And Lastly Two

At the beginning of October, my son and girlfriend brought over a bag each of their old tee shirts in hopes that I would be able to use them in a quilt for each of them. I had used a couple of their shirts to make into pillows. With a lot of tee shirts, I was able to pick out the best to use on the backside of their quilts.

My son's girlfriend loves cats, but sadly my son is allergic to them. 

So I decided to make her quilt in a cat theme. I had enough leftover batiks and also the paw print motif fabric that was used in my son's quilt to make a rainbow of cats. I followed the Missouri Star's cat pattern. Got to love Missouri Star's Youtube!!

The backside has the tee shirts from her high school years; tee shirts that she got from Taiwan when visiting her Grandparents. 

For my son's quilt, I had already purchased a fabric with paw prints as the motif back when JoAnn's was going out of business and before doggie. My son had been talking about getting a Shiba Inu for at least a year. I wanted this quilt to be for the dog since my son already has many quilts from me. I used scraps from my stash to use as the chain in the Irish Chain pattern. 

An eclectic grouping for an eclectic group of tee shirts. 

The dog isn't a blanket kind of dog, but he didn't mind for this photo. I think he doesn't mind being on top of the blanket, just not inside it. My son was good by rescuing a 4 year old Shiba!! The sweetest Shiba!!!

Mrs. Smith's Favorite

Back in April, my daughter and I traveled to Hamilton Missouri to shop at Missouri Star Quilt Company's many shops. Honestly, I just wanted to experience this quilt town since I follow them on Youtube. My daughter saw the Mrs. Smith's Favorite quilt hanging on wall at one of the shops and fell in love with it. 

She loved it so much that she asked if I could make her one almost with the same fabrics and in a queen size for her bed. 

After purchasing the Block magazine with the pattern and directions, we headed over to their Batik shop.

Omg! That shop is worth the travels to Hamilton! There are so many beautiful batiks! My daughter loved the look of the blue quilt; so, we stuck to picking from the many beautiful blue batiks. We got lucky that they had the cute small flower fabric, which was used in the quilt at the other shop.

The pattern is easy to follow, but since I didn't purchase the suggestion of layer cakes, 10" squares, I had to make changes to directions. Since my quilt would be a queen size, I had to purchase yards of fabric for the different motifs of fabrics that are required. The size of the quilt increased from 68x68 to 95x95. I had to figure out how many more squares and rectangles would be needed to make a queen size.

Eeks! I forgot that quilting a queen size quilt is a workout! The binding was quick and easy using my favorite method. 

In this photo, the quilting looks like it's taking away from the star pattern in the quilt, but I think it's the lighting. The quilting is much softer, but this does show the pattern of the quilting that I used for being able to quilt a queen size quilt with my sewing machine. 

The backside of the quilt is a solid print. I used 3 yards of 108" fabric. This was a fun quilt to make and would do it again, but not a queen size. I'm done making queen size quilts---and don't even think of a king!   

Something Extra

 Made some pillows as Christmas gifts this year.

My son-in-law designs the tee shirts for his Mom's cafe: Son of Egg. 

This is the second pillow that I have made for him using a tee shirt that they sell. 

My son's girl friend gave me some tee shirts from her high school days to make into a quilt. 

These two tee shirts just didn't fit into the look or theme of the quilt; so, they went into a pillow that became a birthday gift for her. 

And lastly, my son also handed over more tee shirts with the request for another quilt. 

I used two of his tee shirts to make him another pillow since the essential shirt would have been difficult to use in a quilt.