This and That and a New Baby

August 7, 2013April 2, 2024 Elizabeth E.19 Comments

While the rest of us have been having a summer, my son and his wife have been having a baby: they flew to Iowa (sweet corn country) to pick up their newest son, making four in that family, and number eleven grandchild for me.

We had the older boys stay at our house, and here they are doing a little corn shucking of their own with grandpa.

Somewhere in here, I finished the quilt for Charlie, this newest grandson.

I love love the back of this fabric: Backyard Baby, and so instead of a formal label, I scattered the information within the breezy trees. (That little white dog, with its ears blowing backwards, cracks me up every time I look at it.) While I finished it up a couple of days ago, I’ve learned to write the birth month on the quilt.

This is quilt #120 on my 200 Quilts list.

But summer is always slightly ADHD with going here, going there and not staying home to clean out the garage, don’t you think? So here’s a bit more this and that:

Kris, of Duke Says Sew What, is doing another Polaroid Swap, if you want to join in. I’m slow to post this, so hurry over to her blog and leave a comment to let her know you are participating; you have until August 26th to mail in your blocks (domestic — the international mail-in deadline is a bit earlier).

Several nights this summer, my husband and I have streamed down Endeavour, the newest detective series on our iPads (we have an Apple TV), a prequel to Inspector Morse and which I like better. The star, Shaun Evans, is an interesting mix of loose ends and brilliant thinking. It also helps to have one of these to get into the mystery:

And finally, finishing up this peripatetic post, is notice of a

I attended the Long Beach Quilt Show last weekend and picked up a couple of fun things to giveaway to my readers and followers, knowing that the end of summer is coming and we can’t say good-bye to its crazy days without a little fun. Giveaways (I have more than one!) will be posted at the end of this week, and I’ll pick my winners next Monday, the 12th.

Have a nice end to your summer!

Christine’s Philadelphia

May 28, 2013April 2, 2024 Elizabeth E.21 Comments

At the last post, we were in the bakery section of Bottega Louie and I had a big surprise for my sister Christine.

It was Christine’s Philadelphia, a quilt celebrating her life and her newly adopted city. She moved to a Philadelphia row house this past year, after ten years in transition. First, she raised all her children, then began a new section of her life as an artist, returning to school. Settling in to this life was not for long, as her husband died of cancer in a quick and wild two years. She went on a mission for our church to New York City, and resumed a friendship with Doug, who had also lost his wife. They married after her mission and she moved from the West Coast, where she’d spent most of her adult life, to the East Coast (Delaware), then finally to a lovely home in Philadelphia, within walking distance of art museums. She resumed her art, but one more mishap: while biking to her studio one evening, she was hit by a car, but has now mostly recovered from that accident. She is taking on new challenges all the time. So you can see why I wanted to make her a quilt. I had lots to cram into one tiny creation of mine.

She was surprised. And I think, delighted.

I’d been planning it and working on it for a few weeks, and when she came out for her son’s graduation, I knew I could give it to her then and see her face, and then mail it back later (which I’m doing).

This was the sketch I made in QuiltPro. I knew that I wanted to alternate bold solids (for the roofs) with other patterns (for the houses).

This was the quilt, all sewn and smoothed up on the pin wall. I think I was able to execute the vision I had fairly successfully. I also wanted to emphasize the chevron effect, but didn’t want a steep 45-degree angle on the roofs, instead I went with something more sloping (drawing my own pattern to get this done). I often thought about making this just in solids, like the sketch, but I’m all about richness and texture in my quilts.

This was the first pulling of fabrics. I was worried about mixing the moderns (used mostly for the houses and the row above, as well as the sky) with the densely colored, floral Kaffe Fassett fabrics.

I sent a photo of this around to some friends and asked them what they thought. Cindy of LiveAColorfulLife said, “Oh, go for it.” So I did. (Like all my junk on the sides of my pinwall? Sometimes I treat it like a giant cork board.)

Swapping out roofs on the right side to see if I like the orange down on top of the yellows any better. I don’t.

But I tried the whole row and added in the doors and windows. You’ll notice there’s a bold blue sky piece which disappeared in the final version. I keep trying to refine my design as I go, snapping a digital picture, evaluating, moving things around, and repeating the process.

I am not a fan of when people say “Oh, I am working on this but I can’t show you.” Then just don’t show me. I hate keeping quilt secrets, but I had to keep it secret from my sister as it was a surprise, so I tried this sideways artsy shot on Instagram one day, hoping it would disguise the basic design. I didn’t want to put it anywhere on my blog since she’s a faithful reader.

I formed the windows and doors over a piece of stiff paper (like what is in a calendar) so they would be all the same size, then topstitched them down.

I sewed the narrow roof/house sections row by row; here’s one row lined up for stitching.

Then I would add the house, then the sky. The “row” on the right is all done. I’ll do another post on sewing those Y-seams, but later.

I like this shot. It reminded me of the AMH feather block I’d done for my Mid-Century Modern Bee.

I pressed the seams open — a rarity for me.

I took it outside to photograph the top, and just by draping it over the fence, I could see how valuable that deep plum-colored roof was to the whole composition. This partly influenced what color I chose for the binding.

Christine’s Philadelphia, front

I rigged up a clothesline on my back fence to take photos, as my husband wasn’t home and I wanted to get it ready to go with us to the graduation. I used a Jane Sassaman for the backing (above), and my quilter was lickety-split on the quilting (thanks, Cathy!).

I didn’t want the quilt label to stand out too much on that background, so printed it on yellow.

Here we are again, in an uncropped photo. You can see all the bakery goodies in the background.

When you sew on a quilt that is destined for someone, you spend a lot of time thinking about that person, in essence sending good vibes out into the universe for them, I think. I remembered the time she had mononucleosis when she was going to Stanford, and moved home (my dad was a professor there so we lived in the area). I was in high school at the time, and we shared a room while she convalesced. She hates it when I say this, but she has served as a great example for me and my other sisters, as all four of us are close together in age. All of my sisters are amazing. I am beyond lucky to be able to say this, and I know it. I made a quilt with Cynthia, made one for Susan, and now, with this one, they all have one of my quilts.

And with each quilt, I send them my love.

****

This is Quilt #115 of 200 quilts, and I’m publishing this post on my mother’s 85th birthday. Happy Birthday, Mom!!

(Don’t worry. A long time ago, I made her a quilt too.)

200 Quilts · Family Quilts · Quick Quilt · Quilts

Chris’ Welcome-to-the-Family Quilt

March 24, 2013April 2, 2024 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

This is where I was Wednesday morning, after listening to hours and hours of a new audio book: Beautiful Ruins. My mother’s still ~~reading~~ listening to it, so I’ll withhold my review until later. But the really good thing about audio books is that when they are playing on your desktop computer in the same room as the sewing machine, a lot gets sewn, like a quilt top for our new-to-our-family adopted grandson Chris. This is my Sashless Quilt, with the tutorial found *here.*

Full length shot on our front porch, with hands belonging to my tall husband Dave.

This isn’t a complicated quilt, it sews up quickly, and I love using favorites from my stash like the bicycle fabric. I’d been saving that for a long time and this was the perfect use because my son (Chris’ Dad) loves bike riding, owns a bunch of them and takes all his sons out on bike rides.

I started cutting this on Monday, sewed Tuesday and Wednesday morning, quilted Thursday, did the binding on Friday. Hey! I felt like Rita from Red Pepper Quilts, only I’m not listing it in my ETSY shop. (I don’t even have an ETSY shop.)

The “label.” Sometimes with quilts I know will be washed and washed, I don’t mess with a formal label, but simply write directly on the quilt with a Micron Pen.

Glamour shot, reclining on the sofa. I did the basic quilting: stitch in the ditch. I’d played with the idea of doing echo-quilting alongside the seams, but in the end changed my mind.

I gave it to Chris as they arrived on Saturday evening to celebrate my husband’s birthday. Chris’ younger brother Andrew used it first.

Later on, after dinner and all the adults talked, Chris nabbed it and settled into a movie. Or was it a game? I can see that at the dimensions of 46″ x 57″ he will soon outgrow the quilt, but I didn’t want it too big–it’s a “welcome to the family” quilt, like what his brothers received when they were newborns.

Chris seems to like it–I’m so glad!

It’s Quilt #109 on my 200 Quilts list.

200 Quilts · Family Quilts · Quilts · Tutorial

Sunshine and Shadow Quilt Tutorial

February 14, 2013April 2, 2024 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

Here’s the recipe for the quilt I gave to my sister-in-law, Janice. But I think you’ll notice how “lopsided” the block is–and that’s because I wanted to eliminate the sashing step, including it in the making of the quilt. I also wanted to make this quilt completely from my fabric stash, so I chose colors I had multiples of, in different designs and shadings. What is sashing? It’s those long strips that separate blocks from each other and can be part of the design of a quilt, letting each block float in its own little world. Many modern quilts eliminate them, but I like them occasionally.

I started with the centers and cut all of them from the same line, but used two versions of the yellow flowers. Then I pulled out a lot of different fabrics, trying to keep in the same tonality in the blues, and in the yellows, so the quilt top would be harmonious.

1. After cutting, the first step is to sew two blue strips on the sides of the large center block.

2. Sew two yellow blocks on the end of the blue rectangles.

3. Line them up. After choosing good sets that go well together, stitch the yellow square/blue strip pieces onto the center. I pressed the seams towards the blue, away from the yellows. Sew the strips onto the center section.

4. True up, by placing a 9 1/2″ ruler on top. I found if I trued it up at this stage, the rest of the construction went smoothly.

5. Sew all but one of the blue squares onto the larger yellow strips. Then get ready to put them all together. You won’t use all the blue square/yellow strip pieces at this point. Just set the extras aside. I wanted to audition how the random yellows and blue fit together, so I took one large block, a yellow strip and a blue square/yellow strip piece, making sure I wasn’t duplicating fabrics in any significant way.

6. I pinned the yellow strip on the bottom, and folded up the other strip and pinned it to where it would eventually be sewn. Sew on the yellow strip.

Here it is, with yellow strip sewn on, showing that I pressed the seam to the outside yellow.

In all cases, first press seam flat to eliminate puckers, wobbly edges, then press the seam open.

7. Sew the blue square/yellow strip piece on the center construction, matching seams, etc. This is the finished block.

8. Because my pin wall is longer from side to side, than from top to bottom, I rotated the blocks a half turn and laid them out on the wall. I kept using my digital camera to make sure that there weren’t too many of those darker yellow-gold pieces mushed together, as well as eyeballing a good distribution of the rest of the colors. The quilt looks a bit strange now, because you are still missing a length of “sashing” on the left side and on the bottom.

9. Because I still wanted to sew these as blocks, I laid out the “sashing” pieces, each with a blue square on them, where they should go. I laid them out, again checking for color and value distribution. I had to sew that random last blue square onto a yellow strip/blue square piece, then I sewed these pieces onto the adjacent block. When you replace these new expanded blocks on your pin wall, be careful not to rotate them into a wrong orientation. Use your last digital photo as a guide.

10. Put quilt together: I put row markers (shown in *this post*) on the blocks on the left side of the wall, in order to keep track. Then I stitched the rows together, going across. Stitch rows together, going down, until the quilt top is complete. I think it goes much faster (have I said this before?) because you are sewing blocks, rather than long strips of sashing.

Quilt as desired (and my favorite way is calling Cathy and having her do it for me). I used the extra bits of blue strips I’d cut out, plus extra, to make a scrappy binding.

Okay here’s the honest truth: I started out with a completely different idea for this quilt and cut a whole lot of blue and yellow fabrics into 2 1/2″ strips, but realized that my time was short so I had to step up to a quicker quilt. That’s when I had the idea of adding the sashing pieces to the block, because sometimes sashing just wobbles and stretches and becomes one pain-in-the-rear step to making a quilt. This was was much faster, and I think the integrity of the quilt doesn’t suffer for it. You’ll notice I tried to press to the “sashing” side always, as I think that distinguishes those pieces from the “block.”

To make the label, I did the usual method of pressing some fabric to freezer paper, running it through my Epson printer (they have the best inks), bordering it, then stitching it onto the quilt invisibly around the outside edges. I also like to do it on the inside edge of the border, where the label meets the edging. No one can tell, but it poofs out less from the surface of the quilt if it has that second round of stitching.

I’m actually planning to make another like this, as it is really quick, and I like the fact that I can use up my stash.

I seem to have lost a few days here, but with the weekend coming (a holiday weekend!), I hope to find time to dive into some stitching, and some blogging.