Hugs and Kisses Quilt

Another quilt finished!  I'm on a roll this year. :)  This one was started in May of 2015.  I had this jelly roll for some time before finally figuring out what to do with it.  To be honest, I had several jelly rolls in my fabric stash, as I am sure we all do, and have never known the best way to incorporate them into a quilt.  I was looking for a pattern to use with this precut and I found the Missouri Star Quilt Company's tutorial for the Jelly Roll Race II and knew I had found the perfect quilt.  I loved the idea of this pattern adding the squares to breakup this strips.  I decided to add two borders to finish the quilt.  

This one I knew I was going to give to my mother from the very begining. While machine quilting in the ditch I came up with the idea of adding an X or an O in the square blocks to represent hugs and kisses.  My mom always signed everything to us kids with XOXO and I wanted to put that in the quilt being made especially for her. I wanted to wrap her with hugs and kisses!  

Finished Quilt

Close up look of the hand quilted X and O in the square blocks.  Hope you can see.

Don't forget, always add a label!

Name that Tune Quilt Challenge

I was so excited when my quilt guild, Nitetime Needlers, announced we were doing a "Name that Tune" quilt challenge.  Instantly I was coming up with ideas and all of them seemed to be songs from my favorite movies.  What was I going to choose, Grease, Dirty Dancing, Wizard of Oz... so many choices!  I didn't go with any of those.  I went with another child hood favorite of mine.  See if you can guess. :)

All the yo-yos were sewed down onto the quilt top by hand. 

 Hanging up! 

Last chance to guess before you see the answer...

Heartlight by Neil Diamond

Circle of Friends Quilt Finished

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At my very first quilt retreat in Spring of 2015 all the attendees participated in a mystery project that turned out to be a bowtie quilt pattern.  I didn't get signed up for the retreat early enough to have the instructions on what to bring for the mystery project.  You had to bring an assortment of blocks pre-cut, darks and lights.

However, luck was on my side, they had some left over squares and I had two wonderful members give me their blocks so I could work on the project while I was at the retreat.  As this was my first time attending anything like this I didn't bring enough to work on! :)

By having all of these squares donated to me, this allowed me to finish a larger quilt top than the mystery project would normally have been for everyone else.  I did only finish one group of blocks while I was there and then started working on the others in late August with me finally quilting, binding and hanging the quilt in January 2016.

Blocks in progress.

Blocks laid out on the floor while I decided on the design I would go with. You have lots of options with this quilt block.

 Sandwiched and pinned all ready for quilting!

Quilt hanging above stairs that take you to our downstairs family room.

Closer look. Really love how it turned out!

Found a great tutorial and free pattern for the bowtie quilt.  This is not the one I used but very close.  Enjoy! http://www.craftsy.com/blog/2014/05/bow-tie-quilt-patterns/