Finished Quilt

The baby quilt is done!

Once I decided how I wanted it to look, it took far less time than I had expected.

It's a 9 block quilt, I'd call it "log cabin inspired" more than anything, since there's a central motif and the pieces around it are more or less mirroring the idea of a log cabin quilt.

But it's not exactly one, which is about what I'd expect from me.

Because not all the blocks were the same size, and because I wanted to use some of the other pieces of clothing that didn't make it into the blocks, I did strips in between each block and around the edges.  It used up a bit more fabric and added a few more prints to the mix.

I have to give props to a mom who dresses her child in such nicely coordinating colors.  There were literally only a few pieces I didn't use, and most of them would have still worked.

When I sent her a progress picture and told her I was going to back it in a neutral fabric I had on hand, she was fine with that.  We also decided on a light gray binding, which was from a gray t-shirt I had in my stash for that purpose.

All the years that I thought I didn't need a serger.  I could kick myself, except then I'd have to take my foot off the pedal of my serger.  Because every piece of fabric in this is a knit, this entire quilt was assembled with my serger.

I think my favorite bit is the central LOVE panel.  It was two sides of a jacket with a separating zipper.  I reinforced it before cutting, removed enough of the zipper top and bottom to be able to run it through the machine without hurting anything, and kept it as is.  I could have probably picked out the zipper and sewn the fabric together, but to me that would have changed the point of the piece -- it's meant to be Katy's outgrown baby clothes, and losing the zipper would, to me, lose some of that.

Baby Clothes Baby Quilt

Center squares - images from tiny shirts and jackets

Last month, I was contacted by a mom who had purchased one of my receiving blanket bears.  She and I had talked after the bear's arrival about doing something else, but the project never happened.

When she contacted me this time, she was ready.  She had been cleaning out her baby's clothes, she said, to give to a friend who was expecting, and there was a pile of stuff she just couldn't bear to give away.  Would I be able to make a quilt out of her little one's outgrown clothing?

But of course!

The clothes arrived last week, a whole copy paper box full, in bags labeled 1, 2 and 3 (order of importance for use).  I didn't cut up everything right away, because I'll either return or donate the unused pieces, but I ended up using all the pieces in bag 1, a good bit of bag 2, and some of bag 3, because I needed some solid colors to break up all the prints.

Katie trying to tell me to take a break.

Originally I had wanted to do something a little more free-form, like the baby clothes stockings I do, but then I saw that a lot of her pieces were infant-sized and I wasn't really going to be able to get a lot of pieces out of them.  So after I found 8 shirts with writing a central motif, I embroidered a 9th piece with the baby's name, and cut everything else into 2" wide strips.

It's sort of a bastardized log cabin, but not really.  Most of the central squares were 4", but a few of them were slightly off.  I put the largest in the center and worked outwards, inserting extra strips to make things line up.  The central "Love" square still has a zipper down the center (edges removed before serging and then anchored from behind so it doesn't unzip).

It's not quite done.  I gave it a good pressing after the last photo here, and now I'm looking around for backing fabric.  She didn't send anything large enough for that, so if she doesn't have any objection, I'm going to use a section of ivory sheet that I had on my shelf for this purpose.   Not sure yet if this quilt is going to get stitched or tied; it's small enough (32x32) that I could get it through the machine with minimal swearing.

Finished photos to come, hopefully by the end of the week.

UFOs

I saw a UFO the other day.

It wasn't in the sky; it was in my workroom.

Let me explain.  My workroom is always a mess; I tend to work better when there's a bit of chaos around, but even I had gotten to the point where I realized it was out of control.

On Friday, January 20, I decided that the best way to spend the day was to avoid the TV at all costs, and start cleaning the room.  It helped that I had just sold something on Craiglist that was currently in the room, under a pile of fabric, holding apparently even more fabric.  So I started there, pulling out the vintage trunk (which was absolutely beautiful, but round-topped and so hard to stack on, and, embarrassingly, there's another one in the attic anyway) and emptied it.  There was a ton of fabric in there that I could use right now, some of which I'd forgotten I owned.  So that's sort of a win?

Continuing on all week with the TV avoidance (though not social media; if we're friends there, you know my feelings and how abundantly I've shared them), I got the trunk out, added a metal shelving unit from the basement to better organize fabric, cleaned out the standing cedar closet (and its stackable bins inside), threw out/donated another 3 trash bags of stuff, and thought I was finished.

There was one more trunk left under the table, and against my better judgment,I moved everything aside and dragged it out.

Inside was stuff I literally haven't seen in over a decade, including a quilt that I started making shortly after I bought the house (2000), and drafted a review for in Patternreview's UFO Contest back in 2006 (but never posted because it didn't get finished after all).

I was trying to stitch down the rows of squares on my machine, and I didn't notice until I'd sewn a few rows that the backing fabric had gone crooked, pulling the whole thing out of alignment.  Instead of simply picking the stitches out and starting over, I folded it up and shoved it in a box.  For 10 years.

Last night I laid it out on the bed, over top of the comforter (which actually came with me when I moved in 2000), and it looks really good in the bedroom.  I fetched a seam ripper, ripped out those three rows of stitching, grabbed some  yarn and a big needle, and yarn-tied the entire thing in an hour.

So now all I need to do is bind the edges and I can add the 16 year old comforter to the donation pile and sleep the sleep of the righteous under my finally-finished UFO quilt.

Quilt Britannia

It seems appropriate to write about my second Beatles quilt a few days after the Brits have (apparently) lost their minds.  Or maybe not.  I guess time will tell.

I saw a news clip with some anonymous British man who said, "What are we gonna do?  We'll get on with it.  We're England; it's what we do."

So, hopefully.

On to the quilt.  This is my second piece for the same customer - I did a similar (but slightly more Beatles/Lennon) quilt for her about a year ago.  This year, not long after Christmas, she contacted me and said she still had more shirts and wanted to do another quilt.  What with one thing and another, it took a while for me to get the shirts from her, and longer to get started.

Thankful for understanding (and local) customers.

I think this quilt turned out better than the first, not just because I've gotten better at doing them, but because of her extra contributions this time.  First time around, I simply used varying colors of denim in between the shirts.  This time she gave me a selection of her own tops that she no longer wore, which she said she had a similar sentimental attachment to.  I like the variety of colors and prints mixed in with the shirts.

In addition to the Beatles and John Lennon (and the particularly cool Lennon artwork and original lyrics in the bottom left), this one also has shirts from four local Philly music festivals, and a Rock the Vote/Censorship is UnAmerican shirt front and center.

One more thing . . . she still has more shirts.  There might be a third quilt in our mutual futures.  She said that even if she can't display them all, they take up far less room on a shelf than a bag full of unworn t-shirts.

A quick quilt

Is there such a thing as a quick quilt?  Turns out there is.

I haven't been doing much sewing for my local theater lately, because their performance schedule usually conflicts with my show schedule.  The shows that have occurred in the late winter/early spring didn't require any help, so when the costumer asked if I could make something for their upcoming show, The Cripple of Inishmaan, I agreed.

Then she said, "It's a quilt."

I think I stopped breathing, because then she said, "Just a quick quilt.  It doesn't have to be tiny pieces, or even quilted.  It's a bedspread for Mammy's bed."

I said okay, although I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into.

When she arrived with a trashbag full of fabric and another one full of batting, I just took them.  She reiterated her instructions, and added, "The squares don't have to be small.  Maybe 10 inches.  How does that sound?"

That sounded better, thank you very much.

Production photo by Rebecca Gudelunas

When I looked at the fabrics, they were an interesting blend of suiting and plaids, mostly muted colors with some pops of red.  The play takes place in a poor Irish village in the 1930s, so you can imagine that this quilt was made by Mammy from repurposed clothing and remnants from better days.

It went together quickly.  I turned the fabrics into piles of 10" squares, and sewed them into strips of the required length.  Once all the strips were stitched together, I took everything into the bedroom (the largest clear floor space in the house), laid out the backing fabric, added the batting, and then placed my quilt on top of it.  The backing fabric was cut 2" wider all around than the quilt, folded in and pinned.  Binding a quilt with its own backing fabric may not be recommended, but it worked.  And looked finished.

Instead of quilting, I grabbed a skein of dark blue yarn and tied the quilt at each intersection of squares.  The yarn wasn't visible against the backing fabric, and I knew that the quilt was only going to be seen from the top anyway.

I was happy with the result, and pleased to see how good it looked on stage.  The play, by the way, was fabulous.  Their first review -- overwhelmingly positive -- is here.

** edited to say, I guess "recommended" might not be the right word to use regarding the self-binding, since the first two comments have mentioned seeing it before.  I've mostly seen bias-bound quilts, and have been told by those who "know" these things that binding is the proper way to go.  Nice to know that my quick-and-dirty method is perfectly acceptable.

Imagine . . . a Finished Project

It's easy if you try.

Quilt Accompli

I can't believe it's done.

Last Thursday, before my second embroidery class, I managed to get the three layers of the quilt together, and I pin-marked the measurements where the tacking would go.  I still had a little time left before I had to leave, so I got out the big needle and the yarn and started in.

I've never been a fan of tied quilts -- to me, quilts are quilted.  Or so I thought.  Having done a tied one now and gotten it done in about 20 minutes (okay, it's only 30" x 30", but still), I think I'm a convert.

If you're a quilter, I can still see the point of quilting.  But if what you're doing is really about the piecing, or the fabric art you've created, and you don't want to quilt, then I say grab some yarn and have at it.

Especially for a baby, or for the display piece that I kind of assume this is going to be, I think tying a quilt is just dandy.

In other words, I look at the photo of the finished product (which in actuality is in a box making its way to Ohio), and I realize that I wouldn't be done more than a few inches of it by now if I'd quilted it by machine.  Let's not even discuss hand quilting.

And as an aside, the yarn I used was off-white because I couldn't find a purple, lavender or pale gray that matched.  It's not that bright from the front in real life; the camera always brings out the one thing you'd like to conceal.

When Bears Attack

I've been on a bear-making roll lately.  I did a batch last week, then one for the custom order, and then another batch.

Aside from having craft shows almost every weekend of the summer, I dropped off batches at two local stores who do consignment.  Consignment isn't always my favorite -- obviously I'd rather get paid every cent of what my work brings in -- but on the other hand, it gets my work into areas where I can't always be, I don't have to be there selling it, and it makes me feel like I'm getting somewhere that shops want to carry my work.

In other words, I made 15 bears and got to keep 5.  So now I need to make more bears.

The ones pictured here are recent favorites.  I didn't send any of these to stores because I feel like they need the personal explanation from me to go with them -- they're made from the remains of a vintage feedsack quilt and really aren't meant to be played with.  They're either for display or for an older child, who understands what fragile means.  But I love how they turned out, the faded colors and the slightly blocky shape the quilting gives them.

They're probably among the most photogenic bears I've done to date.

Halfway There

Well, I may not be a natural quilter, but I don't mind the piecework portion of it.

As you can see, the bear is finished.  I cut her first, using a sleeve from the jacket, a small portion of the floral skirt and a cap sleeve from the blouse.  I like her.  She's very purple, but I like her.

The jacket presented a problem for my original quilt design since it was princess seamed front and back, and had a peplum.  Lots of smallish, odd-sized pieces.

The skirt, on the other hand, was full, with only side seams.  The blouse had bust darts, front buttons and gathers, but still provided a fair amount of unseamed fabric.

I decided to do the quilt in strips for ease and speed, and because I like the simplicity of it.  There was no way to avoid a lot of the floral running together, so instead of trying to avoid it, I made it a feature, with pieces of the contrast fabrics only at the ends and in a few cases running horizontally.

I found a perfect light purple cotton for backing and I had batting in my stash already.  Both of those are cut to size, so now I just need to finish it off.

Like that's going to be the easy part.

What do you think?  There was no real way to make this look "childlike", considering the fabrics, but I think it will make a nice keepsake.

Vintage Quilt Love

I've always had an affinity for quilts, just not necessarily for quilting.

Old quilts, in particular, talk to me, sharing stories of where they've been, the women who made them, the tough times they've survived.

I found this old quilt recently - it was being sold quite cheaply because there was some damage to it, but I loved the colors and the pattern and took it home, hoping there would be enough to salvage.

Surprisingly, there was remarkably little damage - a few holes and worn spots, but mostly near the edges.  Some discoloration, but isn't that to be expected in something that's over 60 years old?  We should all be in this good a condition by that age!

The quilt sat for a week or two while I considered it.  I wanted to make a few stockings - I'm getting ready for the holidays in a big way, and though I'm not into  country the way I'm not into quilting, there's also something attractive about it, especially when you add in all the emotional baggage of the holidays; it seems right.

I thought it was a great way to indulge in some country-themed items without going full-on, over-the-top into cheesy country kitsch.

I've done the stockings two ways - one, with the "JOY" applique, because it wanted that appliqued on it.  The applique, and the reverse side of the stocking, are repurposed denim.

The second stocking is plain patchwork, with a denim reverse, and meant to be personalized.

After I finished a pile of stockings, I realized there was still quite a bit of undamaged quilt left.

That's when the bag bug kicked in.  I like hobo bags.  I like roomy bags that you can wear on your shoulder or cross body, with storage and pockets and a little cuteness to perk you up on a dreary day.

I decorated this bag with a jeans pocket on one side and an appliqued denim heart on the other.  Both sides had a few embellished pink roses.

The bag strap is made from the waistband of the same pair of jeans that gave up its pockets to the cause.

The bag is lined in a cheery mid-century-looking pink, yellow and green print, just to cut a little of the sweetness.

Somehow, there's still a pile of quilt left on my table.

More stockings?  More bags?  More . . . something.  I'll figure it out.

Vintage Quilt Hobo Bag

I bought two pieces of vintage quilt at a sidewalk sale recently.  The sellers said she'd purchased them  years ago with the intention of making something from them.  I took them home with the same idea in mind.

I knew they wanted to be a bag, but I couldn't decide how to best take advantage of the piecing.  There were a few "bald patches" in the quilt, and of course they were in prominent places.

The pieces got set aside to marinate, and the other night, when the bar down the street kept me awake, I went into the workroom and started in.  I don't necessarily recommend working when pissed off and sleep-deprived, but on the other hand, by the time it quieted down and I could finally get some sleep, this is what I had on my hands.

When I woke up the next morning, headachy, stiff and still quite annoyed at being kept from sleeping when I wanted to, I was almost afraid to go into the workroom and see what I had done.  I was so tired by the end that I literally didn't remember some of what I did, so this could have been really good or really awful.

I'm tending to think it's really good, but maybe I'm biased.  Or still delirious from lack of sleep.

Listing is here.

Bits and Pieces

Fronts of both pieces

Quite literally, that's what these are.

We were coming back from our weekly Saturday trip to the farmer's market -- peaches and string beans and mushrooms, oh my! -- and we happened upon a sidewalk sale.

This is not uncommon in my neighborhood, and I was happy to see that it was a house I'd stopped at before, and a woman whose craft materials seemed endless.

Today was no different.  I picked up a few pieces of vintage jewelry for my other Etsy shop, but my main focus was on these two pieces of patchwork quilt that she had rolled up on the table.  When I asked about them, she said that she'd bought them years ago, at a sidewalk sale, but had never gotten around to using them and felt guilty.

Backing of one piece; front of second piece

Let's just say I alleviated her guilt, and also lightened her table of a piece of blue and white cross-stitched trim that looked like it was from a kitchen curtain (it has coffee grinders, spoons, pitchers and teacups on it).  Not sure what I'm going to do with that yet, but these quilt pieces have announced loud and clear that they want to be turned into a hobo bag, preferably in combination with some faded denim to coordinate with the faded blue of the cotton.

We all know not to argue with the fabric, don't

More later, and hopefully a bag photo to post.