My Local Quilt Shop

After work I went to my local quilt shop - The City Quilter - to buy the black fabric to finish up my Strips and Scraps quilt top.  I also signed up for a Hand Quilting class in April.  I have been wanting to take this class for 5-6 years now, and I finally get a chance!

As for the Quilt shop, my how things change in four years.  The Quilt shop has been renovated, and there was much more space for fabric and supplies.  What a positive change and a wonderful surprise.  :)

If you live in NYC, or if you ever plan on visiting and you are a quilter, I highly recommend you hitting up this store.

And because I think posts are boring without a picture, feast your eyes out on this snowman-winter!

(courtesy of some stranger in Bushwick)

ABC Baby Quilt

ABC Quilt

I started making this for a friend's baby back in, can you guess?  2007-2008.  I must say I got pretty far.  The quilt top was finished, the quilting was started and I just never got around to finishing it.  I find large quilts on my machine to be quite hard to manage, constantly having to roll and unroll, roll and unroll with the quilt barely fitting under the machine.  But if I take it to someone with a long arm machine to finish this, won't the different freehand styles be noticeable? 

I've been interested in taking a hand quilting course at our local Quilt shop, because I've considered doing the middle two rows by hand and just stitching in the ditch.

By the time this quilt gets pulled back out and finished, the original baby won't be a baby anymore.  I don't know of any pre-teen who wants ABC's on their bed, do you?  Maybe I'll save this one for my future grandson/granddaughter (and I just got way ahead of myself here).

City block - Wall hanging

City Block - Wall hanging

As with most of my quilts, I started the first block below pre-baby.  Last week I was at a friends house for a craft night and needed something simple and fast to take with me, so I brought a bag of scraps and a pair of scissors, and created the other two blocks.  I decided I would make these blocks into a wall hanging to cover an ugly door in my apartment that no one uses.  I have to create one more block, sew the buildings into the scene, and then embellish the buildings once I sew it all together.  I've never embellished a project before so this should be interesting.  Tips are welcome!

 

As with most of my projects - stay tuned.  This will be continued.......

Strips and Scraps

Strips and Scraps

I am getting close to having a top finished for my Strips and Scraps quilt.

 Measurements are done

Now a trip to The City Quilter for some black fabric!

Friendship Star Quilt

Yet another UFO - I have this quilt top finished and enough blocks to make another quilt.  I think I might have to finish these and send them to my nieces in Costa Rica.

Incan Quilt

My original idea for this Quilt was to have all the interlocking rings a different type of plaid.  Since I was making this for a friend,  I will not take responsibility for the color scheme (fabric choices were not mine). 

The Incan inspiration came from my friends' Bolivian heritage.  He/she wanted the Incan cross quilted in the middle of the rings.

Dear Jane Blocks

One day I will make a Dear Jane.

7 blocks down - hundreds more to go.

Civil War Quilt

I made this one for a friend, using mostly Civil War fabrics.  I loved the colors in this quilt. 

First Jean Quilt

This was the first jean quilt I ever made, and I gave it to a friend.  This inspired me to make the Star Wars Quilt.  After you make one jean quilt, you can't live without it.  As my son would say "it's warm and cozy."  Perfect for snuggling on the couch.

My only regret was not cleaning up my friends room before taking the pictures - it's a little embarrassing.


Jean Quilt #1
Making a jean quilt is so simple.  Start off making a rectangle template.  I made mine about the size of a shoe box lid.  Lay the template over the back side of the jean legs and trace with a black permanent marker.  Do this many times and cut these pieces out.  Once you have enough jean pieces cut out (depends on what size quilt you want), lay out your pieces on the floor and come up with a pattern (or lay them on your bed to make sure it's big enough).  When you start sewing, alternate the pieces right side together and wrong side together.  This will give you some 'fuzzies' in  your quilt.  You can also try to make a pattern out of the 'fuzzies' if you want to fuss with planning it.  Make sure you are using a thick needle for jeans on your machine - otherwise your needle WILL break.

Use fleece as your backing.  You will want to cut a piece of fleece (I had to sew mine together) to be approximately six inches bigger all around the jean piece.  Put the two pieces right side together and sew all around (like you would a pillow case) leaving 2 - 3 blocks at the middle bottom of your quilt unsewed for turning.  Make sure you make some back stitches with your machine where you leave the gap.  Once you are done sewing, trim the extra fleece fabric.  Turn the quilt inside out and lay it out flat.  At this point, you want to hand knot the backing and jean top together.  I used thick cross stitching thread to do this.  You will also need to make the "fuzzies" by snipping the pieces about half inch apart before you put the quilt in the washing machine.  You also need to hand sew the hole you left open for turning.  You can do this step before or after the hand knots.

Baby Quilt - D's Quilt

Years later, I got to make another baby quilt for a wonderful friend.  The fabric was bought in Maryland, but the quilt was made in NY.  I also quilted this one myself.

D's Quilt

As an afterthought, I probably should have ironed the finished quilt before taking a picture.  You live and learn right?

Baby Quilts - J's Quilt

The second quilt I made was for a dear friend who was the first from our high school group to have a baby.  Because of privacy issues, I'll just call him 'J.'

I made this quilt with my mom.  I was home visiting, and since the Black and Red quilt was so daunting my mom was nice enough to pick up a kit with a pattern and already cut fabric.  She showed me how to make a quilt properly. 

'J' is extra special because he shares my birthday.  :)

J's Quilt

First quilt - Black Jack

This was the very first quilt I made.  I was living in San Diego and had no clue how to make a quilt.  I had no clue how to follow a pattern, and no clue how to use the rotary mat.  I had this adorable poker fabric and just went at it.  The results weren't so bad!

Black Jack

Mom's quilt - Churn Dash

I also made this one while living in San Diego.  The ladies from my mother's quilt guild - The Seven Sisters - sent me a box of green fabric from home (Maryland) so I could make this for her.

I started off with the Churn Dash block, made a mistake very early on by accidentally inverting one of the blocks and just rolled with it.

Churn Dash and it's SideKick:

Dad's Quilt - Boats and Waves

I wanted to post some previously made quilts (prior to baby) while I'm working on a new project.


Boats and Waves

I made this quilt while living in San Diego.  I had just broken up with a boyfriend and some close friends (transients) had moved away so I was lonely, sad, and had a lot of time on my hands.

Since my dad loves sailing, I tried to make the blocks look like boats and waves.

UFO's

Since I haven't touched my stash since 2008 - I have many MANY unfinished projects waiting for me.  I also have many more projects that I want to start.  After all,  I've had four years to collect books, patterns and fabrics.  This should be fun......


 Strips and Scraps
A very long time ago (4+ years), I had a big bag of very small scraps and a few of those little jewelry sized boxes full of fabric samples.  I decided to sew them into squares to one day make a quilt.  The other day I was digging through a box and found my stack of scrappy squares. 

At first I thought of laying them out as squares, and putting a solid color of fabric (sashing) in between the boxes.

Then my creativity took it a step further.  I'm going to make all of the squares look like the following, and use a dark solid color for the sashing.  I'm thinking black would be a nice bold color to make the other colors really pop.

Stay tuned for this one..... It's coming up next.







 Scrappy Baskets
In the same box, I found a bag of these scrappy baskets:

The question is - how should I lay them out?

I like the look below, but I kind of lose that 'basket' vibe. Now it looks more like a square with weird triangles on the outside.

 This is another thought - but again the baskets are floating and the flowers get lost.

 Of course, I could always stick with the original pattern but who wants to be a copy cat?

I have a lot of tiny pieces cut out for this project, and not a lot of finished squares.  This quilt might have to be put away in a box for another year or two until I feel really inspired to finish it.