First quilts of the year

I guess I have been busy. My last post was New Year's Eve, and it is nearly April. I know we had some snow days, and the usual new year events, but usually seems like the late winter months are slower, less busy. The year is flying by! 

So far this year I have made one quilt per month, and am on track to do that in April as well. That quilt has a LOT of blocks so we'll see. 

In January and February I took pictures of two quilts. The first was part of a Quilt A Long with Stitched in Color. It think I finished most of it in January, but the border piecing took a little longer than I expected. I loved that I was able to use so many scraps.

I had two yards of this fabric, Bright Eyes by Anna Marie Horner, but needed four. I vaguely remembered seeing it still at my local quilt shop on their clearance shelves. I went back, and it was still there!

My daughter and I carried this along on our day trip to Purcell, and found this antique shop for the photos. It was super windy and cold outside that day. Would have been tricky to take any good photos. It is a beautiful building, restored by the owners.

The next quilt I finished was a birthday gift for one of my co-workers. I had made her a quilt a few years ago, but when her house was hit by a tornado in February of last year, the tornado stole the quilt along with other clean laundry she had on the couch to sort. I decided to make her another one. At first I looked through what I had to make one similar, but just couldn't do it. I kept the same colors and ended up making this instead:

I used a mix of blue fabrics from my stash and scrap bin, as well as more of those dress shirts I had cut into squares and rectangles for baby quilts. 

The backing was a vintage sheet, with blue to tie in with the front of the quilt and flowers that my co-worker loves. 

My March quilt was a fairly quick quilt that will be a baby gift, once the coach returns from her leave. I used Denyse Schmidt's My Sunshine pattern, but constructed it using half square triangles instead of the triangle layout shown on the pattern.

                                   

I ended up adjusting a few of the triangle matches toward the end while working on the center to give me a better variety, but overall seemed like it would be faster to make it that way. And less chance for pieces to fall on the floor and get all mixed up while trying to sew everything together. We took these to OKC Myriad Gardens on St Patrick's weekend to get a few photos of this green quilt and that green water. 

                                                       

The backing on this one is a heavier weight canvas that I picked up somewhere, probably as a free find.