And another...

Here is another buzz saw, set into a circle block. To make the block a square, you have to add a 2 inch strip to one side. You can then set 4 squares together into a circle. Or, use them like log cabin blocks into any log cabin setting. I did my first one in the Perikomen set--have to hunt up old photographs.
These I made with brown batiks, keeping each batik together in a block. I used one mottled background. Again, I used left overs of the browns for the border.
I love this quilt--gave it to my husband.

another buzz saw--green and cream

This buzz saw started with 6 1/2 inch blocks, cut 1 1/2 inches into strips. I used mainly dark greens and creams. The borders are a bunch of greens, cut 6 inches wide.
I like to do a scrap border with close in color fabrics.
Oh, the camera charger--it was found at my sister's house, about 4 hours after I bought one for $43.00 and used it. We have this problem in our house. Can't find anything until we replace it, then there it is.

Buzz Saw

I have a Buzz Saw class that I really enjoy. These photos are of one I made in scraps. I think I started these with 7 1/2 inch squares. Bonnie has directions for this type of block on her web site--I think it is called delectable mountains.
I'll post some more photos of quilts I made with this when we find the charger for the camera...
The quilt can look so different depending on the fabrics used and setting of the blocks.

pastel batiks

My small group gives each other fat quarters for our birthdays--I try to put them into my next quilt. This one I made 2 years ago for my daughter, Eve. I had asked for pastel batiks. It is a pattern from Judy Martin's website. Judy included a slide of my quilt in her cd-rom Stars and Sets.
The quilt has several of my "ghost blocks", made in low contrast.

Hand dyed fabrics

A small quilt made with hand dyed fabrics I purchased about 12 years ago. After many years of being pregnant or breast feeding, I finally a few years ago was able to start dying my own fabrics. I have a top I made with some of them, I will try to photograph it this week.
This little quilt, machine quilted in channels of ripples, I sold. I don't sell very many--usually I can't part with my quilts for money, although I give many away.
This quilt was made in the same way the quilt features in my earlier posting of August 7th.
It is one of my most popular classes.

Our family attends St Pauls United Church of Christ in Chicago, where I am happy to make paraments and vestments. These red ones were for the congregation's 160th anniversary. You can see them with their academic gowns and their pastoral albs. The anniversary is on Reformation Day, a day of the Spirit
so the color of that day is red. It was so wonderful to work with red. The insides of the stoles are a firey orange batik, commemorating the
Spirit, and the church rebuilding from the Chicago Fire and another devastating fire in the late 1950s.
I used a different log cabin style for each pastor.

Framed Nine Patch, triangle label

A framed nine patch, the darks being from the floor of my really needing to be cleaned up sewing room, and multiple pastel backgrounds. On this one I clumped the backgrounds together as I did later on the taupe quilt I posted. I gave it to my mother.
You can see my triangle label--I include labels in the corner before I put the binding on. I make both rectangular and triangle labels--the triangle ones are really easy as there is only one line to applique, and no corners. The other sides are held on with the binding stitches.

This quilt is made from the book Scrappy Duos by Donna Lynn Thomas. I rarely follow the colorations of someone else's quilt this closely, but I loved Linda Kittle's Prairie Harvest.
I pushed the colors a bit more than she did, and made the quilt bigger.
I call it Marigolds.
It is held by my son Seth and neighbor Claire, back in about 2003.

Made with Batiks and Hand Dyed Bali fabrics. For the 30th anniversary of my cousin Gerald's ordination. 2004.

I was happy to find Bonnie's site quiltville.com.
Here are two quilts I made from her ideas.

Made from taupes. I like to use multiple backgrounds.
I include a low contrast block or two in quilts--I call them ghost blocks.
On my design wall I had worked to make sure the backgrounds were scattered and it didn't look right. So, I clumped the backgrounds and am much happier.
Still at the top stage.
This is redrafted to a smaller size from an Atkison book, Confetti in the Corner.

Teal fabrics from my stash, held by neighbors. My family is less than enthusiatic anymore about helping me photograph quilts, so I grab neighbors. Our block's houses have porches that are great to hold a quilt off of for photographing.

We live in a great neighborhood in Chicago.
This summer we will hold our 50th anniversary block party.

quilting in Chicago

August 2005
I belong to Illinois Quilters, Inc, a guild of about 300 quilters from Chicago and the northern burbs.
My small group of 10 years, with a revolving name as we cannot agree, is currently called Urban Quilters.
I teach quilting at The Portage Park Center for the Arts.

klein meisje quilts

Klein meisje is Dutch for little girl--what my beloved grandfather called his 12 granddaughters because, I fear, it was easier than trying to remember our names.