Of all the adjectives in the famous thesaurus, Cris, I would not pick "lovely" to describe the quilt.

My loving daughter calls the quilt top a "doozy" as she smiles at it, but then she has always thought I had a great sense of humor. Her favorite block is the one that honors her great-grandfather Charlie Miller, the man who taught me to spit watermelon seeds and to work crossword puzzles.

"... who taught me to spit watermelon seeds and to work crossword puzzles"

Video or it never happened!!!!

Wow!!! I love that backing.

I love that backing fabric!  Definitely bold.  And no-- we don't tire of hearing about your KK quilt.  

It's available at Keepsake Quilting; I may be getting older and more feeble but I am still a darned good enabler. 

I started working on a t-shirt graduation quilt last night and was so pleasantly surprised.  The mom had gone through and washed and labeled the shirts:  front & back, front only, back only.  And she sent exactly how many shirts I told her.  She is a school superintendent, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that she is organized and follows directions. 

A school superintendent would be the kind a person who listens carefully and so that's why you got what you asked for.

One thing that really got to me this morning was how long it took me to load the quilt parts and get started on experimenting on what I should do with quilting on the Kresge Kid project. All of you younger longarm quilters, listen up .... age will creep up on you someday and it ain't gonna be pretty.   When I bought Lily Aurora twelve years ago I could load those Project Linus quilts in a jiffy and get them quilted in a flash. Now I have found that the machine is willing but the operator is always sitting down to rest ... the old grey mare, she ain't what she used to be.

Anyhow, notice how I created a wide top border for "play space" so I could experiment on what type of little motif I will use to "tie" the quilt parts together.  I'm using Warm & Plush batting (found some remnants and fused them together yesterday) and so once the quilt is off the frame I'm expecting the small motifs to sort of "disappear" into the plushness of the quilt.

https://warmcompany.com/product/warm-plush-queen-bolt/

Did not really need to experiment very much; I tried stars and pseudo-zig-zagging but then it was easy to decide to use the same motif I used on the necktie quilt that I made for my DF back in the mid-1990s, a motif I used on my Singer 201-2.  I put the stitch length to 15 inches and did some swirly circle work, slackened the thread, moved the needle over a handspan's length, dropped the needle and started swirling again.  Of course I will have a lot of thread clipping to do once I take the quilt off the frame. 

I will be extremely flexible about where I will drop the needle because the whole point of doing this type of "tacking" is to avoid certain parts of some of the blocks.  I see no need to bury the ends of any threads because this quilt will never be laundered.  I have a medium purple thread in the bobbin and my favorite variegated turquoise in the needle.

You're such a tease!

Cris in MT

Nope, not me.  I'm just explaining my thought processes in bits and pieces so I don't have to write a long essay when I eventually get this puppy done.

I'm imitating our dear Pirate, letting my thoughts flow.  Or gush.

This finished product will look nothing like the quilt that inspired it. For example, if someone says they are making a "Dear Jane" quilt then you expect something that looks like the other "Dear Jane" quilts out there. Or a "Sunbonnet Sue" quilt or a "Double Wedding Ring" quilt.

I liked the idea of the "Gypsy's Wife"quilt with all of the different blocks randomly placed but when I bought the designer's booklet and saw her obsessive tiny blocks and immaculate placement instructions of the re-named pattern I was totally freaked out. It was as if she wanted me to make a variation of a "Dear Jane" with a bunch of strips thrown in for good measure.

No.

No.

No.

At this point in my quilting career (over the hill and picking up speed) I was not going to attempt something like a variation on a Dear Jane.

I might have tried it in 1985 but I was not a quilt maker back then and I don't think the Dear Jane book  had been published  in those days. Anyhow, I'm babbling as usual.

After flipping through the "Wanderer's" book three times and heaving dramatic sighs over it, I made a photocopy of the cover and pinned it to my design wall and stared at that for some time. Then someone on the forum posted a message with photos of a T-shirt quilt she had made as a gift and the light bulb clicked on.

This forum prompted my creative brain to create "Kresge Kid's Life" and I was off and running. I decided to use a T-shirt quilt approach creating small-ish blocks with themes and then when it came time to build the quilt I would not make formal  coordinated sashing I would go willy-nilly with the sashing using a variety of fabrics to frame each block. Sometimes the sashing went with the colors in the theme and sometimes it added to the theme.

My quilt, my rules.

Here's what the quilt top looks like with no borders. Cris, see if you can find your metallic fabrics that I used as needles on my two petitpoint pieces that I included in this work of "creativity".    

Dee dug in her stash of novelties to send me fabric with crabs on it to represent my maiden name (Crabbs) and I was tickled to add those on the bottom row as that was a last minute idea. 

The dotted fabric strip above the pink and white Ohio Star has the handwritten message; "Do Not Launder. If Quilt Gets Wet Air Dry."

My DD is pleased that the most expensive block is hers ... I had to mail order a Strategic Air Command patch for hers because she was born on a USAF base and buying that patch was a way to honor her birthplace (which has been decommissioned) and her dad's service. Her brother's patch (the pi sign) might be larger but hers is pricier.  Since DD will be the guardian of this quilt gotta make her happy.