Whims and Fancies is hosting a
Trunk Full of Quilts blog hop. I'm a bit late to the party, but I couldn't resist showing off some of the quilts that I'm still swooning over, even years after making them...
Nancy's Mysterious Quilt is still my favorite. I've got a tote that I made from the extra fabric and carry it just about every time I leave the house to run errands.
The twin log cabin quilts came to be because I was helping a friend follow the Quilt in a Day log cabin pattern over the phone. She had the book, I had the book, and after looking at the instructions and explaining them to her so many times, I decided I might as well make my own. Except I was going to use 1 1/2" strips and as many different lights and darks as I could find in my stash. On December 7th, I decided that I wanted to make my grandmother a log cabin quilt for Christmas and that I wasn't going to give up my own. I managed to finish both tops and get hers quilted by Christmas Eve. My own top got quilted a couple of years later.
I had so much fun with those log cabin blocks that I made a Courthouse Steps quilt, which got revamped later as
Moab or Sedona?
My husband had to work on my 38th birthday, so I pulled out a white sheet, cut a bunch of dark blue scraps and
started making myself a quilt. Including the batting, thread, and thrift store sheet I used as backing, I made the whole quilt for less than thirty bucks. Which makes me happy. I know that I can keep quilting even when money is tight.
For
Grandma's Donuts, I followed a pattern from an old magazine and made a cereal box template to cut the wedges.
Leif's Snails, which I finished back in 2009. This is one of those rare quilts that I bought brand new coordinating fabric for. Looking at it now, I think it looks hard... but at the time I plunged into the project without even thinking about it. How does that even begin to make sense?
Most of my quilts are scrappy - the more fabrics the better.
For
this postage stamp quilt, I cut 2 1/2 squares of every drab and brown fabric in my stash.
For
Cheddar Bow Ties I used every fun little print I could find in my scrap bags.
A few years back I realized that I was making more quilts than me and mine could ever use, so I started making baby quilts for a couple of local organizations. It's been the perfect solution. I can play with just about any color combination or pattern that catches my fancy and, if I really truly love it, I can always make a bigger quilt later for myself.
I've got new favorites, but they're not finished yet.
The Nail Polish Quilt and my
challenging scrap quilts would all be here if they were finished.
or something with a few more bells and whistles. For what I do, I think I'd be just fine with, and less intimidated by, the fifty dollar one.
by Siobhan Adcock and its depiction of motherhood. There's a wonderfully chilling moment was when Bridget finds herself torn between the ghost, who is trying to push open the door that Bridget is leaning against, and her baby, who is dangerously close to the stairs. And another when she flees the house in fear one morning only to realize that she's wearing pajama pants and a tank top and the baby badly needs a diaper change. There's a second story, about a newly wed woman in 1902, but I didn't find Rebecca nearly as interesting as her modern counterpart. I loved the beginning and middle of the book, but the end just left me confused. Judging by the book's Amazon reviews, I'm not the only one.
by Dean Koontz. Bibi Blair is suddenly stricken with brain cancer and told that she has at most a year to live. Hours later, she gets up from her hospital bed, seemingly cured. She's told that she must save someone named Ashley Bell and that the Wrong People will try to stop her. There were parts of the book that I really enjoyed and long chunks of the book that I didn't like at all. (Unfortunately, I can't tell you why I didn't like them without giving away too much of the plot.) 
by Dawn Kurtagich is the story of two sisters sharing a body. Carly is present during the day and Kaitlyn is there after the sun goes down. They communicate by leaving messages for each other's. Carly's therapist insists that Kaitlyn isn't real, that she's a symptom of Carly's dissociative identity disorder. Their story is told through diary entries, psychiatric reports, and the testimony of witnesses. It's intriguing and creepy, but I was pulled in more by the unusual format than the plot.
by Mary Kubia kept me turning pages until the end. When Heidi Wood sees a homeless teenager on the train platform with a baby in her arms, she wants to do something, anything, to help their situation. The moment passes too quickly for her to make a decision. When she sees the pair again and gets a second chance, Heidi invites Willow and her daughter into her home. Her husband and daughter are horrified. How can it be safe to trust a complete stranger?
. This time Maddie and her family are in Mexico to film an episode of The Family Frugalicious, their new reality show. After Maddie balks at signing a time share agreement because she knows that her viewers aren't going to get the same wonderful deal that she's being offered and wants to do her own research into the company, the sales manager's body is found floating in one of the resort's pools. With the producers of her show urging her to investigate the death, Maddie starts to wonder how far the people around her would go to build ratings and if her almost-ex husband, who she's pretending to be in love with for the sake of the show, knows more about what's going on than she does. I love that the author has created a completely different type of murder and motive for each of the three books. She's really captured the stress of time share sales in this one. (We own a hand-me-down time share and every time we use it, they try to sell us something new. I don't want to know how pushy they'd be if we weren't already owners.)
by Allie Harrison. Torrie Reynolds, who entered the abandoned Hargrove house on a dare and quickly fled in terror, is hired years later to refurbish the old place. It's just too perfect -- her handsome new employer, the way that everything on the project goes so easily, the way she can step into each of the bedrooms and immediately know what paint colors and furnishings she needs to order. Everything except for the digging sounds coming from the cellar... I didn't find this book at all spooky. It had more of a traditional gothic feel to it, with Torrie falling for her employer and avoiding the forbidden locked rooms. 
