"Sunbonnet Sue" donated to Peppers & Pinatas Silent Auction

Once again the Blanketeers came through with another lovely donation for the Peppers & Piñatas silent auction.  Didn't "Sue" turn out beautifully well?  Thanks again to everyone who worked on the quilt, especially Virginia, who put the quilt together and bound it, and Karen, who donated the gorgeous machine quilting.

I'm sure everyone who worked on making the Sunbonnet Sue blocks will never forget the project day where I "taught" everyone how to applique.  What a laugh.  Talk about the blind leading the blind!  It was lots of fun though, and we ended up with such a pretty quilt for our trouble.

"Peppers and Piñatas is an event hosted by Mental Health America of Greater Tarrant County.  Proceeds from the evening will broaden support for the Warrior Support Program designed for military, police, fire, paramedics, and their families in need of mental health services."

April Project Day

It has been a busy two weeks. The Blanketeers had a productive project day two weeks ago. This project day didn't have a real theme; it was more of a "get 'er done" sort of day. Here is Rhonda with the quilt top made from the sailboat blocks we all made at the last project day. I made the boat in the lower right corner. I fussy cut a ruler from some ruler fabric and made the yellow boat out of that. I think this is going to be our Peppers & Pinatas offering this year.
Here is Rachel's latest snowball quilt. Those "Baby Fats" quilts just keep on giving. The Blanketeers have kind of divided into two factions, Rachel & the "Chubby Cheek" snowball group, and me and the "First Steps" cohort. The "First Steppers" are a little faster, but the "Chubby Cheekers" end up with pinwheels from the corner cut-offs that make into lovely quilts of their own, so I think it's a tie. I can't wait to see the pinwheel quilt that results from this vibrant color scheme!
Sheila found a way to use the darling little lamb that was one of the door prizes at our Christmas party last December. It looks like it was made for this sweet little quilt top.
And here is Mary with her latest "First Steps" Is it not gorgeous? I just love the pink & green combo. And her work has gotten so fine! This one just knocked my socks off. I finally got the chance to give her the Friendship Star pin that was her Christmas present (Mary's been busy). Now it represents a token, not only of our friendship, but of how incredibly far she has come with her quilting skills. Way to go, Mary!

I worked on the Quilt of Valor for the first time in probably five months. It is now mostly in rows. It was painful how much the points had to be hacked off to square up the blocks, but that's life. It's more important that it lie flat than for the points to be perfect. It's still going to be really beautiful. I keep telling myself that; that and "finished is better than perfect!" 8)

Peppers & Pinatas - My Quilt, Starry Night

I designed Starry Night using EQ6, then pieced and quilted it myself. It's the main reason I didn't have anything else completed this summer. lol I'm very pleased with the way it turned out. I started with the basic Ohio Star, and chose 3 other star variations and paper pieced the lot of them. Starry Night follows the color wheel around the circle, dropping one color and adding the next in line; yellow/orange/red, then orange/red/red violet, etc.The first set of blocks I did were the yellow/orange/red Ohio Stars. I had never paper pieced before, so this was very much a learning experience. You could really tell from the backside which blocks were my earliest paper piecing attempts, lol I was very glad to get the quilt sandwich made up so all that could be hidden away permanently!
I stippled, of course, this is me after all, with red on top and blue on the back. The backing material is the same blue fabric as the blue in the red pointed star. I didn't have enough of the orange in the first set of Ohio Stars to make the last block, and wouldn't you know this was fabric I bought in Canmore, Alberta! Fortunately, my friend, Neelu, and her family went to Calgary for a lovely Indian wedding and then on to Banff for a vacation. For a very small bribe Neelu happily went to the quilt store in Canmore and found a VERY similar fabric. If you look very closely (don't) the orange fabric on the star in the upper left corner is very slightly different from the ones all in a row. Thanks again Neelu, and also to your two boys who were sooo not thrilled about going to a fabric store on vacation.



Here is Pat of Marty & Pat's Frame Shoppe, on literally the day before the Peppers & Pinatas silent auction. Talk about being just in the nick of time! Next time I hope to work a little further in advance of need, because this one was a killer!

Peppers & Pinatas Group Quilt

What a busy summer this has been! I ended up making my own quilt for the Peppers & Pinatas silent auction last Tuesday as well as putting together the group quilt. They both turned out just lovely.
Here is the group quilt right after Larry and I decided which block went where.


It took us about 45 minutes to decide on the layout. We knew we were done when our last three changes got changed back to the way they were.

Here is the quilt top, ready for our quilter, Karen, to work her magic, and what a relief it was to finally turn it over to her for quilting and binding (thanks again for binding it, Karen!)

And here it is upon delivery. I thought it turned out great! Look at the pretty quilted hearts Karen quilted. That's Virginia on the left, who made 4 of the blocks, and Pat on the right. Pat is coordinating the Peppers & Pinatas silent auction donations.

Let's see if I can remember who did which block: From the left:

Top row: Virginia, me, Sheila, Mary

Second row: Brandy, me, Sheila, Virginia

Third row: Rhonda, Rachel, Mary, me

Bottom row: Virginia, Sheila, Bea, Virginia
Quilting and binding: Karen

Way to go Blanketeers!