Progress on CQJP blocks

 It has been cold, wet and windy today. I woke up to pouring rain. Poor dogs dashed out to do their business and came back in cold and wet, shook themselves off and made a bee line for the sofa (which I wisely keep covered with a blanket).

 I had lunch with my sister in law at Marietta Diner then came home and procrastinated a bit, looking through pictures and old documents I found while searching for some photos I wanted to include in this quilt. I ran across a letter my mother had received from the Veterans Administration around 1979 apologizing for mistakenly sending her an overpayment notice. I cannot imagine getting such a personal, polite letter from any government agency today. When Mom died seven years ago, an employee of the Social Security Administration hung up on me after telling me that they were just too busy to process our claim for her final SSA payment.

But, moving on...

I finally got to work on another block. I'm still a little ambivalent about this. I look at it one minute and it looks pretty good to me; another time I'm still not happy with it.

Here are some pictures of the latest blocks.

I've been moving them around the center block, which will be the photo you see of my aunts. I'm thinking I should put smaller cq blocks around that center picture. 

I've also decided not to include the linens in the cq block except as the center. I like the blocks without them better. 

I've left some large pieces deliberately to be able to place some photos in those areas. Speaking of photos,  digging around today I found more of the aunts in quilting mode:

Emma

Peggy, Mae & Emma

Gladys & Mae

Still have to find those slides I made for the project I did in school. I am sure I have some great photos in there.

It's the last night of Hanukkah. We had a great weekend with family and way too much food.  This was taken the fifth night when we celebrated with my dreidel cake which I make each year.

 (I'm just dreaming...please don't wake me...)

Photos on Fabric

Below are some examples of some pictures I've printed out using both the freezer paper method & commercially prepared inkjet printable fabric. I think the freezer paper method gives a softer look. The commercial printable fabric seems to give a sharper image. The type of fabric also makes a difference. Higher thread count in the picture on the right. It just depends on what effect you want. 

I often iron freezer paper onto muslin or some other fabric and then cut it to 8.5 x 11 inches. It works pretty well and it's definitely cheaper. **Added: Debra points out that fabric should be treated with Bubble Jet to keep it from fading or the image disintegrating if it gets wet. **

Freezer paper images.

The last two were printed on commercially prepared fabric.

There are a multitude of tutorials on doing this on Youtube and other places on the Internet. Try Craft Gossip, too. I'd search for them and link them here but my computer is an antique and it takes FOREVER to load photos - and some of these blogs (heh, heh) are very photo-intense. Kind of like this one. I'm sure there are folks out there who have done this and have great ideas and tips to share, please feel free to do so in the comments. And I'll work on getting the links together during lunch at work where I have a much faster computer. 

Please do comment on the photos above, and come back soon.

Transition