Remember these quilts? They are happy in their home with two adorable, grateful boys. Their mom said it’d be cool if I posted these pictures. It’s so nice to see these little people be so gracious and loving of their quilts.
Brothers driving cars on the roads.
Love this! “No, Mom! I’m not tired! I’m still playing!”
Very heart warming for yours truly.
Love is in the air! This summer marked my 5-year wedding anniversary, and our 10-year “being together” anniversary.
And then I had the pleasure of making this wedding quilt for a friend’s friend. My pleasure! Knowing that the couple was very modern, but still tame in their tastes, we looked to the works of Barbara Perrino for inspiration.
This quilt showcases a variety of colored rectangles, spaced evenly on a neutral sea. It’s in all solids (except for the binding – which is a Moda Crackle, and the backing fabric, which is a subtle beige geometric pattern), which I love and is very “me.”
I did straight line quilting. In a detail maybe no one but me will ever notice, I alternated lines between a cotton thread and a polyester (both in cream). I recently did an entire quilt with polyester quilting threads (yet to be blogged), and I actually loved the shimmery effect of the thread.
The back has a framed red rectangle, placed off-center.
Henry photo-bomb
And I cannot wait to show you the quilting label, but I’m going to hold off as I sure wouldn’t want to somehow spoil the surprise.
I’m so excited to announce that I’m hosting a quilt-along for the Positive Space pattern. I would absolutely LOVE to have you join me!
And to make this even more exciting – Pink Castle Fabrics is offering a coupon code for all participants! The code is POSITIVE15 – 15% off all purchases! It’s good from now until the end of October, mmkey doke?
So if you’re interested in participating…
** Head on over to Craftsy to get your pattern and find out your fabric requirements. The pattern has information for a throw – a King sized quilt! Just $8 for a PDF download. You can also get it from Etsy or Threadbias.
**Snag this coloring page to design your quilt and dream of fabrics. (Click to enlarge, drag and drop to your desktop!) The pattern offers a guide for using Kona Solids, but do whatever you feel!
**Go to Pink Castle Fabrics and get your stash ready! Don’t forget the coupon code – POSITIVE15
**Check back here starting Monday, October 1st to go through the whole quilting process. BOOKMARK THIS PAGE to keep track of all upcoming blog posts regarding the quilt along! The schedule will look something like this:
- OCTOBER 1 – Cutting fabrics
- OCTOBER 5- Assembling Court House Steps Blocks
- OCTOBER 10- Making Columns As
- OCTOBER 15- Making Column Bs
- OCTOBER 22- Making Column Cs and finishing the top
- OCTOBER 26- Backing and basting
- OCTOBER 29- Quilting and binding
Here’s the flickr group! Please upload so we can all enjoy your wonderful projects!
Filed under Quilt Along, Quilting, Shop, Tutorial
I am so excited to announce my First Ever Quilt Pattern!
For those of you who have been following my blog or flickr account, you may know this quilt better as “Dusty Springfield” from the Kona Solids Challenge – or “Patti Page” from the Tangerine Tango challenge. However, I don’t think I can legally attach these lovely singers to my humble quilt pattern, so we’re going to go ahead and call it “Positive Space” from now on. Why so much focus on the negative spaces in modern quilts? Let’s focus on these little plus signs and keep positive : )
If you are interested in buying this pattern, it can be found in my etsy shop as a PDF download ($8) or as a printed pattern ($9). The pattern includes cutting charts, color images, and information for making a Throw through King sized quilt-top.
You can also purchase this very quilt from my shop.
Quilted using straight lines, framing the squares.
Many, many thanks goes to the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild – and especially Brenda of Pink Castle Fabrics – for being SO encouraging about going ahead and making this pattern to sell. What an extraordinarily lucky woman I am to have this amazing group of talented, quilty friends.
Simple pieced back, using some strips of Kona Ash and large pieces of FS10 GEOMETRIC by Fabric Freedom.
Social media, doing its thing. My friend Abbey pinned this quilt, also found HERE, and bing bang boom, I was commissioned to make a pair of blankets for her two adorable boys.
I used primarily Riley Blake fabrics. I was so happy to find the Peak Hour fabric line, as it saved me from having to come up with car appliques on my own. Instead, I used my method of sewing the outline of the car to a piece of muslin, right sides together. Then you cut a slit in the muslin, turn the car right-side out, and then trim the muslin to just a quarter-inch seam allowance. Then you can applique the car onto the quilt-top! First I did hand-stitching, but then I top-stitched the cars on by machine for added security. When I was quilting the blanket, I added some quilting to the window of the car for even additional security.
I did double binding. I love the framing effect, and it’s a nice way to make machine-stitching the binding look attractive.
Abbey’s family just moved back into their home after a year away. Their house had extensive, heart-breaking damage due to a terrible flood (like – seven feet of standing water kinda terrible), but her husband and their family and friends resurrected their place and things are looking bright! Hope these quilts bring smiles to a family that has endured a lot, and deserves a break!
Once I read about Ellison Lane Quilt’s Summer Sewing Contest, I knew it was time to take my stack of Denyse Schmidt fabrics (and some coordinating strays from the stash) and finally make this blanket:
Reds, Whites, Blues, and Greys make for a muted patriotic palate. And I’m always extra-patriotic right around the fourth of July, aren’t you?
Wonky, scribbled stars for the quilting add a little spangly goodness.
I’ve been wanting to do an HSTs on point quilt for a while.
Measures just about 50″ by 50″ – nice for a baby blanket or a lap throw.
Filed under Challenges, Holiday, Quilting
My husband’s aunt recently asked me if I would make her daughter a t-shirt quilt. The daughter is graduating from high school and a blanket made out of her teenage memories seemed like a lovely gift to take to college!
I’ve never made a t-shirt quilt before. Most of the ones I saw online were made in a patchwork style, some sashed and some not. Once I saw the box of t-shirts, I decided I could create a layout featuring color-blocking that I hoped would create some modern visual interest. I grouped the shirts by White, Black, Red, Light Blue, and Dark Blue. I only added interfacing to the extremely thin shirts. Other than that, I just pieced with a stretch needle and my walking foot.
I did a stippled quilting design – my first big experiment with my BSR free-motion stitch regulator! It beeped at me 100000 times, but I have to admit – the stitches are regulated.
Sorry for the lack-luster pictures. My camera was dead and I had to get this baby in the mail in a hurry, so the iPad had to suffice.
Filed under Quilting
I cranked out a simple strip quilt inspired by the NPR logo to test out my new machine.
I did another double binding, only this time I did red and blue as the secondary color. Love this technique’s framing effect!
Straight line quilting in an echoed X formation.
Filed under Quilting
My friend Manya had this really cute baby quilt from her youth and asked me to take a shot at resurrecting it for her new baby due this Spring.
the original quilt - bunchy batting
Sadly, the quilt was really beyond repair. The quilting was so scant that the batting had bunched into big mounds. It really taught me the importance of making sure your quilting pattern hits every six square inches to avoid this problem as the quilt ages!
Also – the birds were either completely falling apart or getting a little frayed (they were needle-turn appliqued, but the needle-turned edge had popped out). So I took apart the whole thing and decided to just recreate the blanket.
sad, dissected birds
I wanted to use as much of the original fabric from this quilt as I could, but the pieces were literally disintegrating as I disassembled the blanket. So I decided to turn the old birds into wings! I found fabrics that matched the jewel-tone/gender neutral theme from the original quilt and made new birds. I did my favorite applique technique – sewing the birds to muslin and turning the unit inside out, appliqueing to the background fabric (more on this method in this post).
I picked a white-on-white print for the background, as I refuse to use solid white for a baby quilt. At least this will somewhat camouflage spit-up stains. And I quilted little clouds (continuing on a theme from this project)! White thread on top, invisible thread in the bobbin.
And for the birds I added a little quilting, with invisible thread on top and in the bobbin.
Invisible thread is so frustrating! Lots of tension issues, but then again my machine was literally dying and spewing out its insides while I quilting this blanket (more on that HERE and HERE). I cleaned up a little bit of the quilting on my NEW MACHINE and the tension issues weren’t as bad. I think I need thinner invisible thread…
I’ve had this teal backing fabric for a while and what a perfect fit for this project! It matches the jewel tones and it is gender-neutral. I also used some super soft peacock print cotton I recently got as a gift. Hoping I still have enough to make myself a little dress out of this lovely fabric!
What a fun challenge to recreate this beloved blanket! I hope Manya and her future baby like it!
Filed under Quilting
I am working on a quilt that is a gift for a friend, but mostly what I’m doing right now is swearing.
This quilt has had it’s share of problems. I’ll go into more detail later but for now let’s focus on my immediate stress: My machine is randomly puking black dust that seems like eyeliner flakes onto my WHITE WHITE WHITE quilt top as I free-motion quilt this beauty. I had my machine professionally serviced a year ago and am very, very good at cleaning it regularly with a paint-brush. I’m not sure what’s going on… and I can’t clean it more thoroughly because it has a computer brain inside I don’t want to funk with even if I could figure out how to access more of it’s insides.
one of many black smudges of sadness
So what do I do? I’ve decided I’m going to keep going and quilt the whole blanket – stopping frequently to take brush-out-the-dust breaks and to just give the machine a second to catch its breath (this is an intense quilting pattern of little, unattached clouds). After it’s all quilted I will stain-treat the stains, throw it in the wash, and pray and wish and hope. I can’t very well wash this with it only half quilted and I don’t want to put stain-treatment on the spots too early in fear of there being new damage caused by too-long exposure to the cleaning chemicals.
Barf barf. Wish me luck.
jenna brand 