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My aunt commissioned me to make this t-shirt quilt for my cousin. He's headed off to SUNY Geneseo this fall, so I used his school colors for this quilt. I know the colors are blue and white, but I couldn't tell if they are royal blue or navy blue, so I used both. Branden's super tall, so this quilt is huge! I used interfacing for the t-shirts, kona solids and stippled it with white thread.
Now I've got to finish making the college t-shirt quilt that's been sitting in my stash since 2003!
I was connected to Margaret's Hope Chest through Amanda Jean's retreat last summer. I am so impressed with the mission of the organization and the two women who run it. Carin and Carol are just the sweetest people ever and it is so inspiring to see how they have turned a family tragedy into an organization that helps so many people in need.
Here are the two quilts that I've donated. This is the second year of their Wrapped in Hope campaign, which gives personalized birthday quilts to children who have parents who are in prison. I made this quilt for Alexia who likes black, white, blue, purple and music. I used this pattern from a quilt I made a few years ago in the color scheme she requested and added some Alexander Henry music fabric for the binding.
I finished up this quilt in November after having completed the top at the summer retreat. The pattern I used is the Fair and Square pattern that Amanda Jean designed for Margaret's Hope Chest.
If you're looking for a great charity to donate to and have extra time to make a quilt, please consider making a quilt for MHC. You can find a list of children who have requested birthday quilts here.
First up is Jess' block for the Mid Mod Quilt Bee. Jess came up with this fantastic sketch and sent each of us a different color printed fabric to use. I can't wait to see how her quilt turns out.
Next are these two blocks for Erica's quilt for bee beautiful.
Working with these vintage feedsacks and prints was such a treat! Every new piece I added to the quilt was like unearthing a new flea market find. I definitely had to incorporate this little strip that says "Patchwork Love."
I'm adding one of these style quilts to my ever-growing to do list now! But, then again, I want to make one of everything that Erica creates!
(photo from Pam @ Mama Spark)
At the end of July, I made a little road trip over to Grand Rapids to attend the Margaret's Hope Chest Summer Work Party and to meet Amanda Jean of crazymomquilts. We stayed in this gorgeous bed and breakfast in the Heritage Hill area of Grand Rapids (right across from Frank Lloyd Wright's Meyer May house • side note: I'm a huge FLW fan, as evidenced here and here).
On Saturday morning, our group met up at a local church (if only I had this much space in my own craft room to spread out!) and got to work on Amanda Jean's pattern, Fair and Square, that was specifically designed for Margaret's Hope Chest. (you can get the free pattern here).
Amanda showed our group the quilts that she designed and made and walked us through cutting out the fabric, working with scraps, and gave us lots of great quilting hints and tips.
We all got to work making our own versions of her pattern. I used some squares brought by Pam and we both made the same quilt but with different sashing. It's fun to see how different colors of sashing look in a quilt.
One woman at the sewing day made this fantastic top with all of her blue scraps. She just sewed all of her scraps into small blocks and used pieced blocks instead of fabric squares for her quilt. I'm definitely going to use this idea with my fabric scraps.
Amanda and I
I had a wonderful weekend meeting these fun quilters and learning more about Margaret's Hope Chest. It was so much fun to work on a collective project with so many enthusiastic quilters!
If you'd like more information on Margaret's Hope Chest and how you can help, be sure to check out the MHC's blog and CraftSanity's Episode No. 105 interview with the founders, Carin and Carol.
Here's my finished Doll Quilt for Round 9...
For those keeping track, I had started off with this palette and turned it into this quilt top until I realized that my partner doesn't like brown and turned attempt #1 into a pillow.
So, I slightly tweaked my palette and came up with this set of fabrics:
At this point, I gave myself a pat on the back for having cool fabrics in my stash and made a mental note to start sewing with what I have on hand more often!
I've been really inspired by all of the fabulous half square triangle quilts I've been seeing lately, so I jumped on the bandwagon and made a mini version. "Accurate" piecing like this gives me a bit of a headache, so the mini size was perfect for me to try out this design and not too many corners were lost with my sewing skills (or lack thereof).
If only lap quilts and bed quilts were this easy and quick to quilt!
For the label (I'm not showing the name yet!), I used twill tape and iron on transfer paper to include all of the details and sewed it in with the binding. The finished quilt is 15" x 15" and it's got me wanting to make a throw sized quilt like this with my fabric scraps.
I've been a member of the Brighton Modern Quilters group since it almost began. It's been fun meeting up with local quilters to talk about techniques, share ideas, and be surrounded by beautiful fabrics and quilts!
If you're local to the area (or semi-local, like me), be sure to check out one of our meetings! We meet at Monarch Quilts on the 4th Monday of the month. Our next meeting is August 23 at 7:00pm.
A handful of our members even have blogs...Rossie, Sarah, Debbie, Lynn, Angie, Bonnie, Lynn, and our fearless leader, Andrea!
At our latest meeting, we shared the results of our paper bag challenge. Back in May we each brough a paper bag filled with a fat quarter, some fabric scraps and some random notions. We swapped bags and then had a few months to turn our bag into a quilt or project of some sort. It seems everyone in the group put off this project until the last minute (myself included - I was up at six the morning of to finish sewing and stuffing my project).
Here's what I started with:
A great big pile of dark batiks! Batiks are so not my thing, but I was able to salvage one strip of green batik fabric to use in the challenge (we had to use at least one piece, so I stuck with the bare minimum :)
I combined my green strip of fabric along with some other greens and blues from my stash. (I should say right now that I was hoping to make a mini quilt for the Doll Quilt Swap and turn this project into a twofer).
I wanted to make a patchwork cutout strip (like in this project seen in my flickr favorites), so I cut the fabrics into strips and sewed them together.
I cut out some junk mail to make my template in the general shape I wanted to use.
Then I laid everything out on my base fabric and added the brown for extra contrast.
I pieced the brown to the fabric strip and then appliqued the other side of the brown down to the background fabric. At this point I went back to read my Doll Quilt Swap partner's preferences (just in case) and realized that I missed the fact that she hates brown. Oops!
So, instead of turning this into a quilt, I turned it into a decorative pillow for our living room. And now I have officially made a new throw pillow to replace the other pillows on the couch. This one is fluffier than the old pillows and much more suitable for Sunday afternoon naps!
On Sunday afternoon, I visited the Ann Arbor Area Quilt Show. As always, getting to see a wide variety of gorgeous quilt is is always such an inspiring way to spend the day!
Here are some of my favorite quilts from the show:
I've been drawn to traditional quilts in modern colors lately and I love the look of this Irish Chain.
Debbie's Traffic Pattern quilt is one of my most favorite quilts in a very long time! The pattern is for sale here. She's in the Brighton Modern Quilters Guild with me, so I always get to see what she's been up to.
This Bargello patterned quilt photo is for Christine. I read on the description that this quilt design came in a kit from a Quilt Shop in Illinois (probably why it's identical to this quilt seen at the Oakland County Quilt Guild show I visited earlier this year). The quilter actually enlarged the pattern by 1.5 times, which is why it's slightly different than the other quilt in the link.
Me really liking this quilt is just another sign that I am turning into my mom as I age! She had a thing for patriotic quilts back in the 80's. Maybe it's the antique background that I really like set off against the bright red?
I am really liking bright bright quilts lately (high volume, if you will)
I love this color combination. I will try an orange peel block someday!
I have a feeling that an amish style quilt is in my future! Black mixed with bright jewel tones? Yes, please!
And, finally, can anyone tell me the manufacturer of this bright floral or point me in the direction of a similar looking fabric? I feel like I've seen this before in oilcloth, too.
Here are the latest blocks I've completed for the various bees that I am participating in.
Common Threads
First up is a tall, sweater wearing girl for Wendy. I used light weight washable yarn for the sweater portion.
And here's a block of pluses and minuses for Amanda.
Maverick Stars for Jessica.
Jess' block (see her quilt inspiration here)
A textured block with a pop of color for Sarah (full shot of block was blurry so here's just a snippet of the block).
Patchwork blocks for Audrie.
A tulip block for Penny.
Neptune squares for Julie.
And Spiderweb blocks for Natalie.
A few months ago, Rossie invited me to join the new bee she started with Cheryl (of Naptime Quilter). The bee is based on the mid-century modern design aesthetic and all of the blocks will be mostly improvised and pattern free.
(photo by r0ssie)
Her concept for the month is creating a kelp quilt with these varying shades of red and orange fabric that she flat dyed (simply robin tutorial here).
Here's the kelp block I made. The hand dyed fabric was really fun to work with. It's so saturated and full of interesting little variations.
My college roommate, Emily, is expecting her first kid in September, and I've been planning on things to make for this this baby girl ever since I first found out she was expecting. After all, making baby stuff means getting to work with cute prints and small projects, so it's easy to go a little bit overboard.
..I made some bibs and burp rags. The bibs are backed with white flannel and the burp rags are quilting cotton backed with chenille and are 12"x18". I used the same fabrics that I used for Chikage's baby gifts, and was able to get one bib and one burp rag out of a fat quarter (with a small scrap left over).
...I sewed a nursing cover (tutorial here). My fabulous male nursing cover model is back in action! I finished 20 minutes before Emily stopped by for a little visit. Thank goodness I had the fabric cut out in advance or I never would have finished it in time.
...and I made this quilt/blanket. The fabric for this is the Porcelina line by Michelle D'Amore from Marcus Fabrics. I actually purchased this before Emily found out that she was having a girl because it totally screamed "Emily's daughter," so I was really happy that she found out she was having a girl so I'd have a chance to use it.
I stalled making the quilt because I was trying to come up with the perfect pattern to use for the quilt. I had toyed with using a raw edge circle applique pattern, but raw edge circles are a bit too unfinished for Emily. I was going to do a simple charm square patchwork, but wanted to step up the patchwork for this. Then I narrowed down the piecing options to a disappearing nine patch or a box in a box, which I ended up using. I went with the box in a box because the dimensions in this tutorial created the right size square for the size backing I was using.
For the backing, I used a 32" x 35" piece of minky fabric. This is my first time working with minky and I was afraid that it would pucker or bunch weird when quilting because it is so stretchy. Based on the recommendation of the quilt store employee, I stretched it out on the floor, taped it down and applied a generous amount of spray baste. Then, I laid the patchwork top on the minky and pressed it down with my hands. I quilted it with a walking foot in the same way that I quilt normal quilts with batting and a fabric backing. I tried to minimize the amount of quilting I did, because I didn't want to pull on the backing too much.
I made a scrappy patchwork binding with each of the fabrics included in the quilt and attached the binding using this technique.
The finished blanket has a really light drape to it and the backing is so soft and cuddly. Now I want to make a grown up sized blanket with a minky backing like this.
It's been a busy few weeks around here, so sorry for being light on the crafty posting these days. Here's the brief, bullet point list of some of what's been going on...
• I finished knitting and blocking my Hela cardigan. I tried it on for kicks and nearly died of heat stroke. The words "Get me out of this thing" may or may not have been yelled to Jon during the process. Once I pick out a zipper, I'll begin the steeking process.
• I (along with the kitties) cast on for Jon's Icelandic Sweater, Stapi, last Wednesday, but have not touched it since. He picked out the yarn colors and pattern on our trip to Toronto in March.
• Jon and I discovered the most fabulous ice cream bars! If you like Almond Joy, you'll love these So Delicious Dark Chocolate Almond Coconut Bars. Yum Yum!
• I'm a bit behind in my bee blocks, so I'm going to be busy this weekend playing catch up. If all goes well, 3 out of 5 of these will be on time!
• I'm also participating in the Doll Quilt Swap #9 this year. My partner likes bright colors and graphic designs, so it's right up my alley. I've been tossing around ideas in my head for quite a while now and hope to finish up the quilt this weekend. My quilt from round #7 was featured on Angela's favorites list on the Doll Quilt Swap blog last week. Thanks, Angela!
