This is a comfort quilt. The blocks were made by a variety of quilters. My friend, Carolyn, assembled them into a quilt top. I did the quilting.

In September, I took a class online with Bethanne Nemesh called "Freehand Florals." This quilt was my chance to practice some of what I learned in the class. Look closely at the sashing and you will see the flowers, leaves and swirls that I freehand quilted there. The daisies on the block points were also freehand quilted, but these were not from Bethanne's class.

I really loved this cheerful quilt and had lots of fun working on it.

One of my best friends, Marsha, who also happens to be married to the brother of my first husband, has a daughter Sara (my niece) who gave birth to a daughter, Eve, in 2013 (making me a great-aunt for the first time).

My friend, Carolyn, and I decided to make Eve a quilt. Knowing that Sara is a lover of bunnies and hedgehogs, we went online in search of fabrics featuring either of those critters. We found some really cute options which we ordered (I think they were my first-ever online fabric purchases) and ended up using most of them in this quilt. Too bad you can't really see them in this photo. But I guess that seeing that really cute baby makes up for that!

From July 2003 to April 2004 the Show & Tell Quilters worked on a set of Round Robin quilts for each other. Each participant created a center square for the quilt that would eventually be theirs. The first month, a different participant added a border around one other participant's center square. The following month, each quilt moved to a new person who added the next border. This continued until each of the six participants had worked on each of the six quilts.

The quilt top then returned to its originator for her to back, bind and quilt. 

We ended up with a set of six very different quilts, all quite stunning. We displayed the quilts in the Genesee Valley QuiltFest the following year. Below are photos of each of the quilts hanging in that show.

In 2003, a member of Show & Tell Quilters, Linda, announced that she was leaving Rochester to marry her high school sweetheart with whom she had reconnected after many years.

Several members of the group made this pillow for her. I'm not sure why just Marsha, myself and Carolyn posed with it.

This is another Show & Tell Quilters group challenge. Each member of the group contributed one or two blocks for this quilt. I provided the black fabric and instructed my friends to make the four points of the star out of a red, a green, a blue, and a "fun" fabric from their stash. Each block was signed and dated in a silver marking pen that I provided to the participants.

The quilt has aged very well, but the silver marking pen has not. Most of the signatures are gone or barely legible, which is sad. I can tell from the ones I can still read that the blocks were made in 1992, however I did not finish assembling the quilt top and quilting it until 2001 - quite a gap!

I've always liked the unusual sashing I gave this quilt. I feel like that, and having the stars on point make this quilt.

I quilted each block with a different pattern, so it is something of a machine quilting sampler. I have used this quilt as my daily lap quilt since it was completed and it is still in great shape.

My quilting friends, the Show & Tell Quilters, came up with a unique idea for a challenge. Each of us devised a set of instructions for blocks that we wanted made for us. Each of us chose something different, something that meant something to us. For instance, my friend Marsha who was turning 50 that year, challenged each of us to create a block for her that included 50 of something. One person made a block that measured 50" in circumference (with the tape measure attached to prove it). One person made a block with 50 buttons attached. I designed and made a block that contained 50 pieces.

For my blocks, I designed a quilt made up of various-sized squares and rectangles and asked each friend to choose one of the blocks, They had to cut a solid color fabric to that size, layer it with batting and backing, and machine quilt the block in any pattern they wanted. 

At that time, I had started getting really interested in machine quilting and knew I had already developed skills beyond those of my friends. So, this was my way of hopefully nudging them towards getting more comfortable with machine quilting. My endeavor wasn't a huge success, and I'm not sure any of my friends was really excited or even comfortable with the assignment, with the exception of Carol Taylor, but they all persisted and returned a block to me. 

Peruse the detail photos to see their end results, including the back of the blocks where they signed and where you can also witness some of the tension problems they encountered.

I assembled the blocks and added the quilted the borders.

This was an interesting project! My friend, Carolyn, volunteered to spearhead the creation of a quilt “banner” to commemorate 1995 as the 75th anniversary of the passing of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. The idea was hatched at a meeting of the Art Quilt committee who were planning  a juried quilt show featuring contemporary art quilts celebrating the visions and energies of women around the country. The plan was to hang the banner at that show as well as at other 95/75 events throughout the year.

Carolyn enlisted all of her friends, many of us quilters, to contribute photos of women, including ourselves, our mothers, and our grandmothers. She had all of the photos transferred to fabric. 

The Show & Tell Quilters all contributed strips of red fabric. We used them to piece a random patchwork background to which all of the fabric photos were fused. I still have a ziplock bag full of strips of red fabric left over from this project!

The Art Quilt committee created the logo which we used in the center of the quilt. I enlarged the logo and set the type surrounding it, then used the large format laser printer at my place of employment, Saatchi & Saatchi, to photocopy it onto fabric. That was an undertaking, believe me! Not all of the toner fused completely, so I then spent several hours inking over the whole thing with a permanent marker in order to get it looking good.

I was single at the time and hosted the Show & Tell Quilters at my house on Westchester Ave. to work on this quilt. The quilt was indeed used at many events that year, but sadly never found a permanent home, so it remains in Carolyn’s collection of quilts. 

Another early member of the Show & Tell Quilters, Julie, was expecting a baby. Louise designed this cute ladybug block and we presented the quilt to Julie after her daughter Alicia was born.

Unfortunately, Louise and her husband had relocated before the quilt was completed. The photo of the quilt label in the gallery includes a scanned and laser-printed copy of Louise's signature because she was no longer here to sign in person.

Sometime in 1989 or 1990 Marsha's friend, Louise, invited a few friends who also made quilts to meet at her house. They decided to make it a monthly gathering and soon after Marsha invited Carolyn and me to join the group. We started taking turns hosting the meeting at our homes and dubbed ourselves the Show & Tell Quilters. 

This was the first group quilt made by the Show & Tell Quilters. It was made as a gift for Louise's first baby, William, born in 1990. By the way, the block I made is the nighttime house in the lower left.

The Show & Tell Quilters became some of my closest friends and one of my few social activities for many of my working years. Some members of the group came and went, but many of us stayed involved for 15-20 years. Amazing!