Finished Quilts in 2013

Finished Quilts in 2013, a photo by davenjilly on Flickr.

Speaking of 2013 sewing (as I just was - but you haven't read it yet - sorry) I did finish these four quilts. The funny thing is that only one of them is in fabric that I would normally choose. I think fabric wise my quilts were pretty out of my comfort zone.

Ah well, I have no sewing obligations or pregnant friends right now, which gives me free reign to play in 2014.

Finished in 2013

Finished in 2013 - lots of small finishes, a photo by davenjilly on Flickr.

I should remember how to post things from Flikr , but I don't. So, here is my lame from-Flikr post of everything I finished this year.

It was a bit of an odd year - I spent a lot of time planning and making things for my etsy store that I quickly gave up on, or stitching practical things. I took a forced "break" during the summer when Dave had his motorcycle accident, and have only sewn gifts or swap items since October, other than the quilt that will not end.

So all in all, not my most productive sewing year, but since it was a pretty turbulent year, I will give myself permission to be happy that I stitched anything at all. And gosh, those penguins are cute.

Peach Hourglass quilt

In our last episode, I left you with the above shot of this little quilt that I made for my friend Emily, and her new sweet baby Elanor. I was lucky enough to go and say hello to Elanor on Friday, and let Emma play with Elanor's big sister, one of her favorite friends. 

 You might notice that the blue elephants from the earlier photos didn't make it into this quilt. I decided in the end to go with a strictly pink and yellow colour scheme. There was enough print, pattern and value in this quilt to make it interesting, it didn't need extra colour.  I ended up editing about 4 fabrics out of the final quilt - so I had to make more blocks to have a final quilt that worked.

 I like working with low volume prints instead of just solids - I like the extra interest it adds. It is challenging, however, as most of the low volume prints I'm attracted to are very busy. So I added all the solid white to calm the busy down, as my friend is one of those all-white-and-wood Swedish design type people. She has very good taste and a well put together elegant home. I felt the need to honour that and make her a pretty, tasteful, soothing quilt.

 Because there were so many secondary patterns produced by the way I laid out the houglass blocks (more details here) I wanted to quilt in a way that would emphasize the diamonds. I talked my quilting plans over with Valerie and we decided I should just do simple diamond quilting. Of course, my brain went all spastic and I decided to free motion quilt hearts and flowers in it instead.

 This proved to not be enough quilting, and made the diamonds less clear. So I went back after it was 2/3 of the way bound and added diagonal lines. Yes, I broke one of the "laws" of Modern Quilting and QUILTED IN THE DITCH. It really was necessary with this quilt, and I think in the end it was what pulled the design together in the end.

 This is the only photo of the full quilt  I took - I tried to convince Emma to hold it up, but she laid it on the mini trampoline instead.

 So, there you have it.

 Details:
Hourglass block tutorial:  Cluck Cluck Sew
Fabrics: various (if you want to know what one is, just ask)
Size: 30" x 45"
Machine pieced and quilted by me.

And much appreciated by its new owners! I hope it sees lots of spit up and gets so ragged and worn that I see it and think, "Gosh, where did they get that great old . . . oh, I made that". I love it when that happens.

Finished and ready to gift.

Just a sneak peek until it gets to its new home. It was supposed to be gifted yesterday, but we've had colds all week, and I didn't think 2 week old baby Elanor wanted to share our cold.

Owen's Quilt

Two weeks before his first birthday, Owen's quilt is finally done! Fortunately, its big enough for a toddler (40 x 48) so I'm not too worried about the lateness! Emma was sick and mostly wanted me to sit around with her yesterday, so I got a lot of crafty type things done, including stitching down the binding on this quilt.

I finished the piecing in the middle of last month, but then when I started machine quilting it, my machine got grumpy and kept leaving snaggles of thread and ugly ridges all over the quilt. This was mostly because I was lazy when I basted it, but rather than re-baste it, I simply decided it was small enough to hand quilt, and smooth out as I went.

I quilted with purl cotton, making x-es in the squares along the outside of the quilt and random sized boxes in the rest of the squares. I am not a super good hand quilter, but I really liked the slightly heavier texture hand quilting added to Emma's baby quilt, and I thought it was a nice size to practice on, so I went for it.

This quilt was easy to put together, and really shouldn't have taken me almost a year to make. But there are so many busy fabrics in warm and cool shades that I wanted to use that it took me a while to figure out how to give it a sense of order. In the end I simply alternated dark and light outside blocks, while trying to scatter both the novelty prints and the super busy prints evenly throughout the quilt. In the dark outer squares I also alternated warm and cool fabrics. This quilt was on and off my design wall several times at several stages in between other quilts.

In then end, I'm glad I took all that time, since it is a quilt that is living at my house and I have to look at it every day. When I was finished, I laid the quilt out to show Owen. He was most impressed with the Horton the elephant block.

The back of this quilt is two organic cotton prints - one bought with the intention of backing this quilt, and the other bought because is was so darned cute. The little paper boat print is one of those prints that would have otherwise been scattered through everything I made for the next few years, but I think I'm happy using it on this quilt that I will see every day for many years to come.

I was laughing at myself, as it was a cloudy day yesterday, and I was sad that I couldn't photograph this quilt. Then suddenly the sun came out, and I ran outside to hang it on the clothesline (our back yard is a mud and ice pit), and then drape it across various chairs around the house, madly clicking pictures before the sun disappeared again.

Its been a busy week of finishes - I'll have more to show later in the week (unless more children get colds, in which case I might be too busy making lemon - honey drinks and passing out kleenexes).

Quilt for my Mom - finished and sent

Although this quilt made it into my list of to-do quilts, I forgot to show you the finished quilt, as I finished it in the midst of my Madrona Road Challenge madness. As you can see, I photographed it on a cloudy day in mid-January, so my apologies for the grey photos. That's what the light was doing, so I just went with it.

My Mom was born in the 1930's and her childhood was mostly in the '40s, so I wanted to make a quilt that used some fabrics that would remind her of that time period. Since she also loves dogs and children,  I wanted to include those in the quilt somehow too. She has always liked blue and red and wears mostly those colours. I wanted this quilt to feel a little bit like it had been made from clothes from her wardrobe, even though it wasn't. I went with a simple pattern of squares, as I knew she would appreciate this as much as something more complicated - she does not sew much and is not crafty.

 I get my creative, colourful bug from my Dad and his parents, who were very creative people. My Mom is  very strong and active, and played hockey into her 60's, so we don't really have the same gifts.

My Mom also loves elephants, so I had to add them somehow. When I went to visit her in October I noticed that pretty much everything in her apartment is blue and beige, so I decided to make the back to match that. The quilt is tied for simplicity, and I like the drape it gives the fabric. Also I was a bit burnt out on quilting (ahem - I can't think of why) so I wanted to tie this one.

My favorite print is the big flowers, which I beleive is from Urban Chick's Sweet collection. I also like the girl of a swing, and the classic Lotus dots in this quilt. It is not really "my" colours, but I had to include some splashy prints as it was made by me.

Here is is all folded up and ready to go. I mailed this out at the same time as my Doll Quilt, and it fortuitously arrived yesterday - on Valentines day!

Owls in the Cupboard - My Finished Doll Quilt

In the last week or so, I have been busy working away on the doll quilt that was due in the mail today. I decided to do a variation of something I have done in the past that was popular and fun to make: teacups.

I started out with this sketch, way back in Novemeber, when the swap first started. I was going to make the teacups and applique these little birds on.

 I was sketching late at night, and as you can see, the birds weren't sure why they were on the mugs - and neither was I. Although I realize that a whimsical quilt is just that, whimsical, inconsequential things bother me. I really wanted to give the birds a reason to be sitting en masse on teacups.

 So, I decided that maybe some of the birds were ON the teacups, and some were free, and it would be like a joke, like the free birds were trying to get the birds off the teacups. Or like there would be all teacups and one bird in the middle of them - one unexpected free peiced bird in the midst of the teacups with birds on them. So I started making cups and mugs.

 And then I made a few more, and a bird to go with them.

 As I progressed, however, it seemed that a log cabin was called for. To quote the great artist Winnie the Pooh, "It wanted to come in after the [red mug] so I let it". (speaking of which, if you have kids and you like to play them stories, you really must get the cds of Stephen Fry and Judy Dench and a bunch of other brilliant British actors reading Winnie the Pooh - they bring out all the comedy perfectly, my kids love them, and I don't mind listening to them a hundred times because the characters are so well done). In any case, I kept playing, adding owls when I could and eventually, a second bird and then a final mug. This was my first time working with text prints as a background to anything, and I must say I love the final result. The only thing that was tricky was balancing out the quilt - some of the prints I chose as my lights were very light, while some were more medium. This meant I had to be careful with my final layout.

Eventually, I ended up with this fun little nine patch quilt. I didn't have a lot of time for complex quilting, and I was really taken by svetlana's quilting on this quilt, so I decided to do something similar on my quilt.

I also quilted around the teacups and birds in matching thread so that they would stand out a bit more against the background. I must say, these owls just make me laugh - they are kind of funny and creepy and cute all at once.

I bound the quilt with a black-on-black print I've had in my stash forever, wrote a label of sorts on the back, and popped it in the mail.

I love this quilt, and would have gladly hung it on my own wall. I hope my partner likes it just as much or more than I do. I may have to make myself something similar, except I only had a scrap of the owl fabric, so I will have to find some other weird animals or people to go on my mugs . . . hmmm, we'll see.

Fragments and Dreams - My Madrona Road Challenge Quilt

After many late nights and many, many spools of thread, I have finally finished my quilt! I started out thinking I would do a little bit of doodle quilting to accentuate what was going on, but as time went on I got deeper and deeper into the quilting. I'm not sure this quilt entirely works compositionaly, but it was fun to stretch myself to make it. I was hoping the quilting would balance out the quilt, but I don't think it did. However, I am proud of the work and thought that I put into this quilt, and I think it is a sign of where I am going as a quilter.

Here it is, in all its glory! The concept of this quilt was pulled out of the text fabric, so to understand it, you have to know what the strips of black text fabric say. The top left is "stitch by stitch she pieced her life together", then "the family settled in a little house with a big life on Madrona Road." The center appartment building says, "The country mouse and her prince grew restless in their beuatiful city", while the quote next to the flower says "longed for a steadfast place to call home". The ladder and hand says, "After battling an evil giant she vowed never to climb ladders again", the center star says, "Sweet dreams" and the bottom right quote is "Alas, the winds called her to seek her soul in the desert".

On my Flikr photo I wrote a little artist's statement: This quilt was inspired by the text fabric and the night time colours - I wanted to make a quilt that had the same effect of fragmented, unfinished images drifting over the surface of the quilt. The free motion doodle quilting fills in details and adds texture to the quilt, adding extra images and words (a castle by the giant's hand, wind in the desert, a garden outside the hosue) that expand the images and continue to reflect the text in its  free flowing stream of consciousness style.

I'll walk you around a bit of the quilting, shall I? If you'd rather just look at the pictures, feel free to skip the text all together. But its there in case you're interested in my process and the details.
Here we see the giant's castle and the clouds behind it, as well as the swirl-y quilting I put on the whole bottom left of the quilt. The writing says "Here be giants". Now I wish I had echo-quilted these yellow flowers too, as I did with the ones above and on the right of the quilt. Maybe I'll pick it out and re-do it if I have the time . . . (ha ha).

Since I was playing with the interaction of images vs text, and piecing vs quilting, I was feeling all Postmodern, and decided to layer my own words on top of the words and images that were already in the quilt.
In case you're wondering, free motion writing is easy. If you have some practice and control with your free motion quilting, and you can write cursive, then you can write on your quilt. Around the star there is this same swirl-y quilting, with small stars and hearts added in.

The wind is quilted around the girl, and the yellow flower has echo quilting in it. The flowers are expanded outward into the white space. I quilted "Let the sunshine in" and a sun next to the yellow flower, which reminded me of the sun.

The house has clouds and swirls above it, and a garden below it. There is a path leading from the text about finding a place to find their own. The house has bricks quilted into it, and the is texture in the roof and the curtains.

This flower motif is one of my favorite parts of the quilting. I will definitely use this again on another quilt.

On the other side of the quilt I quilted in the words from the text above, with spools on either side. Above this is the part where I made square spirals. I'm the least happy with that part. My original plan was to do straight line quilting, and I think I should have stuck with it, or made the lines much closer together - more like a 1/4 inch.

Finally, next tot he house, I wrote "Home sweet home". This also shows a nice section of the clouds and swirl-y spirals. The swirls sort of expanded into these spirals as I continued quilting, and I think I like them better. I will probably use them as a quilting motif again, too. The clouds were also fun.

Overall, I had a lot of fun quilting this - it reminded me of the geometric doodling I used to fill pages with in highschool during class. Although the final product is a bit random, the process of making this quilt was great, and I will definitely use some of the things I learned in future quilts.

2012 Making in Review

When I was thinking about what I had accomplished this year, I felt like I hadn't made anything at all. Maybe a softie or two, and a doll quilt and maybe something or another for the baby. But then when I went to make a mosaic I realized why I haven't finished anything big. Its because I did a lot of small project sewing - mostly for small people. If I look around my house, I see lots of handmade, but often I can't even remember when it was made. I guess this year I had lots of requests from kids, and lots of practical things that I wanted to sew instead of buy, and not so many friends having babies.

When I look at my mosaic, I'm pretty happy with my year. Considering I was working for half the year and I had a new baby in the house (and 3 other kids for the summer), and we went through the crisis of Latin (twice) which has ultimately led to the untimely demise of the PhD project my husband was attempting, I think I did okay to fit in any sewing time at all.

Here's to a 2013 with less excitement and more sewing.

The Month of Finishes

I have decided that November is going to be the month of finishes. There are several quilts that have been hanging over my head for a loooong time in the half-finished state. I really like to have one or two quilt project max on the go at the same time, with several smaller projects (think clothes or toys) to break things up a bit. In the last few years, however, I've had several half started projects sitting around collecting dust and cluttering up my brain. I've decided that this is going to be the month to finish up three of the six quilts I have on the go at present.

What precisely do I have on the go right now?

Well, there is my Mom's quilt that is a two-years late 70th birthday present. There is sarah and molly's free piecing study (on the design wall this moment). There is the star quilt that is for our bed. There is the windmill quilt that is supposed to be a toast and tea quilt (but may just be a windmill block quilt). There is Owen's baby quilt. AND there is my Threads Together Bee Quilt. Whew!

I have finished my Threads Together quilt, and I want to finish the quilt for my Mom and the sarah and molly's quilt this month.  Then I will take a break from those to make a quilt for my in-laws for Christmas (I think) and next will be Owen's quilt. After that we shall see. But really, 6 quilts on the go is pretty silly.

Oh, you want to see my finished quilt? Well, I might just happen to have a few photos for you:

Here it is, all washed and folded, showing off its pretty scrappy binding. Since I had added a scrappy border, I finished it with a scrappy binding as well. Some fabrics are from the quilt, but I thought it would be fun to also add a brand new fabric that Cindy sent me a few weeks back with my swap quilt.

All except one of these blocks were made a few years back by the Threads Together Quilting Bee. The original plan was to receive 16 blocks, but I only ever got 12. One really didn't mesh with the others, and for a long time I just sat on the blocks, wondering what to do with them. Finally, I decided to make one more block, sash them with Kona Bone, add a scrappy border, and settle with a smallish 50 X 62 quilt.

I quilted it in what I choose to call organic straight lines (it could also be known as the "quilting with a baby on your lap and a toddler climbing on your back lines). I left it unbound for a coulple of weeks while I tried to finish my Mom's quilt (see above) and made Halloween costumes.

Here is the prettiest part of the back - the top 20". The rest is just Kona Aloe, which is a sort of weird blue-green that I love. I am really glad I finished this quilt - I've always loved these fabrics, and I chose them to remind me of a particularly peaceful moment we had on the trip to Ireland Dave and I took 8 years ago (with a baby Andrew in tow).

So, finish #1. Let's see if I can manage two more this month, shall we?

Fab Little Quilt Sent!

Okay, finally the post about my finished Fab Little Quilt! I sent this quilt almost a month ago now, but I haven't had the time to do a real post about it. When we last saw this little quilt it was just pieced together. My partner really loves dense quilting, and had a lot of favorites with just that featured. So I did a lot of free motion quilting - I used three or more bobbins of thread on a quilt that is only 15 x 20". The grassy fields were quilted with tiny little blades of grass, and one tiny flower.

The sky's quilting mirrors two of the swirly patterns in the sky, while the grey "clouds" have a looser cloud pattern.

The sun, of course, has some sun rays quilted in it.

With the quilt bound in a scrappy binding that almost mirrored the lines in the picture quilt (so as to keep the wonky improv theme in the binding), and a tiny cycling mouse (courtesy of Heather Ross' Nursery Versery) appliqued on the back, the quilt was finished! I literally stitched the last of the binding on the morning of the mailing deadline, and sent this quilt to my partner in the afternoon.

Here is the label. As you can see, my partner's flikr name is Quilting Cyclist, which made the mouse print perfect for the label. That is, of course, me wearing my baby, chatting with Mona, ready to hop on her bike!

Mona received her quilt super fast - within a week - and she really loved it. I was so happy to make something that cheered her up so much. For me, that is what swaps are about - sending a little piece of joy and happiness in the mail to someone far away. This was a fun swap and I once more enjoyed creating a tiny quilt for someone else.