Ella's quilt

Brian's colleagues are having babies right and left! Having made a minkee blanket for one, I am in a position to have to make them for everyone. I really don't mind (I like the people), but I am making very easy blankets. This quilt is from a cheater panel, Baby Genius by Benartex. Babies love these figures, and I didn't have to piece them! I just put on borders, backing, and quilted along the squares, then bound it.

Here's the backing -- it's the same fabric that you see in the bottom middle square of the quilt top. Wild!

...and more blocks!

Remember all those batik-look flannels I cut up? I've started stitching them into blocks.

I have been overwhelmed with Linus stuff, so my sewing space is a mess, which means I'm less inclined to work on a project. And then I got this virus followed by a cough so bad I cracked my rib coughing, so I haven't felt much like doing anything. But yesterday I was feeling better and really wanted to get into my projects. So the two blocks I just posted and these were easy to make without setting up a lot of stuff. Now I'm inspired to clean up the space (shouldn't really take too long) and get back to it!

I do love these flannels, and after I had cut them all up, I found I was regretting not making off-kilter squares, like Jan Mullen does. It would have been great, but now that I've started putting these blocks together, I'm happy with them.

Blocks

A couple months ago I found an Oriental Lanterns quilt on the About.com quilting site. I love Asian prints and since this pattern calls for a large number of those fabrics, I thought it would make a good swap pattern for the guild. It's easy to make. Dorothy, the swap and lotto chair, was very willing to use the pattern but wanted to try it as a block lotto first to see if there might be enough interest in a swap.
I don't know whether enough people will be interested, or whether those interested will have any Asian prints. There are more midwestern traditionalists in the guild than there are people who like modern designs, or quilts with a more international flair. We'll see if anyone responds. Wish me luck! It was nice of Dorothy to give it a try.

I also made this very traditional block. Every year the guild holds a retreat at the same place near Princeton, Illinois. The center needs to raise money for refurbishing, and so the guild decided to make a raffle quilt to help them. I took home a packet and made this block for the quilt.


I'm really glad they provided all the fabrics, because my scraps don't look like this! That's the problem with swaps and such -- it's really hard to end up with a coordinated look since no one has control over the fabrics other people choose. You can specify color or style, but it's never enough!

Una borsa fiorentina

Val bought some very spiffy shoes during her Italian sojourn, and the clerk put them into a possibly even spiffier sack:

If I recall the story correctly, Val was given a choice of a sack or a box, and the choice was made the very instant she saw the sack. She does have good taste. Anyhow, as I was cleaning up the satchel pile in the mudroom today, I saw the sack (now placed in Val's closet) and was struck by what a great quilt it would make.

And the design on the reverse would make a matching pillow, don't you think?

Chicago Quilt Show 2007 - part 2

This quilt was amazing. When you see it in person, it feels like the bird will swoop out of the quilt! Again, I like quilts that ARE quilts -- the dynamic background is a vibrant log cabin variation, and the whole quilt is pieced. Just love it.


This quilt was arresting -- partly for the color, partly for the immediately recognizable Monet look. I'm not completely sure what I think, but it's definitely intriguing.

This quilt is so different from the others, but I really liked it. The colors are great. The layout of the design is so interesting, and the simplicity is wonderful. It's both lively and calming. The background fabric is perfect.

Chicago Quilt Show 2007 - part 1

Yesterday I took the guild bus up to the Chicago Quilt Show. Wow! Such fun -- vendors galore and absolutely amazing quilts. I loved it!

There were some very clear "No Photos" signs on some of the exhibits, but others seemed to allow photos. People were taking them everywhere, even in the no photo area (shame on them). Sometimes I wasn't certain whether or not I could take a photo, so I didn't, and now I'm thinking I probably could have. Ah, well, I got photos of a few great quilts which I will share with you. I also photographed the sign with the title and quilter's note.




I really liked Brenda Smith's Wildfire! quilt. It works for me in lots of ways. First, the overall look and color grabbed my attention, and it was very "quilty" -- put together out of colored squares. I loved the straight lines of the trunks and the contrast of the leafy trees. Her color use, from the cool blues to hot yellows and reds, really spoke of the fire's effect. Hope you can get all that from the photo!




Helen Knott's Low Tide really took me in. When you see it, you feel drawn back into the mist. I felt like I could look at the quilt for a long time and not tire of it. I love the inner border frame, how it frames and yet does not limit the design. Do click on the photo to see the quilt in more detail.

A springtime visit to California

We went to California to have Passover with the kids, but it was also Merry Christmas -- Jocelyn finished my second sock! Hoorah! They are so comfy on my feet.

The Seder had almost 30 people, but fortunately the co-op had lots of dishes and tableware (and tables -- we had three!). Grandma Frances provided the flowers on the big table ...
...and the two little tables each had one of the quilted Passover tablerunners.



The food was fabulous (and why not, with such great chefs?). This photo of lighter-than-air matzah balls made by Val gives just a hint of how delicious the feast was.






Brian and I got to see lots of family -- our two beautiful daughters...









my mother...








my niece Andrea and her amazing son, Nathan...








and her cute-as-a-button daughter, Hannah. We also saw my brother Ray and his wife, Chris, but alas missed Laurel and her family. Next time!

Could have been an 'oops' (or Why I pre-wash my fabric)

Boy, do I love these batik flannels! Totally love them. As Woody Allen told Annie Hall, it's more than love -- I lurf them. They are gorgeous! I bought some for the back of Jocelyn's African Coins quilt and more for the back of Val's Ocean Waves Monkey Wrench quilt. When Sew Sassy put all the batik flannels on sale, I bought a little of each of them because I knew I would use them eventually. Eventually is now.


Flannels can shrink. Actually, they DO shrink -- they are more loosely woven than quilting cottons and when you wash them, well... they shrink. With all the dye in these batik-like flannels, they also bleed. When I prewashed the flannels I threw in a Shout Color Catcher, as I always do when I wash new fabric. Sometimes they get a faint tint, sometimes a more noticeable one, sometimes you can't tell they've been through the wash. But look at this! The blue sheet was washed with the flannels. The unused white one on top of it shows what it looked like when it went into the washer. Nuff said.

Cookie cutters

I started collecting cookie cutters in the 1970's. For a few years I was semi-serious about it, but later I realized that I didn't make cookies that often. I just can't eat cookies all the time and I didn't want my kids to grow up feeling deprived unless they had a cookie. But I did love the cookie cutters!

Eventually I pruned my collection, but I still have quite a few cookie cutters. They came in handy on Make A Blanket Day (Feb. 17). A snow storm prevented me from attending the Big Event in Forsyth, so I decided to spend the day putting together one of the Linus kits the guild has (and which I store in my sewing room). This one had lots of cute fabrics, but there were also several solid, pale peach squares that forced you to look at them and really detracted from the quilt. I wish I had taken a photo so you could see that. So after the entire quilt had been assembled, I decided I just had to do something. I found one applique pattern in a magazine (the flower with the center) and then wham! Suddenly I remembered my cookie cutters. They were the perfect size to use as templates. I traced them onto fusible web and made some appliques. It's definitely easier to applique the squares before assembling the quilt, but this wasn't too bad.

It's a cute top and I think the appliques add that extra something special.

Animal panel

Here's a Linus quilt made from a simple panel (the squares and the yellow dotted border surrounding them). Someone added the blue/green/yellow striped border and turned it in for a Linus top. I thought it was still too small, so added some green dotted fabric of my own as an outer border before quilting and binding it. You may recognize the fabric from Cool Brian (California Dreamin' s first incarnation).


I tried quilting this a new way, and it was wonderful. Whenever I have stitched a long, anchoring seam down the middle (as I was taught to do), I inevitably pull the fabric on the back and it gets puckered. I have tried several ways around this problem but have been unsuccessful. This time the quilting worked out great. I quilted the edge of each square, making it look pieced. This also kept me from having to start off with a long anchoring line of stitching. When I stitched in the ditch in the borders (and I must say I do a mean stitch in the ditch!), it still looked great. It's a baby quilt, so was easy to work with on the machine and I felt really good about how it came out. Nothing fancy at all, but it worked. Yay!

Quilts everywhere!

Again, behind in my posts. The problem is with iPhoto -- I have it waaay too full, so it takes forever to download photos, edit them, and get them to the desktop for uploading to Blogger. I need to move photos out of iPhoto and just use it for downloading and editing, but that will be such a long task that I haven't started...so I keep adding photos...making it a bigger task when I do get around to it. But I have now moved several photos to the desktop and will get a few posts done soon. Here's a picture taken in my family room.

The pile of quilts on the chair is donated Linus quilts that I brought home from guild the other night (you can see them on the Hearts for Linus blog, link to the right). On the couch back are two Linus quilts I contributed to making. The quilt on the bottom normally resides in the family room -- it's the first quilt I ever made, which goes with nothing and is too small and has too big a border, but I like it anyway.

Below is my design wall (sorry, I forgot to rotate the photo and there's no way I'm going back into iPhoto to do it!). The green strips are Laurel's I Spy and other is a table topper I made in my Quilt University class. I haven't decided whether to join the red and yellow triangle borders to it or just be done, so I'm leaving it up to look at it both ways. I don't much like the piece, but I learned a lot making it.

"Mountain majesties"

Oh, beautiful for spacious skies
For amber waves of grain
For purple mountains' majesty
Above the fruited plain.

We all know the words -- or sort of know the words. How many people get the "purple mountains' majesty" part correct, with all the right plurals and possessives? I grimaced when I saw the title on the block lotto directions, but I know I am more particular than most when it comes to orthographical niceties. Fortunately, Google is uninterested in the apostrophe and I was able to find out more about this block online.


In any case, I made this block as part of our monthly block lotto at the guild. I like it okay, although I doubt I would ever make a quilt based on this block, but I was intrigued by the construction. You make two half-square triangles, cut them apart in strips, and stitch them back together. I was intrigued enough to look for layout possibilities online. Quiltville, one of my favorite sites, has instructions and some very intriguing designs using this block. Click here to take a look. By the way, this is all prelude to my next post, coming soon, about tesselations and symmetry.

Snow sculpture

Brian opened the back door from the garage to get to the patio to shovel that big snow drift against the family room door (I posted that photo a few days ago). This is what greeted him when he opened the door.

The indentations in the door made a lovely mold for the snow!

More pieces!

Remember the green and yellow checkerboard I posted a week ago? This goes with it! Next week I should join everything and you'll see what it is.

PublishThese are photographed on the spiffy table-top gridded ironing board I have. It's wonderful!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Blizzard!

Snow! Last I measured, the drift against the patio door was 43" higher than our carpet (don't be ridiculous, I didn't go OUTSIDE to measure it!). And that was about 5:30 this evening, and it's now 10:15 and it's still snowing.
It's a very odd storm -- bitterly cold and windy, with very dry snow. So the tree branches are all bare and forlorn looking, part of the grass is visible, and then there are drifts that measure several feet. The University was closed today and will be again tomorrow. Incredible!

Lost & Found

When I organized all my I Spy paraphernalia, I put the magazine with the pattern in the big Rubbermaid tub along with everything else. Somehow it crawled out all by itself to play hide and go seek. I was not amused. I finished Teresa's I Spy without it, but the top had already been pieced. It became more critical when I started to work on Laurel's recently. Just how many hexagons??? Finally this evening I sat down with a huge pile of quilting magazines and went through them until at last I came upon the right one. I guess the magazine knew that the best place to hide a needle is in a haystack. But I am so glad to have found it!

How do you like my temporary design wall? I felt pretty clever with this one. It's batting stuck to the wall with painter's tape, which doesn't harm the wall and peels off easily. (I just wish that painter's tape wasn't so blue.) I stuck up all the hexagons I had put triangles on and they came to 70. I need ONE HUNDRED FORTY-SEVEN! But seeing what I had made it easier to avoid duplicates as I rummaged through my stash. I'm now up to 95. This time I'm cutting the hexagons with a rotary cutter around the template rather than tracing and using scissors. My accuracy should be much better, making piecing easier this time. I'm on my way!

What's this?

Well might you ask! It looks mighty daffodil-ish if you ask me. While I would definitely like to see a daffodil outside (what a relief from the vast expanses of white that will only get whiter when it snows again on Tuesday), I am not such a daffodilish quilt person. I must say I was surprised when I made this border for my Pressing Basics class at Quilt University. I trust that when the quilt is complete, you will not be thinking of daffodils. I will say no more, but continue to post the other parts as they are made. (If it looks weird, one strip is right side up and the other is upside down so you can admire the pressing.)


This block was another extra project for the Pressing Basics class. I madeit with Linus fabric and will work it into a Linus quilt. We have several extra blocks, and I'm making them all with the same fabrics. Then I'll do some applique apples and make a quilt.

'Twas the night before Christmas

Well, no, it was February 10, but if it had been the night before Christmas, someone would have been using this pillowcase!I bought this kit in November 2005 because I wanted to learn to make a pillowcase with a cuff and no raw edges inside. In my effort to finish up UFOs, I stitched this up. It's a really clever construction method in which the cuff, edging and body of the pillowcase are joined in one seam that leaves no raw edge. Then the side and bottom are stitched twice, once to join and once to enclose the raw edges. Now that I know how to make these, I'll make many for gifts. I think kids will love them. This one is my contribution to the guild bazaar (everyone needs to contribute for the quilt show).

I've been doing lots of stitching recently -- sent Teresa's I Spy once I figured out how to make a decent label (I printed it up in a fancy font, then traced over it onto fabric using a Pigma pen), am working on Laurel's I Spy, and of course have been doing lots of Linus stuff. Check out the Hearts for Linus blog if you haven't been!

UFOs and other strange sightings

We see way too many UFOs around my guild -- and no, we are not in Roswell, New Mexico. A UFO is the quilting term for Un-Finished Object. It is so easy to get excited, start a project, and then ... somehow ... never finish. The guild has a challenge this year to finish up some of our UFO's -- I put down several projects on my list.

Just for fun, here's a list someone shared from a Yahoo quilting group:

UFO Un-Finished Object. A project which is started but not yet finished.

WIP Work In Progress. A project on which you actually do work. (The dividing-line between UFOs and WIPs is highly personal.)

PIG Project In Grocery-bag

prozag PROject in Zip-lock-bAG

PIGs and Prozags are those bags / shelves / boxes / whatever, where you have all fabrics and a pattern. Thread and batting is not necessarily included. Numerous PIGs have been known to be called my herd of swine.

BOB Bag (Box / whatever) Of Blocks. Often swap-blocks that are put aside for "later". Also the odd "test-blocks" where you have tried out colour-combinations, or a new technique, or the blocks of projects that were started, and is now stopped without any intention of every doing more about that project ... but there are anything from 1 to 100 blocks that are finished.
BOB-projects usually need serious executive decisions ... such as setting, use, size etc.

The 3 above categories can be DOA, Dead On Arrival. Something you know you will never finish anything from. If that is the case, get rid of it! Donate, toss, sell or recycle into stash.