Quilts and Books

Three weeks ago I found I needed to whip up a quick gift. I would like to have made something more elaborate, but being short on time, I decided to choose this very simple pattern. Leafdrops was designed by Cheryl Wittmayer of Sew Be It. The pattern actually makes a much larger quilt. This is about 22" x 32". I went with just 2 blocks using a gorgeous, rich golden leaf fabric and a brown print. The pattern included some quilting designs that I really liked. I quilted the veins of the leaves and then mimicked that in the borders. I think the veins also resemble empty tree branches. I love the effect.
To quilt this design I lightly drew it in chalk and then just free-motioned over my chalk lines. The dark brown frame is ditch stitched. I love to quilt with Aurifil thread and I used two colors (a brown and a bright golden yellow) for the quilting and for the machine applique.

 Here are a couple of views of the back.

My June UFO project was a big one. I had pieced the central portion of this quilt in February at my guild's retreat. And by the terms of the UFO contest at my local quilt shop, I only needed to finish piecing the top. Then I made the rather insane decision to enter it in the June NQA show. That meant it had to be fully finished by the 20th of June in order to have it to the show on time.
I didn't want to take the easy way out by doing an all-over (i.e. boring) quilting pattern. I wanted the quilting to reflect the themes of the Asian fabrics. So each large panel across the quilt is quilted differently. From top to bottom I quilted small flowers, water, leaves, chrysanthemums, and ginkgo leaves fallen among pebbles. The border fabric is printed bamboo, so I quilted long, skinny leaves--they kind of look like grass. Oh my, was that a ton of work. But I am so pleased with how it turned out:
This picture shows a little more detail of the quilting:

Here's a shot from the back:

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I'm working under a couple of deadlines, so I don't have much time for blogging. Nonetheless, here's a peak at what I'm working on now. The first two pictures are the quilting on the quilt I started in February at my annual guild retreat (scroll down).
When my shoulders get tired from pushing that big quilt around, I work on this little wall hanging. Here's the background waiting for a few big and colorful flowers. This is going to be fun.

Well I'm half way through my local quilt shop's UFO Challenge and so far so good. I've finished the three projects I'd intended to do. Sadly I haven't won any of the monthly prizes, but I am loving the incentive to get these things done.

First, I need to remind you of this quilt that I made a couple of years ago:


It was for the great-nephew of a co-worker. She commissioned me to make a baby quilt for him. We talked about colors and I found this great space fabric that I thought would be fun for a boy. Only it turns out that the baby's mom hates orange and other bright colors. So we went with Plan B, the blue and brown quilt above.

But that left me with this quilt top. I set it aside to quilt later. And here it is, done at last. I love this version so much. It's bright and happy.


For the quilting, I did free-motion stars all over the whole thing. They're very funky looking. Here's the back where you can see them better:


But of course, this wasn't…

The president of my guild issued a challenge last fall. Make a quilt that displays the 6 main colors of the color wheel. The quilt has to show the progression of the colors, although it doesn't matter which color you begin with. They were due at our April meeting. Here are a few of them:




That one above is made of yo-yos, appliqued to a black background. It is simply stunning in person and was voted favorite quilt by the members of the guild.
As you're about to see, it's clear I have a thing for squares. I was inspired by some colorful, whimsical artwork at the local children's hospital. I decided it would be fun to go through my stash and see how much variety I could find. This was my entry. 
Below is a close-up of the quilting. I made a fundamental mistake with my straight-line quilting, going back and forth rather than starting each line of quilting from the same end. It caused some tugging on the fabric and distorted my squares. I almost ripped out all of the quilti…

And the winner was .... author Dorothy St. James! Dorothy has previously written in several genres as Dorothy McFalls. Now she has a mystery series out (book 3 is due in April) centered around Casey Calhoun, the White House Gardener.
When Dorothy won the Brenda Novak Auction for Diabetes Research last May, she only had covers for two of her books in the trilogy. I was happy to wait until she received the 3rd cover before beginning work on her quilt. In the end we agreed I'd start after the holidays; I finished it last week and shipped it to her. Now that I have word that it safely arrived I can show it off.
Essentially I chose to mimic the look of a triple picture frame. The covers themselves are beautiful, but busy. So I decided to go simple and drew inspiration from the White House and the color red to symbolize the fact that the books are murder mysteries. I found a fabulous white batik fabric with very subtle blue, yellow, green, and pink shading. You might be able to see it …

I was commissioned last summer to make a t-shirt quilt for a young man headed off to his freshman year of college. As you can see, he was active in sports, band, and Boy Scouts. This is now my 3rd t-shirt quilt and I've gotten quite comfortable making them. Once I figure out the layout it goes quickly.
The recipient was supposed to get it to use in his dorm room. His mother took it up to him and promptly decided that dorm living would be too hard on it and brought it home. I'm glad she treasures it, but I'm sad it's not being used. When B. saw his quilt, one of his first comments was "I wondered where that shirt went." Pretty funny. Fortunately he really likes it. He just has to come home to use it.

And a close up of the quilting. I just did a quick all-over meander:


From the 2011 issue of Best Fat Quarter Quilts comes this pattern called Circle in a Square. The original pattern makes up into 12 blocks. I made two smaller units instead of one big one. The wa…

This is a picture of a spread from the Spring 2012 issue of Quilt Sampler. I saw this quilt and instantly fell in love. The pattern was designed by Kathy Thomas and Jo Thomas of Suppose Quilt Boutique of Preston, Idaho. While the shop offers a kit, I decided to use that over-abundant stash of mine and make my own version. About the same time I was deciding to make it, I learned that my niece and her husband were expecting their first child. Baby gift!
So below is my version of the quilt. You can see some variation in color based on what I own in my stash. (I need to collect some brighter yellows!) There are some great memories for me in the fabrics in my version. I used a couple of fabrics that are at least 20 years old. There are remnants from other quilts that I remember quite well. A few of those purples were in this pinwheel quilt I made last winter.

And here is a close-up of my quilting. I did these half-moon shapes up and down the pencils to simulate the roundness of a pencil. I…

Last month I wrote about a class I took with Phillipa Naylor on precision piecing. I finished that little wall hanging and used it to practice my free motion machine quilting. Here's the finished quilt, which is 22" x 22":
Here are a couple of close-ups of the quilting. There's so much of it--this sucker is stiff as a board, lol!

 I got my Christmas present a bit early--a new camera! So I had to play with the close-up feature. Nice, huh?

 And I decided I needed a festive holiday purse! I used some poinsettia fabrics here:

Hard to believe, but the 2012 Brenda Novak Auction for the Cure of Diabetes is right around the corner, little more than 2 months away. Since my Teen has this disease, I've been contributing a quilted project for several years now. This year, I'm offering something a little different that I hope will appeal to authors, but perhaps readers might like this, too.

I am offering to make a "book cover wall hanging"--that is I will design and make a wall hanging that includes the images of up to 4 book covers. High-resolution files, submitted by the winning bidder, will be printed onto fabric and sewn into a quilt that will probably measure around 24" x 18", depending on how many book covers are used. To illustrate what I'm thinking of, I made up a prototype for Brenda as a thank you for all she's done to make the auction happen.

I chose to work with Brenda's latest series and started with these three book covers:


I need to pause a moment and admire th…