A quilt challenge for you

When my mom passed away this past february, my sisterds went through her stuff and donated here and there, gave away what she said to give, and took some of the pain away for the rest of us. My mom had little stashes of stuff here and there, and they were all found. I wonder why people stash stuff like that? We all have them, little stashes of stuff we cant bear to get rid of. Anyway, mom had a stash of fabric i didnt even know about. Boxes of stuff. She had some of that stuff you make bedspreads out of........ I dont know the name, its pink and I have even seen bathrobes made out of it. anyway, a whole bag of that. I think my neice gave it to her. She also had a bunch of fabric that would make really nice tablecloths, in fruity prints, heavy cloth. there is brocade for recovering furniture, and this other stuff for making pillow covers. then there is a box of nothing but quilting fabric.

I opened it up to see if I could put some of it with my scraps to make another quilt. there is so much crammed into that box. Its still laid out all over my sewing table. I have a bunch of books I could choose from to make another quilt, but for some reason, I am just not as excited as I once was. I will get there, I know I will. there a re a million different designs to choose from. I could even design my own. I dont know if any of you have ever looked at a quilters web site, actually, I can probably guess none of you have, but some of the stuff these people do is amazing. Huge quilts made of itty small squares, creating a picture of something. I have seen people make pictures of their children out of the different colors of fabric.

If you look at this pic, which i didnt do, you can see all the different squares of color. I dont know how they do it.  Some people make small quilts to hang on their walls. I have done this twice. A picture of an Eagle, I made for my oldest son Andy, and also one for my nephew in the Airforce. I just dont want to hang quilts on my walls.

I have made sets of placemats for all my family, and table runners to put over end tables and table tops. they arent as exciting as watching a quilt come together. Starting out with an idea, then you start cutting, then pieceing back together then it starts to grow and you have strips, then one big peice. Its up to you how you wanto finish it. no borders, fun bordersOr something like this border, but it doesnt really stop the edges of the quilt. they just sort of end. By the way, I didnt do this either. then there is the issue of the back panel. I try to make the back coordinate with the front in some way. I have to look  for a while some times, depending on how big the finished quilt is. Most bolts of fabric in stores are 8  yards in length. really big quilts need 11 yards. the last one I did was almost 11 yards for the back. this gets pretty pricey, considering most good fabric is at least 8 or 9 dollars a yard.

so here is my delema, oh and such a delema it is. what kind of quilt do i make. do any of you have any suggestions. do you want to look at a quilt web site and give me a challenge? I dont know how to do curves, circles, things that arent straight cuts, so dont ask me to cut flowers or frilly stuff like that. Its different, and I have to learn how to do it still.  If i accept the challenge of a particular quilt, and try to make it a multicolored quilt,......I will let you know what the prize will be. I am in this one for the fun. Damn, I hope Amber gets to see this. I will have to leave it open till she gets back. I will wait for responses. If you can, send me a pic of your challenge quilt or the name of the quilt. they all have names. Oh Im excited now. Go fellow bloggers, send me your ideas.