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May 22, 2022
Can You Teal the Love from Jean Swenson



Donation Blocks for Can You Teal the Love

May 2022

When Kate over at Tall Tales from Chiconia announced that she is making an Ovarian Cancer charity quilt this year – after a two year pandemic hiatus – I knew right away that I wanted to contribute to this quilt project. The last one I had participated in was Go Teal it on the Mountain, back in 2018. The theme this year is love, with hearts being the feature element in the blocks’ design. To keep things interesting, she expanded the colorway from teal (predominant) and ivory, to include pink (in small ...

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May 4, 2022
Bubblegum from Jean Swenson


Bubblegum

May 2022

Here’s another quilt I made as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge that I will be sending to The Little Lambs Foundation in Utah. The challenge is being hosted by Mari over at The Academic Quilter.

This quilt incorporates a lot of “pieces of the past”. The fussy cut zoo animal centers were from my 2014 quilt, Balancing Hippopotami. The pink polka dot fabric is some from my Granny that has been in my stash and has made numerous appearances in my quankets for several years now. Another blast-from-the-past fabric is the backing fabric. I ...

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May 2, 2022
Play Ball from Jean Swenson


Play Ball
May 2022

I used this printed panel to make a quanket (quilt + blanket = quanket). It will be donated as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge. The challenge is being hosted by Mari over at The Academic Quilter.

While I typically tie the fleece-backed quankets I make, I decided to try something different with this one, and quilted it on my machine. I had tried quilting on a fleece-backed quilt years ago, but became frustrated when the fleece bunched, and looked a mess no matter how many pins I used to hold it in place. However, between then ...

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April 6, 2022
Sisterhood from Jean Swenson


Sisterhood
April 2022

For this recently completed jeans quilt, I used my and my sister Cathi’s old worn jeans. I had been wanting to make a jeans quilt for some time, but hadn’t found any designs that interested me. I had seen one that was made similar to this, except the folded over piece had been radiused, resembling a cathedral block. I wanted a more modern look so left the folded piece squared off, and mitered the corners. Since the back, or inside, of used jeans can be quite plain looking, I used Annie’s Craft Store’s ...

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March 16, 2022
Bloom from Jean Swenson


Bloom
March 2022

This quilt will be donated as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge. This year, the challenge is being hosted by Mari over at The Academic Quilter. She will begin the sign-up process soon, so if you’re interested in joining this year’s challenge, check out her blog.

The backing fabric, shown here, is a Mary Engelbreit design from 2001, and has been living in my stash for about ten years now. I think the fabric is super cute, but every time I considered using it in a quilt, I was not sure how to cut ...

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March 12, 2022
Baby Quilts Up for Auction from Jean Swenson


Scooter & Tod

I have donated these two recently finished scrappy quilts to my grandkids elementary school for a silent auction that will raise money for school programs. If you are interested in bidding on either of these baby quilts, you can bid on Scooter (airplane) here, and Tod (fox) here.

Each quilt measures 40″x40″ and is made from 100% cotton outer, with 80/20 cotton/poly batting, machine pieced and quilted.

The auction is open from March 11-19, 2022.

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Baby Quilts Up for Auction from Jean Swenson


Scooter & Tod

I have donated these two recently finished scrappy quilts to my grandkids elementary school for a silent auction that will raise money for school programs. If you are interested in bidding on either of these baby quilts, you can bid on Scooter (airplane) here, and Tod (fox) here.

Each quilt measures 40″x40″ and is made from 100% cotton outer, with 80/20 cotton/poly batting, machine pieced and quilted.

The auction is open from March 11-19, 2022.

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January 31, 2022
Scooter from Jean Swenson


Scooter
January 2022

Every Spring, I try to participate in the Hands2Help Challenge hosted by Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict @fabricaddictquilts. This year I decided to get a jump start on making baby quilts for this great cause. Since I was working to deplete my scraps bins with my recent Tod quilt, I kept the momentum going and made these yellow and blue log cabin blocks with “mostly” scraps. I say “mostly” because I was being a bit too fussy about the colorway, and did go into my stash for some of the blues and yellows. I ...

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January 29, 2022
Tod from Jean Swenson


Tod
January 2022

While putting away my holiday scraps, I found that my reds bin was close to exploding. So, time for a red scrappy quilt! I kept this baby quilt super simple, patchworking 2″ blocks. As for the fox, I found a coloring page online, and then enlarged the image to the size I wanted, and traced directly from my monitor. I know all you techies are cringing, yes, it’s probably not good form to trace off a monitor, but I try to press only ‘very, very lightly’ </p>
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January 8, 2022
Traveller from Jean Swenson


Traveller
January 2022

I’ve been wanting to make a Wanderer’s Wife quilt for awhile and when I came across these jelly rolls, I knew they would be perfect for this project. Part of wanting to do this quilt was the desire to use up some of my orphan blocks. As it turned out, the blocks I used are about half new and half orphan blocks. It does not have as many blocks as some Wanderer’s Wife quilts I’ve seen, but I like its simplicity.

I like being able to repurpose, and I really like how this ...

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November 13, 2021
H♥me from Jean Swenson


H♥me

November 2021

My nephew Joe is getting married today, to his love, and best friend, Bailey. The name H♥me is meaningful to them, hence the name.

Home is where the heart is. (Bailey)

You are my home. (Joe)

I hope through the years they become even better friends and share every possible kind of happiness life can bring.

The majority of the material used for this quilt is new, with a few pieces of the past mixed in. The pattern is called Geometric Slide, by Faith Jones.

 

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October 22, 2021
Cheery from Jean Swenson


Cheery

September 2021

Here is my finished Hometown BOM (block of the month) that was hosted earlier this year by Jacquelynne Steves over at Art of the Home. She typically hosts a couple of sew alongs each year, and this is the fifth I’ve participated in, which included Save the Bees, Silver Linings (I made two), FaLaLa and her current Snowman & Silent Night sew along.

The colorway inspiration for me came from the border fabric, which has been in my stash for a while, waiting for just the right project, and this was it! The sew along was offered ...

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Cheery from Jean Swenson


Cheery

September 2021

Here is my finished Hometown BOM (block of the month) that was hosted earlier this year by Jacquelynne Steves over at Art of the Home. She typically hosts a couple of sew alongs each year, and this is the fifth I’ve participated in, which included Save the Bees, Silver Linings (I made two), FaLaLa and her current Snowman & Silent Night sew along.

The colorway inspiration for me came from the border fabric, which has been in my stash for a while, waiting for just the right project, and this was it! The sew along was offered ...

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October 2, 2021
Lassie from Jean Swenson


Lassie
September 2021

This quanket combines many scraps from Toodles, a quilt I made for my nephew Dexter, six years ago. The colorway is very mid-century modern. The avocado, browns, teals and oranges have made these fabrics a bit of a challenge to incorporate into other quilts over the past six years, not only because of their strong color personality, but also because the colors are all very saturated. I felt the linen color for the background provided the neutrality needed to compliment these strong colors.

This scrappy quilt began by sewing the small’ish scraps (most under 4″x3 ...

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September 25, 2021
Ziggity Zaggity Baby Quilt from Modern Sunbonnet Sue

I started another baby quilt. I love when new babies are born because it gives me a chance to make another baby quilt. One of my nieces, I have several, had a baby in July. I plan to gift a baby quilt at Christmas. I’m using a pattern from a 2008 baby Quilts magazine by […]

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September 14, 2021
Stormy from Jean Swenson


Stormy
September 2021

I try not to have too many UFOs, but this one became an unfinished project last year, during the pandemic. With the rush on cotton fabric for making face masks, it became increasingly difficult to sometimes get fabric, let alone trying to find more of a specific fabric. I needed less than a 1/4 yard of one of the outlying darker blues, but could not find it anywhere. Even as the pressures on cotton fabric eased over the last several months, I still had no luck finding what was needed.

After sitting in a drawer for ...

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August 31, 2021
Bunn Bunn from Jean Swenson


Bunn Bunn

August 2021

I usually don’t do panels, but this one was just too cute to pass up! The center panel is Timeless Treasures Fabrics Bunny And Her Bear. The panel is 24″ wide by 44″ long, which is a little narrow for a quilt – even a baby quilt – so I bordered it with a narrow soft pink all around and added the two side hourglass borders to make the overall quilt wider. I custom quilted the center area to highlight the design – it required tying and burying a lot of knots on the backside, but the overall ...

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August 24, 2021
M82 from Jean Swenson


M82
August 2021

The cream fabric in this scrappy quilt is leftover from my Firsts quilt while the blues were pulled from my bottomless blue scraps bin. I organize my scraps by color, and it seems that no matter how many times I create scrappy blue quilts, this bin is always full! I created the scrappy blocks by sewing seven, 1.5″ x 7.5″ strips, and then combining a cream block to make the half square rectangles (HSTs).

I love the versatility of HSTs. Just a simple rotation, or placement of fabric and color can make it look completely ...

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July 21, 2021
Plumage from Jean Swenson


Plumage

July 2021

While I have named this recent finish “Plumage”, I think “Into the Corner” would perhaps have been a more fitting name. The reason being is that I sort of got painted into the corner with this one. My plan all along had been to make this a quanket – backing the quilt top with a fleece backing. However, in letting the top’s design take the lead, it ended up being 66″x66″ which is larger than the readily available 60″ wide fleece at the fabric stores. I was truly flummoxed by the situation I had gotten myself ...

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June 27, 2021
Firsts from Jean Swenson


Firsts

June 2021

This is a quilt I made for my husband, twice. The pinwheel blocks are from the first quilt I ever made, 40 years ago, as a gift for him for our first Christmas together. The original quilt had been the pinwheel blocks set in a 4×5 layout with an ivory border and backing. I made it in the style of a comforter, using high loft polyester batting, that I sewed around the inside edges before turning out, like a pillowcase. I didn’t know to tack through the batting around the center area, so when it ...

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