Wonky squares a plenty

I have completed 20 wonky log cabin squares. Here they are all laid out together, on a queen size bed,(not sewn yet) to see how they might look without borders. I am planning to outline them with borders using one of the light fabrics. The squares are 13 1/2 inches, so this will be a nice large quilt.

This has really been fun, making it up as I go. True improvisation.

More wonkiness

I am having a blast with this. Each block is it's own composition, I am experimenting with contrast and bringing in variation of green to blend with the purple domination. I am even piecing some of the strips, to add yet another dimension. Do you see some of the Zambia dress fabric included? (you can click on the picture to get a closer look)

I am beginning to wonder if this quilt will keep one awake, it seems kinda jiggly, with these blocks just laid out like this. Hmmmm

Going wonky

Not much time to sew, but this has been on my mind

I have not had much time to sew lately, due to other time commitments. In between and around the edges of other things that demand my time, I have had quilting on my mind. Specifically improvisational. I did have a few minutes to spend in the studio and produced this purple one. Pretty symmetrical, I want to make another with the same fabrics off center and askew.

Not sure when I will get the time, but here's the symmetrical one for now.

The quilt and blanket chest are delivered

They loved the quilt! Here they are posing under it with their dog Sirius. The dog kinda blends in with the black and white. Perfect.

The reason I made this quilt was so they would have a special blanket to put in the blanket chest that my husband made for them. Here it is, isn't is gorgeous? His original design and wonderful craftsmanship.















I know this piece of furniture will be a cherished part of their home.





I did manage to get in some basic sewing during our visit. I mended 6 shirts for Andrew. A la this work.

We had a great weekend in Columbus, a wonderful visit with my son and his wife. It was warm and spring-like. I saw crocus blooming in their yard. yea!

The trees with branches

My winter sunrise wall hanging is coming along. The trees now have branches. A lot of free motion sewing here. I like the tree on the right better than the ones on the left. I did those first and I think they have a few too many branches. I did get a little hill distortion between the first two of the trees. But, I figure this gives it dimension.

Next up, I want to quilt the snow section. I have a nice metallic white thread, but it kept breaking in the machine. I am going to try an embroidery needle before going any further.


Here is another picture I want to share. We have a 20 year old cat, she has kidney disease but is hanging in there. She is very thin, so when she curls up to sleep, she really wraps herself tightly to keep warm. Here is how she looked this afternoon. Doesn't she look kinda like a Q or a question mark?

Contribution to the Bushfire Quilting project

I made these two wonky star blocks to contribute to the Bushfire Quilting project. This is the flickr group of other contributed blocks and also has all the information needed if you want to contribute.

Here is the link to the tutorial on making these stars, called Wonky or Maverick. They are very improvisational and fun to make.

The woman who started this idea has had an overwhelming response and is now a quilting organizer, wonderful. I love the idea of the scores of homeless people receiving a hand made quilt to help them cope with getting their lives back together.

Trees added

I have added the trees to my winter sunrise composition. They are fused on. I plan to add sewing lines to do the thinner branches.

I also have some shimmery white thread to add to the snow area. I think I will do that by hand.

We have actually had some milder temperatures here the past few days. Into the 40's and 50's. Makes one think of the little green buds that will be coming to these dark trees.

Winter sunrise

I am working on trying to capture winter sunrise in a small fabric wall quilt. Here is a photo that I am using for inspiration. This is a scene that I pass on my way to work in the morning, as I drive east.


Here is my attempt, so far, to capture the sunrise.

I don't have the photography equipment to do the colors justice here, they look much more muted in this photo. There is a lot of gray here in the winter, appropriate I suppose.

Next I have to decide how to add the trees. A minister at my congregation referred to the trees against the winter sky as "brown lace". I like that comparison. I don't plan to use lace literally but do want to capture the wispy pattern of the sleeping winter trees.

sewing for Makayla's bitty baby

I spent a long weekend up north with friends and their 4 yr old daughter. Makayla brought along her bitty baby doll. I had a small variety of fabric on hand, just in case. We made her a quilt, a bib and a bonnet. She picked the colors (her favorite color is yellow) and helped me decide on size and placement of the large blocks and the bib shape and size. What fun. She was very pleased with the results, as you can see.

finished sunshine

Here are some shots of the finished sunshine pillow. You will note that is got a little bigger.

Sunshine

This week I have been dreaming about sunshine. We have had sunshine here in Michigan, but it has been accompanied by temperatures as low as -15 F. So, I gathered some pink, yellow, orange and red from the stash. I didn't have time to actually get to the cutting and sewing part till yesterday.

So, my sunshine grouping became this.


You may notice some fabrics in the block that were not in the inspiration gathering. These are courtesy of my friend Betsy, I joined her for sewing time and she generously found some sunshine in her stash to contribute.


Next step, quilt this and make it up as a pillow.


This is a type of sunshine that says summer and hot to me, what a nice break. For contrast here is what the sunrise looks like for me now. A different quality indeed, but beautiful in it's own way. I have been noticing a lot of these black/white gray skies backed with red and pink lately. Another theme, for another time.

The black and white quilt

Spoiler alert - Sarah.

I just couldn't resist posting some photos of the finished quilt. I wanted to make a large lap quilt, it ended up 80 inches long and 60.5 inches wide. I think that is almost twin bed size, so it should be plenty large enough to snuggle under while lounging on the couch. It remains to be seen how it functions in the environment with their black dog (who sheds a lot), I hope it all blends in nicely. : )



Here is the quilt being held up by my husband. The next shot is the back. I did not have enough of the black fabric that I purchased, so made a wide strip from the fabrics used in the quilt top.








The label is shown here.




I also wanted to mention that I adapted the pattern for this quilt from one in Modern Art With Fabric by Debbie Maddy, published in 2007. I used her lap quilt pattern but made it about 1/3 larger. Here's a link to her web site, it's called Calico Carriage.

Little practical things and more quilting

Some of my studio time this weekend was used for a couple of needed practical things. I made a padded bag for my new car navigation assistant. I made the standard writstlet that I have been making and added a center divider, so that cord would not scratch the screen. I also put a layer of quilt batting in the bag to provide cushion.




I also realized that I needed one more cloth grocery bag, so made one out of the leftover bedroom curtain material (that I have been getting a lot of mileage out of!). I used the basic Morse bag dimensions. This one does not a have a flat bottom like most of my other bags, but I think that's OK.



With those two projects done I then turned my attention to finishing the quilt for Andrew & Sarah. As you can see from this picture, the pins are out. I finished the machine quilting yesterday then added the binding and did the hand sewing last evening.





I added the label for the back this morning. Just the basic message, who it is made for, with love, my name and the date. Now I can't wait to give this to them. I think it will happen sometime in February, we may be making a visit then.

Free Motion extravaganza

I spent time yesterday doing the free motion machine quilting on Andrew and Sarah's large lap quilt. I pulled my machine into the center of the room, put a table behind it and set up my ironing board to my left. Like so:

It was great fun and not nearly as cumbersome as I had thought it would be. I did a sort of large scale stipple. The black on black is almost invisible, here are some of the more white squares that show the quilting more obviously.


I ended the afternoon with a very numb right thumb. I guess I was a little too excited and clutched the fabric too much. Feeling is back in my thumb today, so no harm done.

In the spirit of Every Day Creative and inline with my goal this New Year I plan to post more often. I want to record what I am doing in my every day way to infuse creativity into my life this year.

If you are a lurking reader a comment of encouragement would be appreciated. What are you doing to keep your creative spirit alive in your life?

Christmas makings

Now that Christmas is over and the gifts have been given I can share some of the hand made gifts I gave this year.

For my son and daughter in law I wanted to make a tree ornament that said something special about 2008. So what better than to remember the campaign and election of Barak Obama? I snagged a photo of the Obama symbol from the campaign web site and proceeded to copy the shape for a round ornament. It was fun to do and turned out pretty nice. Andrew and Sarah really enjoyed receiving it and agreed that it will be a good remembrance of 2008.

For my each of my two sons I wanted to make a boxy shaped bag with a zipper. I followed the tutorial here, well I tried to anyway. The first time I got the width and length of the body transposed and ended up with a rectangle instead of a box.
It was amazing to me that I got almost all the way done before I realized that this object was not short and wide but long and narrow. Oh well. Andrew liked it and does feel he has a use for it. It actually is a good size for tools.











For my musician son I wanted to make a boxy bag that would hold CD's. This time I carefully thought out what the dimensions needed to be and actually measured a CD case. (how clever) I used a piece of fabric that Nathan had given me quite awhile ago, something that spoke to him while visiting JoAnn's with a girlfriend. I did not get a sewing room photo, so here you can see Nathan with it on our sunny Christmas afternoon.












Last but not least, the big ta da. I decided about 2 weeks before Christmas to make a quilt for Andrew and Sarah. My husband is making them a very nice blanket chest/coffee table and it occurred to me that a lap size quilt for the inside would be very useful. I selected a pattern with very large pieces and enlarged the lap size so that it is basically almost twin size. I went with a black and white colorway so that it will not show the dog hair of their black dog too badly. Needless to say I did not finish this before Christmas. It is pieced and pinned together, and that's how it was wrapped and given to them. They really liked it, here they are holding it up for a work in process photo. Since I knew they would not be going home with the quilt, I did whip up a set of 6 cloth coasters out of the black and white fabrics. No photo of those, sorry.









One more item to share. While Andrew and Sarah were visiting Sarah mentioned that she wanted to make a dog bed for their dog out of an old egg shell mattress pad, folded to a 36 x 46ish size. So, we went to Joann and found a really nice piece of purplish fur on sale. Sarah also wanted to line the bed with mylar insulated batting so that it would feel nice and warm to the dog. Sarah and I worked on this yesterday. We had to add a strip of black duck so that the piece was wide enough, since the edge of the fur had a very loosely woven selvedge. Here you can see Sirius quite contented with the results.