Category: Quilting

Something of a streak

I’ve been on something of a streak recently, making potholders from Jeni B’s tutorial.

I made two blue and two green for friends I visited in Michigan in late May, and boxed them off and shipped them before I realized I hadn’t photographed them. So you’ll have to trust me when I say they came out well. Hopefully they’ll get lots of use.

Then I made a pair for the friend I went to the MA Sheep & Wool fair with, because she liked the blue and green ones, whose loops I was sewing up when I visited her.

I used three different sizes of dots: largest on the back, smallest on the binding. I didn’t have any brown thread, so I quilted them in white. I’m not sure how I like it, but hopefully the recipient won’t be quite as much of a perfectionist as I am.

I made a second pair for someone I don’t think that I’ve ever met. I got a package in the mail about two weeks ago, with no idea what on earth it was. I sometimes half-forget about having ordered fabric, so that getting the package is a pleasant surprise, but I always recognize the package when it arrives. This package, though, was a complete mystery.

I opened it and found a book on watermarks in Rembrandt’s prints, and a note from one of my mother’s former co-workers! Apparently she ran into my mother in the city and thought I might like the book. She’s right — I love it. It has wonderful photographs of the watermarks in the paper Rembrandt used, and all kinds of information about printmaking and paper in his time period. I’m a complete old book geek, so this is excellent.

So I made a pair of black and white potholders for her, as a thank you. I’m going to mail them to her along with a copy of The Left Hand of Darkness, because apparently she’s been getting into early sci-fi recently.

I particularly like the back, because the print is very clear:

Block of the Month Progress

I’m participating in Jeni (of In Color Order)’s Half-Square Triangle Block of the Month quilt along. So far I’ve finished the blocks up through April, and I can’t decide if the pinwheels or the flying geese are my favorites.

I am very proud of the way the pinwheels all line up in their centers, though.

I’m not stopping with April, of course. And I thought I had finished May’s block, before I realized that I had flipped two of the light-blue half-triangle squares. I took the one side section off, flipped it 180 degrees, and thought “There! Now the light blue triangles are facing the right direction!” And then I looked at it, and realized that now the corner blocks faced the wrong way.

I’m not very pleased by it right now, but once I’ve forgotten about the amount of ripping and re-sewing I had to do, I’ll probably be a lot happier with it. I’ll probably fix it over the weekend, and also get June’s block cut out, because it looks like one I’m going to like quite a bit.

I’ve been half-seriously considering doing two blocks for each month, to put together a larger quilt top when this is all over. Of course, that simply highlights the fact that I haven’t the faintest idea what on earth this quilt will be when I finish it: a gift for someone, presumably, but for who? I have no idea.

It’s funny: I appear to be very much a process quilter, while I’m sometimes a very product-oriented knitter or spinner. Who knew?

Mixtape quilt basted!

It feels like a long time since I’ve posted about this, but the mixtape quilt I’m making for a friend’s son is all basted and ready to quilt!

I love the way the blocks are arranged: if you look closely, every set of four (2×2) has one from each color group. I’m always impressed when people write patterns that lay blocks out in regular but not immediately obvious ways, so this pattern has been a lot of fun.

The back is fairly simple: just a strip of white separating two of the small prints used on the front.

One thing I’m really pleased about is the fact that the stripe on the back lines up almost perfectly with one of the strips of sashing on the front of the quilt. This will really only ever be visible when the quilt is folded partway, but it makes me happy.

For right now, it’s basted with pins at the corners of the blocks, but I’m not sure that’s enough. Anyone with more quilting experience: is that enough, or should I pin the centers of the blocks, too? They’re eight inch blocks. I’m torn, because I don’t want to have to quilt around even more pins, but I also don’t want things to shift about too much. Advice would be wonderful.

Finally, I’ve done up two samples of ways I might quilt this sucker. They’re done in black thread against a light background to make the stitches more obvious — it also reveals that I probably need to adjust the tension on my machine a little bit, since you can see the white thread from the other side poking through a bit here and there.

I’m not really sure how to quilt it — loops or zig-zags are probably easiest, as far as free-motion quilting is concerned. I’ll have to talk to the recipient and see what she likes best, and go from there.

As for other projects, I’ve been chugging along on the blocks of the month, but I just made my first large piecing mistake, so I’ll leave that (and its fixing) to next week.

Blocks of the Month and a Mother’s Day gift

I’ve not yet sewn together the previous two Blocks of the Month, but I have cut and laid out another one.

I think April is my favorite so far:

And just in time for Mother’s Day, I’ve finished up two potholders. Not a terribly interesting gift, but at least they’re useful, and I know she likes the fabrics included.

The pattern is Half-Square Triangle Pot Holders from In Color Order. It was very clear and easy to follow, though I added loops, which might look a little funny. And of course I was brilliant and pinned everything together and THEN cut it all square, instead of quilting it first. It ended up not being a huge deal, but I’m planning on not doing that again.

On other fronts, I’ve completed two of my three courses for this semester, but the third is going to be a lot of work, so I may be just as quiet next week as I was this one — apologies in advance.

Mixtape progress and Block of the Month question

First of all, here’s the rather pathetic progress I’ve made on the Mixtape quilt since the last time I posted about it:

I’m looking forward to finishing it up, but I think it’s going to have to wait until the end of the semester: something about the potential finished-ness of it once I sew in the long sashing strips is giving me pause.

In the mean time, however, I’ve changed up the fabrics I’m using for the Block of the Month quilt:

The new one in the dark blues is the cities print from 1001 Peeps; the yellow dotty ones are Ta Dot by Michael Miller, which I’m fond of.

Here the light blue has benefited from the addition of some Ta Dots as well.

And because just cutting them was putting far too much temptation in my way, here are two blocks that I’m almost ready to sew together:


This is the March block, and I think I’m pretty okay with how it looks.


This is the January block. And for this one, I could use some advice: which orange? Or should I pick something else entirely from the fabrics I showed above? I’d love a second (or third, or so on!) opinion, because I’m really not so sure about this one as it sits now.

Quilted coasters

Following this tutorial, by Jeni of In Color Order, I spent a little while last week putting together and quilting four little coasters.

It was a great chance to try out free-motion quilting for the first time. Most of what I learned was: I need way more practice at this. So there may be more coasters and so on in my immediate future, since they seem to make a nice tiny little playground for trying my hand at free-motion quilting.

Quilt-alongs

You may have noticed the three icons that have popped up in the sidebar. The first one is the My Precious Quilt-Along, which challenges you to use some of that fabric you just can’t get yourself to use — something old, or rare, or out of print, or just something you’ve been hoarding instead of using. I think it’s a fantastic idea, and I’ve loved poking through the images to see what fabrics people have been hoarding.

It’s hard to call my behavior true hoarding when I’ve only been quilting for a little over a month, but there are fabrics in my little stash that I look at and take out and pet and look at, and then put away carefully because WHAT IF I MESS THEM UP!? I had thought that knitting and spinning had cured me of my desire to keep the pretty things instead of using them, because I’m pretty good about knitting with or spinning up that really pretty yarn or fiber. But it turns out that’s really not the case at all when it comes to fabric: I get all grabby and want to just leave them on the shelf, because they’re pretty there, and clearly I’m not nearly a good enough quilter yet to merit using these fabrics.

The ones I’m most inclined to put back on the shelves just in case are from the 1001 Peeps collection, by Lizzy House. It’s not super-old (it seems to have come out in early 2011), but some of the prints are getting harder to find, so I hope it qualifies for the QAL.

I used a tiny bit of it for some Simple Math blocks, but for the My Precious QAL, I’m challenging myself to use more than one of the prints, in more than just a teeny strip. In other words, get that precious fabric off the shelf, and into a quilt. It was like pulling teeth, to get myself to actually pull even just a few of the prints off the shelf and into the queue for the Block of the Month quilt. I’ve ended up echoing the colors of the Blocks of the Month QAL over at In Color Order.


The only one here that I’m worried about messing up is the Illuminate.


Here I’ve got two from the 1001 Peeps collection: Peeps and towers, both of which I’m very fond of. I’m hoping I can sort of fussy-cut a little bit to get people in the triangles.


Here, again, is the Illuminate print, which I thought was too pale for the oranges. We’ll see how it works out in practice.


I’m going to swap out the orange print with crosses or the one with keys for the Scheherazade print in orange, because it’ll provide more of a contrast with the white half-triangles. It only took me sleeping on it for a night to decide that, yes, I could use that one, really. Apparently I really do want to keep some of these fabrics on the shelf.

And then I’ll have one of the prints I’m all grabby-hands about in each color group.

The third button, the Retro Flower QAL, is more of an aspirational project — once I work myself up to the idea of quilting curves, I’ll get going on it. For now, it sits in the sidebar to remind me that there are always new things to learn.

Henrietta Turtle

No in-process photographs for this one, I’m afraid: I was so caught up in making it that the camera didn’t make its way out at all.

This is the Henrietta Turtle by Heather Bailey, made from scraps from the Mixtape quilt I posted about on Wednesday.

The little boy I’m making the mixtape quilt for fell in love with the stuffed turtle at the City Quilter, so when I stopped back in to get fabric for backing, I picked up the pattern.

This was a delight: the instructions were clear and easy to follow. And that’s saying something, because this is the first time I’ve sewn curves since my grandmother taught me how when I was a kid.

I only changed one thing: instead of french knot eyes, which I know will end up unraveling, I simply drew on the eyes with a permanent marker. Not nearly so nice, but much less destroyable.