Category: Family Quilts

100 Quilts · Family Quilts · Finishing School Friday

Southern Brights–FSF

Elizabeth E.3 Comments

This is my son Matthew and his wife, Kim.  Sometimes she likes to be called Kimberly.  Other times it’s just Kim.  She’s a bright and sunny personality of a gal, and easily matches my son in energy, determination and love of a good joke.  They’re great.

This is their family, taken at a family camping trip (quickly! and that’s why Emilee has no shoes on), in the mountains above Phoenix Arizona, a place they call their home.  But only for another day or so, because he’s been promoted in his corporate job and they’re off to Cinncinati Ohio.  I love that she would follow him anywhere, so I decided to make her a quilt to honor her love of the Southwest and her bright and sunny personality.

Ta Da!  I give you “Southern Brights.”  It’s a Bento Box block, with lots of wild and crazy fabrics, put together in a bundle by Fabricworm, but of course, I added a few of my own.

My favorite is the little Round Robin fabric with little round robins on it.  I also like the punched-up hugeness of those flowers in the middle.  Change in scale?  This quilt’s got it.  Change in color?  Yep, yep.  Change in value?  Not so much (all medium fabrics) so I threw in some lights and brights to keep the eye moving.

Love the Marimekko fabric on the back, punctuated by a strip of the the Anne Kelle flowers.  Alas, our Crate and Barrel outlet has closed, so now if I want those fabrics, I need to travel an hour and half–instead the previous half-hour.  So I hoard my stash of these, but this quilt just called out for something sunny and bright.

I wish them all success in their new home and new state!

Family Quilts · Quilts

Cynthia’s Quilt Done!

Elizabeth E.2 Comments

Here we are, standing in front of the completed quilt top.  The little yellow papers are to keep track of the rows.

We went off to the quilt shop on Wednesday morning, picked up some fabric for the back, then stopped for a leisurely lunch at In N’ Out Burger.  Back home, we pieced the back together and were at the quilter by 2:15 p.m. to drop off the quilt.  Done!!  It’s a good feeling to get a quilt done from start to finish.  I appreciate her determination–it’s a lovely quilt.  I think of it as Daughter of Blue Quilt. The quilter will mail her the quilt, so we made the binding and rolled it up to travel home to the Chicago area, where she heads this morning.

The quilt is kind of representative of our bond as sisters.  Lots of little patches make a whole quilt and lots of experiences make up a relationship.  This much is an obvious metaphor when looking at a quilt–but I think also that our appreciation of  quilts comes from the time spent with it.  Just like sisters.

I’ve made a quilt with Susan (Crossed Canoes–which was not “for her” but that she made in honor of a friend), and now with Cynthia.  Wonder if Christine, my oldest sister and I will ever do one together?

Creating · Family Quilts

Cynthia’s Quilt

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

We interrupt Road for a minute to tell you the sewing machine is still cooking along. (More posts are coming.)

My sister came to stay for a few days.  Guess what?  She wanted to make a quilt.  (Twist my arm.)

I had some blue squares leftover, and we cut some more from my stash and a couple of more squares from what I’d picked up at Road.

Yes, my circles are underneath another layer of improvised pinwall.  So here’s where it was when we finished Monday night.  I went off to teach on Tuesday morning, and she had a Quilter’s Epiphany.  You know–when you hate everything you’ve done, and want to start over.

She’s sewed the block rows into strips and is sewing the strips together now.  I’m going to make her stop so we can go and get dinner–husband’s out of town–who wants to cook when quilting’s going on?  Sushi anyone?

Family Quilts · Quilts

Working in a Series

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

Here I am again, with a bunch of pink and orange and some orangey-red patches.  I’d started this when the boredom and pressure of constant grading began to get to me earlier in the fall, when cutting and stitching and feeling the fabric under my fingers was a tonic for what ailed me.  I finally got back to it this week–Dead Week (bliss!)–and have finished most of the top.  I still have another narrow white (with teeny blocks) then that long blocky-piano key-type border on the left.  Just a little something extra to differentiate it from the one I made for my daughter (•here•).

I began this because I “knew” it–knew how to do it and didn’t have to think about it when my brain was really somewhere else.  But it’s been interesting to stitch the same thing again.  This repeating of a quilt is not a process I do ever, and yet I’ve always heard that “working in a series” is the best way to go.  Of course those who offer that advice mean it in service of the creative process–not making the same exact thing over and over, but sticking with a technique, a style, mining a vein of creativity to see where it takes you.  Knowing myself, I wonder if that might not lead to boredom on my part?  It’s the constant change of promise that keeps me going forward.  I’m guessing I’m not alone here, judging from the explosion of fabrics this past two years, put out in limited edition, one-of-a-kind fabric lines that quickly sell out, leaving room for newer arrays to tempt us quilters.

I did finish another quilt this fall, but I couldn’t really write about it because it was a Christmas gift for my daughter-in-law, Kristen.  I did give a sneak peek *here* when I held it up at Quilt Night,  but here’s a lovely picture of lovely Kristen on Christmas morning with her quilt.

She says she loves it, and that makes me happy.  I guess when I look back, I have worked in type of series, but just not a creative-push-the-edge type series.  I made the green quilt, then the pinky-orange quilt, then this blue quilt.  I went for the modern-style pattern of lots of “empty ground” with the white, letting the fabrics come forward.

Whether working in a series or not, perhaps the bigger and more important issue is to keep on working?