Independence

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Suzanne

While I’ve been busy doing other things (bookkeeping, blech), I’ve also been working hard quilting. My next customer quilts require me to custom quilt them, so I’ve thrown a couple of my own into the queue until I’m ready.

This poor quilt has been hanging around my sewing room for years. Many years. This was a kit, though I added borders to make it bigger. The instructions were terrible.

My piecing wasn’t that great either, you’ll note, based on the comparison with the floorboard, how NOT square this quilt is (and this is just one of the sides, the bottom is even worse…)

I had always intended to do a custom quilting job (for my non-quilting readers, this means doing something fancy in the borders and in the blocks and stuff). I did some deep soul-searching and realized that this was never going to happen, and that I’d rather sleep under this quilt around the 4th of July NOW, rather than have my children pull this out of a bag 50 years from now and wonder why Mom never finished it (or…have them throw the bag away…).

It does lay flat. I think there was a dog bone on the floor.

I think there were supposed to be some appliques, stars or something underneath that flag block. Interesting side note: that pinwheel block and streamers on the right? I actually pieced a second one of those and made it into a banner that we had hanging outside our old house for awhile. Until it faded and started falling apart.

It does have to go into the waiting to be bound pile for awhile. First, there are quilts ahead of it in the queue, and second, I don’t actually have anything to bind it with at the moment. This was made before I got smart and started setting aside fabric for bindings, and I am thinking I’ll use either a solid navy or a solid black, and I have NONE of either of those in my stash.

I have thousands of yards of a hundreds of other fabric, but no solid navy or black. Typical.

(quilted by my Intelliquilter using a computerized design called Ocean Froth by Anne Bright. Thread is Sew Fine and Bottom Line, batting is Warm Bond.)

S is for Sabrina

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Suzanne

My sister-in-law gave birth to her 4th baby yesterday, she and my brother now have a matched set: 2 boys and 2 girls. Sabrina and her Mommy and Daddy are doing well.

I shared the quilt I made for her on MQResource awhile back (I actually made it and sent it before she was even born. I know, amazing…), but I only ever posted teasers here, some blocks in progress, the pillowcase it got delivered in. In honor of her birth, I thought I’d share the actual quilt, along with a gratuitous shot of the dog walking away:

Have I mentioned how much I love this black and white polka dot fabric? Yeah, I’ve only used it once or twice or…10 times before…

For the quilting, I used a computerized design from Anne Bright called Venice. It stitched out beautifully. The thread is Sew Fine and Bottom Line.

I drew and cut the “S” freehand. It’s a really great initial for a name, don’t you think?

I can’t wait to meet Sabrina. I hope that some day soon her Mom or Dad will send me a picture of her with her quilt. They can wait awhile, though, I’m sure they are kinda busy right now.

Cherry on Top

Posted on January 5, 2010 by Suzanne

I don’t know why I consider quilts “done” when they still need labels and bindings, but still, but I guess it’s done enough to share, the rest is just gravy.

Looking back through the blog, it appears that I finished piecing the body of this back in September 2008. At the time, I mentioned having Delusions of Applique.

Fast forward to April 2009 and I was auditioning applique, but struggling with colors and placement.

Apparently the ideas needed to continue marinating because it wasn’t until about 3 weeks ago that I had an epiphany.

See, I was trying REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to get the word CHERRY on here somewhere.

I have the letters cut out and everything (they are in that April post). It’s the same curly font on display in my header on the blog. I really loved those letters. But I just couldn’t figure out where to put everything. I even contemplated taking the quilt top apart and changing the size.

My epiphany? It went like this:

“Duh. You don’t NEED the word CHERRY on the quilt, when you actually HAVE cherries on the quilt.”

After that it was easy.

Well, after I realized that the green words for “with a” and “on top” were too blendy and they needed to be red. Luckily, I had them cut out that way already. I had 3 sets of letters — 2 shades of green plus the red.

I finished the freehand quilting this afternoon, and can’t wait to bind it and maybe hang this on on the wall somewhere here at home!

Really pink

Posted on November 30, 2009 by Suzanne

The pattern is a Miss Rosie’s pattern - Sweet Tea. The pattern quilt uses a pink background and I decided to screw up my courage and use the pink, too.

Wow. It is really pink.

It is also made up of a bazillion 4 patches, and I’m pretty much over making them, but the units are all cut, so I’m powering through them in the evenings. The day times are spent slaving away over the quilting machine. Nothing to show at the moment, no pictures of one (yet…), and I’m not ready to show the other (yet…). Everything else has been boring meanders.

Tomorrow starts the Journal Your Christmas project, and I’m going to take another stab. I did a complete journal in 2007, but only got about 3 days done last year. If you are interested in participating (and people do it in all different ways, from really fancy paper scrapbooks, to simple written journals), you can visit Shimelle’s website.

So that’s what I’m up to. What kind of trouble are you getting in to?

Wednesday

Posted on May 27, 2009 by Suzanne

I meant to bring this quilt home so I could get a better picture of it, but I forgot. I’m just glad I remembered to get the memory card out of the printer so that I had the pictures I had already taken…

I started making these blocks some months ago, but they got set aside in the heat of…several other quilts. After getting Sweet to it’s current state, I looked around at the disaster that masquerades as my sewing room and decided that I ought to take the opportunity to clean up a bit.

Then, I came to my senses and pulled these blocks out in order to get this quilt finished. Only, this isn’t exactly the quilt I had in mind when I was making these blocks. I had originally intended a twin size quilt, with 16 blocks, but I had an epiphany over the weekend: I could use 9 of them to make this quilt, and turn it into a year-belated baby gift for Mark’s cousin’s baby…and then I could make a smaller block wallhanging as a sample for the shop.

It was while I was sewing on the borders to this one, that I realized that 16-9=7, not 5. I was thinking I would only end up with 1 orphan block, but this plan would result in 3 orphans. 7 is practically 9, so…I guess I’ll be making 2 more blocks, plus the required checkerboard sashing…and end up with a 2nd quilt this size.

I was so productive today: got the whole quilt quilted, plus a bunch of other stuff done. Of course, that’s only because I let IQ do the quilting…this is a panto from Keryn Emmerson called Bramble, it came on the IQ. I thought it was quite pretty. I used wool batting, and a lavender thread on the quilt top. Hopefully I’ll have it labeled and bound sooner than the kid’s 2nd birthday…

I’m not sure how it’s possible, but: tomorrow is the last day of school. I’m going to have FIFTH graders. I’m pretty sure I haven’t given them permission to grow up so quickly.

TTFN –

Suzanne

Suzanne Earley

Suzanne's Adventures in Quilting, Photography, Computers, and Life

Tag Archives: quilt

Independence

S is for Sabrina

Cherry on Top

Really pink

Wednesday