Great Granny {the tablerunner}

Earlier in the year I won this copy of Lori Holt’s book on Red Pepper Quilts.

I like a lot of the patterns in this book and I’m happy to have it as part of my home library.  In January we remodeled our bedroom, and sadly our dresser has been “decorated” with an old bath towel on top to protect the surface from the TV and other electronics stored there.

But that’s all about to change!

I’ve been planning this tablerunner in my mind for several months, knowing I wanted to choose fabrics that would look sophisticated and pop out against a black background.  Slowly I built up a pile of potential fabrics and this past weekend I finally started cutting the squares.

The cream is Essex linen, and a lot of the fabrics are scraps, hooray!  The first seven blocks are sewn and squared up, just seven more to go.  The squares finish at 1” and it takes me about 75 minutes to sew one (already cut) from start to end, so this is all I’ve been working on the past four nights.

Hopefully I will have a finish to share soon!

Finished Summerlove Quilt

My cousin and I took the Summerlove quilt to the Calvert Marine Museum last week for a photo shoot at the lighthouse.

There was no wind, which made it a perfect (although cold!) day to take photos.

This is the first quilt I’ve ever had professionally long-armed!  I picked the quilting pattern and then mailed the quilt and backing off to Utah and got it back about a month later.  The stitching is beautiful and perfect.  I will definitely be sending my quilts out when I can afford it.  Melissa Kelley of Sew Shabby Quilting did the beautiful quilting.

You can really see the quilting on the back side of the quilt.  The backing was a gift from my husband a few years ago.  It’s a wide backing fabric from Keepsake Quilting.  As much as I really love a pretty pieced backing, sometimes it’s awesome not to have to sew the back together!

I couldn’t help but include this outtake from the photo shoot.  My cousin just had a baby in January so she did all the quilt holding with a 14 pound baby strapped to her chest!  You can see his little ear poking out of the wrap.  Thank you, Summer!

The finished quilt measures 60 x 72.  The fabrics are Summerlove and a few from my stash.  The background fabric is Essex linen.  I think the color is called natural. 

After washing and drying, the quilt looks almost exactly the same, just a little crinklier and softer.  I am in love with this quilt!

Summerlove Update

I have finished up the first four rows of my Summerlove Hourglass quilt. 

Love, love, love!  The sashing is Essex linen, which I have never used before, but I find it soft and easy to sew with.  I may never buy Kona white again…just kidding!

I also joined A Bee in My Bonnet’s Row-Along.  I happen to have quite a stash of Lori Holt fabric, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.  The first “filler” row is done, but I’m not loving my fabric choices.  I just kind of hurriedly picked them out while the kids were with me one afternoon.  It didn’t help that I didn’t understand the directions and picked out twice as many fabrics as needed—my error, not the direction’s.  Luckily it’s just a filler row, so hopefully I can refine my choices as the qal progresses since it’s mystery-ish and I’m not really sure exactly how prominent the focus fabrics will be.

I will be participating in the Dots on Dots blog hop coming up September 10-21 and giving away a $25 gift certificate to Quilt Taffy, where you can find lots of sweet fabric treats!  See you September 10th!