SusieQOH

Iceblossom, I love your quilts and the stories. Kind of shocking how someone will marry someone to get back at someone else! Wow!!

Jshep

Iceblossom love your quilt stories. You do such beautiful work. Would love to hear the other stories about your quilts.

Fizzle

I made a donation quilt as an original variation of a ribbon block, but by using two different blocks set on point, it was all large and easy square seams and no triangles. A pet peeve of mine is when I piece a triangle all nice and everything and then it gets turned into a square by the piece next to it! One of the guild ladies asked me to teach a class in it and this was the piece I made to have for the class demonstration and also to see how long it would take. I wrote up directions and sized it in various ways from crib to queen sized. My donation variation I do have an old school photograph somewhere and used a different focus under-the-sea fabric for each ribbon (so the red in this one) with the same squares in all columns that are green here.

I don't have them handy but I should be able to find those directions if anyone wants them, it's a fast donation quilt that I made several times, just didn't get this one for me done.

I would be interested in the instructions!!!

rosiewell

I loved the stories, I would keep those unfinished unfinished, they are part of your life!

Iceblossom

Ok Fizzle! I will look for them. I did them on a computer, the question is which one and where is the back up. I know I have the block layout on EQ6 as well. I was calling it Peppermint Twist at the time.

I remember the Sea variation, my first attempt was using a hot orange/black/neon color daisy and that was a hoot. I also made a soft pink and blue Ice Cream fabrics, with a white-on-white that was like whipped cream -- just used up the last of that whipped cream white in the Purple quilt I'm currently working in.

It also quilts nicely and quickly on the diagonal grids. Was a great donation project, everyone looked different, all straight seams, so low yardage. It gets harder doing more than 3 colors but as you get used to working with it, it starts to make sense.

Friday1961

I, too, love reading your quilt stories and seeing your UFOs, all of which are beautiful. I especially love your imaginative jar quilt. It tells a story all its own, with the jar on its side, the escaped geckos, the spider -- it's adorable!

Iceblossom

It is funny how sometimes defining moments happen in your life, sometime we know when we are doing them they are monumental, other times they don't seem life changing but are.

Judy Martin's book Scrap Quilts that I mentioned before was a big influence on me. I don't come from a quilting tradition and didn't grow up with them, I had decided as a senior in high school that I wanted to make quilts. When that book came out for the first time I saw scrap quilts that I didn't consider ugly. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of using a larger number of fabrics in a planned process. We've outgrown the cutting techniques and such in that book but it is still worth it for the pictures and print discussions, if not the directions.

Another big change was that bug jar swap. We weren't the first people on the internet to swap but it was the early days of the 'net. Just after bulletin boards, when forums were high tech! We developed our rules for the block size (that was before buyable "layer cake" squares were a thing), and all that. Some of those people I swapped with for years, others just that one time. It wasn't all bugs, no it was cats and civil war and angels and metallics and all sorts of things, at the end the last 12 or so of us each picked a theme for a month and then we decided we sort needed to do some stuff with all this fabric! Some of the fabric has been used as simply fabric over the years, others in collections related by theme if not color. Recently as I've been sorting my fabrics again I've pulled out the civil war and the metallics from my collection including the squares which usually reside in their own perfectly sized boxes. I'll probably be working with them next year. Neither collection is enough for it's own box yet but I'm going to have to sort through them and play with them until I decide what to do.

I was talking to the hubby last night and am thinking that more accurately I have become a "collection" sewer as opposed to the "scrap" of "thrifty" sewer I've considered myself.

So here's a couple of my collections, plus a "file" box for reference when I say "oh, I have a box of that sort of thing let me look..."

Civil war on the left, the VIP/Cranston prints on the bottom aren't but will be used for the back of at least one of the projects. I'm figuring I have three quilts in there at least. Batik box in the middle I just grabbed because it was easily reachable, the cheap boxes don't hold up and this one needs to be replaced but not quite yet! And you might notice the lid isn't on securely because the box is overflowing. Metallics on the right, I have several ideas forming to use them but nothing definite yet, at least not enough to make a serious dent. You'll notice large stacks of 10" squares for each of these collections.

Now to fit them back in the box tops a bit better, wash my hair, and then off to my mom's and away from my stash. Well, except for what I'm bringing with me.

Lynnie25

Some beautiful quilt tops there waiting to be finished. I am not sure I could remember the story behind each of the quilt tops I have waiting to be quilted, some I can't even remember piecing together they were done so long ago.

Rose_P

Oh, my, Iceblossom! Each one of these deserves a separate thread. It's too overwhelming to try to respond to all of them. I love that you have taken the time to tell their stories, and all the tops look as special as the stories that go with them.

I understand the situation with your father-in-law because my grandmother was the same about her diabetes. However she was living in a much earlier time before managing it had advanced to where it is now. Also, she was 74, and dying in 1956 made her well past life expectancy for her generation. When I was younger I agreed with family members who deplored her refusal to follow the diet and take insulin, but the older I get the easier it is to understand how difficult it would have been for her. That was a time before Medicare, and she probably would have been hard pressed to cover the costs of treatment, including transportation, because she lived far from town and didn't drive. She just wanted to continue with the uncomplicated life that she'd always known, caring for her cats and chickens and making quilts. I believe she allowed herself a relatively peaceful ending and she was entitled to her choice. Still, anyone letting go of life too easily at age 60 seems terribly sad. That seems a lot of years short of what he might have had with today's medical miracles.

Teddybear Lady

Love the stories and the quilts. Thank you for sharing.