I'm Back!

I can't believe I haven't posted anything on this blog since last summer!  I love reading other blogs but have been super busy and then had some issues with the way my server works with blogspot.  So I will attempt to keep this as brief as possible to update you on all that's been going on. 
Daughter got moved into her apartment in August to prepare for her first year of teaching.  I spent some time with her helping her unpack her apartment and setting up her classroom.  It was determined the second week of school that the enrollment for her grade was too small to justify keeping her at that school.  So in the matter of about 3 days, we packed up her kindergarten room and moved her across town to another school to teach first grade.  While this was traumatic on her and her students, it has worked out great and she has a wonderful class for her first year.  
I am still teaching preschool two days a week and have a small fun class.  I am subbing some at the elementary where I taught for 10 years before retiring.  It is fun to see some of my former kindergarten students all grown up into 5th graders!

My niece married in October and I spent quite a bit of the fall making a surprise for her and her husband.  I made a small quilt for them from their moms' wedding dresses and some scraps from the alterations on her dress.  I didn't have a pattern and made it up as I went. While it was scary making the first cut into my sister-in-law's wedding dress, I think the quilt turned out very nice.  They loved it. 

 

Later in October, a friend that teaches at the preschool had a sweet little boy.  Here is the quilt I made for him.

In this picture you can see the topstitching on the seams and binding.  It's a quilt as you go quilt.  I thought it needed more definition on the seams.  It was really quick to quilt up.  (The blue leaf in background is the back of a quilt on which the striped quilt is lying.)





 I  made a quilt for a friend from Sunday School class who fell while moving and broke her neck.  She is doing well now and has started a new job.  I didn't get a picture of it but here is another quilt made for a lady who had some major surgery.  I used the same pattern but the first quilt was white, pink, and aqua.  Cat not included with either.  The color is a little off on this one but best picture I can find. Backing has the teal, wine, and gold color in a floral.

We didn't get to go to our extended family Christmas in 2012 as there was big snow storm we would have had to travel through.  So I saved the quilt I made for the gift exchange and took it this past Christmas.  Enjoy the picture of our living room and the top of my head while you are at it! The fabrics are mostly Christmas prints with some red and green fabrics added in.  Block pattern is called Disappearing 4 patch.  There are several patterns on line if you want to try this block.

You may have heard of a "hard candy Christmas".  Well this was a quilt Christmas.  

Daughter loves chevrons and I made this one for her. I made it for a couch quilt but I think she keeps it at school so she has it when she has hall duty on cold mornings.  The color is really off.  the bottom under the turquoise is an off white and the middle row is a deep pink not red. I really need to work on a better place to take pictures where I can get more natural light. The pattern Chevron quilt is posted at a great blog -  My Quilt Infatuation . Kelly shares some really pretty quilts there.
Here is a picture of it when I took to show and tell at my quilt club. 
  

 

This is the quilt I made for my brother-in-law.  
If you have never been there you should take a trip to Quiltville
This is one of Bonnie Hunter's free patterns called Strip Twist. I made it longer than her quilt by adding more blocks and I changed the border.  











And here is the one I made for my husband.  He likes an extra long quilt for his side of the bed.  It looks long here but it was a little shorter than he needed so I added a couple more rows on one end to make it longer.  Adding rows to a finished quilt is a complicated process!  Try to avoid doing that if at all possible like the plague.  This block and layout is called Double 4 Patch.  I found the patten at About.com but I can't seem to find the link anymore.  The top was made from scraps and up-cycled shirts.  I bought the batting and backing but all the rest were in my scrap stash.