A Baby Quilt

 I've been quilting for the past few days on a baby quilt for my guild.  We need to "fill our merchandise" to sell at the next Art in the Redwoods, and then Winter Wonderland.  These are the two main fundraisers for our guild (and for other organizations as well as the parent organization, Gualala Arts Center).  I had some fabric in my stash that had multi-colored squares printed on it, and I bought it with the idea of making it into a baby quilt.  So I pulled it out, got it sandwiched with a cute "kiddy print" on the back, and am now doing the quilting.

I don't pretend to be a very good free motion quilter, but I think that the more I practice, the better I should become, right?

This first design is simple leaves, all over and all different directions.  It was fun!

I believe this was a design that I found in a Leah Day free motion quilting book.  I drew one line wavy from corner to corner, then drew a straight line between the other corners.  Then simply followed the line, and echoed it.  I like this design a lot.

This kind of looks like a star to me, or a flower.

And some plain old stippling, which I really like, now that I've finally learned how to do it!

Several years ago, in my free motion quilting attempts, I could do "pebbles" quite well.  Now, however, something has changed, and I find myself pebble-challenged.  But I thought I'd try pebbles again.  The bigger pebbles are definitely easier for me than the small pebbles.

Below you see a square with a very simple wavy line going across it.  Also, you can see that these squares are about 5" square.

I still have several squares to quilt.  I'm quilting every other square, leaving the alternating squares blank.  I thought the quilt might get too stiff if it was quilted in every single square.

Work on my President's Quilt

I have been working in earnest on my president's quilt lately.  I'm very close to being done with the quilting.  I decided to do a fan-like free motion design in the blocks themselves, with a leafy vine in the green sashing strips.

I had a bit of trouble with my machine, so I haven't been working on it steadily, but I've kept at it.  It is so enjoyable to work on it.  Each square has the name of the person who sewed it, so as I quilt each square I think about that person fondly.  I appreciate the particular fabric they used to go with my blue print.  Very fun.

Scrap Block Quilt Number Two

Way back here I showed you a quilt that I made from some fabric squares I had been given.  And I sewed it up really fast.  There were still squares left from that project, so I thought I'd better make another quilt.

And here it is!

(I was having some trouble with the wind outside, making it a little bit difficult to photograph this quilt!)

It turned out to be exactly 10 squares by 10 squares.  I had no idea there was such a perfect number of squares left, as I had never counted them.

I decided to make Quilt Number Two a little bit bigger, so I added on a green inner border and a larger, outer border from purple grape fabric.  (A friend of mine said she thought the grape fabric would make it sell well.  I can only hope!)  BTW, I'm not receiving any money for this quilt; the money will go to my guild and Gualala Arts Center.

Here is the pieced back I made for the quilt, using some more of that same grape fabric, and a little bit of a light blue print, from my friend Harmony of Harmony Arts.  The rest of it was a light green.

 I tried out a few free motion quilting motifs when it came to quilting this quilt.  Above you can see some swirly designs.  I took a lot of photos of the quilting, but none of the designs showed up very well against the very randomly-colored quilt top.

So I took some photos of the back of the quilt.  Please be kind, as I consider myself a 

"constantly improving free motion quilter."  That is my optimism speaking!

In the first, smaller border I did a little vine-y or leafy pattern.  I kind of liked doing it.  Gave me some good practice with travel stitching.

In the larger border I quilted these over-lapping circles.  My inspiration for this was that SisterStitches used this design on a quilt that she quilted for me.  This design was actually easier than I thought it would be, and a lot of fun to do.  I'll definitely be using this design again!

I used some more of my scrappy, leftover binding pieces to finish it off.  Sometimes quilts are just so darn easy to make, aren't they!?!

Possible Quilting Design

This is a chair cushion I saw a few months ago in a restaurant.  And I'm thinking, "quilting design?"

The close-up is not too clear, but it looks nice and curvy and organic, and I'm wondering if it might be possible.  I'll have to make myself a practice sandwich and try to work this out.  Lots of traveling, that's for sure.  We'll see.

Memory Quilts

This project has taken me a long time.  Way too long.  A friend of mine died a few years ago.  It was very sudden and unexpected.  Our kids were close in age, and we had gone all the way through their schools  together:  elementary, middle school, and high school.  Needless to say, Susan's death hit a lot of us very hard.  I try to concentrate on all the good memories I have of her: having lunch together, working as marching band parents in high school, going shopping, visiting back and forth.  

At her memorial service, another of her friends, knowing that I am a quilter, asked me if I would be interested in making a quilt from Susan's clothes.  I felt really honored to be asked to do this.  So, when her family had gone through her closet, I collected a few bags of her clothes, trying to select mostly cottons.  And, even later, I finished two quilts, one for each of her sons.

The quilt at the top measures 62" wide by 68" long.  First I cut strips 4 1/2" wide of Susan's clothes.  Then I decided to use a light green Kona cotton for the inner strips and  the border.  Those little strips were all 4 1/2" by 1 1/2".  I laid all the clothing strips out on a bed top (my design wall wasn't available) and arranged them in a random way.  (Is it random if you are intentionally arranging them?!?)  I tried to not have the same fabrics next to each other, or too many blues in one spot, etc.  I sewed the little green strips between each of the clothing strips, then added a light green border, and quilted it with a meandering viny-ey type of design down each row.

Susan was very proud of being a New Yorker, and also of having ties to the New York Fire Department.  When I was going through her clothes, choosing fabrics for the quilt, I came across a lot (A LOT) of blue FDNY t-shirts, so I knew I had to include them somehow.  I chose one shirt for each quilt, cut out the logo, and in this case, fused it onto the back of the quilt.  You can see that I used a wonderful Harmony Art organic fabric, called 40 Ginkgos for the backing fabric.  It's an extra wide cotton (so no seams necessary), it's beautiful, and Susan had ginkgo trees in front of their house.  The perfect choice.

This particular t-shirt had printing on both front and back, so I went ahead and fused this 13" by 13" square onto the back, too.

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This quilt was made using a different "pattern."  Each bordered square measures 6 3/4" by 6 3/4".  The whole quilt measures 48" wide by 62" long.  I didn't find enough cotton fabrics that were of a quilt-like weight, so I also used heavier fabric from some shorts, slacks, and even a denim jacket.  Susan loved her denim jackets and had many of them!

In the photo above you might be able to tell that there is part of a pocket included in the top square.

And I found some of this beautiful blue mottled/batik-type rayon fabric which was from a dress with a Hilo Hattie's label in it.  From that I can surmise that Susan bought it on a trip to Hawaii, and I'm sure she liked this dress a lot.  It even had very cute buttons on it, so I included one here.

For the backing and the border I found a nice light blue batik.  Since this wasn't an extra wide fabric, I had to piece the backing.  I did that by adding a solid blue strip off center, between the batik fabrics.  And into that strip I placed another FDNY shirt logo.  For this t-shirt piece, I ironed some fusible on the back, and just sewed it into the strip like ordinary fabric.  The shot below also shows the quilting I did on the quilt, which was an overall free motion stitch I found from Leah Day's website.

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I realized that I was going to have to give these quilts away (surprise!) and I wanted more than a photo to remember them, so I made two little mini-quilts for myself to keep.  This way I can remember how the quilts looked and some of the fabrics included.  I have shown them here next to my 14" ruler, so you can see they aren't very big.  

On the green-ish quilt above I scaled down the pattern so each of the strips finishes at 1 1/2" wide.  For the blue-ish quilt below, I used the same scale as the large quilt, but only made four blocks.

I won't say it was fun making these quilts.  That's not the right word.  I guess I would say it was meaningful to me.  It helped me to grieve for my friend.  I found, not surprisingly, that I was thinking of Susan and her two sons a lot while I was making them.  I'm very happy I made these quilts.

Free Motion Practice

I have seen examples of this type of thing done before, and the last time I saw it I said to myself, "I am just going to go ahead and do this.  Why not!?"

It is a medium for practicing free motion quilting designs.  Why this particular "gizmo" is really good is because I can lay it on my quilt top and get an idea of how a particular design will look on the quilt top.

So I went to the hardware store and bought about a half yard of this clear plastic.  It was with all the vinyl tablecloth "fabric" that they cut by the yard.

I cut my square of plastic/vinyl about 20" by 20."  (They were a little generous with the half-yard measurement!)

The next step was simply to put my artists tape around the edge of it.  Now I can draw with my dry erase markers on this over and over, erasing each time with a small scrap of batting.  

The reason for the tape on the edge is so that, when I place this over my quilt top to audition a quilting design, I don't accidentally go over the edge and onto my quilt.  That would Not. Be. Fun.

"Placemats" or "Practice Quilting"

I completed a set of four placemats for our table.  These were practice quilting pieces.  I started them in a machine quilting class I took from a great teacher in our guild.  (See earlier post here.)

I chose a wild, multi-colored fabric, which should be good for not showing stains!  I was hoping it would be forgiving with my free motion stitching, too.

I tried out lots of different quilting designs on these placemats and had a lot of fun with them.

Then I decided to try binding them completely by machine.  I've read of a couple different ways to do this.  I sewed the binding to the back, then folded it around to the front of the placemat.

Select stitch #4.

I used a wavy stitch, which is number four on my Bernina.

Here is what it looked like on the back.  I sewed very, very close to the edge of the binding.

And here it is on the front.  I assumed it was going to overlap my binding edge like that, and I'm ok with that.  The only problem I had was with some uneven stitching.  When the machine was taking the stitches on the binding itself it was fine.  But some of the stitches off of the binding, onto the other fabric, had large stitches, which means some were being skipped.  Maybe it was the unevenness of the levels of fabric.  But it seems to me like it should have been more consistent.  

I'll try machine binding again some day.  But I have a few issues to work out with it first!

But for now I have a new set of great placemats!  And some worthwhile practicing.

Free Motion Quilting Class

I recently took a free motion quilting class at my local quilt guild. It was taught by Bonnie Toy, a very experienced quilter. She has some awesome ideas, and is a good teacher. Bonnie has a wonderful way of getting things across to her students.

Now, if you don't laugh too much, I'll show you some of my attempts in her quilting class. I've done some free motion quilting, but am nowhere near adept at it, and I always need more practice. I take every class I can find, as I always learn something new.

This first example is just a little elongated, three-loop figure eight, then three loopy loops around it. It's quite easy to move around the quilt top with this design.

My second example is a curved loop, but then it is "echoed" in a square manner, rather than with loopy round lines.

One of my favorite designs, and totally new to me, is this one that looks like intersecting circles. It requires drawing a grid onto the fabric, then snaking curves up and down the lines. The result looks like circles. It's awesome, and I am so glad I discovered this design. I now need to acquire the necessary grid, and my local quilt shop has some ordered, so I'll have one soon.

This design--or one similar to it--is know as bananas. However, I didn't make mine quite like everyone else did. But I'm pretty happy with the outcome. Just some random curves.

The above examples are all on one piece of fabric. You can see that the fabric is a very colorful batik print. One day I will do more practice quilting on this fabric and will have a set of placemats!

Quilt of Valor

This is my latest (second) Quilt of Valor.

Our guild has taken on this project; we've been doing it for the past 3-4 years or so. Part of national organization, a Quilt of Valor (QOV) is given to a returning wounded service man or woman. It is a way of showing that we care about them, and their recovery, and appreciate what they have done for our country. The organization has given out tens of thousands of quilts.

Most of the time we make red, white, and blue quilts, because it seems like that is the preferred color scheme. There are a lot of patriotic fabrics available, and we scour the fabric stores looking for them.

These particular fabrics I found at the (now-closed-sad) Black Cat Quilting in San Francisco. I found the pattern in a magazine, and thought I would try it. As you can see, it's simply a rectangle, surrounded by lots of borders.

It wasn't my favorite pattern to do, because it was just border after border after border! But I'm happy with the way it turned out.

I experimented with my free motion quilting, using a different design or motif in each border. That was fun to do! I can always use the practice of quilting!

This is the very center of the quilt. You can just barely make out the word "America" which I quilted in script on that center piece.

Here is a row of some sort of unidentified species of trailing vine!

The above shows one I really liked, the wavey lines back and forth (very easy!) and some sort of wonky spirals, which still need a lot of practice...

Here you can see some free motion hearts, and some arcs. Many thanks to Leah Day and her fabulous blog full of quilting designs and tutorials. Check out her blog/website. It is full of inspiration.

I absolutely loved the stair step pattern I made in this red row. I should mention that I used some great red-white-and-blue variegated thread for the quilt. (Until the last round, when my thread ran out and I couldn't get any more! Then I used blue thread.)

Part of the requirement for these quilts is to provide a fabric bag to carry them in. This makes it much easier to transport many quilts, and is a tidy package in which to present the quilt. I made mine based on the measurements of a pillowcase, and used the same fabric I had used in the quilt.

Some time this spring a few people from our guild will go to a Veterans Hospital and take these quilts to the people who are there. It's such a small thing to do for people who give so much to our country.