Quilts, quilts, quilts, quilts,quilts...and bags!

The quilts I made for my niece and her four children were a delightful surprise and much appreciated. I have several nieces and nephews but only one that had triplets - and by chance, not with any fertility drugs! We have several sets of twins in our family, including my brother and sister and some first cousins, but only one other set of triplets and that was a couple hundred years ago. This niece has had some other set backs in life that most people only read about so I decided she deserved a nice surprise. I had (OK still have) quite a bit of fabric in my stash and then I had more given to me when fellow quilters found out I like to make scrap quilts - although I call them scrappy quilts. So it sounds like making five quilts would be very expensive, in this case, it was not.

Here are the quilts: (hubby is an expert now at holding quilts up for photos)

The two girls of the triplets each got a quilt using the same pattern but in their favorite colour. I commented on a picture of them on Facebook that their mom posted and casually asked what their favorite colours were because she does not dress the girls alike. She had no idea I was just being sneaky.

The pattern for the girls' quilts is called "All Shook Up" but I have no idea where I got it from because I have a tendency to tear out the patterns I like  from magazines I buy, and then photocopy them in case I lose or rip the torn out pages, and then throw the magazine out - I don't have a lot of storage space so I only keep the patterns I might make.

The boy of the triplets got a crazy quilt with the centre of each block hosting a picture of a Monster Truck - left over pieces from the quilts I made for my grandsons - I don't throw anything out and this is why! There is no right or wrong way for his quilt as some trucks are up, some are down.

The oldest boy who was 2-1/2 when the triplets were born got a string quilt. I love making these and crazy quilts. Their my favorites to make and they use up those narrow pieces of fabric in the stash.

My niece's quilt is from a pattern called "Crossroads" and I actually still have the magazine that it came from - must have been more then a couple patterns I liked it because I haven't torn any out yet. This was a fun and easy quilt to make too and used up a ton of small scraps. Its easier then it looks.

These are the bags I made for them. I wanted to make matching bags for each quilt but I got so far behind when I had tennis elbow and couldn't quilt for three long months I knew piercing the bag tops would take too long so I gave up on that idea and just made them bags. They didn't care.

My next project to get caught up on are the quilts for the Alzheimer's ward at a local nursing home. Three of us were on the Block of the Month committee for a couple of years and we decided to make some scrap quilts for the Alzheimer's ward as a group. We had tons of odd blocks donated to us so it was a bigger project then we started out with and quite a challenge to make quilts from "orphan blocks" made by different people. But we all need a challenge in our lives to keep us on your toes!