And so it begins!

Starting a new quilt today! It will be a queen size version of this quilt, but kicked up a notch. 

Here's a hint of inspiration as to how I'm going to kick up the design. Like it?

Inspiration quilt in photo is by Namoo.

In other news, it's beautiful hiking weather for a trip to the state park. Enjoy!

Modern Baby Quilt Finished!

It's done! Click here to see the beginnings of it and the directions on how to make the applique circles. I'm very proud of this quilt, because it's the first time I've made the quilting part of the design. I used to dislike the quilting, but I'm liking it more with every quilt. As an all-by-hand quilt maker I am usually in a hurry to finish. But not anymore!


Wolf is enjoying it for now, until it goes to my dear friend Sarah.



Here are closeups of the four quadrants of the quilt. I love how the quilting on some of them "breaks the plane" of the square it belongs to and draws the eye away from the block divisions.

I didn't mark any of the quilting. The circles naturally turned out at 1/4" intervals, I think because I'm used to "eyeing" quarter inch seams. For the straight lines I just took a plastic quilting ruler and ran it back and forth on the fabric, pressing down, so I could see the line.


Frog prince!


The owl and the pussycat!


Dandelion moon!


Hope you enjoyed seeing it as much as I enjoyed making it. Cheers!

Modern Baby Quilt Beginning

Edited to say: click here to see the finished quilt!

I started a new baby quilt for a dear friend Sarah who will soon be bringing home a sweet baby girl. Sarah chose this design, Sun and Moon from Squareonestudios from my inspiration file. It's all modern square blocks with appliqued circles.

I used the super circles tutorial from Anna Maria Horner's blog, and the tinfoil method worked perfectly! Give it a try.



I edited the photos to show just the blocks, so consider the white of this blog the design wall, and the blocks are thrown up here. Sarah wanted mostly solids, but I made three novelty circles and used a little patterned fabric.

Above is the enchanted frog from Heather Ross' Far Far Away double gauze collection.



Here are some solid and patterny blocks.



The blocks do look like the sun and moon, don't they?



The most fun part is how they change when you put them together in rows. The neighboring blocks give them a different look than they had on their own. I will show the whole top in a few days so you can see what I mean. Click on the below photo to see it better. Enjoy!

Hexagon Turtle Quilt

A finish! I've been very busy lately so haven't been able to post on the progress of this quilt, but here it is finished! This was a commission for my dear friend/boss Angela for a friend of hers who is due soon. Angela wanted a giant turtle but didn't know how I would achieve that. Hmmmm. Me neither! I originally thought I wanted to make the turtle shell kind of like a spider web but that meant a hex center with parallelograms and arcs surrounding, and no cutting directions. Huh? Yeah, not that. So I remembered that I'm good at hexagons, having hand pieced literally thousands of them for the feedsack GFG quilt a few years ago, so I tried that and it worked!


I printed a small hex off the internet and blew it up to get about a five inch hex and then made a cardboard pattern from it. Angela wanted ric rac around the edge of the shell and a turned head to mimic the turtles in the Wendy Slotboom fabric I used for the piecing. I made the eye and chin out of wool felt so it could be ironed if desired.


I chose the Amy Butler honeycomb for the background because it echoes the shape of turtle shells and also kind of looks like water rippling, so the turtle is swimming. I outline quilted all the hexagons and used the Slotboom turtle fabric for the backing.


I had to applique the whole thing onto the honeycomb piece, then I cut out the part under the hexes to save it for scrap. It sure would have been a lot easier to applique this thing if I'd had a machine! I kind of thought the edges of the hexes would be cool as the edges of the shell since some turtles look like that, but that wouldn't have worked with the ric rac. So as I desperately searched for something oval that was big enough to trace around, Mr. Babyquilts simply said, "Why not fold it in half like a Valentine heart and cut it even that way?" Smarty. That never even occurred to me. So I did and it worked perfectly.


I was in a super rush for time or I would have done a few extra things like successive rings of outline quilting around the hands and feet to show paddling movement, and I might have embroidered claws on the turtle too. I would have also made a separate binding out of the blue honeycomb instead of having to turn the back to the front for binding, which I consider cheating but is sooooo much easier and faster! Hope you like it. Cheers.
Wendy

Michiko's Japanese Quilt

This was my first attempt at applique and some of the teapot pieces were less than 1/2"! I almost gave up, but I persevered. There is a teapot, tea cup and tea leaf to commemorate the tea ceremony, a lilly pad and flower to represent Japanese koi ponds, a world to show we are all one people, the ocean to represent Japan as an island and three Texas flowers to honor her life in Texas. The sashing is a grey on black koi pond print with water and fish and the back is a panel.

I took the first photo in our backyard when our koi pond was still functional and beautiful. Now, not so much!

Sorry about the quality, I scanned them in from hard copies (those were the pre-digital days). Enjoy