Progress on Jackson's quilt

I completed the baby quilt top for J and R's baby-to-be. Now to layer and quilt it. I'm hoping it isn't too formal, but I just fell in love with the pattern and wanted something traditional. I'll sit on it a week or so and let the quilting muse strike me for just what patterns to quilt.

Baby to be quilt for Jackson

I finally took pics of the Hot Shot quilt top begun at the March retreat, and finished with the borders a la Pat Speth style at the May retreat. It is queen sized, and will eventually go on my bed. This is it, now destined to percolate in the recesses of my mind until I'm ready to layer and quilt it.



I also dug into the huge pile of shirts for Tom R. and spent an afternoon cutting and tearing them up to get to the logos for a t-shirt quilt. Next step is to spend a day or so ironing on stabilizer to their backs. Then the fun begins, laying them out on the design wall, selecting fabrics, and creating a top or two out of them. I don't know if I'll try to layer and quilt my Dad shirt quilt before I tackle quilting Tom's quilt. Probably should so I know what works and doesn't on this style of quilt.

April, May and June have come and gone!

I think I must just accept that blogging will be a hit or miss activity for me. It's also nice to have this as something without a deadline or reaction to someone's expectations (besides my own). So how is my quilting life? Also hit or miss.

We had a spectacular small March retreat yet I of course have no images to share of progress I made. The Hot Shot pattern blocks were done, and those were put into a top during April. My guild had an awesome May retreat where I did a pieced border for the Hot Shot quilt using Pat Speth's picket fence technique. I also added borders to Dad's t-shirt quilt and worked on a few smaller projects. It was good.

Then nothing for a while. Got the daughters out of U of I and high school for the summer. My mother left my childhood home for condo living. Marked the anniversary of my father's passing away. Then had to take a deep painful breath and pause my life while my family faced life without one of my very talented and loved nephews, who passed away June 16.

Somewhere in the calendar this spring, we added a new pc at home, which of course took my attention re: moving files around. I still need to face the IPod file transfers for my youngest daughter. Maybe this weekend?

This weekend I realized that quilting needs to help me through these changes. I'll throw myself into some commitment quilts-a baby quilt for Jan and Rusty's baby-to-be, memory quilt(s) from t-shirts from my brother-in-law Tom R., and some Project Linus quilt tops. Now if I can just take some photos of works in progress to inspire me to keep up the blogging!

Mid-March update

We had a great three day retreat at a bed and breakfast in Chrisman IL last weekend. I took a pile of yellow and browns fabrics to work into a Hot Shot pattern my DDs gave me for my birthday. The fabrics came from a guild auction held in February. I'll post a photo soon, as I'm very pleased with the look. I just need a chance to take the picture. I decided to make it bed size for my use. The original pattern was shown as monochromatic, but I chose to use purples for the popping squares. I should have sufficient fabric left to add a border or two, and maybe piece the back.

I also spent some time quilting my slaphappy quilt. I put a flannel back on it, and I'm not pleased with the accidental folds I introduced on the back. Of course, I chose solid colors for the back, so all the imperfections show up. The quilting is not done, yet. I'm pondering solutions to the quilted-in folds. In Slaphappy tradition (where you don't ever rip, just adapt and move on), I'm thinking of adding label information to the back right over the problem areas. Just cover those suckers right up.

Taught me a lesson-I really need to keep my quilting as a home task, where my sewing surface is flush with my work table. I get a much better sense of back-issues then. Good to learn on my own project.

March is here

And the turning of the month just taught me to blog more often. I finally came back to the sight, and the page was blank! You can tell I'm new to this stuff. I forgot the site automatically archives at the start of the month. Thought for a short spell the previous posts were just gone.

So now I know to be more active on this.

Have a 3 day weekend retreat coming up that I'm really looking forward to. This gives me the impetus to get a few projects organized for taking away. Progress will soon be posted.

Mini-retreat results: one t-shirt quilt top completed

So it's the day after the retreat. Wow, what a productive day. Usually I work on several projects, moving each one along a little bit to the next stage. This time I chose to devote it all to piecing together t-shirts I inherited from my dad. They represent many, but not all, of the places he visited. He loved an excuse to see something new and different. Every year, upon returning from a trip, he'd say he'd finally seen all the parts of the world he ever wanted to see. A year later, he'd have a new destination in mind that he had wanted to see all his life. It wouldn't be long before he was on his way again. I'll probably take it to my next three day weekend to quilt it. It was also practice for t-shirt quilts waiting in the wings for my daughters, with their youthful memories recorded in their shirts, and my niece, and a memory of her father. I figured better to make mistakes first on my quilt, and learn accordingly.

This is the full quilt top. It is about twin bed size. I may add a solid fabric border all around to make sure it is truly rectangular, and to contain the shirts more. If you click on the image, it should go to a blown up version of this.
This is the bottom half of the quilt. That's Switzerland top right. Bottom right is too dark to see, but there is Toledo, and then Turkey down there. The wonderful bird was from Costa Rica. After that is the top half.

Mini-retreat, here I come

Tomorrow is my guild's mini-retreat. My DD doesn't understand what all the fuss is about. How can two dozen women want to spend 12 hours together, just sewing, in town, on a sunny day? (Imaging the big eyes rolling in her head)

I can't explain it either. There's just something very childlike about being able to walk away from reality and home life for a whole day and do something you are passionate about with others that truly understand without any explanation.

Ah-h-h-h-h, quilting buddies.

Recharging a project

Last spring I was taken by the pattern by Cynthia Tomaszewski, 'Sitting Pretty'. Only thing I didn't like was that it was designed in 30's fabrics, which I don't care for. In fact, I refer to them as 'gaggy 30's fabrics'. Yet when shopping for fabrics for this, I didn't see any other types that I felt would make this work for me, and I ended up buying 30's for the project. What I have so far is at right. I think what I like about it is the mix of free form shapes with the old fashioned fabrics. All the pieces are buttonhole stitched by hand. Something I started just to have handwork ready for car trips and watching dvds. I didn't get to the final borders her pattern called for though.

This was partly because I realized that I have no place to hang such a wallhanging. It's definitely not my decorating style at home or at work. So I had to let this sink in; percolate a little. Finally I decided I needed to recharge this project. Think about it differently. Going out on a limb, I bought more 30's fabric, and will now work to turn this into a bed sized quilt, using the four blocks as a medallion with paper pieced sections all around. Hopefully the fabric style will tie together the varying styles of construction. Wish me luck. I'm softening up a bit about this fabric style, but not so that I want to spend much more time working with it. In fact, I truly evaluated calling it done, quilting it and having this over with, or investing more time and money in making it bedsize, and maybe useful. The latter won out.

I made quite a big deal amongst friends about my anti-30's attitude. Now I'm a bit embarrassed about this project going in this direction. I'm waiting to see how the expanded version of the quilt looks before I admit I've gone over to the 30's dark side. Then maybe I'll show and tell it to the guild.

Getting Back to Work

I find it hard sometimes to get down to quilting. Especially if I feel in between projects. Not that projects are done, but more like I get them to a point where I need a break before taking it to the next step. I think I need to get some supplies for a handwork project so I'll have that to do in these moments. Lately though I've gone through stashes of t-shirts for 3 of 4 projects. Two are for my daughters, and one is for me, for a memory quilt using my father's travel shirt collection. I need to do the latter before I tackle a memory quilt for my sister and her daughter, using my brother-in-law's shirts. I've never done one before, so thought it best I suffer the errors on my own project before I do them for gifts. So for now we've been crazy cutting the important stuff off the shirts and getting fusible stabilizer on their backs. At least I've seen 3 piles reduced greatly in size.

Image details

Ooh, I'm going to like this. Just posted my first images. The quilt in the header is a Trip Around the World quilt, and it was my first. All hand cut, all hand pieced, all hand quilted. The wall quilt below was my second quilt. Again, done before I knew you were 'allowed' to do anything not by hand. The pattern is called Amish Cats and Rats, but I haven't been able to find the pattern creator. It was my first applique quilt, done back about 1990.

Amish Cat's and Rats

Getting into the habit

I'll most likely start off with these simple notes to myself to help establish that habit. I have aspirations of this becoming the site family and friends can visit to check up on the latest news, but I'd really like it to become my spot where my quilting takes center stage. I'm thinking it would give me a boost to document that part of my life.

I started quilting about 1986, after 10+ years doing any kind of craft I took a fancy to. This was different though. I started off focusing on one quilt at a time. Thinking the better quality quilt required all hand work, from templates, to cutting, to piecework, and quilting, one at a time was sufficient. This mindset continued when we moved to the Champaign/Urbana area in 1991, but once I discovered our local quilt guild, all bets were off. Quilting was no longer another craft in my repertoire-it became my primary creative outlet.

Suddenly rotary cutters, machine piecing, machine quilting (gasp), and collecting fabrics to build a stash were permitted. I can't believe how exposure to the women in the Illini Country Stitchers guild changed my view of quilting.

So this blog will be my way of sharing what I'm doing in the quilt world, and I'll add in family and friends stuff along the way. For now, it's like a private journal, but I'll soon see to changing that.

What have I done!

I've put off starting a blog for months, sure it would either swallow up all my available creative time, or become another project that I push to bottom of the to-do list and feel guilty about. It's a new year, and I think I can find a place for this in my life. So here goes.....