Edna brought me this beautiful block-of-the-month (BOM) top, which she did through A Common Thread. I’ve chosen to quilt a hibiscus pattern with a gold color thread. The quilt pattern will play off the border fabric and let the individual blocks shine. This quilt will look fabulous on her bed!
I quilted a box today. My second box, to tell the truth. The first one was a fun little fling. I made it as part of a gift-swap for the Portland Modern Quilt Guild. Inspired by a pattern from hemma designs, it went together smoothly and looked pretty fun. And the gift recipient seemed to like it, too.
The second box was already forming in my mind as I finished the first. A few minor tweaks, really. I’ll give one to my teenage niece in her favorite colors. Brilliant! Quick texts confirmed her favorite colors, my stash surrendered the perfect fabrics. It was only as I was halfway through the quilting process that I realized that I was, in fact, quilting a box. For a gift, to a teenager. Ack!
What next? Well, truthfully, probably more quilted boxes are in my future. There’s a couple more tweaks I think are needed, and my own studio could use some of these boxes.
It’s either more boxes or start in on that quilted tree idea.
My friend (and quilter extraordinaire) recently had me quilt this top for her. She was going to give it away, but when her husband saw it, he changed her mind. It really is quite a gorgeous top, and I’m so pleased that she trusts me to quilt it! I chose a cloud texture pattern with an Asian feel for the background, and then added a wheel-like geometric pattern in her circles. She loved the way it turned out, and the kudos from her husband was just more icing on the cake. mmmmmm . . . . icing
This quilt reminds me that its spring outside our (windowless) studio. So it’s nice to have something so GORGEOUS to work on! The genius behind this top echoed the trippy floral buzz with applique’ flowers in the corners of the window panes. Traditionally, the background of a Dresden Plate is white, or a pastel solid. The spark in this quilt comes from the fantastic floral used as the block’s background. This would make a fantastic picnic quilt, I think. Lovely to sit upon, an always-available garden.
Pat and I have to squeeze in our own quilts as best we can; this week inspiration struck Pat and she went with it. Taken from her stash of vintage pieces was a great runner made from flour sack prints and muslin. She added natural-colored linen, and even before she’d finished quilting it I was in love. Once off the longarm, she had to admit that it was pretty good. It looks modern now, yet pays homage to its vintage past. And it’s already yummy–no breaking-in necessary!
This collaboration was very unique from the beginning. An Air Force dad had volunteered to coordinate the class’ fundraiser, and, working with a local artist, designed a beautiful quilt top. The students painted freeform onto white sheeting, which was then transformed into a large, dramatic dove with an olive branch in its beak. The dove was pinned to an even larger royal blue background and delivered to us for quilting.
We used a background pattern on the blue that mimicked the olive branch. I basted the dove and branch to the background and quilted various-sized spirals on the dove and veins for the olive branch.
spiral quilting adds movement to the dove
Frank, the volunteer dad, stopped by last week to give us an update. Since only one person could win the quilt, they decided to created posters and coffee mugs with the quilt’s picture.
the large dove and olive branch were pinned to the background fabric
He brought us one of the posters as a momento–a lovely gesture that we so appreciate.
A few weeks ago, we received this great top–a fundraiser for a local school. Each student (and their teachers) in this sixth grade class created his or her own “alter ego” with fabric crayons.
alter egos make this folk-art quilt super!
Super idea, super fun for the students–and a treat for us, too.
We quilted it simply, just putting a simple background pattern behind each “portrait”. A bit of crosshatch livened up their superhero names.
I’m so happy to see so many modern quilts coming in to the studio. This one is amazing in almost every way you can think of. Jack, a retired gentleman, has taken up quilting. In his words, “I just fell in love with fabric”. He designed and pieced this beauty, because he wanted to make something perfect for his wife. It is a huge quilt, too large for a decent picture. I love the backing he chose, too. A modern-looking, deco-ish pattern which he found at Cool Cottons (great place!). We quilted his top with a great spiral pattern and white thread–it looks fantastic! We’ll finish it up with a black and white striped binding, cut on the bias.
Looking forward to the first meeting of the Portland Modern Quilt Guild tomorrow night.
great black and white quilt
so, I’ve been working with Pat at Just Quilting for about a year now . . . that went fast. I think I should count up how many tops I’ve quilted so far. There have been beauties! The king-size top made entirely of three inch squares of different yellows. I quilted it with big sunflowers and wanted to jump into it. And swim around. The lovely baby quilt with aqua stripes and red dots, and those two big, block-of-the-month that were Robin and McKay’s first quilts.
must post more often. so much happens that I want to remember on this journey.
Today’s project is a vintage quilt top, maybe found in a garage sale in Florida. It’s big–96×96–and two colors. A lovely 8-sided star pattern with two fabrics: a small print of navy blue & off-white, and a larger print that’s cream with pale khaki leaves.
pale khaki fabric
The stars are huge, and set on point they’re 21″ from top tip to bottom point. Half star blocks fill in the triangles along the sides and top.
I can tell that it’s been laundered–and really, no harm done. As I press, it becomes clear that there are some bubbles in the squares. Wonkiness, caused by the quilter being humanoid.
wonki-ness
Does this top deserve quilting? For one reason or another the original seamstress chose to put it away, unquilted. Maybe she wasn’t satisfied with her work, or wished she’d chosen different fabrics. Maybe she was planning to use it as a “summer quilt”.
Maybe she didn’t get the perspective she needed to see her top as quilt-worthy.
I remember making a quilt with my girlfriends, the ya-ya’s, a gift for one of us. A wedding gift, but not a “wedding quilt” (sheesh!). She had chosen the fabrics: browns, orange, red, green, and with a brown paisley-patterned flannel backing, it would be a perfect snuggle at her lakefront cabin.
Whose idea this gift quilt was, I don’t remember. Surely not mine, because only two of us were quilters and sure as shootin’, I’d be the one to lead the project. It was probably the redhead’s idea–she was the only one who did not live in the same city. She had even left the state. Would she have suggested it, assuming I’d to take the lead? She is the bossy one; when we are together, she has a plan and makes us stick to it. Otherwise, it would be noon and we’d still be sitting around in pj’s, picking at breakfast and musing over whether to make another pot of coffee. She doesn’t drink coffee, which may be part of the problem.
It may have been my mother-in-law’s idea–she is responsible for my first quilt, which only took 15 years to finish. She knows all of the ya-ya’s, and it was on a visit to her house that we all ended up at the quilt shop with one of her quilting buddies, picking out fabric. And, this friend is known as the QBPP (Queen Bee of Paper-Piecing). The plot thickens.
So now there are 6 of us, each doing 2 squares. Paper-pieced stars. From a book of 50 paper-piece star patterns, one for each state in the Union. We each chose states that held meaning for us: Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, New York, Pennsylvania, etc. Weeks and weeks of quilting (at my house) followed. Not everyone could make it every time, so we set up a couple sewing machines and whenever there was time, twisted our brains around small scraps of fabric and paper until the paper-piecing process made sense. We made a few mistakes, had a few laughs and not nearly enough drinks, but eventually we ended up with 12 star blocks.
On one day, we got together to decide how to arrange the blocks into a top. The thing is, once a critical mass of moms is gathered in one spot, their children suddenly realize that they cannot live one minute longer out of their mothers’ presence. In a remarkably short period of time, they all converged on us and a little celebration broke out. The ya-ya’s had decided how to sort out the paper-piece galaxy, and we also discovered that the quilting bug had bitten. twice. in the same family. Our Georgia Peach had started a top of off-white squares, and her younger son had caught the fever and was making a blue, red and flame version.
Peach and I got together the next week and started putting the blocks together to form the top. Even though we had all agreed on the layout, and we all loved every individual block, we weren’t in love with the top we had laid out on the floor and photographed “for the record”. As each block was joined to the become a row, and rows were joined together, Peach and I found ourselves feeling a little better about the top. “you know, this one looks really good next to that one”; “this one is amazingly complex–MB did a great job”. Finally, all of the blocks were joined. I held it up for her to see from across the room. Her surprised response: “hey, it looks really good!” We called MB, and told her to look out the window. From across the street, she thought it looked pretty good, too.
paper-pieced stars
We added borders and the top became a quilt, which became a gift, which is now a way for Pez to remember all of us, every time she snuggles up in it.
It’s all about perspective, I guess.
perspective : the big picture
Back to today’s top. It’s so big that it’s difficult to see the lovely pattern unless you put some distance on it. I decided on a muslin backing because it’s a vintage piece and the fabrics in the top have a little roughness themselves. Hobbs 80% cotton/20% poly for the batting–it has a nice hand, and more loft than 100% cotton. The block patterns are twined leaves; they fit perfectly into the top’s large diamonds and triangles and have a matching border pattern. The patterns are not too complex; they’ll give the quilt a textured dimension without leaving it too stiff. I chose thread in antique cream, which gives some contrast to the blue borders but won’t distract the eye from the fabulous star pattern in the main field of the quilt. It’s not an easy top to quilt–it will take the better part of two days to finish, and I hold my breath a lot when working on vintage quilts. It feels a little like my grandmother is watching me quilt.
quilted--at last!
The wonkiness is mostly smoothed out by the quilting, but in one or two places there is some extra poufiness, or a small tuck. That’s how you know it was made by human hands. I wish I knew more about the seamstress who put together the top. I’d love her to know how beautiful it turned out, and applaud her handiwork.