Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[freedombecki]

Ohmigosh! Those are great!!! I think we could throw one of those pillows together quickly!

They'd sure be cute. Even so, I hope you load the information into your browser and see the alternatives you could use for making your son's pillow cases. It's great to have the internet to see what other people are doing so you can have a springboard for ideas.

Today, I found a video on making crocheted crocodile lace. I bet Dabs could do that if she kept the video handy. She had that Hawt beautiful new colored crochet thread she was going to make a bedspread with. I bet she could make a scarf out of this technique:

[ame="http://youtu.be/RUNtrp_Vj4o"]Crocodile Stitch - How To Crochet - YouTube[/ame]​

 

[Bigfoot]

That's something, koshergrl. I'd not seen those before. Apparently other quilters have, because when I loaded "minecraft quilt" there were dozens of items, this pillow being just one of them:

Very nice.

 

[Dabs]

Becki...speaking of that new bright color yarn I bought to start a new afghan.....I have gotten a good portion done on it!
Here is how it looks so far

 

[freedombecki]

Becki...speaking of that new bright color yarn I bought to start a new afghan.....I have gotten a good portion done on it!
Here is how it looks so far

So that's where you've been keeping yourself, Dabs. You go girl!

 

[freedombecki]

...trying to envision tropical colored crocodile stitch... But I can't find my G hook! ​

 

[freedombecki]

Finally! I got my old printer hitched up to the new computer for temporary purposes until the other one gets sent off and returned.

This morning, I was so inspired by everyone's politeness wherever I went, that I finished this little quilt started anywhere between ten and six years ago, but for one reason another, got constantly set aside. When we moved back to Texas 3 years ago, I found it in one of my fabric totes, and saw that it had one row short of a star, and that I'd either have to find enough self-same fabric to complete it or else cut it back two rows. It got put back. In the meantime, I used almost all the blue, having put it out of sight and out of mind. It popped up again last week around Thursday or Friday, when I found the bin, dusted it off well, and brought it up to my sewing room. I decided, forget about making it the largest child quilt ever, just get the seam ripper out and make it look like it was planned to be either a child-sized quilt for the local shelter or a wheelchair veterans' quilt. I put a "Forget me Nots border along with a little of the back ground material, of which I had a little less than a quarter of a yard, so cut 4 strips that would finish out to one inch. It needed a darker blue, but I found the blue highlight in a marble fabric by Moda fabrics and had just enough to cut 2" strips to go around it. It went nicely between the tricolor quilt squares and the Forget-me-nots flowers I bought a bolt of in honor of my mother, who always had Forget-me-nots in her amazing garden, wherever she went. We'd lived in Alaska when I was young, and saw them growing out near a baseball field one of the first nights we were in Alaska's Fort Richardson, where Dad had been called for whatever they needed him for on the base there at that time of Cold War Troop training maneuvers. One of his old CO's remembered him and wanted his skill. His cover story was they wanted a top baseball player to coach the base team, but he was one of the top marksmen in WWII and Korea. He never missed what he shot at. Like you could teach that to someone else by osmosis.

Anyhow, here's this quilt top that has set too long in a plastic tub with other UFOs (UnFinished Objects):

Scan 1: Top Border with designation tag
Scan 2: Partial Star showing the blue 9-patch square
Scan 2: Partial Star showing the Snowball/Kansas Dugout square

 

[freedombecki]

Here are some scans from that quilt I dragged my heiny on for a whole week while it was being completed at the slowest pace imaginable. All the squares got completed in one day's time. I guess some art comes out in artistic spurts of completion.

OMG I just saw the most beautiful dark blue with almost-red chested bluebird hopping across the lawn. I don't know if his deep coloration is due to contrast on the grub-infested or winter straw-brown of St. Augustine grass or if he was just dining on the local deep red berries of the Holly and Yupon tree/shrubs on and near our acreage out here in beautiful rusticated Walker County. None of the pictures you see show them this deep coloration in any of the magazines or online, but that's what he was. A beautiful Eastern Bluebird!

Back to the subject at hand, here are scans of quilt #11 for 2013, the Red Points of Light, Sawtoothed-Border Quilt top completed on February 8. One good thing about taking one's time--I had a lot of time to think about using this fabulous piece of Hoffman Red Maple leaf print that I got for the shop and held back a 3-yard piece for my personal stash. We'd visited New Hampshire 10 years ago, where I saw the most dazzling array of red maples you could imagine. The locals said it was the best color year they could recall in 15 years. What a privilege to see the red maple trees of New Hampshire that fall.

Back to the Red Maple-Bordered Points of Light Quilt Top!

Scan 1 - Showing the Red Maple Hoffman border print and quilt description
Scan 2 - One of 16 points of light--8 of them are in the star portion, and 8 of them are sawtooth borders at top and bottom to make room for a young child's growth spurts until he reaches the quilt's measurement, which is around 66" in length. (5 feet, 6 inches)
Scan 3 - Solid red logs in the log cabin centers. (4 solid reds in center and 4 solid reds in corners of 8-point stars to square the quilt off and make it look right)

 

[freedombecki]

This afternoon, I needed an easy project to do. Thinking that checkerboard was probably the quickest, I had these two pieces of orange print fabrics--one a white dot on bright orange background and one a large orange dot on a white background and decided 4" squares sewn together would make the perfect clown-dot checkerboard quilt. So far, it is half done.

Orange is a very interesting color. They say it's the color that is most attractive to the mind. It's one of the school colors of the University of Illinois Illini, Sam Houston State University Bearcats, Oregon State University Beavers, University of Texas Longhorns, and of course the Denver Broncos aka the Orange Crush. Orange is the color of some very good fruits and vegetables, all of which have unique antioxidant properties, not to mention great vitamin contents that boost the immune system and sharpen the eyesight. Orange is the picture of health, enagmatic sunsets and sunrises, and it's playful as a bikini, a clown outfit, a race car, or in neon lights. I totally love the color orange. And Eastern Bluebirds wear it proudly on their sweet little chests.

So I like to do an orange quilt now and then just because. It can turn a gray day into a day that has a charge. And if a reasonably good looking guy wears a California orange shirt, all the girls just swoon and might likely fall in love!

Anyway, children look great in orange, too. It's youthful, it's vibrant, it's healthy, and it's happy. Orange is all things merry and good. Making a perfectly orange quilt will hopefully bring some joy into a little life somewhere where a little joy would be welcome!

Scan 1 - one of the 40 4-patch squares that will measure 7" when finished
Scan 2 - a part of the half of the quilt cut, started, and partly finished this afternoon
Scan 3 - this determined woman's beautiful red and white checkerboard quilt from solid colors. I found it here, where this lady has seen the red and white show in NYC a year ago March and decided to go for making her own collection that is shown at her blogspot LINK, cupcakes and daisies. You have to really scroll down on this extra-long page to find it, that's why I'm putting it in a thumbnail. If you just click on it, you won't have to do all that scrolling at the LINK, but then you'd miss her blow-by-blow progress on her personal red and white quilts she's doing. They're definitely worth a look!

 

[freedombecki]

Whilst looking for border material, a solid color orange appeared, and it looked llike there was plenty of it! After inspecting it closer, it was in two pieces, one of which appeared slightly darker than the other. The "brighter" orange solid was selected, and the appropriate strips cut, and the Orange polkadot quilt became a reality this morning around 6 am after another 2 hours of finishing it up, that is.

Upon examination of the "darker" piece, which was being readied for re-storage, a quilt was found put together that had an orange backing cut for it, and was neatly folded together and forgotten while another 3 or 4 similar quilts were constructed using many other colors than orange as borders! That was at least 2 years, maybe three years ago. Somehow, it stayed there until early this morning, when a bleary-eyed quilter picked it up and received the joyous shock of finding a charity quilt good to go, after last week's butt-dragging and seemingly getting nowhere with a quilt that's been done a dozen times before in just a couple of days. lololol! So this morning, quilts 13 and 14 for the year 2013 are done! Woohoo! Yea! and all that jazz.

And for February, that means 4 quilts are in the neat little pile where quilts ready to go to the Charity Bees closet accumulate until there are 10 in number. Surely one quilt can be done between now and the 14th, which is approximately half of February. Guess a heart template should be cut and assembled into some kind of a valentine quilt. It would be so nice if the one I designed a couple of weeks ago would magically appear. All the pictures taken for all of last year's quilts are gone with my computer that went out a couple of weeks back. It has no desktop, no access to anywhere including internal files.

Even so, it's a happy day! 2 more quilts across the goalpost!

 

[freedombecki]

Here are a couple more shots of the Echo Frames quilt top found this morning.

And Oh, what a beautiful morning!

Oh, and it's almost Valentine's day and this didn't get done (maybe today?):

 

[freedombecki]

Sometimes, a holiday is upon us, and the project for that time cannot possibly get done within a 48 hour time parameter. That's time to put it to rest, and a good plan is to place a Valentine's quilt's start 6 months before February 14. That would be around the middle of August. Of course, by then, you'd be wise to be finishing up your Christmas gift sewing. Maybe starting a Valentine's day quilt around the middle of September would be better. Yes, it would take a couple of months to make a detailed top, call the quilter to see if her calendar will allow her to quilt yours by the first of February if you are giving it locally, and by the middle of January if you need to mail the quilt off across country. If you are working with hand quilters, depending on their work load, you should get advice from them now about what their schedule will allow. If they say, "first come, first served," that means they are fair, but you need a couple of months sooner to turn it in to them, because it takes longer, and their Christmas quilting might give you a run for your money. Quilting takes time. Good quilting takes much longer. Ask the quilters. They may tell you a year and a half due to a backlog of quilts. But that is the way of quilts. If you really wish to truly understand how long it takes to machine or handquilt a quilt, it pays to do one yourself first, when there are no time constraints. That will tell you the commitment and time others have to complete a quilt.

I well knew that when I posted the heart quilt (above) I just wasn't facing the fact that it likely wouldl not happen. What did happen in my quilt room that day was an assessment and some logic going on upstairs. The assessment showed I had a gross surplus of logs cut for green log cabin quilts. The logic said "St. Patrick's day is 30 days away" That's plenty of time for me to finish a couple of green log cabin quilts, if other things don't get pushed in the way first. So for the last couple of days, I dutifully cut green lights to go with the surplus of dark precut greens and have sewn some together. I will post the progress report below in a few minutes, just not right now. It takes a half hour to warm up the printer and get it rolling. My progress is not significant, but getting started to the 4th row in 2 days is ok. There are at least 200 green centers
now cut as well. Back in a bit.

After returning...

Scans 1, 2 and 3 each have 6 of the 24 log cabin 2-color quilt in case I decide to just do a plain log cabin and get it over with. In front of the sewing machine are 24 more dark squares, 8 of which are required to do a points of light quilt, which reduces the need for 24 star points to 8 star points and 8 sawtooth border points for lengthening the quilt to a child's size.The 8 leftover half-light and half-dark log cabin squares will be a nice start on the next quilt. That's why making 2 of the same quilt back-to-back makes good sense. There are now plenty of strips cut for one quilt of the lights, and enough for 2 or 3, maybe even 4 of precut darks that were cut in the past 2 or 3 years. Back to the 3 scans, here's what took all morning today. The afternoon was spent driving to and from a quilt store 60 miles away to get matches for a quilt I will be doing soon plus a couple of light greens.

 

[freedombecki]

The solid blocks of log cabins that are dark greens will be the center base for making the star points stand out, along with four more separate the points of light at the corners of the star. the last 8 blocks are points that when aligned just so are called sawtooth points--4 at top, and 4 at bottom. Here are the dark blocks at stage 5 logs, and a couple scans of light and dark log cabin squares that are at stage 9 logs (of either 13 or 17, probably will go to 17. 17 just look nicer when doing points.)

That just about ends my day.

God bless the beasts and the children.

 

[freedombecki]

This morning progress saw all 8 of the darks to go out to the 9th row of logs (including the log center) and the remainder of the light and dark squares to also be as the ones on the right above. I worked from about 4 am on. Some of the greens may be bigger than the above... It's not rocket science, so you don't have to do much except stop after the first row of 9.5" strips. Then you are done with both light and dark squares as well as dark ones.

More lights need to be cut. The repeats are getting under my nails. I just came in the computer area to pick up the fabrics I bought yesterday. It was fun to see someone had read this thread. Thanks, Mr. H. You're the best.

 

[freedombecki]

My dear mother advised about making mistakes on sewing days, that if you make a mistake or two, it could be time for a break. So after sewing two different pieces on wrong on the same log cabin block, I decided she was right. So after replacing the strip by ripping and redoing TWICE, I just left the sewing room, two blocks in hand to scan and show. I'm on row 14 on both the darks and the light and dark squares and will have 8 dark and light squares left to start the next green quilt when done. In the meantime, I must either cut 40 more dark strips or find all the dark green strips I didn't find when starting this quilt. Somewhere in my stacks of fabric, bins, and/or boxes, there are 6 or 7 dark green 1.5" strip bags that have about 100 strips apiece in them, some are doubled, some tripled, and some are singles, not to mention a lot of strips rolled in sweet bun rolls after cutting a strip or two for "later" over the last 3 years of cutting and sewing strips with which to make log cabin quilts. There are likely over 200 dark-to-medium green yardages in stash bins as well, not counting lights and medium lights. Well, I organized all of them once, and they're in a box all together somewhere...

Here are the two scans--one is a completed light and dark log cabin square, the other an all-dark one to the fourteenth row, ready to start row 15 and 16, both of which will be 8.5" cuts, and 17, which will be 9.5" cuts. The squares will all finish out around 9", and potentially slightly less since I still haven't mastered the bernina scant quarter inch yet. I sewed on pfaffs since 1966, got my first quilt foot in 1985 or '86, and at the edge, the Pfaff foot sews a scant quarter inch, which translates to a perfect 1" size every time if you cut your strips exactly 1.5." Not sure what the problem is, but the foot from center needle position measures at 1/4" exactly, which is not a scant, and this machine does not allow a slight needle position change when using the single stitch plate and the 1/4" foot. It's all electronically digitized, so I'm stuck with what I get, which is 1/4" plus the thickness of the thread, which comes out about 1/8" shy after sewing on 17 pieces together to form the 9" square. I just can't see to sew two fabric threads under 1/4" edge of the bernina foot. It could have been that my foot got placed a millimeter to the right, because you can see the split in the foot seems to make the needle appear closer to the left side of the slit than the right. When you remove the foot, the needle is perfectly in the center of the plate hole right to left and front to back. The problem has to be that the foot somehow melted and pushed a tad to the right at the same time. That has to be the problem. A lot of the better quilt fabrics have a high thread count, so 2 threads is the equivalent of old fabrics that had the low count of 60 threads per inch, although if the threads were fatter, the quilt fabric was sturdy. Quilt fabric threads are not that thick.

I just prefer my squares to come out uniformly without having to think about 2 threads going to the left and under the side of the foot, where you cannot see them.

So such as they are, here are my two blocks. All the other blocks are finished to row 14 of the 17 logs.

 

[freedombecki]

All the blocks are done! The 16 central blocks are sewn together to form the points of light star, and the two sawtooth top and lower borders are stitched together, waiting to be put together to form a quilt.

Then, it's just a matter of cutting borders from two dark green fabric, which seems to heighten the effect of the points.

I'm loving this quilt now.

It was true worth getting up at 5 am to sew the last 2 or 3 dark rows on the squares and get it together!

And in a couple of hours or less, it could be a done deal. Will save the celebratory remarks for when there's something to celebrate, though, and finishing the quilt top is a truly good reward for hard work. Can't wait to show the scan of the border when it's done.

 

[Mr. H.]

You deserve a day off. Monday is President's day, y'know.

 

[freedombecki]

Thanks, Mr. H.

 

[freedombecki]

It's done, here are some glimpses:

Scan 1 a corner

Scan 2 A sawtooth point

Scan 3 Left top of quilt with designation details.

It was fun.

 

[freedombecki]

More pictures--the center of the Points of Light quilts that I do are always the dark color in log art form.

It goes fast when you're paying attention.

Scan 1 is the center 4 blocks, all dark

Scan 2 shows a star point

Scan 3 shows the dark corner between two star points

The quilt top measures 44.5" x ~ 65." I like to keep the east-west measurement of the child's quilt under 45" in case they use batting by the bolt that measures 45" in width. It's just more efficient.

 

[Bigfoot]

Those are very nice looking. Sophisticated.