Regina’s Wedding Quilt

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

This week I made this quilt for my dear friend Regina. Her son was married last June. At the wedding she asked people to write marriage advice on cards she put on each table. Then she printed the advice onto fabric.

A few weeks ago she sent me the printed fabric as well as a bunch of other fabrics with a note to put it together somehow.

When Regina gave me carte blanche to do what I wanted, one design came to mind.

I knew it would be perfect to frame the advice squares.

I’ve seen several of them that I like, this one and this one and this one; I’ve been wanting to make one for years. This was my chance.

With the fabric Regina sent me I made a light-dark, light-dark pattern.

I was able to quilt it and bind it and send it off in plenty of time before the newlywed’s first anniversary.

What do you think?

Watch for the pattern, I should have it up soon.

Happy Trapezoid

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

The super talented Jenean Morrison sent me this gorgeous fabric last spring. Jenean designs fabrics among many other things. All her creations are fresh and bright and playful and I love all of it! Click through to see her 2014 summer line call Lovelorn. I can’t wait until next month when I can order some!

This line of fabric she sent me is called Beachwood Park and it is interesting because it uses reds, whites and blues but really isn’t patriotic. Jenean used several different hues of reds and blues and patterns that take my mind places other than the 4th of July.

This quilt from MQG inspired the the pattern and quilt I made for Jenean’s Fabrics.

When I saw it I knew is was perfect for what I had in mind.

I sat down and planned the quilt. Here is my first draft.

Once I had my plan Sue and I headed to the fabric store and bought some matching solids. I’m terrible at matching colors so I love having an extra pair of eyes with me, plus Sue is just one of my favorite people. Win-win!

Here they are all cut into pretty trapezoids. (I need to clean my iPhone camera)

I cut out all the trapezoids and then set to work arranging them. I think I spent more time arranging and rearranging them than I did anything else but this is what I ended up with.

Once I had everything in place, I started piecing. I was really happy with how the top turned out.

For the quilting, I followed the lines of the angles and ended up with this chevron pattern.

To add a little more quilting, I quilted around each of the solid trapezoids.

For the backing I used one of the larger patterns in this line called Reunion Blue and bound it in Rendezvous Red.

I couldn’t be happier with it. What do you think?

Mondrian Inspired Quilt Pattern

Friday, April 11, 2014

This is one of favorite quilts. Super simple and it looks good to me every time I see it. Here is the pattern. I will post a more detailed pattern later but I wanted to get this one up today.

If you make one of these, I’d love to see it. Email me a picture!

Rikke Hat

Monday, March 31, 2014

I finally finished this Rikke Hat. This took much longer than it should have but it was one of those projects I picked up and put down. I’m happy to have it finished though. Isn’t it cute!

I used this pattern from Happy Knits. It is a great project to start with. It knits up quickly and is cool enough for teenagery type people.

Sara saw it finished and immediately started one in blue. It’s going to be so pretty!

blue-rikke-hat

Dropping the Ball

Saturday, March 15, 2014

drop-the-ball

I made this quilt a couple of weeks ago for Sara. It made me happy to be sewing again and it has my mind racing with ideas I want to try.

Liz’s Quilt

Friday, October 4, 2013

I can’t tell you how happy our family was when we found out that my sister in law Liz and brother Jared were expecting another baby. It had been a long time in coming and it was a joyful, tearful, happy day. Even now I can’t think about it without getting emotional.

liz-preg

Planning

Of course I was going to make my expected little niece a quilt. When Liz and I talked about different quilts she might want for the nursery, she remembered that she had an old quilt that she wanted to repurpose. She hadn’t seen it for a while and she wasn’t sure if she could even track it down and if she did track it down, she wasn’t sure if it would even be useable. She found it though (yea!) and sent it to me.

It was large for a baby quilt, about 55′ x 55′, and has a faded pale pink, almost white back ground with a tiny pink rosebud print. So so sweet. It had also been hand quilted, I love that.

Before it had come into her possession this quilt had obviously been well loved and well used. There is something so lovely about that. Knowing that something was loved or maybe a comfort to some little girl, now all grown up.

Liz's-quilt

Prep

The blanket was not in good shape. The edge of one side was torn and there were spots all over the quilt, large and small, where the fabric was worn through or very thin. There were also quite a few brown, milk stains.

The first order of business was to get rid of the stains. Nothing worked very well until I soaked it in Oxyclean. And for the darker spots I had to concentrate the powder directly on the spot. It worked.

Getting stuck

So now I had a clean blanket and I had seen the larger holes but when I looked at it closely, there were little tiny holes were everywhere. If they weren’t on one side, they were on the other. I didn’t see how I was going to get even a baby sized quilt out of it.

I thought my only choice was to cut it into useable pieces and piece it with other fabrics. That bummed me out. It would be almost impossible to preserve the hand quilting and I wasn’t sure how this old fabric would look and feel with new fabric.

There was one area of the quilt that only had a few small holes, and holes are holes, but then . . .

Light bulb!

I thought about appliqué! I could appliqué small patches over the little holes!

Once I thought of that, it only took a few hours to finish. I cut the piece, put a binding of white on it and then appliquéd three little hearts over the holes. Below is my Instagram finishing up one of the appliqués.

This is the first quilt I’ve ever repurposed and although it was a challenge, I loved doing it and am so happy with the final product.

The story doesn’t end there.

Just the other day I got this text from Liz.

Liz: Just found out that old blanket? My great grandmother quilted it for my mother when she was a little girl. How sweet is that??? So glad we were able to revive it!!!

Me: That is so wonderful! I thought it was a thrift store find!

Liz: So it will be made by our daughter’s great great grandma (who was married to Henry Call, our Henry’s namesake)

Me: I’m glad I saved the quilting and didn’t pull it out. Hand quilted by your great grandmother. Her very own stitches. It’s making me cry.

I feel privileged that I was able to be a part of this sweet story and can’t wait to get my hands on my little niece.

Lexy’s Quilt

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Lexy-Ward-from-The-Proper-Pinwheel

I met Lexy of The Proper Pinwheel a little over a year ago when we worked together for Alt Design Summit. Lexy is smart and creative and has such a great sense of humor.

I described her to someone this way, “She has impeccable taste in style and design with a little whimsy and silliness thrown in to surprise you and make you smile.” I think the picture up there is a perfect example of what I mean.

I was so excited for Lexy when she announced that she and her husband were expecting their first baby. Is there anything more fun than a new baby?! My answer would be, “No, there is nothing more fun.”

I was planning to make a quilt for Baby Girl Ward already and at the same time I was getting ready to launch Yellow Bug Quilts. I reached out and asked if she would be willing to be my Guinea Pig and walk through the custom process with me. She might as well have a say in what she wants right?

Starting from Scratch

Initially Lexy told me a little about what she had in mind for her nursery, and she sent me pictures of the fabrics she wanted to use as well as a picture of a quilt that she liked. Most of the fabrics were from Sarah Watson’s Indian Summer line. It captures an outdoorsy feeling with a childlike look that make it perfect for a nursery.

start-to-finish-vert

I went to work on some designs. We emailed back and forth with different design ideas and played with several elements of the fabric patterns. I have to say I got a little stuck here. I couldn’t see how the fabrics were going to work together because I couldn’t be sure about the scale and exact colors. I finally just went and bought a little bit of each of the fabrics. All of it made so much more sense to me once I had the fabrics in front of me.

We continued to pass ideas back and forth until we agreed on this design.

It is always interesting so me to see the collaborative process work and to watch a project evolve from a few fabrics to design ideas and, in this case, on to a finished quilt.

Construction

Once we settled on a design, I started sewing.

The main design was fairly simple and it came together quickly. The flying geese added the texture and movement to the design and that part was a little more time consuming than the large design but it was absolutely worth the effort.

In fact, once I learned the piecing process, it became relaxing and I spent a lovely day moving from sewing machine to ironing board to cutting table and back to the sewing machine. Time *ahem* flew by. I enjoyed myself so much I couldn’t believe it when my daughters got home from school. I totally wasn’t expecting them for two or three more hours. Ha!

I look forward to making another quilt with lots of flying geese.

My normal MO is to see a quilt I like and reproduce it or at least elements of it. This is the very first quilt I have made/designed from start to finish and I am happy to report that it was a very satisfying endeavor.

I’m so thrilled with how it turned out and how it compliments Lexy’s nursery. And how cute are those bumper pads??

What about you? Have you ever designed your own quilt? How did it turn out?

Sara’s quilt

Monday, August 26, 2013

I’m making a couple of quilts for my sister Sara. She wanted me to use this clean, modern line of fabrics by Michael Miller. Although they aren’t colors I seek out normally, I love them! They have been fun to work with. The fabric is a little heavier than I normally use in a baby quilt,it is more like decorator fabric. It softened up beautifully when it was washed, however and if this is a well used quilt, it will be that much more durable.

The patterns are large and I wanted to employ them in the best way possible. I started by planning it with this Six Squares pattern but we wanted to use four different colors and the six squares didn’t allow me to use all the fabrics. So then I designed another quilt using more and smaller squares, using this and this as my inspiration, but no matter how I worked the design the squares were just too small. So back to the drawing board, literally. I went back to the Six Squares design and reworked it with eight squares. It was just right.

I actually ended up making this quilt three times. I made it in a lap size so I could work out all the bugs. Then I made it in a baby size but didn’t notice the mistake with the orange square until it was already quilted and bound and I was taking pictures of it. Ugh!!

I don’t understand it. I looked at that quilt top for hours while I bound it. I went over it every inch of it cutting all the tiny threads. I held it up in a mirror after each block was sewn. I guess I stopped looking at the design as a whole and just focused on the smaller pieces, until it was too late.

Luckily I cut out two of everything so that I could make a second quilt and Voilà! Here is the finished product.

I’m really proud of it and can’t wait to mail it off.

What I learned?
Look at the pattern as a whole and not just the smaller pieces.

Jean’s Quilt

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

My sweet friend Jean went to the south of France in June and brought back these wonderful fabrics. She sent them to me to make a ‘Country French’ quilt for her wall.

The fabrics are beautiful and I couldn’t wait to get started. As I studied them and planned how they would go together, I decided that they needed a little more yellow.

I casually started looking for Charles Demery fabrics to order online and was surprised to hit brick walls every where I looked. I tried everything I could think of, eBay, etsy, little stores that sell French products. I wrote several emails and made phone calls. A few places sold Charles Demery fabrics but not the color or pattern I needed.

In my effort to find the fabrics I ended up doing a lot of reading and now I feel like a Charles Demery expert. He was a French fabric designer in 1916. As of the mid 1970’s Demery’s company was run by his nephew. His nephew oversaw the switch from hand printed fabrics to machine printed fabrics. His patterns are copied reproduced occasionally by present-day designers. Click here to read more.

When Jean sent the fabrics, I knew they were special because they were purchased at a market in France. It didn’t take long for me to learn that working with these fabrics was a rare treat.

In the end I wasn’t going to get any more of this fabric unless I went to France myself. I ended up going to a local quilt store where I bought the fabric below. It works well with the other fabrics and add that yellow I wanted.

Here the squares as I was just beginning to arrange them.

And here it is all done!

I put a sleeve in the back so Jean can hang it. Designers print their names and pattern line on the selvage edge of their fabrics; I incorporated the selvage edge into the sleeve so Jean would have it as a record.

As part of her payment she is letting my keep the rest of the fabric! What do you think I should I make?