Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Dreamscape and Rainbow quilt tops


Saw a string quilt block on Vicki's sewinspired site and wanted to share a landscape quilt that's in process. After this picture, some extras have been added--textured yarns sewn over seams . The whole thing will eventually have every seam covered in yarn and/or decorative stitches, some beading and metallic stitching. This is from Dream Landscapes by Rose Hughes and I did a smaller one that's in rusts and golds for DL. Not string quilts as there are patterns but they are reminiscent of them.





The tourquoise/brown/lime quilt is what I call a comfy quilt. It's one I made for dil, Jenny mostly from materials she chose. Not colors I would have picked, but DL liked them, too, so I made her one and one for little Spencer, and now I like the colors a lot. It's in a fiesta pattern and I've made or am in process of making about a dozen similar ones in various colors for mostly family and some friends. Most of the others have squares with machine embroidery on them or appliqued onto them, they also all have strips separating each row and all of them are backed with fleece. Most also have decorative stitches down every seam and to "quilt" them, I used simple one color embroidery designs in several squares.
This one is from Stratavarious and is an adaptation of one of their quilts. In theirs you just keep adding strings of various widths in the order given to each other in order until you've gotten to the width you want, then cut out the squares. This one is in a rainbow color palate for a wall quilt--absolutely marvelous. It's just beautiful, but I finished the top just before finding out dear little Sabrina has no color vision. That threw me for a loop as I'd been so anxious to share it with my grandkiddos and I grieve that she sees only in shades of gray. Of course, for Sabrina, that's all she's ever seen, so it's her "normal."

I'm also working on a spider web quilt for a friend. It's also a string quilt but done on triangular pieces of black with bright colorful strips added one over another similarly to foundation piecing.

About 20 years ago, I made a sort of strip quilt for Adam on big black squares. I cut rather wide strips of very bright solids that matched the material for his curtains--a black batik sort of pattern. Not sure if they were bias but was able to curve them some as they were sewn down. I don't think there's a picture of it, but it turned out really well, used bright solids to sash it, and it had black prairie points all around. It was quilted by hand--vividly remember my fingers curling up on their own occasionally!! Don't expect to ever hand quilt another one. Hopefully, I'll find a picture of it somewhere.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Dollies, Angels, Flowers and an Elephant in the room


This dolly angel on the left ended up reminding me of my mom when she was a young woman. Her graduation photos were in the photographer's window for a long time in the 30's.

The monster dolls I made for everyone in the family, Christmas
2007. Mostly from a book that Adam and Jenny gave me the Christmas before and I had everyone pick out a doll they liked then I adapted them. Randy's isn't in this picture--his is a flamingo. I try to give him something flamingo related every year since he told me one year that he'd know "we were over" if he ever came home and found flamingos in the front yard. Even DL has gotten into the fun by knitting him one a few years ago. He's got a flamingo rug, a small wooden "weather vane" flamingo, a wall hanging, a flamingo jingle bell, a denim shirt with flamingoes on the pocket...you get the idea.


Cute angel dolly who holds another tiny angel dolly and a star and is always on the top of our tree. Pam Lawrensen taught the class for this doll at a super saturday years ago in Lakewood. I've made several of these and always have fun making up new outfits for them.



UW shirt on a silly long legged elephant doll I made awhile ago for Gavin. The doll clothes are some of several pages of them I did on my embroidery machine for Sagie several years ago along with three dolls, as I recall. Another of my favorite roses--alitissimo--just barely survived last year. Randy took this picture as he does most of my pictures. Isn't this just beautiful--simple velvety elegance. I'm looking forward to seeing what's blooming this spring. I can't for the life of me figure out how this all works--keep deleting pictures and don't know how to get words right by the pictures, so bear with me!!

Also, keep trying to find the picture of DL's girlies with a ladybug wall hanging I made--Randy says they look like chickens!! It'll be on here if I can find it and figure out how to upload it.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Victory quilt and my wonderul son

I'm in the midst of making a quilt for Randy. It's from Quilt In A Day's Victory Quilts book and I made 19 of the 20 blocks in it, making two of one block that Randy liked the best. The book has super excellent directions and I also got a lot of information from online videos to go along with the book. This is just the strips so far and not the exact way they will go in the quilt. There will be horizontal lattic strips interspersed with small squares, then I've made ribbon borders for it that will be the inner border and will have a black border and backing. It's been a lot of work--I was wondering how many seams I've sewn on it so far!! Maybe some day I'll figure it out. There are also a few appliqued stars I may add to two of the blocks. Not sure how it will be quilted. I don't think my shoulders are up to trying to machine quilt and my hands and wrists are definitely not up to hand quilting it. Will see.





Right is a little taggy blankie I made for my darling little Gavin a couple years ago. Really easy. Out of two different fleeces about 16 inches square, embroidered on one side then folded 3 inch ribbon pieces all around. Back side is a bubbly minky fleece in green.


Adam is doing his residency in anesthesiology and I made some scrubs caps for him when he graduated from UW med. school a couple years ago, then made a few more at Christmas 2009. It was fun that he could give away a bunch of the UW ones to some friends.