Category Archives: Quilting

May 3, 2014 · 7:13 pm

Play on Point quilt

Here is a quilt I made for my friend’s new toddler! They adopted a recently-turned-two-year-old boy from China. He’s a gem, and they are a wonderful family.

This quilt is about 60″ square and features quarter log cabin blocks set on point. A tutorial for making one of these quilts will be on the blog on MONDAY along with a GIVEAWAY! Woot! This quilt was inspired by THIS ONE instagram’d by 2ndavestudio.

I love looking at these bright colors after our long, dreary winter!

It’s been a while since I stippled a quilt. There’s something to be said about the free, loopy, swirly playfulness of this super fast quilting pattern.

2 Comments

Filed under Quilting

February 16, 2014 · 8:37 pm

Riley Blake Challenge Quilt

Hello! Here is my entry for the Riley Blake Modern Quilt Challenge. I call it Riley’s Cloud:

Happy little cloud bumps made using my sew-and-turn applique method explained here.

It’s not blanket stitch, not raw edge, not needle-turn – it’s sew and turn and it’s my favorite!

Can you see the scallop quilting?

There are four cloud outlines hidden in the white.

A little splash of color against our milk sky, our snowy roof-tops, and the black, bare trees.

This quilt was made for the MQG Riley Blake Challenge. Members of the modern quilt guild were sent fabric bundles of Riley Blake designer quilting cottons.

The Ann Arbor Quilt Guild is also having a challenge! Our members will pick a favorite and win a stack of fabric!

More pictures after the jump:

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under A2MQG, Challenges, Fabric, Quilting, Techniques

January 17, 2014 · 1:54 pm

Vintage Hanky Quilt

My mother-in-law gave me a box of beautiful handkerchiefs that once belonged to her grandmother. I pieced them into a quilt to give to my MIL for Christmas this past December.

To make a quilt with handkerchiefs, I found it helpful to stabilize the hankies with fusible light-weight interfacing before cutting them into half-square triangles. I am so floored by how colorful and lush the hankies look when you cut them down!

The solid I used is either Kona Bone or Kona Ivory… who can keep track of such things 😛

I call this quilt “Grandma Love” because it is both a way for my MIL to remember her grandma, but also a token of my appreciation for my boys’ Grandma Gracie. She is such an absolutely amazing grandma to those kids.

I used an all over magnolia quilting pattern. I backed the quilt with a vintage sheet I bought from the lovely EmmmyLizzy via her etsy shop.

I bound the quilt in the same neutral Kona whatever : )

Have you played with incorporating sentimental, non-quilting fabrics into your sewing projects? I’ve got a stack of my husbands old work shirts I plan on playing with someday.

Thanks for stopping by!

1 Comment

Filed under Fabric, Quilting, Techniques

January 6, 2014 · 9:13 pm

Woodlands in Winter Quilt and Tutorial

Here is a quilt I made for my mother for Christmas! I call it Woodlands in Winter. They live in the forest and run the Woodlands Sawmill.

tree-1

Improv trees on a sea of mixed neutrals. I was inspired by Lovely Design’s Lovely Little Forest quilt from the Purl Bee.

Walking foot quilting in flowing lines, inspired by Debbie’s Joy of Simplicity pillow seen here.

I bought a white-on-white bundle from Pink Castle Fabrics and used a lot of Kona Bone for the background. It measures something like 80″ x 75″.

One tree fell down. Time to harvest its lumber!

Read on for a tutorial on how to make these wonky trees and plan for the final layout…

Continue reading →

8 Comments

Filed under Fabric, Holiday, Pattern, Quilting, Tutorial

Tagged as quilt, quilting, tree

November 12, 2013 · 6:13 pm

International Quilt Festival

I was very honored to have had two of my quilts accepted into the Modern Quilt Exhibit at the International Quilt Festival in Houston. See all of the exhibit’s quilts here…

“Trapezoids at Work” originally blogged here

“Archicoop” – more pictures here – and featuring my homegirl Rossie who teaches this applique method.

Vroom Vroom! Another car quilt

A simple, fun commissioned quilt for a newborn boy!

The pattern is inspired by a design from this book HERE.

Cars are from Riley Blake’s Peak Hour and were appliqued using my sew and turn method.I’ve made two of these quilts before and they are blogged here.

1 Comment

Filed under Fabric, Kids, Quilting

November 7, 2013 · 7:10 pm

Felix Quilt

Here’s a take on a Positive Space quilt in perky yellows, oranges, and blues. It’s for a new darling boy who was born a couple of weeks ago.

I love these Lizzy House fabrics and also, if you look at the picture above, I like the chevron prints that I cut on angles. Sort of fun, huh?

I used yellow thread for the quilting; a zig-zag stitch done with my walking foot.

I love this binding with the plaid, and the backing is shirting fabric. It is so incredibly soft!

2 Comments

Filed under Fabric, Pattern, Quilting

September 30, 2013 · 12:17 pm

City Stripes – A King Sized Quilt

My sister in law recently acquired a piece by YURI MASNYJ and decided she wants to hang it in her bedroom – where she will be sure to see it everyday.

This lead to her desire to have a new quilt for her king-sized bed that would coordinate with the print and the variety of other beautiful artworks she has in her room. (She runs an art gallery and her whole house features AMAZING art.)

I was super honored that she commissioned me to come up with a quilt! We worked together on the design, and after seeing THIS quilt and THIS quilt I came up with this sketch:

And then it was off to the races! I drew a grid over my sketch to help me keep track of the proportions:

Each row was developed and built out, then framed with grey. The rows were then joined and the final border was fleshed out until I had my desired width.

My Bernina people said that they would never try to quilt a King on their machine. I have a 550 QE and I just didn’t want to give up and send it to a quilter without giving it a try – especially since I knew I really wanted a version of straight line quilting! I used a thin cotton batting and am happy to report that with my walking foot and ziggy zaggy stitch 16, as well as a large table with chairs around helping support the blanket, AND some clean gardening gloves to aid in my guiding of the fabric, I really had ZERO problems quilting this blanket. Zig Zag stitches every 1.5 – 3.5 inches throughout the entire blanket. I did it in two sittings.

The backing is three panels: stripes, white and grey. The binding is stripe fabric (an homage to Red Pepper Quilts): some skinny stripes, some wider.

I am looking forward to making this quilt a little sister someday! I’d love to play with this design again on a smaller scale.

4 Comments

Filed under Fabric, Inspiration, Quilting

September 20, 2013 · 12:46 pm

Everett’s Plus Quilt

My dear friend is having a baby boy in just a couple of weeks! Her decorating style has always really impressed me. Her home has lots of dark wood, rich colors, gold filigreed wallpaper. They are big on Americana and she finds all sorts of amazing items at estate sales. In fact she is one of the bloggers for the popular thrifting blog Dig This Treasure.

I decided to do a repeating plus block quilt similar to THIS ONE, but in nutty browns, tans, black, white, and some splashes of orange and yellow. This whole quilt came to fruition when I scored some vintagey looking Star Spangled Banner music fabric from a swap at the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild. It’s quilted with a large zig-zag embroidery stitch (#16 on my Bernina).

The backing fabric is mostly this AMAZING Field Notes fabric by Moda and some left over strips (origin unknown) that I used to back THIS quilt from the Positive Space Quilt-A-Long

Embroidered label : )

Anyway the quilt goes best with my friend’s living room, but take a look at their amazing mint nursery! And yes – that’s a taxidermied boar’s head. And that’s a real dog, not a toy.

1 Comment

Filed under Fabric, Quilting

August 20, 2013 · 7:21 pm

Mountains Quilt

For a friend, I was asked to make a quilt inspired by these gorgeous wall decals from blik. The pattern for these wall tiles, called “Conquered” is based on a Threadless pattern by Ross Zietz. Mr. Zietz was extremely generous – I reached out to him on flickr to get his blessing to make this one quilt and for permission to blog about it, and he was kind enough not only to encourage my endeavors, but he also sent me his design documents!

This made it so much easier to formulate my plan for “conquering” this project.

I photoshopped guide-lines on the tile until I had pieces that were nice rectangles that would be paper-piecing friendly.

Okay so then I printed out that guide and went to the floor with a giant piece of paper (wrapping paper taped together to be roughly 60″ square) and I translated my guide with pencil onto the paper by scaling, just like you used to do in grade school. Something roughly like one inch squared on my guide was equal to 7 inches square on my giganto paper. I fudged things here with layout and color from the original design in order to work best for me.

Then I cut out each rectangle and those were my paper piecing pieces (although I had to be conscious about adding seam allowance when I was actually cutting out fabric and the resulting “blocks”). From then on it was just assemble blocks and get a quilt top.