Secret Christmas projects - now exposed! =cD

Over the Holidays I had several Christmas projects that were being given as gifts, that I had to keep secret.  OHHHHH it was tough!!  haha.   Well here they are:

The first quilt I'm showing you is the WVU quilt.  I've lived in Cabell County, WV my whole life, so I am a Herd Fan from wayyyyy back.  BUT, WVU is such a big part of my heritage, that I could not pass up the opportunity to make a quilt for one of my dear old friend's hubbies.  ;c)

 Started out by printing the WVU logo backwards, and tracing it onto fusible.  Then I cut that out and fuse it to the center white piece of fabric.

 This quilt is just a series of borders, applique, and quilting. .  once all the borders were complete...  I penciled in WVU WVU WVU WVU around the thin white outer border... the corners are little blue WV symbols ;c)

 With my darning foot and a wide zigzag stitch, I went around each WVU.   The center was quilted with my version of McTavishing

 In the wide outer blue border, I appliqued the words:  "Let's Go..  Mountaineers!"  In yellow fabric

 And the back is some licensed fabric with WVU print on it.  

Another shot of the finished quilt!  

 The next quilt I made was for my friends in Texas.   I feel like I know this family so well, since I've seen their pictures up close and personal ;c)  They're great people BTW!     Sharon, Raymond's daughter, had this quilt made for HER daughter. . .  when LAST Christmas, her daughter had one made forHER! haha. .  paybacks.. but the GOOD kind!  

Sharon picked out all the greens and browns for this quilt.  The white areas are Mr Kotz's shirt remnants.  The center block is called "Texas Tears". . this is a memorial quilt for Mr Kotz.  From what I can tell, Sharon and her daughter must have loved him very very much.  

And here's the back where you can see how I appliqued through all 3 layers of the quilt.  It gives an interesting effect on the back of the quilt.  

And last but not least, I made ONE more Crown Royal quilt. . BUT. . since this was the last quilt I completed before Christmas, I did NOT have a chance to get a finished photo of it before I had to get it in the mail.  But here is the TOP!  ;c)

I hope all of you had a very merry Christmas !!!

Adoption Quilt!

Introducing:  The Adoption Quilt.
I finished this amazing project just last night.  So here's the idea - This quilt is for a lady who adopted a child (Nathanael) and whom lives in West Virginia. Her baby shower is this Saturday!    The center block, is the state of West Virginia and represents Nathanael.  
Also represented in this quilt, is her 6 other "sponsered" children.  
3 of those kids are from Indonesia:  Gilbert, Jeniati, and Jonardo.
1 is from Haiti - Augustin
1 is from Uganda - Joseph
and 1 is from Ecuador - Mavelin.

The 4 outer corners are globes.  

All of these blocks were raw-edge fusible appliqued.   I attached the pieces with a narrow zig-zag in dark brown thread.   The names of each child were machine-embroidered on each block.

 I'm mostly proud of this block:  Indonesia - The other countries were easy to applique  . but Indonesia is a series of small islands.   I marked the islands with a thin pencil, and then went over them with my machine, and a darning foot!  I put stabilizer behind the fabric, and used a free-motion embroidery technique!

 Haiti - and Augustin

 West Virginia - and Nathanael

 Indonesia - and Gilbert, Jeniati, and Jonardo

 Ecuador - and Mavelin (LOVE that name!)

 Uganda - and Joseph

 Here's a closeup of one of the corner globes.   I quilted the globe backgrounds with a heart stitch, and the "water" part of the globes with a paisley stitch.  
This quilt also was the first time trying these little squigglies for the sashing. .   This stitch has totally changed my quilting life forever!! They are so versatile easy, and fast. . and sOOO cute!!  (But I'll go more into this in another blog post )

Here's the finished back of the quilt!  I used fabrics from the front of the quilt on the back too!  
Let me know what you think!

My fabric challenge quilt

I won "Best Quilting" in our local guild's fabric challenge.  It's kind of like the Hoffman challenge, but we are given "ugly" fabrics. . or hard-to-pair fabrics, and everyone is to make a quilt.
The winning categories are:
Best Quilting,
Most unique use of fabric.
Best use of color.
Best MIXED technique and
People's Choice.

I wish I would have got a photo of everyone's projects, but I didn't =c/

But here's mine!!

The block I used for this quilt is from the book "50 paper pieced stars" by Carol Doak.  This block is ALABAMA. .   I just chose it because it looked the easiest. and I had a very limited time to complete this project.  The very center of the 8-point stars is the first fabric in the challenge.  The other fabric we were required to use is the fabric I used on the borders.   We were given a fat quarter of each fabric.  I used EVERY LITTLE PIECE of the fat quarter for the borders for this quilt.   I mean there was not a speck of it left!
I quilted the outer borders with burgundy thread in a feather pattern.   The black areas I did my version of McTing, and I outline quilted the stars.
This was the first sorta contest I have participated in, it was fun to see what everyone came up with!