Following in Paula's Footsteps - A Special Blog Hop

On Saturday, February 8, the quilting world lost one of its true treasures.  A sweet and generous quilter named Paula Budinger.

In honor of her life and love of quilting, we would like to invite all of you to participate in a blog hop.

 Creating a Quilted Legacy--Following in Paula's Footsteps

Special thanks to Lorna @Sew Fresh Quilts for giving us permission to use one of her quilt designs for the button.  You can grab the code from my sidebar to post it on your blog.  The code may not be showing up quite yet but I'll get it there as soon as I can.  If you're an experienced blogger and want to just copy the jpg of the button from this blog post and do your own coding, be my guest!  I'm a little rusty at this part.

Let me tell you a little bit about Paula and then I will share more details about the blog hop.

Paula loved bright colors and tackling new challenges.  Although there were other seamstresses in her family she was the only one who made quilts.  Paula started her blog in 2015 and consistently blogged once a week ever since then. Paula regularly made quilts for charities such as Project Linus, Jack's Basket and Covered in Love.  She collected vintage doll quilts, 19th century quilts and more recently developed an interest in studying old vintage quilts.    She often spoke of her daughter and granddaughter with great pride and lots of love.  We want them both to know how much Paula was loved.

If you haven't had a chance to read Paula's blog (Paula B Quilts), you can find it in two places.  She started her blog in 2015 on blogger.com which can be found here and then more recently switched to Wordpress and that can be found here.

Here are a few examples of quilts Paula has made:









Here is a picture of one of the quilts from her collection:

A celebration of Paula's life will be taking place on Sunday, March 1 in her home town.   On May 6, Paula would have turned 79 years old and in honor of her life and love of quilting, that is the day we will start the blog hop.    Each participant is to make a quilt for the charity of their choice in Paula's honor and share your creation in the blog hop beginning on May 6 and ending May 8.

Please contact either Kate Heads at smilesfromKate@gmail.com or myself, Janice Holton at janice@passionforperfume.com if you would like to participate.  Please include your name and the name and URL of your blog.  Once we get the list of participants, we will let you know which day you will be sharing your blog post.   We would be delighted if even those who do not have a blog want to participate!  Just send either Kate or me a picture of your finished quilt and we will post on our blogs with your name and the charity to which your quilt will be donated.  Or if you would like to participate anonymously, that is ok too.  Just send a picture and let us know it is for the Leaving a Quilted Legacy Blog Hop.

There will be prizes!

Each comment left on a blog post will get readers an entry to win several prizes so the more comments left the more chances to win a prize (bloggers are eligible for the prizes as well as readers).  The list of prizes will be announced later.  Participants with blogs are welcome to offer prizes on their own blog post if they wish but it is not required.

I hope you'll join us in honoring Paula's Quilted Legacy

(Quilters!!  This is a perfect time to get one of your UFO's done!)

Apparently, I have forgotten how to create code for a blog button so I'll work on that and get that fixed! 

More Orange and Other Stuff!

My goodness, I have been getting totally carried away with the RSC color of the month, orange.  I did not intend to make an entire quilt; however that is exactly what happened last weekend!

I purchased this pattern from Kelly at My Quilt Infatuation several years ago when I first started learning how to quilt and have never made anything with it until now.   It's called Courtyard Tiles.  I love how easy it is and it  comes together really fast. I will probably make this again in another colorway one of these days. So this is just the blocks up on the wall, not sewn together yet.  I have to fix one mistake before I sew together.  Can you spot it?

I made a few more Scrappy Trip Around the World blocks . . .

Here is an orange star block, using orange and fabric from a thrifted plaid shirt . . .

Here are a few more of block of the month blocks for my Civil War Quilt

And I completely forgot about THIS!  I found an old ratty and stained one-patch quilt made with polyester fabrics that wasn't worth saving; but look what was on the back!  I cut off all the old ties and freed it from the polyester and ripped batting and as you can see, this piece still has some pretty bad blue stains as well, but isn't this a fun cotton print?  These flowers are LARGE.  So fun.  Knowing what I know about the quilt's origin, this fabric is from somewhere between the 30's and 50's.

And last but not least I have developed a keen interest in learning about vintage fabrics and learning how to be able to date quilts. That stuff fascinates me.  First step, read everything I can get my hands on that talk about antique quilts and fabrics.  Here are my first two purchases and I'm having a lot of fun reading them.   The Bibliography in the first one has a great list of books to put on my bucket list.

Now don't laugh because I am learning things that many of you have probably known for years but one of the first things I learned from Julie Stocker at Pink Doxies is that in the 1950's fabric widths changed from being sold in 36 inch widths to the widths we are seeing today.  I did not know that!  I have found a kindred spirit fabric nerd in Julie and I know she is going to be a wonderful source of encouragement and knowledge! 

OK, here is another obvious question that is probably fairly common knowledge but I do not know.  When did they start printing designer and maker information on the selvages?  I would love to know the answer to that and any other fabric dating tidbits you care to share with me in the comments.  I'll bet I'm not the only one interested in this stuff, so feel free to write an essay there if you wish!

Linking to:

Needle and Thread Thursday

Midweek Makers

Wednesday Wait Loss

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Orange RSC and Other Things

I have decided to join in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (RSC) this month.  For my non-quilting friends and family, this is a monthly challenge started by Angela at SoScrappy where a specific color is chosen each month.  We are supposed to sew up something, anything, using scraps of that particular color.   I was doing it for a while and then stopped (can't remember why).  So I'm hopping back on the wagon.  This month's color is orange and here is what I have to work with.

Yes, I know these do not look like scraps.  That would be because I rarely use orange and the scraps that I do have would probably only make one small block even if I sewed them all together.  So might as well use up stash.  It's just sitting around!

The last time I worked with orange was when I found a large scale Kaffe Fasset piece of fabric from the 1990's in my stash (you can see 6 big pieces of it in this top) and wanted to make something featuring orange.  Do you remember this one?

Not one of my favorite makes ever and it is still just a top.  

In other news, last September I signed up for a Civil War Block of the Month.  Here is the quilt we will be making:

 We get a packet each month with fabric and patterns for four different blocks.  Here are my first nine!  And now that I've posted these I notice a booboo in block #4!

  

OK, I'm off to search for something to sew with my orange fabrics.  And what kind of grandma would I be if I didn't post one of my cuties once in a while.  This is Wyatt & Krsytel's youngest, such a love!

After a few hours of waffling over what to do with orange, I decided on a Scrappy Trip Around the World block that Bonnie Hunter designed.  Here are the first two!  Kind of busy!  I tend to lean toward bright and colorful prints and then nothing goes together!  I just don't have good luck with orange.

I have ordered  stencil and a pounce pad to use to mark the quilting for my neutral log cabin quilt.  I have never tried these tools before so we'll see how it goes!  Do any of you use this method?  If you've tried it, what did you like or not like about it?

Linking to:

Monday Making

Quilting is More Fun Than Housework

Log Cabins Coming Out My Ears!

Until now, I have never made a quilt for my own bed.  I am finally attempting it!   So what did I pick?  A log cabin quilt.  It has always been on my bucket list of things to make and I'm finally doing it.  Unfortunately, that means I must make a king size version since we just purchased a king size bed this year.  YIKES! 

So here is my progress for far  . . .

This is a twin size piece of batting on the wall and this particular picture shows progress up to a 10 x 11 layout.   I need a 14 x 15 layout so I am just accumulating the rest 10 blocks at a time until I have a total of 210.  I am actually up to 190!  20 to go! 

I am using mostly Civil War reproduction fabrics but there are also some other fabrics that aren't repro at all but I decided the colors worked so in they went.  Here are some closeups of a few blocks.

My daughter-in-law wanted a log cabin quilt too but she wanted hers done in more neutral colors like this . .  

So I had about 20 blocks made using that color way.  Then she saw my quilt and kind of changed her mind and wanted hers to be more like that.  So I took the neutral blocks I had made and just made a baby quilt with a definite Little House on the Prairie vibe to it. I put a brown paisley around the edge.

Looks pretty blah from a distance but up close the fabrics are fun to look at.  Well, I like looking at them anyway!  Ha! Ha!

I have a ton of brown reproduction fabrics so I decided to piece the back too!  So here's what I did with that. 

 A lot of work for one little baby quilt but I enjoyed it.  I know that I would LOVE to quilt it in the Baptist Fan design but I've never done that using FMQ before.  Any suggestions on how to go about it?

 Again, I know this is not something that is going to make everybody go "oooo! WOW!" but I just love it.  It feels so homemade and vintage.  Like I said, Little House on the Prairie.  All those rich chocolaty browns just seem so cozy to me.

I just changed the font on my blog to be more clear and a little bigger.  Goodness knows I am having trouble seeing as well as I used to so I figured if it's happening to me, it's probably happening to others too so I thought I'd help ya out a bit.  

OK so any advice on how to proceed quilting the Baptist Fan is greatly appreciated!

Linking to:

Monday Making

Show & Tell Monday with Bambi