Cotton Candy

I made these little "busy-bags" for the sisters (5&3) of the still-unborn recipient of the planetary quilt. They took less time than a full quilt and got the pastel bug worked out of my soul!

Time to gather in the strays.

Brave New Soul

Well wudja look at that! A quilt!

This is a quilt I made for my acupuncturist and his wife. They're expecting a baby next month, so far a non-gender-specified baby. School's got me pretty busy, so I rather than trying to make two (one for either), I made one, and hopefully it's not too much one way or the other.

The background triangles were originally 5" squares. The circles were an idea from "Circle Play", but the design is original. The background is a Fossil Fern Flannel, "Patina". I love it. I bought it online, and the description called it "steel blue and teal", but in the flesh it has lavender tones and lovely greenishness. I made the border purple to pick up on that. To make the gender issue more waffly too, I suppose.

Very happy with this one. I didn't intend for it to look so planetary, but it did sort of turn out that way. That's okay. He's opened up new worlds for me with these treatments, so I guess it's kind of appropriate.

Finished size (before final wash) 36"X43".

Kalimera! Or, Poppy Makes a Quilt For Young Verdure

Bears in the Cornpatch

Well, I've finally settled on what I'm going to make Chive for his 50th birthday next year. Something like this:



I've always been charmed by the Bear's Paw block, and combined with the alternating chain blocks, I find it irresistable. He says he likes the colours in this quilt, the greyed navy and sage with gold. So in the new year I'll start gathering up my bits and pieces for a HUGE birthday quilt for my beloved. It'll end up being approximately 90"X110", more than big enough for his bed. What we have now is rather embarrassing, especially since I'm a quilter and all - just a lumpy duvet with a cover that's beginning to shred where I tried safety-pinning it to keep it from shifting all the time.

I love this lap quilt. The centre block patterns were from The Simple Joys of Quilting, but I added the borders and cornerstone blocks to enlarge it. Not all my points are sharp, but why should that be surprising? Or even desirable...? The light sage is a William Morris print that I've had for years, waiting for the right project to leap up at me.


I think I would have cast myself body and soul at William Morris' feet if I'd been so unfortunate as to have had the opportunity. I love his patterns and philosophy. Didn't work out so well in practice, of course, it rarely does. Sad. Of course, maybe he wasn't so magnetic as I imagine he was and I would have shunned to run away to the Northlands with him and run my fingers through his beard.

I love the sombreness of the colours, it makes me think of traditional Mennonite quilts.



I meander quilted most of it, but the dark navy borders got stitch-in-the-ditch, and the chain lines were straight-quilted through the centres. I used the darning foot to do the paw-points, too, and that was a new challenge. Moving freehand in a straight line is tough! I also made kind of a stylized leaf in the centre of each paw square, outline-quilted it, and then squiggled quilted the inside. Hand-tacked the binding, of course. I've been wondering lately if I ought to also machine-sew that for durability, but it certainly doesn't look as nice that way. Approximately 52"X62".

And the back:

Corn and grain, corn and grain
What falls to earth shall rise again

Hoof and horn, hoof and horn
Whatever dies shall be reborn.

Clubfeet?

How many times!?

Three or four, anyway.

I have some kind of spatial relations dyslexia, I swear. I've made several of these Bear's Paw blocks, and I know that you have to set those little triangles in the right direction on each side of the square and look at it before you sew them together. I know this. And all three other blocks were fine. But this one; I sewed it wrong over and over, in spite of talking to my inner seamstress and laying it out in front of myself and checking and double checking that everyone was pointing in the right direction.

Obviously, I finally got it right, or right enough. It was a little skewed after all that repetitive de-sewing, but I'll make it work. It's a cornerstone block for a border. I'm really happy with how this quilt is turning out.

I do the same thing when I'm sewing bindings on, too. I have a diagram, I've got it set out in front of me every time, I walk myself through step by step, and .... invariably sew it backwards. You know the bit when you're closing the binding with a diagonal seam? That bit. Always once I have to sew it backwards in spite of all the care I take.

Oh well. At least I'm learning to set my stitch on HUGE so it's not so hard to pull out.

Puss in the Corner for Katt

Since I know she never visits this site anyway, I guess I can post before she gets here to pick it up and it won't ruin the surprise....

Puss in the Corner, on point, with lots of borders. It was originally a baby quilt, but it didn't get used that way, and when Katt saw it, she wanted it. Only bigger. I love borders.

The finished size is 54"X61.5", so a very good quilt for reading on the sofa. I know - I've tried it out several times already, several different books, it worked for all of them.

Chive really likes this one, he says it reminds him of a Persian rug and when am I going to make him a quilt? Humph! After all the times I asked him what he'd like and he told me he didn't really care, a blanket was a blanket! Again I say, Humph!

Flannel back, a tiny gold leaf on cream, Red Rooster Textiles, I think. Most of it was meander quilted, but I stitched in the ditch for the plain green border strips.

Another One Struck from the List!

Got it done, ready to go up north! I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I would have like to done a bit more quilting in the triangles, but I put a rib out this week and my back isn't up to it. Not that there isn't plenty of squiggling already! This quilt won't be coming apart, no ma'am!

Update: Naturally, I remember after it's gone, that I've forgotten to take the final measurements. Fiddle. Oh well.

The triangles were cut on the diagonal from 5.5 inch squares. The centre orange square was appliqued. I think the orange borders were cut 5.5 inches wide, too. It seems to me that the finished pieced width was about 37", and with the borders the length would have been 47". Benartex flannel backing, tone on tone beige print with little chickens.

Stipplification

I've put the top together, decided on the pinwheel arrangement for the centres of the stars, and have put a serious dent in the quilting. I need to have this quilt done by Saturday night! It's going up north with my friend who'll be visiting on the weekend.

This post is mostly to register my astonishment at my stipple-quilting. !!!!! It's so much easier than it was even on the last project! Now I've got to decide whether or not I really like it. Wherever you use stippling, the quilt becomes a fair amount stiffer, but maybe that would ease off after it's been through the final wash. I'm mixing it up a bit; stipple quilting in the navy blue pieces and stitch-in-the-ditch and outline quilting on the triangles. Since there's quite a lot of the blue, it's all rather labour-intensive, but I'm chalking it up to practice.

Thread intensive, too. Wowzers. I'm finding the navy thread on the navy fabric is almost invisible, which is fine in the end, but bloody difficult while I'm doing the actual work. Where have I been? Where should I be going? Now that I'm more confident with this particular skill, I'm going to start using threads that are slightly different than the fabric I'm working on, for my eyes' sake.

Triangulations

Clink, clink, I hear a link!

Good gracious! It's been almost a month since I've posted here!

I found this link while browsing through WhipUp, and I love it. It's a frabjabulous idea for using your fabric stash as wall art. Love it, love it, love it! I'm definitely going to do this to a wall in the new house. How come I never thought of foam core?

What am I working on currently? Well, I've come to a standstill, to tell the truth. I need to make a baby quilt, and it needs to be done in three weeks, but I just can't get into it. This Amish-y one was supposed to be it, but it whispered to me that actually, its True Home was on the gold wall behind my couch, and sure enough! That's where it belongs. But now I need to make another baby-size quilt and I'm dillying and dallying. Maybe it's just hormonal. Ask again next week.

And I did make a couple of purses last week, so I guess I haven't been completely outside of the sewing realm. Funny how it feels that way after a couple non-sewing days!

Due Yue Prefer Blue?

This is the quilt I'm not working on, sadly. Sometimes you really have a yearning for a particular thing? I'm yearning after this quilt, but alas, I have to work on something else. Not that the something else isn't a good thing too, but you know...


It's a Puss-in-the-Corner, with a navy Benartex flannel backing in a tone on tone print. Finished size is about 62"X62", a generous lap quilt or single bed-topper.



I've FINALLY come to a place where I'm happy with my meander quilting, and it's actually fun! I'm not swearing. The stitches are all more or less the same length. It looks like what they're doing at the quilt shop! They told me it was a matter of practice, and apparently they were right. Imagine that!

I'm using a variegated thread, but the colours are very subtle and you don't see the variation unless you're up close. And that's alright. The lady at the quilt shop (who teaches machine quilting) was trying like billy-o to get me to use a bright blue/green variegated thread for this project, but there was no way I was going to do it, considering how little confidence I had in my meander-quilting ability at the time. I'm still glad, even though it's going well. That would be too much stress, thinking that every stitch was going to proclaim itself.

The blues in this quilt aren't "my" colours, but now that I've got it layered and the quilting started, I'm loving all the associations the various shades are bringing up. The backing is like a starry winter sky, the top blues are like deep layers of ice, evening sky, snow-shadows, ocean waters... And the more quilting I put into it, the more depth it achieves.

Maybe I'm just not good at changing gears. Deep breath - BE with the blacks and greens and terra-cottas - think triangles, not squares.... That's going to be a nice quilt too. And when it's done, hopefully I'll be able to switch back into blue-mode.

I've been without my sewing machine, Suki the Juki, for almost two weeks and it's driving me CRAZY!!! I've got all these projects I'd like to be working on to keep my hands busy while I fret about the land, but none of them are to the handwork stage yet.

Blast and botheration!

I'm pining.

Er, yes... about those strippies...

I know I said I wasn't going to be posting anymore strippies for a while, but I found out that friends of our had a baby boy, and it really was a strippie situation, if you know what I mean.








Five different fabrics again, which works out well with 11 strips each cut 5" wide, because you get the first, middle, and final strip in the same fabric. The final dimension is just under 39" by just over 49". Big enough to make the transition to being a toddler's cuddling quilt.

I meander-quilted along each seam. It's my most successful attempt at that yet, but still I don't feel extremely confident about it. Practice, practice, practice.


















You know how some colours are just more difficult to work with than others? That lighter turquoise was one of those fabrics that sat in my stash for ages and ages. I bought a metre of it because it looked like a good semi-solid, and it was on sale, but once I got it home it eluded every attempt I made to use it.


















But I got this Fossil Fern "Bluebells" in the mail, and the colours weren't what I was expecting. Guess what! Somehow, it brought all these fabrics together for me, and away I went. The darkest blue, which I had oceans of, is final whittled away down to just a few scraps, and the same for the turquoise.














Just the hand-stitching left on the binding now, and it can go North to G.P. We're stopping at a lake today after we look at some houses, so I'll bring a lawnchair and a needle and thread and maybe I'll get that finished while the kids swim.

Truly Finished, Finally!

I finished this quilt at least a year ago, and maybe two. It's been in daily use ever since, and was starting to look badly in need of a wash.

But -

I'd never finished the binding! It was basted on, but the handstitching was incomplete. Why do I do that?

I got pretty sick a couple weeks ago, and didn't have the energy for anything but sitting around, so I found the black thread and got 'er done. Yippee! And into the wash it went!

I used roses and blues, grouping them into diamonds, but it works a lot better divided by lights and darks, rather than colours. The backing was a Benartex flannel, Cherry Fizz (?), in the Fossil Fern line. It's worn extremely well, and when I need a flannel backing I'll head to the Benartex corner first.

Pursed Lips

I need a purse. I've had the same little purse for the last five or six years, and it's taken a beating. So, I went pricing leather purses and nearly had heart-failure - a wincy little black purse On Sale for $139! Guess what. I think denim and quilt cotton will do admirably, and I can make it out of scraps. I'll keep you updated.

ANOTHER Strippie - the last one for a while

This was the companion strippie quilt I completed as a mate to the one that was "rejected" in favour of another girlie one in my first post. Originally it (and the first one) was commissioned to go to a set of twin boys, but the lady doing the commissioning didn't contact me for a long time, so I eventually gave one to my cousin, and one to a friend. Friend was 49 when she had this child - and it was her first!!!

I had a lot of trouble with the yellow in this quilt. Yellow isn't one of my very favourite colours, and this particular yellow was a screamer.

Not one of my quilts that I was really attached to, for that reason. But there you go. Only stern truth will do on Kotton Frolik.

Whimsical Placemats

I made these placemats without templates or a premeditated design. It was completely off the cuff, using bowls for my circles and sewing the "straight" lines by eye. I had a lot of fun with this project, and I'll probably make an entire quilt this way not to far in the future.

I recycled and tea-dyed an old sheet for the backing, which worked alright until I went to hand-stitch the bindings on, and discovered that the thread-count was so high that it made it very difficult to push the needle through. Live and learn. Used flannel for the centre bat.

Another note for future - placemats need a lot of quilting, so they don't "pull apart" in their layers with wash and use.

These two emigrated to "South America". ;-)

Found Quilt

I love the ridges in this photo. And the natural light, of course, which is ever so much kinder to fabric than the flash.

I made this top and put it away and completely forgot that I had it. Nice surprise when I was rooting through the bins looking for something else!

The pattern is created by lights and darks. Each block is made by placing two squares together, one light, one dark, faces together. Draw a diagonal line on one, pin securely, and sew a 1/4" seam on each side of it. Unpin, and cut along the drawn line. Twala! You've got a block of two triangles, without ever sewing a seam on the bias edge. With this block you can play and come up with several different arrangements. I'm pretty keen on this diamond set-up, and on pinwheel blocks.

Another quilt that went up north. This lady had a baby this spring, and her husband was killed a couple months later in a car accident. Tough row to hoe.

I made another quilt like this that I gave to my neighbour when she had a baby a couple years ago. It was all in blues, light and dark, and it really turned out nicely. I think I prefer it all in one colour family.

Log Cabin Baby Quilt

My first Log Cabin, other than an apron bib in Grade 7 and a couple of pot-holders. I was surprised by how time-consuming the piecing was, but I really like the depth that many colours and shades give it. About 40"X50", the usual baby-quilt size I make. I used some of the wine-red flannel from the backing in the blocks. I hope it's standing up to use alright. Black centres. The white floral in that fabric was too stark, so I tea-dyed it. I believe I used the black as the binding, too. This picture was taken before the binding went on.

It was another commissioned quilt. The recipient was a Native lady who had a baby girl, and she is particularly fond of the reds and blacks and natural colours that are most common in Native art. They aren't colours I would normally use, but that's what I like about requests. They push me outside of myself and force me into a more creative space.














Mustn't forget - don't meander-quilt diagonal sections without very secure basting all over. I should have hand-basted this one, because I quilted some ridges into the back, which was quite a disappointment after all that work. Still, I like it a lot. Maybe I'll make one for us one day.

Yeah, right, I always say that!

Wait - now that I see the first picture enlarged, I can say for sure that I did use the same fabric on the binding as I did for the centres. Oooh, deadly memory!

Double Irish Chain

This is a Double Irish Chain made by the strip-piecing method. I straight-stitched with a walking foot through the diagonal, and meander-quilted the centres. I made the top a couple years ago, and finally pulled it out of the basket and quilted it this past winter. It went to live waaaay up North with Dear Deena-Anna-May. ;-) It was approximately 4' by 5.5', I think. A reading quilt if ever there was one.

What a Bag

I made two of these bags, and Poppy has abducted them both into the fastnesses of her room. I'll have to snitch one back and remember how I made it. I drafted the pattern from an Edmonton Public Library bag (the heavy plastic ones), and hopefully I didn't throw my template away.

I used cut-up old jeans for the outside, print cotton on the inside. We use them for library books, when Poppy lets them free of her grip. They'd probably make fairly decent diaper bags, too.

Bothering the Batiks

Pondering these. In combination? With others? The rosy mottled batik and the blue make me think of mermaid scales in the seaweed. Maybe...

Happy Hyper Whales

The question is, of course, where did this quilt go? I think it went to Mel's youngest, up in McMurray. I guess I could phone and ask what the quilt looked like that I sent their way, but would I sound like a complete idiot?

Another strippie, obviously, made with that "happy whale" fabric I'm having such a devil of a time using up. I just finished another quilt top with that in it, alternating with nine-patch blocks, and it's frightfully busy. Quilting always brings it around, of course. Still, I think it's going to be more than a little frenetic. It'll need to go to an inherently placid baby.

I think I'll make another denim tote-bag and use that fabric for the lining. That should knock it back to just a few scraps.

Pinwheels

This is a quilt I finished this spring (I think, help me Grannyfiddler) as a consignment. The young lady who recieved it on behalf of her baby girl has a twin sister, and the twin sister is expecting a baby boy this fall. Another quilt is in the works. I haven't quite sorted out patterns and colours for that project yet.

I think I have a scrap of paper somewhere with the dimensions of the pieces and blocks. This quilt was made from my own design, pinwheels alternating with a cobblestone block. I like how the negative spaces form a twirling star or modified pinwheel design of their own.

Oh! That's where that piece of mauve flannel went! Now I remember. I used it as a backing, and used it to piece a couple of the blocks, too. Seek and ye shall find. I guess I don't need to be rooting around in my bins for that one anymore, huh?

Update - okay, I found that piece of paper.

Pinwheel squares were cut 5.5", laid on top of each other, sewed diagonally and cut, etc.. Finished block was 9 3/4".

Alternate block - centre square was cut 3.5", surrounding strips 3 3/4". Trimmed block to 9 3/4".

Triangles for sides were 10" blocks cut on the diagonal.

The First Three Red-Hot Strippies

When Alex was expecting twins, a boy and a girl, I gave her one of the pink/purple strippies I had on hand from when we thought we were adopting the triplets, and made a primary-colour one to coordinate. When it turned out that (surprise!) she had two girls, I sent her the second pink/purple one that I still had in my closet, and got the primary-colour one back.

And I just remembered, Noha got the third of these girlie strippies.

That's why I need this blog. I forget everything. And it's good to look back at what I made in the past, and realize that yeah, these very simple strippies were lovely. I'd been remembering them as some kind of quilter's cop-out, too simple. But right now, the simplicity seems restful, and I think I'll make another next time I'm on the baby-quilt warpath.