I made this lovely quilt for my youngest sister Lesley B. for christmas. She is a big skull fan, so I decided to go with a tighter purple palate and pulled all of the different fabrics in my stash that I could find that fit this color way, and then embedded a sneaky secret skull in soft grey into the design. It took me a while to map it all out, but eventually I got there, and went with an 11x15 block design. I placed all 120-something blocks out on my floor to get the pattern right (and added some corner flairs to the blocks around the mouth to give it a bit more definition), and then collapsed everything up in order into the 15 rows that made up the length of the quilt. Once everything was all mapped, it was then a matter of sewing ALL THE BLOCKS together which took a while, but was quite satisfying in the end. I was using a soft quilted backing again, but having learned recently from my cousin's baby quilt, this type of fabric is not great for machine quilting, so after binding it in a complimentary batik fabric, I decided to hand tie the entire thing with golden embroidery floss. Again, quite time consuming, but in the end a nice final effect, in my opinion! I hope Les gets many years of warmth and coziness from this spooooooky quilt!
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Well... better late than never, right? I have been working on this quilt for Vanessa M. for a few months now, and in that time, I missed all three milestones for which it was intended. You win some, you lose some. But in the end, I got it finished and sent off to her. Vanessa and I have been friends for decades, and there were three milestones this year to celebrate: both of us turning 44 (#doubledigits), Vanessa getting married to her long-time partner in August (perhaps the most important), and celebrating the 25th anniversary of International Amy and Vanessa day in September (no wait, that is the most important).
It was a moment of milestones, and I thought it would be nice to mark them with a quilt for my dear friend two whom I have never actually gifted a quilt despite so many years together. We are similar in some ways, but not always when it comes to aesthetics. As one might notice on this blog, I am into COLOR, whereas Vanessa has a more minimalist aesthetic. So I did my best to honor that in this design. Using up-cycled batiks, I wove together a mosaic-inspired central panel showing off the navy and blue fabrics, and then like a supernova, slowly worked my way out from there and into the abyss of space (which is an upcycled bedsheet, also used as the backing). It is a small design detail but one I like for those who care to notice, at one corner the scattering of stardust leaks into the outer trim and into the binding itself. Not revolutionary or particularly dramatic, but i love that little detail and I feel like it is something she would notice and enjoy. After finally finishing the quilt top, I sandwiched everything and started the epic task of quilting this thing. I am not a huge quilting fan and usually keep things quite simple, but I felt like this quilt demanded the free-motion-quilting treatment to really bring it all together. It took a long time, but as usual, when I do make the time for it (like on my white whale quilt), I love the final effect on both the front and backsides. I made the binding from more of the navy backing along with some scraps from the center blocks to create the very subtle 'fading off into the edges' effect. I hope that this quilt gets many years of minimalist-design-loving snuggles! My friend Emily B. is having a baby, and miracle of miracles, I got her baby quilt done before the bambino arrived! You will recognize this color scheme... It is similar to this post --- basically, I made them during the same couple of months, and was loving the modern, modest color vibe and decided to keep playing.
This one was actually the first inspiration, and I took my cues for the colors from the cute animal print fabric in the inner border. It is an upcycled scrap of fabric so I didn't have enough to play extensively, so I played off the colors instead and created a modern-ish vibe with diamond patterns and diamond quilting as well. (Since Emily and Matt are super cool and hip... I hope I matched their aesthetic somewhat) Outer border is soft grey flannel, binding is made of scraps from the colorful fabric bits in the quilt, and the back is a soft purple grey cotton (that used to be a curtain). I had some strips left and made her a little bonus baby-friendly coordinating bag to throw stuff in as well in case it is useful. I hope Emily, Matt and future kiddo enjoy this quilt for many years to come! Another epic quilt project, this time for my father, Robert B., originally scheduled for Christmas 2018, but finally gifted to him for Father's Day 2019. (I was also working on mom's epic quilt at the same time, and I just got completely overwhelmed).
I love my Dad, and because of this, I have learned to also love his ADHD (which he claims he does not have #incorrect). And so, I wanted to make him a lap quilt to snuggle under that would occupy ALL of his head. So I just made it up. It is kind of a sampler--- tons of different kinds of blocks, scrappy bits, panels--- most made by me and some recycled in (including one of the porch blocks!)--- all tetris-ed together into a semi-cohesive whole, quilted with a bunch of different designs (both free-motion and straight line), backed with pieced flannels of grey and yellow (with a cool strip intersecting which echoes the border and binding), and then bound. Whew! It was a ton of work to put this all together, and is the result of months of plugging away at little bits and bobs. The last picture in the gallery above is a pic he sent of him enjoying the quilt, so I guess we will call it a win! :) As I said when I gave it to him, I have never spent so much time on what ended up being a ribbing-type joke about his ADHD. But I am glad I did it and get it finished--- it is maybe not the most beautiful design, but I love it both for its origin story and because he seems to appreciate it too (despite the ribbing). Well, I finally get to reveal my 2018 white whale--- this hexi lap quilt for my dear maman. As with many of the projects I start, I didn't quite appreciate the amount of work on this one, but I plugged away throughout the year, and eventually it all came together.
Essentially, this is your typical paper-pieced hexi quilt-- I basted all of the fabric scraps to 2" hexi templates (I just used normal paper), and started hand sewing them all together... and hand sewing... and hand sewing... :) The middle is a random assortment but the outer layers have a bit more direction as I started working out, with blues and greens at her head/feet and reds and oranges as the focus on the sides. In order to have it feel like the centre panel is floating and there were no hexis cut off abruptly, I did a final row of brown hexis around the whole quilt, before sewing panels of the brown to these hexis and trimming them accordingly. The border is a soft grey flannel with pieced panels from the cool and warm palates of the outer layers of the hexi panel, and the back is a simple blue. The binding is a fun purple batik that I think pulls it all together well. I kept the quilting simple with lines criss-crossing the hexi panel, and simple, randomly spaced vertical lines for the borders. I was glad to give this to mom for Christmas, both so she could enjoy it, and because I couldn't stop looking at it and petting this quilt. I love it SO MUCH, and cannot imagine making something so labour intensive for any one else but my long-suffering, sewing mother. Hope you enjoy it for many years to come, momma! :) Tis the season for high school graduations! While I am WELL out of the high school scene, a dear friend's son is graduating from high school and moving on to greener pastures at Concordia University. I remember receiving a blanket when I graduated, and still have it with me almost 25 years later. I am not sure what kids want nowadays, but thought I would take a chance and hope that Francisco S. would appreciate a little non-digital, low-fi, homemade coziness as he prepares to hunker down into his university career.
As with pretty much every project I start, I have ambitions of changing it up and starting with a tight, modern, hip design. But then I dive into the depths of my fabric stash and I get swept up in the rainbow chaos of all the eye candy... and I make a rainbow-inspired quilt... again. At least I am consistent in my weakness... After succumbing to the siren call of the unicorn, I laid out 2.5 inch strips of some of my faves into color families and started sewing them all together (alternating directions to avoid slippage in the rows). After the main panel was done, I sliced out an off-centre column and reversed its direction, putting it all back together and framing all three panels in a neutral star fabric (because #unicorn) and backing it all with a soft bright teal and pink retro-patterned cotton remnant. For quilting, as usual I kept it simple, quilting the larger panels in vertical lines and the reversed column in tight horizontal lines. Nothing revolutionary but I like it. Made a scrappy batch of binding with some of the leftovers, gave it a good wash and bob's your uncle! Even though it is not very out-of-the-box for me, I still love this quilt. It came together relatively quickly but delivers some big eye candy color payoff. I hope that Francisco enjoys many years of study snuggles in this quilt! Well, actually I might be a bit later than that even.... #betterlatethannever?
I made this belated baby quilt for Alexis and Andrew L. for their newest addition to the family, Claire, who arrived a few months ago but I was only recently able to put aside time to get this completed. Claire's cousin Vibeke was born a few months earlier, and they live quite close to each other, so I wanted to bring a little bit of what was happening in Vibeke's quilt into Claire's. That mainly came into play with the border fabric (which is the same as the background fabric in Vibeke's) and the general colorful chaos (which I can hardly help in the best of times) #rainbows4evah For this quilt, I collected some bright primary colors, and a few of my (rare) neutral prints (greys, beiges and white tones) to make a series of diamond blocks sitting in a more neutral background. From there I framed each of these in a fun diamond fabric, and encased the whole thing in a very narrow yellow border before going into the blue outer border to finish. To be honest, I wasn't sure if the yellow was going to be too thin, but in the end I really like the super narrow sashing--- makes it feel even more like a bit of lattice work, or a window pane. Anyway, once sandwiched, I quilted it simply by echoing the diamonds a few times, and following along the narrow yellow sashing. I backed it all with a fun complimentary graphic floral fabric, and bound it in dusty rose. I hope Claire likes her new quilt, and she and her cousin enjoy some of the complimentary colors between their two blankets! I gifted this to Dallas A. and Roberto C. for their impending bundle o' joy, and frankly, is one of my favourite baby quilts I have made of late. Inspired by a piece of Indonesian batik that my aunt gave to me over the holidays, I used that as the backdrop to a series of complimentary diamonds made out of primary colors. To make the diamonds I started with half square triangles of the background and navy, and then snowballed the navy with 4 different colors. From there is was just a matter of piecing them all together, sewing some narrow borders in between the squares and rows, and sandwiching it all up! I echoed the same fabrics from the diamonds in the binding, and backed it all with another piece of Indonesian cotton. Before binding, I quilted the blanket simply by echoing the diamonds, in a variegated rainbow thread. I love how this came out, and hope that the new member of our urban family enjoys this quilt for years to come!
Whew! This quilt was a long time coming... I had purchased a bunch of shirting cut-offs for very cheap at a recycled fabric sale, and was inspired to turn them into a quilt. They were all of a similar, quiet color palate, so I thought it would be fun to cobble the scraps together in random patterns and punctuate their 'buttoned-down' neutrality with shards of bright red. And so I started improvising the piecing and ended up with 9 cool blocks to work with, along with a tiled border echoing the colorway for this quilt top. I framed the blocks in a cool gold-tiled cotton to highlight the pattern, and connected it all with another shirting remnant that has little embroidered balls of shiny thread. Very fun!
And so the quilt top was done... in 2016.... I love this design and really wanted to quilt this piece properly, but with my 25 year-old machine whose feed dogs would not lower, I just couldn't do it justice. So I took this home to my mother's sewing room in New Brunswick with an ambitious vision of freemotion quilting the entire thing, while framing out the sharded squares with a more geometric pattern. As you will see from the pictures above (especially on the navy backing), this is what I eventually achieved, but it took FOREVER to get any traction on the quilt, since every time I went home and tried to work on it, we had mechanical problems or the thread tension was off or the free motion foot wasn't working.... Until this 2017 holiday season! I received a new and wonderful sewing machine for the holidays, and thought its maiden voyage should include vanquishing this beast of a project. To my utter delight, the new machine took to the free motion quilting like butter, and I had all of the outer freemotion border pieces done before leaving to come back to Ottawa! With that, all I had left was to frame in the sharded squares, trim things up and sew on the binding. I machine sewed the binding to the front of the quilt, and then turned it and hand-sewed it with a slipstitch on the back. It took time to finish but I am really pleased with the final look. After a year and a half of languishing over this project, it felt like an epic start to the year to finally get this quilt finished. As it was my white whale for so long, I will be keeping this one, using it in my guest bedroom--- and I hope it had many years of delight and warmth to share! Here's to an inspiring 2018 full of new projects, new machines, new experiments and all things quiltingly awesome! A lap quilt for my lovely sister Leah B. for her birthday this year. While they recently got a dog, her first love is kitty cats... combining this with her favourite hue of blue, and we have lift off! I did 12 different cat blocks in fund fabrics, and hand embroidered a different expression on each one, from sleeping to shocked to sneaky. Each of the blocks were then trimmed in a pebbled border and snowballed with an aqua batik. Then the lot of blocks were bordered with a graded blue square patterned fabric, backed with a funky piece of dyed green and blue cotton, sandwiched with organic cotton, and then lightly machine-quilted and hand tied with coordinated yarn (not shown--- forgot to take a final set of pics before gifting it to her). This was a fun project to take on since I had some clear directions to take things (ALL THE KITTIES AND BLUENESS), and I enjoyed dabbling in simple embroidery to give the blocks some personality. I know Leah has already been enjoying the quilt as we move into the autumn months, so I hope this one provides many years of warmth and kitty-themed whimsy!
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