Companion Throw

When Maggie brought over her Mom's clothes for the memory quilt, she asked for a queen sized quilt for herself and a "throw" for her sister.I have been working on the quilt, I have the pieced borders on and the backing fabric bought, it is just waiting to be pinned.  You know how I dislike pinning a quilt!  Soooooooo.... I put that project on hold, and I have been working on the throw for Becky!  As I worked on making blocks for Maggie's quilt, I would make a similar block for Becky's throw, so most of the blocks were already done.  I sewed the blocks together without sashing, and found a 4 yard piece of purple fabric in my stash for the backing. (this is left over from the backing of Kaylyn's Kaleidoscope quilt).  I pulled a light purple fabric from my stash as well for a small border, and a piece of funky purple fabric with electric teal lines for the border.  I am now almost done with the quilting of the throw.  Smaller projects go a lot faster!!  The throw is 3 blocks by 4 blocks and measures @ 42" x 54".  Here is a picture of it:

Becky's Throw

Madison Quilt Expo

Every September, the city of Madison has a Quilt Expo.  Every year, I am sure to go, and this year was no exception.  There are hundreds of venders selling everything from long-arm quilting machines to fabrics to notions of every sort.  It is so vast and so busy, with so many people, it can be a trifle overwhelming!

I always go alone so that I can spend as much time as I want at any given booth, I can meander around at my own chosen speed (slow) and get lost without any "advice"!  This year I bought some Pounce Powder and a couple of stencils.  No fabric this year for me, as my stash is starting to look more like a fabric store than a box of scraps.  I spent a lot of time in the "Hall of Quilts", oooh-ing and ahhhh-ing at the beauties that fall into the category of Art and Art +++  as opposed to "Quilts."  Each quilt was exquisite and the detailing always inspires me.  I always come home fired up and ready to create another masterpiece!  I took 229 pictures of the beautiful quilts I saw.  Here are a few of my favorites:

 This one was the BEST OF SHOW and for good reason.  It was unbelievable in it's tiny details, it looked like a big storybook, and the more you looked at it, the more you saw.  Little fairies,  stars and flowers.  Beautiful!

 Look!!  Another Harry Potter Bookcase quilt!  It got a lot of attention from the viewers, just like mine did!

 I loved this quilt.  The geometric design in the building, and the skinny pieced quarter circles in the corners, plus the scroll around all appealed to my sense of order!

 The bright colors of this quilt and the very large feathers in the corners is what made this quilt so appealing to me.  Simplicity in design, but intricate at the same time.

 This was a double Sampler quilt.  Each of the blocks features a different block, but also each was quilted with a different free motion stitch.  I looked at this one for a long time, because I can do this kind of quilt, and so I examined each block individually, both its construction and its quilting.

 This block is a simple construction, but it also had a kind of hypnotic movement to it.  I also thought the appliqued flowers added a nice touch.

This quilt was just plain pretty!  There were thousands of crystals in the quilt, so it sparkled from every angle.  I loved how the colors flowed into each other from light to dark and it seemed to glow.










I also took lots and lots of pictures of just parts of the quilts, mainly quilting designs or creative borders.  I hope I can make use of these ideas in my future projects.

I spent 5 hours at the Quilt Expo.  LOVE IT!  Can't wait til next year to go again!

Memory Quilt Pieced Border

I have all the sashing and cornerstones on, and the first border around.  Now I am working on the pieced border. Here's are the pieces all laid out, ready to sew.

 The quilt so far measures 84" x 84".  I wanted 2" squares going around, made up of framing fabric and/or "memory" fabrics.  But 84 inches means 42 squares, some of which will be colored, and some of which will be cream.  However, if I need a colored square in each corner (and I do!), I need an odd number of squares, either 43 or 45.  PROBLEM!!  I'm going to be either either 2 inches too wide or 2 in. too short.

Here's how I solved it. I decided to go with 45 squares (2 in wider.) This 2 inches needs to be "absorbed" over the course of 84 inches, and 44 squares. Mathematically, each of the 44 squares only needs to be 2/44ths smaller, or reducing that, 1/22nd.  That's less than 1/16th of an inch!  If I make each square's seam allowance slightly (like a HAIR) wider, that 2 inches would be eased into the length of the whole side.  I'm not THAT accurate of a sewer, that I can judge and sew 1/16th of an inch each time, so I just decide to go for it, sew the seams a hair wider, and adjust everything at the end of the row (either stretch it a little if it's too short, or resew a couple seams a bit wider if it's too long). I sewed my squares together, and placed my strip along the top and pinned it.  It fit PERFECTLY!  I still have to sew it onto the quilt, so I'll let you know how that goes next time!  (can you stand the suspense that long!?)

Memory Quilt

My daughter-in-law, Maggie, asked me to make her a quilt in memory of her Mom, Kay Eicher, who passed away in May.  I said I would.  Maggie brought over a box of Kay's clothes for me to cut up and re-use the fabric to make quilt blocks.

There was a variety of fabrics in the box, not all of them usable.  I can use the tee-shirt fabrics, and the cottons of course, but rayon and polyesters?  I think not. I bought some fuseable interfacing to iron onto the knit fabrics so they won't stretch and got started. There were not enough different fabrics, so I had to have some duplicates.  Maggie wanted a queen sized quilt, so I started looking for a pattern that would showcase her mom's fabrics.  I think I found the PERFECT pattern!

The perfect pattern is called "Bird Watching," and it features larger, 12" blocks.  I framed each of my blocks with a one inch framing strip all around, thus deviating from the pattern a WEE BIT!  My blocks turned out to be 14".  The nice thing about this pattern, is that it has large pieces: one 9" square, one 3" square and two 9x3 rectangles, which helps to show off the fabric design. I tried to pick some color in the fabric to match for the framing strips.  The clothes in the boxes tended to be on the paler side, and I think the framing strips I added help jazz up some of the more muted fabrics and set them off.  I will be adding sashing and cornerstones, and a pieced 6" border.


I have 25 blocks completed, and estimate my finished quilt will be @ 90 x 90".   I arranged the blocks in a 5x5 grid, and set to work trying to balance darks/lights, solids/prints etc.  With no particular color scheme in mind when I started, I noticed a sort of  "rainbow" emerging, and was inspired by that.  Here is the result.

 I debated about what kind of sashing strips to use.  Originally, I was thinking a solid cream color,  somewhat neutral, because the blocks are all sorts of colors.  Then I went to the fabric store, and auditioned the blocks against different cream colored fabrics.  Nothing struck my fancy at all.  I auditioned the blocks against a solid black on a whim, and BINGO!  This is it!  I loved it!  However, Maggie is more traditional in her tastes, and so I decided to get her opinion first.  Maggie was not  totally in favor of solid black, but was very diplomatic and said anything I did would be fine.  My  husband was also not in favor of it, saying that it would make the quilt look like a funeral shroud, and a memory quilt should evoke happy memories.  He didn't think black would do that.  So, back to square 1.  (Or square 2?  I did find a pattern I liked.)

In the meantime, I had ordered some fabric for a different project, and that fabric arrived in the mail.  I tried auditioned this new fabric against my blocks, and actually liked the results.  There are two possibilities:

 

      Black with white dots          or          Cream with Rainbow dots

Knowing Maggie's preference, I have opted to use the Cream with  Rainbow dots. (Especially now that there is a sort of rainbow in the quilt!) The cornerstones stand out better, and so will the pieces in the pieced border when I get that far.  I am satisfied with my choices, now to cut the fabric and sew the quilt!

Catching Up

I have been very negligent on keeping up on my blog, but I HAVE been sewing/quilting almost every day.  I will try to bring you up to date on my activity.

Taking up most of my time this past month has been the finishing of Doug and Gina's Four Winds quilt. The piecing of this beautiful quilt has been done for a year or more, but I just haven't had the heart to finish it.  But I've decided it's time to GET ON WITH IT!  So I started to work on it again.

Here is the backing fabric.  A blue/purple leafy batik.  Perfect.  It is one solid piece of fabric.  I ironed it before I made the sandwich. This is the first time I ever ironed a backing fabric, and I will continue to do this in the future.  It really made a big difference in the smoothness of the quilt back.

The "Pinning"!  This quilt measures 80" x 80" so it fit nicely on my kitchen floor.  Pinning is my least favorite part of the quilt-making process.  Hard on the knees, so I use a kneeling pad, which helps a lot.  I always feel this the next day in my muscles too.  Lots of stretching.  Pinning a quilt is good exercise!

This turned out to be a very heavily quilted quilt.  I didn't actually mean for it to be that way, but once I got started, it just seemed to NEED to be that way.  I have spirals meandered in, merged in with free motion swirls to show wind. This quilt needs some wind (it's called The Four Winds after all!) to clear the air and blow away any negativity.  I have "clouds" free motioned in with echoed "hops".  I like the way this quilt turned out.  Here is some detail of the quilting:

  

I have it totally quilted and bound now.  The binding fabric is a deep blue/purple batik, I think it goes perfectly with both sides of the quilt.  I have taken this quilt to my Quilt Guild meeting as a show and tell.  It got a lot of oooohs and ahhhhhhs!  Take a look at the finished quilt:

 

Doug and Gina are gonna LOVE this!  (I hope.)

Indigo and Lace is Finished!

Well, it took a long time, but it was worth it.  My Indigo and Lace quilt, 98 x 98, is finished.  This is a HUGE quilt, my goodness!  The picture below shows it on my California King bed, and it still hangs over the edge!

 

 

The pictures don't show the quilting too well, it shows up better on the backside.  There is a lot of work in this quilt!  Now, only 3 more quilts to sandwich and quilt!

Highway Quilt

I have been working on quilts, just not posting.  I'm almost done with the Indigo and Lace quilting.  There is a LOT more quilting on this than most of my other quilts, and way more than I had originally planned!  But I had to take a time out on it because I have another baby shower coming up, and my reputation precedes me.  A baby quilt was necessary!

So, I know this baby will be a boy.  Great!  Off I went to the fabric store for baby fabric (i.e.  something blue.)  But it occurred to me that babies are babies for such a short while, and I wanted a quilt that wouldn't just be packed away after the baby turns 1!  So I came up with this:

Front

Back

 This quilt measures 42 x 53, so it is a nice size, bigger than a "baby" quilt but not too big.  It fit nicely on my design wall, so I was able to use spray adhesive to do the sandwich. First time I ever did a quilt that way that actually worked!  (I tried it once before on a very large quilt and ended up pinning it anyway.) I used a piece of the Polyester  batting (UGH!) too, it stayed put because of the spray adhesive.  So, no pinning necessary!  Yay!  The front is a solid piece of fabric, so no piecing was necessary!  SUPER EASY!!  Then I just quilted the outlines of the roads and signs/objects.  Put a binding on.  Done is less than 2 days!  The back is fleece, super soft.  This quilt can be a blanket or a play mat.  I can envision hot wheel cars zooming along these roadways.   I'm very happy with it.