A pieced bunting quilt

This is a tiny quilt, but I am over the moon about it. A third quilt finished in 2010! It's for my new little niece, Alaina. Hi gorgeous! I love your mama and I already love you too.

I have seen lots of lovely bunting quilts, but I always feel a little let down when I realize most of them are appliqued. I certainly am not hating on applique. But for my own aesthetic, I do prefer piecing when possible. So I was interested to see if I could get the lighthearted feel of a bunting without the curved drape. I know there are quilters out there that can figure out how to piece stuff like this on a curve, but I do not have the patience or time for that. Check back in 30 years and maybe I'll be into that.

The triangles for the bunting strips were cut with the Accuquilt GO! Cutter. The layout of the strips looks random and effortless and so I'm sure it'll come as no surprise that I wrestled with it for over a week before landing on this arrangement.

I experimented with an all over continuous line starburst quilting pattern. I wasn't sure it would work but now I can say it was a resounding success! I love how dynamic it is. I went for a super sketchy look, as a bit of a counterbalance to the rigid perfection of the piecing.  I will definitely do this quilting pattern again. It was easy, quick and high impact.

I generally have a hard time choosing quilt backs. This one involved some divine intervention. As I stood in line at the cutting counter I saw a bolt that said "The Cara Collection". My sister's name is Cara. As a young girl she loved anything rainbow. As an adult she hates red. So there could be no fabric more perfect: a sort-of rainbow with no red. I was pretty psyched to get a divine order to buy some fabric. (Usually I feel it's the opposite: uuuuuse your staaaaaaaash)

I love the way the quilting looks on the back. I stared at/petted it for at least half an hour. And hey! I used dots instead of stripes on the binding. These are from the Eric Carle/Very Hungry Caterpillar line. I tried using flannel for the batting and can't say I noticed much of a difference from my usual Warm and Natural except more fluffy lint during quilting.

In general I think baby quilts with lots of white are a terrible idea. But I just couldn't resist the white with those happy bunting flags. Forgive me, sis. I'll send you five bucks for some stain remover. It's tiny, about 36" by 45". At first I worried it would be too small to be useful but then I remembered that's what I thought about this quilt and that got used plenty:

Ah, such a short time ago she was that small. Now she's helping me quilt. Here she is "sewing" the binding.

I'll be back with a photo documentary of constructing this quilt, and then we'll move ahead with that very exciting Accuquilt business.

The Golden Goose

A few weeks ago I was pretty certain that I wouldn't make the deadline for Project Modern's Inspiration Challenge. But it all came together, thanks to the long weekend. (I feel a little strange posting this since there seems to be such radio silence about Project Modern but I saw a comment on the above link saying that it's ok to blog about it!)

I'll start by telling you a story of how I took my toddler into Anthropologie during our Milwaukee trip. Hubby had to make a call into work so we entertained ourselves by browsing the stores. Anthropologie's clothes are out of my price range, but I always find that the pieces they carry are unique and inspiring. Unfortunately, in addition to clothes, this store also sold lots of little breakable things. Things like candle-holders, that were stored at toddler height. I thought I had my little toddler under control until one of those candle-holders was on the floor in pieces. I sheepishly brought the shards to a saleswoman, who was dismissive about my offer to pay for it. "Don't worry, it's just breakage" she shrugged. Still, I felt compelled to make a guilt purchase and so I carried Destructo around the store a bit looking for something small. A tin of garden-themed postcards fit the bill and we paid for them while entertaining the other shoppers in line with us.

Now I know you will think I'm silly for making that guilt purchase, and I completely agree. But, if I hadn't gone to the cash register, then I wouldn't have seen this on my way out.

Are you thinking what I thought? Is it something like "GEESE! What a cool thing to do with geese!"? Of course it is, because we're quilters and you can't turn that off even if you just paid $10 for some postcards. I took a picture with my phone and we hurried off to torment other shops.

I thought for a long time about how to get some slightly irregular geese into this arrangement with the least amount of work. There were lots of crayons involved. And daydreaming of owning quilt design software. And what I came up with was not a goose at all.  It was on-point squares with a triangle in each corner. So simple! So doable!

Six rows of that became...the Golden Goose.

It is 53 by 58 inches. I am quite happy with it. I like the way the geese sometimes overlap and other times "float".

The yellow is Kona "banana" and I know that because I made a couple cutting errors and needed to go find more. In normal circumstances I would have just used another yellow but I really really wanted the on-point construction to be sort of a "secret", not to hit you over the head right away. I quilted it with free form vertical wiggles, to mask the diagonal construction a bit too.

The back uses some scraps and this big piece of strange fabric from "Blank Textiles" that I bought two years ago. There wasn't a designer listed on the selvage (I checked! That's a first!).

I gave it a stripey binding, which seems to be the only kind of binding I can contemplate at this point in my life. I wonder what I'll think of all my striped bindings ten years from now?

So there it is. The Golden Goose. My second quilt finished quilt of 2010. I had thought this would be a baby quilt for my little niece due in two weeks, but then I remembered my sister hates red (say what?) and uh.... there's a lot of red up there. So maybe I'll sneak in a third quilt under the wire before 2011. Deadlines are good for people like me.

The E- - - - - - - - - quilt

My grandad and I share a birthday. That's not really important, except that if you shared a birthday with someone who was this gentle and kind and amazingly intelligent, you would brag about it too. Grandad worked as an electrical engineer for his professional life and he is always ready to whip any wheezing refrigerator or stuck garage door back into shape. When my grandma and I would get together and talk about fabric and quilts, grandad would tell us about the kind of fabrics he would like to see. Some electrical components would be nice, he mused. He figured there would be a big market for that kind of thing.

Eventually this line of discussion turned into a quilt idea. He cautioned me not to breathe a word of it. In his letters to me he would refer to it as the "E - - - - - - - - -" quilt. I couldn't exactly tell if he was joking or if this was a holdover from his days of working on top secret military projects, when there was probably a very good chance that someone was actually reading his mail. I was pretty sure he was joking though.

By the way, one of my grandad's non-military projects as a young man was to design a mechanism that would detect bottles of Pabst that were not full and then knock them off the bottling line with a puff of air. So, if you've never had the disappointment of opening a half empty bottle of Pabst, you can thank him.

Anyway one Christmas my family decided to draw names instead of getting gifts for everyone. I drew grandad's name and so I decided to make his E - - - - - - - - -  quilt.  I asked him to send me pictures of the vintage electrical parts he had in his collection of things that might still be useful someday. He complied with all seriousness and emailed them and then I spent hours trying to separate the images from their backgrounds, a process which is simple for those who know something about graphics programs and torture for everyone else. This was in the dark ages before Spoonflower so I got the images onto fabric with fabric transfer paper. I cringe to see the shininess but ....oh well.

The images were each bordered in my idea of manly colors and sort of arranged themselves into this chromatic progression. I had barely completed the top before our holiday trip back home so I packed the top up with some backing and batting and hoped my grandma would let me quilt it on her machine. And, of course, she did, exclaiming and offering words of encouragement the whole time.

I attacked that quilt with any design that seemed remotely related to electrical engineering. I quilted "E"s all around the border, along with words like "ohms", "resistance" and "potentiometer". Each of the borders around the pictures featured a unique quilting pattern. My two favorites are the ones featuring a light bulb and plug, and a light switch and outlet. I bound the whole thing with a pieced binding. This all happened over two days.

I watched my grandad like a hawk when he opened his present: his one present. First he seemed to be thinking "what the heck is a quilt doing in this box" and then it transformed to "oh my goodness she actually did it" and then as he took the whole thing in I think I even saw a tear. (Note: We also included a gift certificate to an electronics store to appease my husband who was highly distressed at the idea of "only" giving my grandad the quilt. So, we can presume it was a happy tear.)

This quilt hung on my grandparents' wall for a few years before retiring to a bedroom. Until now I had only one printed photo of it and so I was happy to get some better documentation of it during my recent trip home.

Telling this story reminds me that it feels so good to give a quilt to someone you love. While I wish I could have had nice custom printed fabric at that time, I still think the quilt stands as a sweet testament to our little inside joke, my grandad's field of expertise, and the special bond I share with both my grandparents. I'm also pretty sure it's the only quilt in existence featuring vintage electrical components and that thought makes me laugh. Thanks for reading, I know this was a rather long story! Hope you enjoyed it!

Teeny quilt

I recently got to visit my family in Arizona and while I was there I got to take some pictures of some quilts that I had never documented. This is a small one, about 12 x 16 inches. It is quilted with rays radiating out from the stars. This quilt was created for my grandma out of the scraps from this one. That quilt was how I started my quilting journey, and it was started with grandma's scraps. So it was only appropriate that the scraps from that quilt went back to her.

These are facts

• For 80% of my evening posts I finally hit the "Publish Post" button because the toddler has woken up and started crying.
• I have 52 bobbins for my Bernina.

• The Bernina's problem has reportedly been fixed and this time I was charged $0.
• Part of me wants to plan out a totally handmade holiday and the rest of me remembers that when I do that my family has this look on their faces like they wished they got something in a blister pack from Costco instead of my pancake mix/vanilla extract/soup-in-a-bag/handmade wallet or whatever. Not feeling the motivation this year. iTunes cards for everyone. You're welcome.
• Last weekend I had a fever and fatigue and other odd symptoms. My revolving diagnoses for myself included: kidney infection, lymphoma, pericarditis, liver cancer, Epstein Barr virus and pulmonary embolism. 
• As I'm sure you realize, I am a hypochondriac. I did not have any of those things and I was all better for work on Monday. 

 

• Speaking of work, that's where my phone is; in my lab coat pocket. With pictures of all my sketches from this week's quilt along on it. 
• With nothing to show for this week's quilt along I officially declare it catch up week!
• Until this June I had no idea what "following" or "subscribing" to a blog was or how to get your comments emailed to you.  

 

• I took my projects to Saturday's PMQG sewing night in an aluminum turkey pan. 
• A woman named Shruti is planning to donate 42 small quilts (about 32" square) for an orphanage in India.   Sounds like a great way to practice some free motion skills! Can you help?

Free Motion Quilt Along: Basting your quilt top

You can baste your top however you want, this is for all the people who are new to basting, or who wanted to know how I avoid puckers on the back. Welcome to my kitchen. Get your tape and your pins.

The first step, not shown, is pressing the front and back of the quilt top. Really well. I am way lazy and I avoid my iron like it has tuberculosis but I do make sure and get everything flat flat flat when I'm about to baste a quilt top. Then I lay the quilt backing right side down on a bit of floor I'm not afraid of taping and pinning.

I start on the selvage edges of the fabric. For this quilt that's the top and bottom. I tape one edge, making sure I'm not leaving any slack in the fabric between the pieces of tape. Don't forget the corners! (like I did here)

Then I tape the other, pulling the fabric enough that it is taut but not distorted. Start in the middle. Tape the whole edge. Yes, there are vertical wrinkles, don't despair.

Then it's time to tape the sides. I start in the middle on one side. Then I tape the middle of the other side, pulling it taut. See how the wrinkles disappeared between the tape?

Keep going, one side, then the other, until both sides are taped. Now the backing is nice and smooth.

Now lay down the batting.

Smooth it out with your hands. Smooth.

 
Now the quilt top. Get it nice and smooth too.

Now let's pin. I pin the middle in both directions first, then fill in the four quadrants. 

I hope you have a cute helper like I do.

About six inches apart, I use my thumb and pinkie as a guide.

Keep your pins out of the skinny strips for this quilt along. Here's my top, all pinned up.

Now you can remove the tape.

While you're at it, pin up your practice pad too.

Great! We've got a few more things to discuss this week and I start you stitching next weekend! Oh, and I  created a handy way to see all the quilt along posts, by adding a "Free Motion Quilting" page to the blog. See the little tab up above, right under the title? 

Triumph

This is the first quilt I've completed in over a year and a half! The baby it was made for is nine months old. Whatever. I feel like a million bucks for having it completed.

This is another group quilt by our collective of intrepid quilters. Prior quilts are here, here and here. Like the other quilts, a theme was chosen: numbers. Each quilter chose a number to represent. Blocks were delivered to me along with scraps of the fabric used. I divided the scraps into four color groups to construct the borders. Prior coverage of the quilting in the borders is here.

I bordered each individual block in yellow. The quilt is bound in a fabric from the train block, it is the same stripey binding as I used in this quilt. Unlike prior group quilts, the layout of this one was predetermined, as the blocks were to go in numerical order. I can't believe how wonderfully that turned out, with some red in each corner, and two blue blocks and two green blocks balancing each other out on opposite sides of the center. Perfect serendipity.The quilters are far and wide and while some got to see it in person today, others will have to settle for online unveiling, so below each block's creator is identified. The final size is 50 x 51 inches.

 By Sandra.

By Laura. I'm proud of the lighthearted cloud quilting.Those balloons look so real!

By Natalie.

By Kara. See the little quilted train tracks?

By Katie. The background fabric is more lavendar than the blue it appears in this picture. I was not impressed with my quilting on this block, I did it in a rush, while hubby watched the baby just-15-more-minutes. Of course, this is the block where my thread choice makes the quilting stand out more than all the others. Oh well.

By Anna.Quilting this one was fun.

 By Monica. This quilter tried to make seven flowers. That didn't work out so she delivered me a number seven instead. I quilted in seven butterflies to keep everything on the up and up.

 By Bree. I am 100% in love with the leaves I quilted on the tree. They look so sweet against those fabulous little lemons.

By me! I hand embroidered those little seeds on the watermelon.

The background is the green print shown above. It is finished with a handwritten label. These quilts are folk art. Most of the contributors are not quilters. I love that they just jumped in and sewed! I hope it inspires others to just sew stuff together. You don't need expensive fabric, books, patterns or classes. You need fabric, a needle and thread.

 I have more to show you about this quilt. I'm not like those quilting bloggers that have a new quilt to show you every week. So I'm gonna stretch this one out over a couple posts. See you next time!