Quilt 7 - Tulip Reverse Shoo-Fly

Another of my tulip quilts, this has a brightly colored floral print with tulips and irises. The reverse shoo-fly is one of our favorite patterns. (You will no doubt see a few more of these.) Normally the shoo-fly has the colored fabrics on the inner sections of the block and the background fabric around the outer edges of the block, but by reversing that you get a quilt that nicely highlights special fabrics.

I pieced this at the ocean as well. I tend to get more done at those retreats than the whole rest of the year, but these posts have made us revisit some old quilts in our stash and are inspiring us to get back to piecing!

Quilt 6 - Snowball and Nine Patch Tulips

The focus fabric in this quilt was part of a large stash of tulip fabrics I had been collecting. I had wanted to make a quilt using all of my tulip fabrics, but that is still in the works. (I won't tell you how long ago I started that collection...)

I took this fabric to one of our beach quilt retreats and wanted to make something that would showcase the tulips. I looked at the pattern and chose my block size to keep most of the tulip clusters in tact (9" finished block).

The pink fabric had a light tulip pattern in it also. I paired the two tulip fabrics with a solid navy (to let the eye rest, as Mom always says). I love taking simple blocks and playing with color and arrangements.

Quilt 5 - Karen's Lone Star

Many, many years ago several of us were sitting around my Aunt Julia's table talking about a quilt show my aunts had visited. Aunt Gladys showed us a lovely collection of fat quarters from Pincushion Boutique (Davis, CA). I think it was called the Azalea Collection.

I turned to Mom and said "Those are the colors that I want in a Lone Star Quilt!" She told me in a very sweet, motherly way to "Dream on!" My aunts however had a different reaction. It set the wheels turning and after calling Pincushion to get more fabric, my aunts started working on my Lone Star Quilt. They mailed it to me without saying a word. Imagine my surprise when several months later the quilt I had mentioned while on vacation appeared on my door! It was beautifully hand quilted and all that I had hoped for.


There was extra fabric leftover from my quilt, so they made my Aunt Adele one, too. She lived far away at the time but it was nice to know we were connected by our "twin quilts". Jump forward about a decade, and our quilts get to live in the same house now that Adele has moved close to my parents.

Here are Adele and I with our reunited quilts.

Quilt 4 - Burgoyne Surround

Mom made this quilt for the Gig Harbor Quilt Festival (GHQF), an organization that raises money for local breast cancer charities and research. There will be several other quilts posted throughout the year that we made for GHQF.

The inspiration for this came from a painting that was donated for the GHQF Auction. Mom saw a quilt in the background of the painting and knew that it needed to be made. The quilt and painting were then auctioned as a set.

Mom drafted the pattern from the painting, then of course found it in a book when she was almost done. She added a couple of extra rows and omitted some of the white blocks on the outer edge to give it a little more red for framing.

Quilt 3 - Recalling Double 4 Patch

This was inspired by a quilt in "Passing on the Comfort" by An Keuning-Tichelaar and Lynn Kaplanian Buller. The first time I flipped through this book I was drawn to this quilt. While making it I realized that it brought back memories of our "Shoe Box" quilts we made as children.

There was a shoebox with cardboard templates in three sizes made out of cereal boxes along with fabric scraps. We would trace around the templates using the large template first and then each of the smaller ones. I don't know what sizes these were but I know that if you sewed 4 of the small patches together it would make a medium square and if you sewed 4 of the medium squares together it would make the large square. When the shoebox was full of large squares there would usually be enough squares to make a quilt top.

"Recalling Double 4 Patch" is this quilt's name and it was made with reproduction fabrics. - Posted by Ione

Quilt 2 - Blue and Yellow Trip

I made this quilt for friends I met while on vacation in Spain. (They hosted 6 of us!) I thought the Trip Around the World pattern would be an appropriate tribute to our time with them.

I love blue and yellow quilts. I've only made two quilts with that color combination, but there are definitely more to come. I purposely chose richer blues and brighter yellows for this quilt. The dark blue row and small border add a little extra depth. The border fabric was light blue with small yellow flowers. So cheery!

A Year of Quilts

Inspired by our friends at Blue Meadow Designs, Mom and I have decided to share a year's worth of quilts! Each day we'll post a quilt that one or both of us has made. Many will be our own design, but if we used a pattern or got inspiration from a book or pattern, we'll let you know where it is from. We hope you enjoy them!

My Mom, Ione Ewert Whitney, has been quilting since she was a girl. She has her own machine quilting business, and hosts quilt retreats throughout the year. I started quilting about 10 years ago.

The first quilt we'll share is one that Mom made for me! Mom started this one shortly after I made a comment that she had made my brother more quilts than she had made for me. (We are both in our 30's, but apparently sibling rivalry has no age limit!) Jewel box is one of our favorite patterns. The black background really sets off the green and pink scraps. It also has wool batting, so is nice and warm. Thanks, Mom! (This picture is of my Aunt and Mom and was taken at one of Mom's retreats at Pacific Beach.)