[Quilt #13] Baby Quilt Request

A great friend asked me if I had anything laying around that she could buy from me for a shower gift.  She didn't want to "just do the registry thing," she wanted something hand made!  I told her I didn't and we talked over a few ideas of what I could do quickly (she needed it in 4 days).  It's funny how these days, the thing that comes together most quickly for me is a quilt.

I took a look at the baby registry to get ideas of what they were after - pale green, purple, and yellow, and they'd registered for things with jungle animals on them, and in another case, an owl.  As I glanced through my fabric, the quilt suddenly became quite clear: the soft greens, grays, and periwinkle in my collection of Jane Dixon's Primitiva were absolutely perfect.

I told my friend that this would be a very simple quilt, and she was fine with that.  I bordered two cuts of fabric - one for the front and one for the back, and then for the first time ever, attempted to applique' something onto a quilt top.  I've applique'd a couple of times, just for kicks, but this was the first time I did it onto something that really mattered.

Notice how I didn't have to piece the eyes for the owl - I cut them right out of the fabric and sewed them on!    The owl came together more easily than I expected, and the wavy lines in the fabric were so beautiful to quilt by.  I was pleased with how adorable it turned out.  So adorable, in fact, that I simple had to take it one step further.  My very first stuffed animal:

Landscape Architect Quilter

Photo Credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

This is where the Quilter and the Landscape Architect in me collide.  The quilter sees this image and immediately responds: "What a beautiful quilt!"  The Landscape Architect immediately thinks: "Irrigation!"  The Landscape Architect wins, but the quilter wants to sew it up.

It's a photo of Finney County, Kansas, and was part of an Earth Day slide show on Space.com that included beautiful images of earth from space. This land that was once prairie and dry much of the time is now a beautiful patchwork of green due to the conversion to farmland made possible by irrigation systems, mostly center-pivot systems.

Wouldn't this make a beautiful quilt?!  I really like the offset angle at which the land was captured.  The consistent same-sized squares are quilt-ready, and the simple variety of colors of green and shape and size and configuration of the circles makes it dance.

I long to make quilts like this - from aerial photos:  photos taken from space of cities full of blocks ready to be expressed in fabric (Chicago is to me one of the most beautiful), rivers winding through still-empty lands, the textures of mountains in the deep shadows of sunrise.  I suppose this is where the quilter, Landscape Architect, and lover of all things space collide.

[Quilt #12] Baby Girl Crib Quilt

All fabric is from Joel Dewberry's Modern Meadow, and I wish I could buy more and more of that line and makes lots of these!  I also wish it was as easy to quilt a throw-size quilt as it is to quilt a crib quilt; it was very satisfying to sit at the machine for just an hour and have this all quilted up!

While designing this quilt I learned to measure/calculate and work with the triangles to piece the 45-degree squares into a square block.  I also learned how great a trick it is to quilt in an "x" across such blocks instead of around the edges.  In using the kaleidoscope blocks I learned that you've really got to get those corners where the kits meet the diamonds super tight and secure - without tight seams these will wear quickly and need repair.  I had to go back over this quilt after I was finished and tack those down just to make sure.

Ahhh... I could stare at this quilt for hours.  Well, the pictures of it anyways, even though I hung it upside down when I photographed it!  It has been safely delivered and opened with joy at a most beautiful baby shower.  I know it brought the new mama joy and I hope this little baby girl loves it for a very long time!  

At some point, I might have to admit I have a problem

Things that have always appealed to me: geometry, patterns, beautiful fabric, and putting things together in an unexpected way to make something beautiful.  And so I seem to be developing a new habit with these kaleidoscope squares.  I used to not love larger-scale patterns in fabric, but now every time I see a motif of suitable size, I begin to imagine what it would look like cut and pieced this way.  The fun thing though, is that you never really know how it will come together until it actually comes together!

Take Joel Dewberry's Modern Meadow, Sunflower in Berry for example:

I had ordered a selection of half yards from this collection in order to make a crib quilt for a baby shower.  I had a design in mind for the quilt, but once I saw the sunflowers would fit so perfectly to the required kite shape, well I got that crazed look in my eye and had to stop what I was doing right then to get to work.  And then I realized, that even with just a half yard, I could cut enough motifs to lay the block out two different ways, with completely different results!  This is all just too much fun.  

And now I'll be trying my first "free form"-ish quilting layout - as I figure out what will go around these blocks to complete the quilt.  Hmmm.....

[Hand] Quilting

Awhile back I came across some bird nest fabric on sale and just had to buy it.  It made me think of my GrannyAnn and her love for birds, and though I didn't know what it would be, I wanted to use it to make something for her.  I've already made her a full size quilt with a different set of bird motifs, and when I remembered how pretty she likes to make her table in the springtime, I thought of a table runner!

This was the first small quilted project I've made in awhile, and as I was finishing up the piecing, I realized it might be the perfect thing to try some hand quilting - for the first time!  So I pulled out some betweens, some thimbles, and a large embroidery hoop.

Though I have longed for the experience of hand quilting, I've held off.  Though it's hard enough to quilt using a small, old machine with a walking foot, due to my back/neck/shoulder/wrist woes I've been fearful of trying it by hand.  I've learned to sit with reasonable posture at the sewing machine, but wasn't sure how I could make hand quilting work.  Lately though, I've not been as pleased with the results from my machine.  I feel that as my skills are growing, they have reached the limits of what my machine can do, and I've been thinking that the next step in pursuing this passtime might require a substantial investment: either a great, ergonomic hand quilting frame or a machine designed for quilting.

So this little project was a bit of a test to see which direction I might take, and what I learned is that either I'm not doing it at all right, or I'm most definitely a machine quilter!  Though after a bit I was able to get consistent, pretty stitches, it created a great tension in the muscles of my hand, wrist, arm, and shoulder.  I had very little endurance for the work with that kind of pain and cannot at all imagine doing this over a whole quilt!  Also, though the hand-stitched look is appealing, as I think through the type of quilting I do most often, it seems more appealing to be able to match a bobbin thread to the backing and the top thread to the quilt top than to have the same thread visible on both sides.

I'm not giving up though - going to search for some tips or videos online and see if I can improve my method, and overall I'm completely pleased with how this pretty little thing turned out.