Quilt Classes with Bonnie

I was so fortunate to get to attend a lecture by Bonnie Hunter,http://quiltville.blogspot.com/ ,on her scrap saver system on Thursday evening.  My friend, Teresa, from McKinney and I took Bonnie's Virginia Bound class on Friday and on Saturday we took her Bricks in a Barnyard.  Now just to get those quilts finished.  Both are a lot of work but great fun!  I only bought some solid red for the Bricks quilt and a couple yards of some plaid fabric.  All the other fabric came from my scraps and smaller yardage.  You know - those strips you trim after quilting a quilt and that extra you bought of a color to make sure you had enough!  Bonnie has these patterns in 2 of her books and she suggests ways to recycle men's 100% cotton shirts for the fabric.  I did have a few of these in my fabric.  My friend Teresa searched thrift shops and found some great shirts to use in her quilts.  I'm trying to use up some of what I have.  That's what I love about Bonnie's quilting patterns - you can use all sorts of fabric and turn it into something pretty.  As she often says, "If it's still ugly(fabric), you didn't cut it small enough".

The Virginia Bound comes from her book, Scraps and Shirttails. Here are some of the block parts that I finished.  They are pieced on paper foundations.   

  

This shows how the 4 parts of the block go together to make the block.  I think I remember the blocks are to be 15" finished.

This shows how the secondary pattern is formed when the blocks go together.  I didn't sew any of my blocks together yet as I want to be sure I have good variety in the 4 parts and I try to use up a strip when I pull it out.  So the same strip my end up in several of the block sections. I want to have a bunch to mix and match.  I just sorted my fabrics by lights and darks.  

The Bricks in a Barnyard comes from her book, Scraps and Shirttails II.  Again I sorted lights and darks but in this quilt I used beiges to tans for my lights and did not include whites.

Each block has 4 sections and depending on how you set them you can get variations.  I'll probably go with her setting but add another row at the top and one at the bottom to make the quilt center 12" longer.

  This is the beginning of 2 sides of the border.  I was using them as leader/enders for each other.  I've always wanted to do a braid quilt or border but didn't quite get my mind around it but directions in class were great.  The sections will be trimmed straight on the sides just before being sewn onto the quilt center. My fabrics on these are actually darker but the camera flash lightened them.


I will leave you with a few pictures of our daughter and pets under the Christmas tree.  Although she is an adult, we've always taken pictures of her under the tree with the pets.  There is also one of Lucy(middle doggie) out in our Christmas snow.

Our beautiful Emma!  I imagine next year she will be in her own place with her own tree.

 Duchess is still rather bouncy and loves to play!

Sophie loves her picture taken but likes to bark at the camera.

Duchess thinks she is being really good.

Lucy does not like her picture taken with a flash!

Lucy figured out how to roll the ball around in the snow and get it coated and then she could eat the snow off of it!