Magpie Quilts

Sometimes a quilt just needs a couple pieces of fabric, in this case, a beautiful "You Are My Sunshine" panel, a golden yellow inner border and a bright all-over sunflower print. This quilt was backed with soft gray minky and quilted by my friend Marie on her long-arm quilting machine.  A solid black binding completes this beauty and somewhere, someone is enjoying this quilt! I love piecing quilts together and even though this one doesn't have much piecing, its' still a stunning quilt that will be cherished for a long time. --Ann

These table runners were so much fun to make. They take a 9 or 10 degree ruler and 8 different fabrics. The fabrics can be a gradient from light to dark in one colorway or you can do what I've done here with 4 fabrics dark to light and then another 4 going light to dark.  The pattern is called Spicy Spiral Runner and you can find it easily through an internet search. There's also YouTube instructions.  These are quilted quite simply along the seam lines of each wedge. The fabrics are first pieced in what quilter's call a strata - all strips sewn together in order - and then cut in wedges according to the instructions.  Piecing the wedges together in the right order makes the distinctive turn and shape.  The binding needs to be a bias binding because of the curves and is a little tricky at the points. A good pressing helps it all lay flat in the end.  Needless to say, none of these runners stuck around very long and I hope they get tons of use in their new homes....

This pattern is one that I've admired for many years. It's called Spinning Star and I've seen patterns for it in various places, but I found it in a kit form through one of the places I buy fabric from. The kit made the quilt in the first picture here.  I had a little bit of trouble with making the points at the center all come together neat and tidy but took another try at it with fabrics from my own stash to make this yellow and blue version. I even took the extra effort to mark and machine quilt the feathers in the background.  All in all, this was a fun project - if you want to try it for yourself, just do an internet search for Spinning Star Quilt and go from there.  This is a pattern I will try again - it comes together fairly quickly and doesn't take a lot of fabric. --Ann