Finished my own Sunset at Sea

Carol Doak posted a beautiful storm at sea quilt in orange and blue on her Yahoo group. I fell in love with it and had to duplicate it. Hers looks better -- not sure if that's because it's scrappy, her contrast is better, or just because she's the master -- but I still love mine. She kept a simple blue border, I had to add orange. After all it is the best color on the PLANET!!!

Below you can see what it looks like without borders and the five simple little blocks it takes to make this beautiful design.

Need Help with Storm at Sea Layout

I'd like to make a storm at sea quilt but am not sure of the layout. I plan on using two units from Carol Doak's Simply Sensational 9 Patch Stars Book. Can anyone tell me if I have the layout right as far as where the light, medium, dark and white would go? Thanks!

Guild's Paper Pieced Birthday Quilt

My guild is celebrating their 20th birthday and challenged members to make something with 20. My small Paper Piecing group made 20 birthday cakes (from Carol's 300 PPQB book). I "designed" the quilt (picked the colors) everyone sewed the blocks. Another member put it all together. I did the quilting. All the small groups were asked to do some kind of presentation for 20 -- and we're doing the 20 top reasons to paper piece your quilts. All the quilt needs is the black border, but someone else is doing that part, so I had to take the picture now before I didn't have the quilt any more. The picture is kind of bad, but it looks cute in person -- not at all blurry like it looks. It's black on black so you can't really see it, but it looks good to me. I love practicing quilting, hopefully with more practice I'll get better.

Crayon Challenge

My favorite on line quilting group had a challenge to use a crayon block in some kind of project. If you posted a picture by September 30, you were entered into a random drawing to win something. A couple years ago in a class I saw someone with this neat "thing" that went under their sewing machine and had pockets in the front for all their sewing "tools." I thought it was great because when you take classes you don't have a lot of room for your "stuff" so this is a perfect way to keep everything in reach and "mark" your territory in class. I used this crayon challenge as motivation to make one for myself. I had found crayon fabric at my favorite LQS and used that on one side, made a dozen orange crayons using the challenge block and used more of my favorite color (ORANGE) on the back side. It came out pretty good. I used the crayons as the pockets and quilted them a bit and made 2 smaller and one large pocket to stick my stuff in. I made a big pocket where I can put a cutting board or leave empty and roll up the tool kit to ship. Should be a good tool for my travels to classes. Here's a picture with my traveling sewing machine. The pockets are big so you can't really see the tools but they all fit in there nicely and stay handy.

My latest project

Wanted to make a quilt for my brother's girlfriend who was having a special birthday -- I'll be having the same one later this year. I used Carol Doak's Rays of Hope quilt free on her web site. Joya's favorite colors are blue and purple (according to my brother). Hopefully she likes the quilt. I was able to get the whole thing done in a day, except for the binding. I added the binding the next day and rounded the edges (a first for me) and was able to get it all sewn and delivered when I met them for lunch before they went back to NY. Did the quilting myself and added hearts (since he said she liked hearts) to the corners as well. Came out pretty good.

Blue and Gold Table Topper

Almost 3 years ago I made my first block from the Simply Sensational 9 PatchStars Book. It was the first time I used blue and gold together. I fell inlove with it. I liked it so well, I decided I wanted a whole quilt in thatcolor combo and I started collecting fabric. When Carol started the BOM morethan 2 years ago, I decided I would do the BOM in 2 color ways - Red, Black and White for my son (still not done) and Blue and Gold for myself. I think I onlygot one other B&G block done before I decided that one BOM at a time was enoughfor me.As I was looking through my orphan blocks to see if there were any blocks thatcould be made into Table Toppers and donated to my guild, I found that firstblue and gold block. I had forgotten how pretty it was. Now it is a TableTopper and will be a prize in the October Quilt Bingo for my guild. I posted a picture in the September General Folder.

First Christmas Quilt of the Year

Carol Doak designed this cute mini Holiday quilt for her Yahoo Quilting Group. She let me be the pattern tester and even though I wasn't feeling well, it didn't take long and went together easily. I was a little nervous since the blocks are 2" and 1.5" but I think it came out very well. It's so cute, I might have to make some for other seasons in the year.