My Baby Graduated

Oh my. I had a rough day yesterday! Our baby graduated from college, and I found that to be a reality I was not quite ready to accept! The Class of 2015 is the 200th class to graduate from Ohio University, and our Emma was among the hundreds who walked across the stage.

Our Emma. Her degree is in Health Service Administration. She is technically not finished until after summer session, as she must yet do an internship. After that, let the job offers pour in!

Emma with her sister and brother-in-law, Erin and Jeff.

Emma with her parents, Kevin and Jayne.

We had some fun afterwards - went to an uptown bar called Jackie O's for beer and burgers. Then we went to her apartment where this happened.

She got to see her purple Kaffe quilt. Nothing like a couple of goofy girls to make things fun. She really likes her quilt, and noted that I did indeed follow her instructions: "purple Kaffe with chevrons." Good job, Mom. *wink*

Another milestone met and passed. Sigh.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Celebrating A Finish!

The infrequency of this announcement makes me want to do a happy dance all around the sewing room. The purple Kaffe Fassett quilt I made for Emma has been quilted and bound. DONE! I even remembered to put a label on it.

I began cutting this quilt out about a month ago. I had just finished Snowbird Stars and felt as though I was on a roll, and with Emma's graduation looming, I went right to work. It was fun to make and so, so easy.

Now here we are a month later, and by gosh, it's quilted, labeled and bound. Ready to give to our graduate in a couple of weeks. She will be so surprised.

 

I just love the lime green inner border I used; it pops the colors even more than they already pop, and provides such fantastic contrast. It's a happy quilt! And Emma will LOVE it.

The back is rather bland by comparison. It is KF dots in the palest of lavender colors. I had enough to use it for the binding, as well.

 There's more to celebrate. All those triangles which were cut away from the blocks yielded this HST quilt. I have put all the HSTs together and have a smallish wall hanging-size quilt top. I have put it aside for a bit so that I can mull over the next step. I think I'd like to make it bigger, and must determine if that means more triangles or some other fun option.

Or options. Quilters have many, you know. *wink*

Happy Quilting, Friends!

A Royal Finish

Someone commented that my purple KF project looked so rich and regal, so I thought maybe it could be called royal, too, as it goes to one of my two princesses - the soon-to-be college graduate, Emma. I finished the borders yesterday and waited until this morning to take a picture so I could use daylight to help show it off. (Since neither of my girls reads their mother's blog, I have no worries that the surprise will be ruined.)

I am thrilled with how it has turned out and am eager to get it off to Terry for machine quilting. It measures 71"x87". I will get the backing prepped today, and hopefully deliver it for quilting this week.

 The lime green inner border works very nicely as a pleasing contrast, and I like the "tame" outer border - it allows the floral and dotty inner blocks to grab all the attention.

This March has been ultra-productive! I didn't even have this quilt on my immediate radar as the month began. My entire focus as we entered March was cutting out Snowbird Stars. I finished that quilt top by around the 10th of the month, and went into this soon after. And all those FWQ blocks were squeezed in between. See what I mean about being productive? I sure hope this new-found industriousness hangs around for awhile.

I am closing in on my 1000th post soon; this post is my 990th since beginning this blog in 2009. I ought to try to say something profound, but I fear that I will not. You may not believe it, but I try to be profound every post, yet it just comes out Jayne. *grin*

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Plenty O' Purple

Emma said she wanted a purple chevron quilt using Kaffe Fassett fabrics. Since she is about to don the gown and mortarboard for her walk across the OU stage, and since I put this quilt on the to-do list for 2015, I figured I'd just better get 'er done.

These blocks went together so easily. I couldn't have picked a more user-friendly design. I saw the quilt pictured on Pinterest, which was for a $10 pattern. Like so many pictures of quilts that you see, the construction looked completely straightforward, and I thought I was certainly skilled enough to come up with acceptable dimensions to make this without a pattern. So I did.

Each block is made from an 8.5" square with two 4.5" squares sewn to opposite corners. (I cut away the excess, and have a very hefty pile of HSTs for a future project.) The center is 7 blocks x 9 blocks and measures 56" x 72" -  it fit just perfectly the top of this full-size bed. Now for borders. I think I found the perfect fabrics to accentuate this quilt. What do you think?

I've already gotten 2 sides of the green inner border attached. I will attempt to get the remainder of the borders finished today. Shouldn't be any difficulty in that.

It's Not All FWQ

Lest you think that all I've been doing is a Farmer's Wife block every day, I have had another project in the works that I have yet to tell you about.

This lovely pile o' purples has been accumulated for a quilt request from DD2. After she saw the beautiful diamond quilt that her sister got a couple of years ago, Emma made it clear to me that she likes purple and would love a Kaffe quilt with chevrons. Her request dates back to at least April of 2013, as I came across this post about buying a bit of purple KF fabric. Accumulating the fabric has been the easy part. Deciding on a pattern - not so much.

My go-to source for inspiration is always Pinterest, and I did find a quilt that I'd pinned - not once, but twice - and so I considered my options. It was mostly green, but I could envision changing things up with purple. What I liked about it was that the chevron design was handled differently. So, I guessed at sizes, began cutting, and here is what I've come up with.

Basically, the block is just half of a snowball block. I decided I wanted to cut big pieces so the fabric could shine, therefore my blocks are cut at 8.5 inches. The triangle is made with 4.5-inch squares. Since taking this picture, I've made considerably more blocks, and I like the look. It's really purple.

Those big corners yield some nice by-products, and I am sewing them as I go for some future, yet-to-be-determined quilt. I do love the HST.

You can imagine how the sewing room looks. Mountains of purple Kaffe fabric in one area; and in another area, I have a mass of repro fabrics scattered around for the FWQ blocks. Multi-tasking is a messy business.

Happy Quilting, Friends!