Quilting fun!

Here are some recent quilts, just can't seem to stop this quilting thing.....but then why would I want to?

Quilt Instructions

The Tale of the Higgly Piggly Quilt














Recently when I was up visiting my son-in-law who is a fabric sales rep he let me cherry pick through his bin of samples so that I could make some sample quilts for an upcoming sales event and I came across a line from Free Spirit that was called Moondance, it was pretty subdued compared to the Kaffe fabrics that I have currently been sewing on and I kind of liked the calm and peaceful feel of the little prints and soft colors. They kind of reminded me of little pj prints or blouse prints from a few years back. Any way I decided to do something pretty simple and used some 7 inch Hoffman Batik squares that he also gave me and combined them with the prints. At first I was just going to add 3 inch strips all around and make a simple 12 inch block but that looked pretty boring and predictable so I decided to cut these 12 inch squares into 6 inch squares and that's how I came up with the sort of random looking quilt. I actually don't do random well as I have to "control" where colors end up so this is my solution for controlling random.

INSTRUCTIONS

The first step is to cut 7 inch squares (in this case these were pre-cut squares from Hoffman) but I also cut 7 inch squares of the print as well.



Then cut 4 strips per 7 inch square that are 3 inches wide and at least 13 inches long. (or one 14 inch strip that can be divided for first two sides and two 13 inch strips for the remaining sides.Sew two strips to the 7 in square on opposite sides and press. Add the next two strips and press....trim edges to make a perfect 12 inch square.





Take the 12 inch square and cut the square in 1/2 and 1/2 again so that you have 4 six inch squares. Then you can arrange these 4 squares to form 2 patterns which can be repeated in random colorways.




These are the examples of the two different arrangements I used and I just alternated them and mixed the colors up so that hopefully there was a balance of prints around the quilt.

The Quilt is 5 blocks across and 6 blocks down and if you use this size then you would need an even number of the two styles of blocks. I'm sure it would be equally interesting to configure the blocks in other ways and do a random selection......it's all about you creating what ever look pleases you. No rules allowed here.

When our children were small we were up skiing and my husband and I were standing on the porch of the lodge waiting for the girls to finish their ski lessons and a group of kids were having a wonderful snowball fight and just having a ball when a rather stern lady who I guess was one of the chaparones of the group came up and started clapping her hands and hollering at the kids....."Children, Children....lets ORGANIZE this snowball fight!" Well my husband and I had to turn away because we thought that was about one of the funniest things we had ever heard anyone say and to this day when ever one of us starts to over organize or over think a situation the other will say ..."lets organize this snowball fight." I have a tendency to want to over think my quilts and as I've said random is very hard for me so I need to remember the snowball fight, don't we all.

Rewards

Last night was the fund raising auction at my grand daughters private school and even though I had vowed to not do any more quilts for the auction for the simple reason that generally they cost a lot more to make than they bring in for the school and after a couple of years of quilts that went for a lot less than I had spent having them quilted I decided to do something else for the auction. Usually I offer up cupcake making services for kids birthdays and those sell really well and bring in a good deal more money than they cost to make them. Also do homemade cookies and pies that people can have me bake for what ever occasion they like and those sell well too and a couple of quilts I did made some big bucks but the last couple were not as interesting to those biding or whatever.

My daughter approached me with the idea that she and another mother had for the 2nd grader's class project that involved quilting and I of course said "oh, sure" as each class has to come up with something to make and sell to the parents in the auction. One of the mothers who's husband works for HP (the printer people) said she would take care of taking the pictures and printing them up on the fabric. She used the paper back cream colored fabric from Printed Treasures and after taking really cute pictures of the kids in various poses she printed them up on the fabric in soft sepia tones. Along with the kids there was a picture of the teacher and one of the school logo and another that said "2nd Grade 2008-2009" which gave me 20 blocks to play with.

My daughter, the photographer mother and I dug though all my batik's and came up with what we thought were a nice selection of 30 or so batik's and then let the kids pick their favorite fabric from that pile. I reserved the right to add the smaller inner boarder on each block to help balance the colors in the quilt and then I picked the dark sashing and the border, backing and binding. All batik's of course. One of the teachers when she saw the quilt finished said, "In all my years at Ashbrook I've seen a lot of class projects come and go but this has to be the most beautiful quilted one." So I think we did well.

When my daughter dropped off the girls last night for a sleep over party at our house while they went to the adult party and auction at the school Tess told her daddy "be sure to bid on my class quilt.....cause I really like it." Mike bid valiantly but dropped out at $400 and the quilt finally went for $465 to the father of one of the boys in the class so although Tess didn't get the quilt it did raise a nice sum. I suppose one of these days now I'll have to make her another quilt with her friends and make sure she does get it. She was pretty cute when we were laying out the blocks as she was most vehement about not wanting any of the "boys" blocks on either side of her....just wanted to be between her two best friends, Olivia and Lauren.....if only that aversion to boys would last till they graduated from College her dad wishes.

So although I constantly think I'm through quilting, something like this happens and I get all charged up to make "more quilts"..... and then there's always that wicked new fabric coming out that further draws me in and keeps me charged up. I guess there are worse obsessions.

Busy but rewarding week!

Favorite fast cookies.....something quick for company and a easy for dessert for my Valentine dinner party after a week of quilting!

QUILT FOR THE BUSHFIRE QUILT PROJECT

This was a busy week with the invitation from Jeanamarie to join the Flickr Bushfire Quilt Project on Monday. This started with me going to just make a couple of blocks but then I thought how much work Tia was going to have putting all these Wonky star blocks together (over 193 quilters now participating) I thought perhaps I'd just go ahead and make a whole quilt top. Well making the "wonky stars" was not exactly my cup of tea, I've never liked paper piecing because I must be sort of dyslectic because I always have the piece I'm sewing on to flip over going the wrong way and it doesn't cover the area I want covered and I get so annoyed at how much work something that's supposedly so simple is for me. I must say I found this experience very much like that. So after making 16 of the 20 blocks needed I had experienced entirely enough "fun" so I coped out and did four blocks of scrappy 4 1/2 inch squares of the colors used in the stars and I actually think it's pretty effective that way (or that's my story and I'm sticking to it.....to quote a favorite Country Western song.)

I was very happy to get it finished up on Thursday and Friday went into my closest quilt shop and bought a lovely dimple print from Andover Fabrics in a bright turquoise which I think will just set it off perfect. Today I made the binding and packed it along with some thread, a few hundred safety pins I never use any more as they are too hard on my hands, also put in a Quilt Tak gun and extra Taks for her to try, it is my favorite way to sandwich quilts. Also just some fun extra fabrics for "whatever" , some backing fabric as well and have the box ready to mail off to Tia tomorrow. It's wonderful to be able to contribute even in a very small way to letting the people who are effected by this tragedy know that the rest of the world really cares.

This weekend we had company from out of town (dear friends that we have been close to for almost 30 years) and I had to do a quick return to normal on my sewing room and house in general as there were trails of snipped threads and "fabric crumbs" all over. Then some quick baking and getting food stocked in for the weekend. Since our friends also wanted to see our daughter and grand daugthers while they were down I threw and improptu Valentine Dinner party for my daughter's family, my mom and our company....nine in all. Fortunately I always seem to cook twice as much as I need so it was fine and we had a delightful evening. After dinner I showed my son-in-law Mike the Bushfire Quilt before I mail it off so that was nice as well. He is a the Free Spirit Fabric Line Rep for Oregon and is friends with Valori Wells so he enjoyed seeing what I did with his samples from her line. He suggested I email Jean and Valori a picture of the quilt which I did.

The plate of cookies at the top of this blog are my favorites as they can be produced really quickly and are really outstanding, plus they make big batches and freeze well too. The Thumbprints I like to fill them with Raspberry Jam or Lemon Curd. If you check out my Flickr page it has photo's of the process and the recipes. For both the Thumbprints and the improvised Chocolate and More Chocolate cookies. I found after creaming my eggs, butter and sugar that I didn't have enough flour to make the chocolate cookies so I used a packaged cake mix, chocolate chips and an extra cup of flour and it made a really delicious brownie like cookie. Mistakes are sometimes a very good thing in cooking as well as quilting as it brings out the creativity in all of us.

Making A Binding Statement

I like to think that all aspects of my quilt are interesting.....not just the blocks or pattern but the backs and the bindings too. I never could understand why people would just put any old thing on the back or binding. I as often have a quilt folded inside out on my couch as otherwise.

I just finished this quilt from The Chocolate Lollipops line by Anna Marie for Free Spirit (well most of the blocks are from that line) but when it came to backing and binding I used the strip from Paris Flea Market by Robin Pandolph. I was in a bit of a quandary for about a week because I wanted to use the dark brown that I sashed the quilt with for binding because I thought it would really effective but I only had about a third of the fabric that it would take to bind this giant quilt and the dark brown fabric was a really really old South Seas Fabric that their was no chance in hell of ever finding and it is such an odd brown I couldn't find anything that looked right.

After groaning and moaning and trying to figure out a solution I dug out the pieces of the stripe that were left after it came back from the quilter and I trimmed the edges. Of course I had purchased the last of the bolt of that fabric as well and had used all of it for the border and backing. But there was enough from trimming that I had four long length wise strips and that was when I discovered that by careful cutting I could actually make them work and work wonderfully. I was able to when I folded and attached the binding have it so the yellow stripe shows on the front of the quilt and the aqua portion of the quilt shows on the back. Let me tell you this was very exciting and I think it's my favorite binding that I've ever done in almost 30 years of quilting.

It is quite nice to know that there are still surprises out there for me that don't involve learning a new difficult quilting technique because this old dog likes to sew simple and easy blocks any more and "let the fabric do the talking" and this fabric fairly sang to me.

Never too old for something new.....we'll see!

I started this blog last spring and then had knee surgery and spent the most of May, June and July stumping around the house grumbling and groaning and not even comfortable enough to sit at my computer and so was relegated to using my lap top most of the time which I really don't like as much for extended typing. (That's my story, read excuse, and I'm sticking to it!) Anyway life is finally getting back on track and it's time to start blogging again.

I was pretty prolific with my quilting this fall and managed to complete several quilts which you might see in the slide show or definitely on my flickr site check out Quiltsalad on Flickr and "Quilts I've Made" or "Under Construction". I did one called "Putting on the Pink" for a local charity auction and luncheon for Breast Cancer research and it was part of the $100,000 plus thousand raised (albeit a very small part.)

I currently have one that I just need to get the binding on that will be auctioned next month the Ashbrook Independent School's Fund Raising Auction. The quilt has pictures of each of the students in my granddaughter's second grade class. One of the mother's took the photo's and printed them up in a lovely sepia tone and I framed them out with batik's and it has turned out rather well and hopefully there will be at least a couple of parents who will want it.....let the biding begin!

I also completed a quilt for my son-in-law Erin who is a sales rep for Hoffman of California and he had given me some of their Bali Pop Batik's and had asked for a particular pattern (I hate following patterns) and I agreed to make it for him. The pattern is called Transitions by Cozy Quilt Designs. A lovely pattern but and this is probably why don't like using patterns.....I really didn't study the instructions closely enough and when I got done well he had a quilt and I do think it is beautiful but it doesn't resemble "Transitions" other than it has the same fabrics (2 inch strips) in the same Strawberry Fields Bali Pops. He was gracious and said he loved it but I felt kind of bad that it really looked so different. Tomorrow I'll figure out how to post a picture of my version and the original version and you can judge for your self.

I think discovering and mastering how to do the slide show will be my big accomplishment for today. That combined with I'm trying to teach my 88 year old mom to use the computer for the first time. She is determined to master it, I'm determined to stay calm and not loose my patience and it's a bit like the Bill Murray movie "Ground Hogs Day"....I'm hoping for a good outcome just like Bill....wish me luck.