117 - 126

I'm on a mission to document every quilt I've made.  Before this exercise of journaling and recording these works, I would have promised you it would be upwards of 300 quilts I've made.  So, imagine my surprise to know that I'm not even over the 150 mark.  Details, details. And I do need to give myself some slack, because during these last 3 years, I've worked on hundreds more client quilts providing the quilting for the tops I didn't piece.

This entry will be covering quilts made in the first part of 2015, all my own designs and my sewing.

117

This was a really fun quilt to make and it inspired a class I taught for a local quilt group.  Working from scrap bins and sewing the blocks improv style and then cutting them down to the same measurements and adding a unifying setting, makes for a polished looking result. 

118

This baby quilt very closely resembles the one that came right before.  In this case, instead of keeping the each block monochromatic, I mixed it all up.  I trimmed each block to be the same size and added the white sashing, but this result was much different than the first.  Also, on the first quilt (above #117) I used an allover quilting design.  For this quilt, I used a different quilting motif in the sashing than what I quilted in the blocks.  

Making two quilts back to back that have an identical layout but different approaches to color & quilting, helped me experiment and develop my preferences even more.  I'm amazed at how much I'm still learning in this craft 10 years into it!

119

I called this quilt the Pedestrian at Best quilt for a number of reasons: 1) it's a simple design 2) I was listening to a lot of Courtney Barnett at the time (one of her songs is called Pedestrian at Best 3) Her album Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit is on orange vinyl.

Orange is one of the most underrepresented colors in my fabric stash, and I don't know why.  I thought this was so fun to make.  The great orange fabrics are really set off by the white border and gray sashing.  Fun times, man!

120

Here I am here with my son Jude. One of the teachers he had in elementary school was especially important to us.  She helped us navigate tricky waters with Jude's before his autism diagnosis and she'll always be special to us because of that.  She took a job outside of our district at the same time she was expecting her first child.  Also around the same time, Jude was into origami and one day he created this shape.  I took it as quilting inspiration - duh - and used up some of my gray scraps piecing this quilt top together.  Lots of mom-tears were shed when we stopped by the elementary school to give this to her.

121

I remember starting this quilt at a quilting retreat.  I brought with me a bunch of fabrics that I thought would be fun to use in a baby quilt, but I didn't have an exact idea about what I wanted to do.  I also brought my laptop along with me to the retreat, so I started up my EQ7 program (Electric Quilt - quilting software is a real thing, non-quilters!) to get some ideas flowing.  I knew I wanted to spend as much time as I could sewing at the retreat, so I hastily picked a block, arranged it in a layout and just started cutting up fabrics.  This quilt was the result and I was very happy with it.  I got to use some of the great orange fabrics I had leftover from quilt #119.  Friends of ours were expecting their first child but didn't find out the baby's gender until birth.  I thought this palette could go either way.  Baby Stella was born a few months later. :)

122

Seriously one of my favorite quilts! Like the last quilt, I started this one at another quilting retreat in August of 2014.  It's my own design - heavy on the HSTs, as per usual.  The repeating block I used was a reimagined take of the traditional Birds in the Air block.  I loved the symmetry mixed with asymmetry of the layout as a whole and the white negative space was fun to quilt in.  Since my baby pictured here (Jace) had never received a quilt from his quilter mama, I made sure it was completed by his 6th birthday.  He uses it every night which of course makes me feel wonderful. 

123

I made this baby quilt for a friend who had her second daughter, Ivy.  Believe it or not, this is the same block used in quilt #121 (in blues and oranges)!  I decided to play around with it some, tilting the blocks on-point and adding a sashing.  I also added custom quilting to this one, jazzing it up a bit. 

124

This is my Star Sighting pattern, and the third time I made it using different fabrics so that all three quilts have a distinct look.  I used the opportunity as I was making it to take a lot of step-out photos for use in the pattern I'm writing for it.  This size measures 96" x 96" and is currently on our bed.

125

This was a quilt whose making spanned many years.  I started piecing the top at least six or more years prior, not having any particular plan in mind for it.  I wouldn't call myself a fan of the 1930s reproduction prints, but I really loved this, a simple Irish Chain felt like such a good way to showcase these kind of prints.  My husband's aunt was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and I knew right away that I wanted to finish this top for Kathy.  All I had to do to get it ready was to quilt and bind it. 

126

I don't know if I've mentioned this in my journal yet, but in the summer of 2015, I began meeting up with other modern quilters.  It was such a great thing for me to do. Being in community is so important - and being around other makers in particular - is so inspiring. At one meeting, we all brought a yard of a fabric we considered to be modern.  I love solids, so I took a delicious shot cotton I'd used in a recent quilt.  We all had our fabrics, sat in a circle and passed them to the left or right, kind of like musical chairs.  The fabric we ended up holding got cut in half, and then in the next round got cut in half again, continuing until all the fabrics had been cut into small pieces and we had almost every fabric at the end - just in varying amounts.  The challenge was to make something with the fabrics.  I made this quilt.  The "dark" fabrics were challenge fabrics, I paired them with low-volume fabrics from my stash.  And of course, I went with my favorite half-square triangles all arranged the same way.  It'll make a good baby quilt to give away someday.

Transition

Well, guys and gills, after quilting for clients for three years, I'm... not... doing that... now.  I thought the transition outta the biz went well with my customers.  I gave them a year's notice and let my frequent customers sign up for the months they wanted me to quilt for them.  It worked out well. I limited the spots available each month and it was easier for me to handle life homeschooling my oldest son and working.

When I finished up my customer list at the end of 2015, I spent most of January cleaning and organizing my house.  And by house, I mean my sewing room.  I went through every tool, notion and piece of fabric.  I decided to keep a lot of it, but I also threw away and donated a lot, too.  The result is a welcoming space that begs to be sewn in!

Here are a few of the things I've made in the weeks since the cleaning job was finished:

Easy Addition pattern by Brenda Ratliff, appearing in the Quilts and More Spring 2016 issue.

And below is the second top that I've made.  I've been inspired by the traditional Ocean Waves pattern for a really, really long time.  I don't know what it is about MANY, MANY half-square triangles that I love.  It's a blessing and a curse.  They look so pretty, but they are legit time-consuming.

I'll let you in on a little secret.  It's always bothered me how the Ocean Waves blocks are typically not arranged symmetrically.  I get that it creates movement and interest.  I don't know what it says about my personality that I just couldn't do it the same way.  Oh well, I made it my own and that's what it's all about.

And at the risk of being a one-trick pony (making one element different), I couldn't resist adding an outlier block.

This is my own design/take on the Ocean Waves quilt.  You can find more pics by searching the hashtag #oceanwavvesquilt on Instagram.

I think I have a quilting plan for it, I just haven't executed it yet.  More to come on this one.

Around the studio

I've been working night and day on a new pattern I will have for sale this fall. I'm so excited to have pattern testers lined up to make the 3 optional sizes and I just can't wait to see their versions of this quilt! It's been a favorite of mine for the last year. 

I'm still trying to nail down a name for it, I'm sure when the right name comes along, I'll know.   

These Cotton + Steel prints lend a ton of personality to this project - I absolutely love this line!

I'll be in touch with updates but for now, back to sewing! 

102 - 116

Alrighty!  We're getting caught up around here to what I would classify as counting up recent quilts!  Today I'm featuring the quilts I made in the year 2014.

102:

I made this quilt for a wonderful teacher who had both my older kids in school.  She had her second baby and while I don't do teacher quilts every year, I thought this was a great opportunity to give back a tiny little smidge of appreciation for the love and compassion she heaped on our family for two years.  I didn't work from a pattern, I just pulled from my scrap bin and matched colors to make same-colored blocks.  The white sashing really gives a crisp look and makes it look a lot more "planned". 

103:

This quilt is one of my favorites ever. EVER! And it's MINE!  I absolutely loved using a charm pack of Vanessa Christianson's Color Me Happy fabric line to - in essence - "confetti" this quilt.  I will be writing and self-publishing this pattern very soon.  I spent extra time on the quilting. :)

104:

This was a wonderful little baby quilt for the second nephew on my side of the family.  I was exploring the use of solids and really liked the simplicity of the repeating block in muted colors.  The white fabric, again, lends to such a crisp look.  Quilting stitches on solid fabrics show really well, too - that's a bonus to a gal like me.

105:

This quilt was the saddest quilt to make.  I cried and cried and cried as I made it.  It really was like therapy for me.  A classmate of mine died suddenly last year of a medical event.  He was such a sweet and special guy and I grieved deeply for him.  I still grieve for his family and think of them often.  I gave this quilt to his family as a comfort quilt - just to remind them that they are loved and that their son will not be forgotten, he made such a big impact on my life.  This was pieced in an improv style but with a basic plan.  It ended up being a large lap/small twin size and I worked on it hard so that it could be finished in four days.  I really do like the style and hope to make something similar in the future, hopefully for a happy occasion.  I was extremely grateful for having a longarm quilting machine for a situation like this, a quick turnaround for what's usually a much more tedious process.

106:

Easiest quilt ever!  I used two great fabric prints to make this quilt with no seaming.  It only took a few hours to put together and when paired with the book - this made a wonderful gift for a book-club friend.

107:

This was a super-fun quilt to make.  I used a bunch of Cotton + Steel fabrics to make these great "records".  I used a free pattern from the Fons & Porter website from which to base this design.  I used a fusible product to secure the records onto plain white blocks then used a blanket stitch to raw-edge applique the records in place.  Then I sewed all the blocks together and quilted it.  I thought the irregularly spaced straight lines mimicked the grooves on a record, so that's how I decided on the quilting.  We gave this to friends - who are also in a record club with us - for their wedding.  Vinyl is alive and well!

108:

I absolutely loved making this quilt.  It's got a little bit of special paper-piecing going on and a whole lot of quilting, just the way I like it. :) This is my own design and we gave it to friends of ours for their first baby girl.

109:

In 2013, I made a two-fabric and three-fabric quilt I designed in this same pattern.  This baby quilt was a gift for cousins.  Again, solid fabrics really lend themselves to showing the quilting well, so I took some extra time for fancy quilting.  It's worth it!  I demonstrate drawing the echoed swirls quilting design in this video.

110:

I admit it, I went on a bit of a rampage last year.  It wasn't violent, but my sewing/quilting room got worked over pretty good.  I found leftover blocks from three different quilts when cleaning and reorganizing and decided to combine them in this one baby quilt.  I unified it with allover fancy quilting to make it look like the whole top belonged together.  We gave this to cousins for the birth of their baby.

111:

This quilt was another one I hadn't really planned on making in advance, it was just that I found a bunch of the printed fabrics already cut and leftover from another quilt.  So, I sewed them into stacks, added a white sashing and borders (my secret weapon) and quilted it up.  I ended up giving this to a friend who liked it on Instagram and asked about buying it.

112:

This was yet another quilt that I basically found the pieces leftover from other projects, added the sashing and borders and then quilted it up.  We gave this to cousins who had their first baby, a girl.  As a general rule, I enjoy quilting the crap out of quilts.  There was a fourth quilt top I made based on these found, long abandoned other projects, but I haven't yet quilted and bound it.  Maybe it'll make the list of 2015 completed projects?

113:

I had to count this mini quilt in my number of completed projects because after all, I did quilt it and bind it.  I'm not "into" minis like some people are into minis, but I do see the appeal.  It'll be really great to display someday in my sewing room.

114:

This quilt was one I started in 2008.  I even got it to the stage where it was basted with safety pins and partially quilted on my domestic sewing machine, but then I just gave up on it and let it sit around for years.  I got it back out, removed the pins, picked out some of the stitching I'd done previously (that I hated) and finished the quilting on my longarm.  It's another quilt that stays in our house.  It is winter-themed with snowflake prints and the like, but not overpowering enough that it can't be used year-round.  This is also my own design.

115:

This quilt was very special because I made it for my mom.  I hadn't ever made her a quilt in the nearly 10 years I'd been quilting, so I wanted to correct that situation for Christmas.  She loves the quilt!  I found the free pattern online and thought it'd look great using fabrics that I'd previously selected for her. I'm so glad I made it, I know it's well used and loved in her home.

116:

And last but certainly not least: this quilt.  I reworked an earlier pattern of my own design (no. 103 from this post, actually) in a different colorway and came up with this quilt for my mother-in-law.  Just before Christmas of 2014, she received a breast cancer diagnosis.  This was made as a comfort quilt and given to her in time for Christmas.  I'm so happy to say that she's cancer-free now thanks to early detection and effective treatments and I'm so thankful for that!  I know so many that haven't been that fortunate. Life and health are definitely a gift!  This pattern will be available soon for purchase.

090 - 101

Well, doing this exercise in counting up my quilts, I've discovered the total number of quilts I thought I made was bigger in my head. :)

090:

I loved this quilt. There are lots of "plus" quilts out there in the quilting industry.  However, it took a gift bag in this exact pattern to get me inspired to make this pattern that I call Plus Ones.  It's a single block repeat and using solids gave me a chance to really play up the quilting.  We gave this to friends for their wedding gift.

091:

As so often it does, once I get a pattern figured out, I'll make it again.  This pattern I ended up making three times total: once in a 2-fabric way and twice in a 3-fabric pattern like this one.  I made this in a baby size for my friend for her first baby.

092:

I designed this baby quilt and called it Adel Bricks.  <-- Click that link to get the free pattern.  We gave this quilt to a cousin for the birth of their baby boy.  I love a quilt top that is easily assembled in a day!

093:

Here's the second Adel Bricks baby quilt I made.  We gave this to our friends for their third baby.  I love the wood grain quilting on pretty much everything, but especially on these little quilts.

094:

This is the third Adel Bricks baby quilt that I made.  It's amazing how much the name personalization can add to the quilt!  This was a commission for friends of ours who had their second baby.  Safe to say I love gray fabrics and especially dig the monochome flavor of each of these baby quilts.

095:

I made this quilt from a magazine pattern.  It was simple enough but rated extremely high on the "fun factor".  The quilting took a long time to do, but I couldn't be more happy with how it turned out.  That's the thing about quilting stitches - once the time is invested, they don't come out and the look can be enjoyed for such a long time! :) Unless those stitches meet a seam ripper, that is.

096:

This quilt was also made as a baby quilt, which happens to be my favorite kind of quilts to make in case you haven't noticed!  I designed this pattern, but admittedly I can't tell you that there isn't one exactly like it somewhere else in the quiltosphere.  I mean, it's just squares.  I might have even made it in a more time-intensive way, but I loved the end result, so that's all that matters.  We gave this to a cousin for the birth of one of their sons.

097:

This quilt was magical to make.  It was the first of its kind that I'd made - the diamond shapes meant lots and lots of bias edges to contend with.  I loved the argyle style but with soft baby colors.  I also decided to use a monogram to further personalize the quilt.  Add fancy-pants quilting, and it ended up being a winner!  This was a gift to friends of ours for their baby.

098:

I made this quilt for a cousin/friends for a wedding gift.  I loved this pattern called Firedrill by Elizabeth Hartman.  

 099:

I designed this quilt fairly early on in my quilting career.  I had cut and sewn most all of the blocks together and just lost my steam on the project - I didn't have anything or anyone in mind for it and so it went on the back burner.  Then a friend asked if I would donate a quilt for a silent auction she was holding as part of a larger fundraiser for her son who will need a future medical procedure.  I told her I would donate this quilt.  This was the second quilt I had ever donated to a fund-raiser auction... and the last.  The family would have benefited the same if I would have just written a $100 check and I would have come out ahead not spending a week's worth of time/materials on it rather than on my business customers.  It was a difficult but valuable lesson to learn for the future.  It doesn't mean I love the families or causes any less, it's just from a realistic approach, quilts have a tendency to be undervalued by the general population.

100:

I just made this pattern up on the fly to give to friends for their wedding. I do love the simplistic color palette and piecing techniques and would make something like this again in the future.

101:

I made this quilt to celebrate my sister's 30th birthday.  She's a lover-of-mint and a modern gal, so I figured out how to cut the fabrics without a template or pattern and figured out the piecing without any y-seams and just went for it.  It took a little more color placement planning than I was used to, but I absolutely love the end result - totally worth it!  There are so many hexie quilt patterns out there that are awesome and I probably would have saved time buying one, but there is also something to be said for doing the legwork and figuring it out myself.  The learning is in the figuring.

077 - 089

The year was 2012, it was the first full year we spent in our new (and current) house, and it was my reintroduction to having my very own sewing and quilting room!  We'd outgrown our old house several years prior - I lost my own sewing space and gained a son.  It was a good trade!

But when I had my own sewing space again, I was blissed out. Here are the quilts I finished in 2012.

077:

I made this quilt in one day and gave it to a friend for her first baby.  I believe the fabrics mostly came from the same collection, I just improvised the piecing using various lengths of strips (but all cut the same width), used a spray basting product for fast pin-less basting and quilted it on my home sewing machine.  I love a good stripe for the binding!

078:

This was the second quilt I'd made using this fantastic pattern!  The first one was no. 029 - that one was for my oldest son in blue fabrics, this one was for my middle son.  It's another quilt that is still in our house.

079:

This baby quilt was made for a cousin's first baby boy.  I centered this quilt around the fantastic large-scale fabric of which I only had a fat-quarter.  So, I pulled other fabrics from my stash to compliment the large-scale print and made it work.  I liked not following the rules of repeating blocks, it felt more artistic in a way - still a simple pattern but I can appreciate now how I was trying to find my way into more modern styles of quilting.

080:

There are a lot of similarities between this quilt and the previous one.  I really played up the great fabrics in this quilt and in a minimalist kind of way.  This quilt was given to friends of ours for their baby boy.

 081:

Here's a close-up of a baby quilt I made for our first nephew on my side of the family.  I'm featuring the close-up photo here because otherwise it's difficult to see just how many fabrics there were in this quilt!  Oh my goodness, talk about using up scraps.  I narrowed my palette down to three main color groups: greens, blues and oranges.  I picked more low-volume prints to pair the more vibrant prints with and the result was a million (thereabouts) half-square triangles.  Simple straight line quilting fit the bill here.

082:

This was a comfort quilt I made for a person in my town who was battling cancer and who is still fighting hard, actually.  I chose our town's school colors as a palette and kept the pattern and quilting very simple.  This was the first personal quilt that I was blessed to quilt with a longarm quilting machine.  In the summer of 2012, my local quilt shop owner trained me how to run her longarm so that I could help out with quilting her shop samples.  She encouraged me to quilt this on her machine so that I could gain experience and because she often donates the quilting for comfort quilts - which is extremely generous.

083:

This baby quilt was given to my friend for her 3rd baby in exchange for her taking family photos of us.  One of my favorite parts of this quilt was the low-volume neutrals on the top portion of this quilt - I just love the subtlety.  Of course, the Amy Butler prints are completely awesome, too! 

084:

I loved this quilt!  We gave it to a cousin for her second child.  I can't help it, I love half-square triangles.  They can be a pain in the butt, yes, but the effect they give in a quilt can't be beat.  It's worth the extra work.

085:

This was another lap-sized comfort quilt made for another member of my community battling cancer.  I used the large-scale fabrics to do the work so that the piecing didn't take very long, but then I spent a lot of time doing some fancy quilting on it.  Again, the owner of my LQS let me use her longarm to do the quilting.  I took advantage of the opportunity to try "fancy" quilting.  I freehanded feathers and spirals allover the quilt - I learned so much quilting this.

086:

This was a fun quilt to make.  We gave it to friends of ours expecting their first baby.  I loved the owl fabric printed on linen and picked all of the other fabrics to coordinate with that fabric.  Also, chevrons were kind of big back then, too.  I used my domestic sewing machine to quilt it.  The back was orange and I liked using a light blue binding to jazz it up a bit.

087:

I'll just say it: I think this is a gorgeous quilt.  I used the traditional Honeybee block as a starting point.  I made 9 individual blocks separately using machine applique to secure the pink petals on the corners of the gray squares.  I loved the interplay between the petals of the different blocks.  The thin gray border really helped set it off and the larger outside border further modernized the feel of the quilt.  I quilted feathers allover the top.

088:

Alright, I look at this quilt and although I designed it, it doesn't look like me.  We gave it to friends expecting their first baby.  The inspiration here was the couple's love of Harley-Davidson motorcycles.  I wanted to use the Harley colors and indicate movement, but not use the logo in any way.  

089:

This quilt was a commission that I agreed to take on for friends of ours for their second baby.  I'm not sure why I never took a finished picture of this quilt, this is the only one to be found.  This fun pattern is by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr.