Quilt Finish 2018: Mini Diabolical Jane

Final Stats

Name: Mini Diabolical Jane

Dimensions: About 40" x 40" (I think)

Pieces: Front - 201, Back - 2

Pattern: Diabolical Jane by Jessie Aller

Technique: Patchwork

Materials: 100% quilting cottons

Quilting: Machine quilted on my Juki

This story begins as many of my stories do, with an expectant mother of a little boy. I asked my usual question: theme and/or color of the nursery and she told me they were planning to decorate the nursery in blue and orange, with a Finding Nemo theme. I went back and forth with design ideas, including ones with fish and anything else nautical I could find. But after making my mother-in-law's sea life quilt years ago, I really didn't want to do anything like that again. And then I remembered that I'd been meaning to try out the Diabolical Jane pattern that a former guild mate of mine had posted on her blog. And the blue and orange would be great for that.

Plus with the layout of the colors fading to white on the edges it looked like a bubble to me. But first I had to adjust the king sized quilt pattern down to a baby quilt size, and I decide to cut my strips 2.5" wide and my diamonds 2.5" square. As you almost have to do with this quilt, I played with the layout of the strips quite a bit, before I was truly satisfied. I was not happy with those too dark blues at the outer edges, for example, so they got replaced or rearranged. A lot of the fabrics also brought in the nautical/fish theme, though I used anything and everything blue and orange I had in my stash, despite what was on them. Next I started sewing together the sections. The more I sewed, the smaller the quilt got. Which I know is kind of to be expected, but because of the number of pieces, it rather surprised me on this one more than on most.

For the back I had bought a fish print fabric and added a strip of a seashell fabric to one side to make it larger and that was it. Nothing fancy since the front is already quite busy. After basting it, it sat and sat and sat some more. The problem: my two commission quilts that I was bound and determined to finish before going back to any gift or personal quilts. And so it sat some more, basted, ready to be quilted, for almost a year. When I finally did get around to it, after quilting the African Commission #1 quilt, I chose to play up the bubble idea and did an all-over free-motion pebble design. I love quilting those, it's almost soothing, and on such a small quilt it takes hardly any time at all, nor is it very hard to manipulate through the machine. I quilted them fairly large as well and tried to stay fairly round with them, though I didn't succeed with that completely. I'd say it still turned out really nice. 

When I trimmed the quilt square, I was surprised by how much it shrank, but at that point it was way too late to add borders or anything else. The binding was a dark blue with a faint linear bubble pattern that I found while shopping for some of the other fabrics. It does a good job of framing the quilt so the edges don't fade out completely and still maintains the theme, which I liked. A quick embroidery to add my initials and the date onto the quilt, and I had another quilt ready to send back to Washington, DC. By then that baby was almost or maybe even over a year old. Whoops!

Travel Charity Quilt

Final Stats

Name: Travel Charity Quilt

Dimensions: 40" x 40"

Pieces: Front - 225

Pattern: 8" Economy Blocks

Technique: Foundation paper piecing

Materials: 100% Quilting Cottons

Quilting: Free motion quilting on my Juki

This quilt started out with a pack of fabric from our charity quilt stash for my guild's 100 Quilts for Kids event. I decided to focus on the travel theme and pulled some additional fabrics from my stash for the centers and some additional green, blue, and black for the frames. I decided on economy blocks to take advantage of the fabrics and I knew the quilt only needed to be 40 by 40 inches to donate. So that meant 25 8" blocks total. I finished the front during one of my guild's sewing retreats and did the quilting at our next sewing meeting. The quilting has loops and words like "flying" and "driving" randomly placed. I bound the quilt in a grey stripe. I'm really happy with how it turned out. It was also my first quilt that I donated to charity as a finished product, which made me feel pretty good.

Space Baby Quilt

 

Final Stats

Name: Space Quilt

Dimensions: 40" x 60"

Pieces: Front - so many

Pattern: Various 

Technique: Patchwork, paper piecing

Materials: 100% Quilting Cottons

Quilting: Machine quilted on my Juki 

So the couple whom I made my second ever quilt for, the Circles Quilt, had a second kid and I wanted to make their son a quilt as well. As per usual, I asked my question about nursery themes and colors. Then the wheels started turning and I found this great paper piecing rocket pattern. I also found an amazing new (at the time) fabric line, Night Sky by Robert Kaufman, and took my color inspiration for the stars from one of the fabrics in the line that I ended up buying for the backing of the quilt. I also bought the more neutral black stars fabric for the background on the front.

I started looking for various star patterns and found some paper piecing patterns and also just dove in and made a few up as I went along (the wonky star, the QST star, and the star with the flying geese blocks, for example). I honestly don't remember where I found all of them, and I apologize for that. I do know that the Basketweave Star that I'd used for my Red, White and Blue Star Quilt was one.

I decided to stick to mostly monochromatic stars using the colors from the constellation fabric: green, blue, yellow, orange, and red. I only deviated from that with one of the stars and that was to make sure it had enough contrast to really make the pattern shine through. Once I had what I decided was enough stars, I spent quite a while deciding on the best placement for everything. Then I started filling in the background to make all of the blocks 12" square. And in between squares, I added 2.5" sashing to give everything a bit of breathing room.

I free motion quilted it with my favorite star pattern. It seemed rather appropriate. And I managed to finish the quilt just in time for our friends to come to DC with their two kids and have dinner with us.

Braille Alphabet Quilt

Final Stats

Name: Braille Alphabet Quilt

Dimensions: 42" x 51"

Pieces: Front - 238

Pattern: Thomas Knauer's Braille Alphabet Quilt with some very minor modifications 

Technique: Patchwork

Materials: 100% Quilting Cottons - Kona Ash and various prints

Quilting: Machine quilted on my EuroPro

Started with my usual, asking the expecting mother-to-be, one of my friends and coworkers, what the theme of the nursery would be. This is her second, so she said she'd be reusing her first son's alphabet stuff and grey. Great, except I didn't want to do the standard alphabet thing. A quick internet search later brought up Thomas Knauer's Braille Alphabet Quilt-Along and although he hadn't finished the posts at the time, I figured out the pattern and decided on the size of each square based on the fact that I'm lazy and didn't want to piece the back. So I wanted to keep the front under 44" across. That's how I ended up with 3.5" squares, which ends at roughly 42" wide. I found the backing fabric first and then grabbed two fabrics for each color for the front. I cut up the rest of my Kona Ash for the background.

I laid out the background squares first. The braille alphabet works by having six dots in a 2x3 grid, where some will be raised to indicate the letter. So A has a single raised dot in the upper left section, B has a two raised dots in the upper left and the middle left sections, etc. Applying this to the quilt, each "block" is a 2x3 patchwork where the background squares are the smooth sections and the prints are the raised dots. Seems completely random when you first look at it, but when you know what you're looking at, it makes so much more sense. Thus I got a non-obvious ABC theme. After laying out the background squares I then filled in the prints, trying not to get the same color or the same print right next to each other, although I had to put some of them kiddie-corner to each other in the lower portion where the "dots" became more frequent.

I finished the top of the quilt before I gave birth to my own son in February and then it sat there for a long time. I finally managed to get it basted and then it sat for another long time. In the meantime my friend had had her son, shortly after I had mine. I took it to the DCMQG quilt retreat in November with the intent to finish this quilt, even if I did nothing else (actually it was my second step after finishing my bee blocks). My friend had plans to come to DC for our work all-staff meeting and holiday party, so I wanted to have it done to give to her in person. And I made it. Got it quilted with the cursive uppercase and lowercase ABCs in the corresponding braille letter blocks, and some sort of fun design in the couple "spacer" blocks (I think I did a leaf, a star, a heart, and a swirl). And I got it bound as well. The only problem was that I a) forgot to embroider my initials and the year in the lower right corner like I usually do and b) forgot to take any decent pictures. The only picture I have of the completed quilt is the fuzzy one of me holding it up.

I may have to ask my friend to take a few pictures and send them to me. I really did enjoy giving it to her in person though. Just in case you're wondering, I finished the last of my bee blocks too. :)

Whale Baby Quilt

Final Stats

Name: Whale Baby Quilt

Dimensions: 40"x52"

Pieces: Front - about 152

Pattern: My own, based on Elizabeth Hartman's Preppy the Whale

Technique: Patchwork

Materials: 100% Quilting Cottons - Kona Cotton and many prints from my stash

Quilting: Machine quilted on my EuroPro

As per usual, I started this journey by asking my friends what their plans were for their nursery. They informed me that they would be doing a nautical theme once their kid was old enough to be transferred to his nursery, so I decided to go with that. I pulled all of my blue fabric that I thought would work, so pretty much anything that had a water or geometric pattern and wasn't anything that would be found on land, like flowers. I bought the Preppy the Whale pattern from Elizabeth Hartman's online shop and did some major quilty math to blow it up to twice the size and then break it down into 4.5" blocks so I could continue the square background around the whale.

Once that was done, I plugged it all into my EQ7 and came up with the size I wanted for the quilt to determine how many background squares I would need to cut and to make sure I liked the placement of the whale. Once that was done, I cut the 4.5" background squares and then auditioned several colors for the whale and ended up getting some input from my friend as to which one she liked best. I cut out the pieces for the whale and then cut the background pieces that went around the whale. I sewed the whale first and was very relieved when the math all worked out and my whale looked right. The rest of the quilt top was quite easy and quick to put together.

I decided to go with a pieced back, because laziness (i.e. not wanting to take the time to match the pattern), and cut some 5x10" pieces from several of the fabrics I had used on the front to put in between the panels of blue bike path. I basted the quilt during a DCMQG sewing day and quilted it at the same meeting using my walking foot and some very loose wavy lines to indicate water currents or waves. I had brought some more red solid for the binding, but figured out halfway through making the binding that I wasn't going to have nearly enough for the quilt. I thought about my options and thought that I might have enough red and white striped binding at home to use, but that ended up not being the case either. So I bit the bullet and went online to try and find some.

My search was more difficult than I thought, especially since I couldn't quite picture how large the stripes would be on most of them. I ended up finding a 1/4" stripe and bought a half yard of that. When it finally came it was a touch bigger than I was hoping for, but worked just fine anyway. It definitely gave it that nautical feel that I was looking for and complimented the red whale quite nicely. I finished the quilt with my initials and the year embroidered in the lower right hand corner, as I usually do. I know I should probably be making slightly more elaborate quilt labels with my full name and the place where I made the quilt and such for future quilt researchers, but I'm just not that dedicated.

2014 Finish - Bright Modern Baby Quilt

Final Stats

Name: Bright Modern Baby Quilt

Dimensions: Unknown

Pieces: 16

Pattern: My own

Technique: Patchwork

Materials: 100% Quilting Cottons

Quilting: Machine quilting done on my little Euro-Pro

This quilt started with some "unusual" inspiration. I had asked my coworker about nursery theme and such, and if I remember correctly, she just said they were doing bright colors. Upon further prompting she did share that they have several modern art prints in their apartment by Kandinsky and Morris Louis, that they adore. So I did some Google searches on those artists and came up with a whole slew of ideas, but the ones that stuck with me the most are the colorful lines that Morris Louis often uses in his paintings. I drafted a basic design in EQ7 and once I was satisfied with the general color placement, I went and bought several Kona solids.

Cutting and sewing the quilt top was the work of about one day (sewing day with the DC Modern Quilt Guild followed by an evening sew-in at Capital Quilts). Which ended up being fortuitous, because I hadn't picked a background color. So I bought some Kona Bone during the sew-in. I had bought the backing fabric at the same time as the fabric for the stripes and ended up finding a lightly dotted fabric at our next DCMQG meeting at Patches. Quilting is straight line, outlining every stripe and then roughly 1/4-1/2" apart in the background area. As per usual, I embroidered my initials and the year into the lower right corner. I'm happy to say that despite the modern and graphic nature of the quilt, my coworker loved it.

Last Finish of 2014: Grey Basketweave

Final Stats

Name: Grey Basketweave

Dimensions: TBD

Pieces: Front - TBD

Pattern: Basketweave, elephant and birds inspired by a picture on Etsy

Technique: Patchwork and Rough Edge Applique

Materials: 100% Quilting Cottons

Quilting: Machine quilting done on my little Euro-Pro

 

So this quilt started like most of my baby quilts, by me subtly (or in this case not so subtly) requesting information about the nursery and sex of the baby from my younger sister. She told me they were doing grey and white sheets, with jungle animals, and that for a boy they would add accents of navy and for a girl fuchsia. Like me, she doesn't care much for the "normal" baby shades of light blue and pink. She also sent me a picture of the rug she had purchased for the nursery, but said that might not be the final rug. I drafted some ideas in EQ7, sent them to her, and waited to hear back about the rug. Once she confirmed that she was keeping it, because nothing better had come along, I started cutting the grey and white pieces and sewing together the blocks. Then, once she told me the sex, I added in the two "ribbons" of navy. Usually I keep things a secret, but in this case, I sent her pictures of everything from my fabric choices to the steps along the way, which was a bit like working with a committee. In this case, one whose opinion I actually valued. Also everything she commented on coincided with thoughts I'd had myself, so it was nice to have things confirmed.

 

Once the top was done and the edge pieces trimmed down, I used the trimmed edges on the back to disguise the seam between the two halves of the flannel elephant fabric I had bought for the back. It turned out so neat that I may need to try that pattern for a larger front at some point. After basting the quilt, I used a largeish pebble design to free motion quilt in the grey and navy areas. I was originally going to do a design in the white areas as well, but my fabric got all puckered in the first test square and I ended up ripping out all of the stuff in the white area, which took way, way longer than the original quilting had done. I think it took about 15 minutes to quilt and 4-5 hours to rip. I was not a happy camper, at all. The pebble quilting, however, went quite well. At first, I just traveled along the seams from one square to another, but after a while, my OCD kicked back in and I stopped and started each square and buried the threads afterwards.

 

Once the quilting was done, I added the applique on top of the quilting. My sister and I had agreed that the quilt looked a little "sad" with the navy, grey, and white. So she suggested adding some lighter greens and blues, and approved my color choices for the animals. I added in some darker pops for the ear and wings. I tried to free-motion around the outside, but the iron-on stuff I used was too thick and my machine kept dropping most of the stitches. So I switched back to my walking foot and used that to tack down my applique pieces. I went around the bodies twice and added touches like feet, beaks, and tails on the way. I only went once around the ear and wings, because those seemed a little less important. The only thing I didn't add was eyes, because I couldn't stomach the thought of twisting the quilt in a tiny 360 degree circle three times.

For the binding, I grabbed my pile of 2.5" strips of grey and tried to do light/dark, light/dark. I machine sewed it to the front and then hand sewed the binding in the car on the way to Kentucky and while we were in Kentucky on the way to Mammoth Caves. I ended up hand embroidering the eyes after I embroidered my initials and the year into the bottom right corner, once the hand binding was complete. I even managed to convince my 36 week pregnant sister and my hubby to help me get some pictures on the way out of the Mammoth Caves National Park. Although it's a little dreary, because December, I'm rather happy with how it turned out. I even got context shots in the nursery when we got back to my sister's place, something I almost never have, even though my quilts are almost always meant to go in a specific setting. So this time I could actually see my grey and white background against the grey and white sheets in the crib, the matching elephant on the mobile to my applique elephant, and the basketweave pattern next to the brick pattern of the sage green rug. I have to say, I'm quite happy about this finish.

HST Baby Quilt

So I am not entirely sure how this happened, but I apparently never blogged about this quilt finish.

I'm especially surprised since it was my very first commissioned quilt. Since it was for family (my husband's aunt to be exact), I just charged for materials and contributed the labor free of charge as my portion of the present. The quilt was for my husband's cousin who was expecting a baby. My only real challenge was to keep things cost effective. So I ended up using a single charm pack, about a yard of Kona Snow, 2 yards of one of the fabrics from the charm pack line (Ticklish! by Me & My Sister for Moda) for the backing and binding, and a cut from my roll of batting.

First I turned all the floral prints and circles into HST's, then added in everything else, because I quickly realized that when you start with 5" squares, they get cut down to 4.5" after sewing, and then finished they only end up at 4". That's a loss of a full inch. So I needed the full charm pack to have a decent sized baby quilt, and then it still ended up on the small side.

I didn't do anything fancy with the backing, because I'd used up every last charm square on the front of the quilt.

Total size was an 8 by 10 layout, or 32" by 40". Definitely far smaller than I usually make my baby quilts. Total time to make it was just over a month. I quilted in the ditch along the diamond patterns. After I washed it, it ended up a lot more wrinkled than I wanted it to be, which taught me a lesson in subject pre-shrinking of the batting.

I leave you with this adorable picture of baby Sadie wrapped in my quilt.

August Finish - Toucan Quilt

My goal for August was to finish the Toucan Crib Quilt. I am horrible at coming up with interesting names for my quilts, so they end up being called something simple based on the main attraction.

I did actually finish the Toucan Quilt.

I cut 33 5.5" squares each of yellow, green, and tan/brown. Putting those together into the quilt top was by far the quickest part of the process.

Next I found, blew up, and mirrored a picture of a toucan to use as the basis for my applique. I used rough edge applique with a straight stitch around the edges to anchor the fabric.

I ended up having to take a row off the top and the side because it wouldn't fit on the pre-cut batting I wanted to use. Instead I used one row on the back in between some striped green flannel.

Quilting was relatively easy as well, until I got to the toucan. I did stitch in the ditch along the edges of the squares, and then outlined every part of the toucan and leaves. That part took forever.

Binding is a Denyse Schmidt fabric I picked up at Joann's.

Finally I embroidered my initials and the year in the bottom right corner. It's kind of hard to see, since it's green on green. Now I just need to wash and send it.