Violette's Sugar and Spice

"Sugar and Spice, Everything Nice," what could be more "girly" than that?

As soon as those words popped into my head, I knew I had to include them in Violette's quilt. I kept the tones of the word "sugar" close to the color violet. I wanted the word "and" to disappear into the background, so I picked a color that was close to the background. For the word "Spice," I wanted colors with punch.

I didn't like the "R" so I redid it. Then I didn't like that it was sewn so evenly, so I ripped it apart and resewed it together. The word "Everything" had to bend slightly so it would fit on the top of a twin bed. And I wanted the colors to be reminiscent of a rainbow.

The word "Nice" looked a bit boring, so I replaced the dot on the "i" with a little flower.

After that came the name panel, along with some butterflies I designed.

Violette's family has a big tabby cat, and I knew I wanted to include him in the quilt. Hiding him in the flower patch at the bottom was the solution.

Here is the finished quilt.
I was so excited to join Tonya's Summer Class. But I couldn't start posting until after I had delivered this quilt to its recipient, my godchild Violette.

I visited her family in July for the Christening and gave them her quilt. Everybody loved it, and thought it was perfect. Everything -was- perfect.

Ten days after I left, Violette suffered a tragic accident and died. I flew down to Maryland to attend the funeral. The family covered her coffin with the quilt at her funeral. It was beautiful, and perfect in its own way, but that's not the image I had anticipated.

~~~~~

It's been hard for me to get back into making quilts or being excited about much of anything. I'm not related to Violette's family, but I loved her very much.


Today the quilt is on Violette's big brother's bed. He's 5-1/2.

He placed it there.

Polka Dot Estates

finished!



I changed the name of my quilt from "housing project" to "Polka Dot Estates". I was looking at Tonya's house tutorial recently. Guess what she called it? housing project! No wonder I thought it was a great name. I guess my subconscious held on to that name until I started my quilt. Sorry Tonya! Never meant to use your quilt name. Eek! Please accept my apologies!

I really enjoyed this class and making the quilt. I learned a lot that I wouldn't have learned if I had just followed a pattern of "cut this many of each sized rectangle and triangle listed". It's hard to explain. But I think you know what I mean.

Thanks Tonya!

I offer this photo as evidence that I am still working on my quilt! As you can see (maybe), several trees and the letters ORES are sewn together into a section. This picture represents about 1/10th of my quilt. How did it get so big?! The work of assembling the pieces is slow and requires much thought. The process is so intense that I can't focus on it more than a couple hours at a time.

After seeing some of your quilt tops finished, I am eager to finish mine, but I daresay it won't be any time soon! I am renewing my commitment to it, hoping to make good progress in the next month.

Hi all,
I filled in the blanks & here it is:


It's 24" x 33.5"-- just a small project. I will be embroidering some more words throughout.

Finished Top!

At long last ~ the flying monkeys are off the design wall!!  

The completed top measures 61 x 86 ~ Chris and I have talked about several quilting ideas, but haven't decided on anything yet.  Hope to piece the back tomorrow (single vertical seam) ~ and then the monkeys will be off to Oakland where Chris lives.

Woo Hoo!!

Not crazy about my results

I decided it was time to try and assemble my trees and I'm not really liking the results. I'm going to stop where I am now and quilt the small piece that's already assembled and save the other blocks for another time - maybe I'll come up with a better plan for joining them.

I'd like to try this again in the future but I may need to rethink and limit my color scheme....keep it scrappy but pick just a color or two to work with. I did have a lot of fun making the trees - they may even show up in other projects.

Not pleased with myself

Oh well, things did not progress as well as I'd hoped and I have precious little to show:

.

I'm not sure it I like the non-wonkyness but maybe I have been brain-washed by all your wonky projects. Also I'm bothered by the absense of piecing but then again, I said I wanted to do appliqué and try a few different things and embellishments.

In short, I don't function well on the no-plan plan but promise to plow ahead with this because I am curious where it will take me.

Broken Dishes

Quick update ~ the double row of broken dishes blocks works really well (and if you let your eyes blur out a bit you'll discover a marvelous secondary pinwheel pattern dancing across the top border). Thanks for your suggestions, thoughts, and encouragement!

Still need to piece the left side's zig-zag border and then construction of the top can begin in earnest!

Quiltdivajulie

Monkey Business ~ Help Needed

Here's where the project stands at this moment ~ I'm a bit stuck on what to do with the top border. Contemplating a double row of alternating broken dishes blocks (love the play on words, plus the colors help balance the weight of the 'monkey wrench' blocks at the bottom). What do you see?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! [note added later - please see my post of July 24 to see a rough sketch for my early asymmetrical border ideas]

Quiltdivajulie