The Quilt Doctor is In

Posted on August 14, 2011 by

The quilt doctor is in!

As long as I can remember, my mother has been sewing and quilting and teaching sewing and quilting. And as long as I can remember, she’s used this Tupperware box to hold her basic sewing equipment (and apparently ten thimbles!) so last weekend, seeing it sitting on my ironing board was a bit like seeing an old-fashioned black doctor’s bag.

Yes, the quilt doctor was making a house call.

My parents were in town for my brother’s birthday and I managed to book my mom for all day for Sunday. My father read and slept on the couch while we turned on two sewing machines and my mom tackled my friend’s baby quilt, which was in cut-up squares in a plastic baggie.

I had overreached. I needed help.

My friend had given birth earlier that week and her baby quilt (in green and yellow as requested) was still not assembled. Months ago, I had made almost all the pinwheels, even the big ones that the instructions said not too, but then I stopped when I faced a sizing problem.

The pattern called for charm squares to be chopped into pinwheels. However, I had ordered some “charm squares” from Etsy that were in adorable green and yellow 30s fabric. But instead of being 5 inches, they were 3.5 inches. This meant I had to fudge the large pinwheels in the pattern….and basically, end up trying to do math. Oh, math. We haven’t seen each other since high school, and we still hate each others’ guts.

Chain pieced and ready for the final assembly!

Anyway, my squares didn’t seem the all be the right size, I wasn’t sure about the big pinwheels, and I needed to cut out 44 white squares of some size. So I was relieved when my mom sat down with the stack and a rotary cutter and made sure all was the same size and then chopped up the white squares…until we ran out of fabric and had to drive across town in the heat to buy more.

So, lessons learned from the quilt doctor?

  • Follow the instructions! Don’t make the big pinwheel if the instructions say not to, because you will have to pick them apart, wasting precious time.
  • If the stitches seem weird, stop and fix the problems. Or it will be almost impossible to pick apart later. Your mother will be displeased.
  • Always buy more fabric than you think you will need.
  • Chain piecing makes assembly much easier!

We sewed and ripped and pinned and my mom made sure that quilt top was together before she left. I was relieved, because I just could not see how it was all going to come together otherwise.

My favorite fabric from the quilt!

So, it’s almost done! I need to piece the back together and machine quilt it, and then send it off to England. And after feeling a bit hesitant over the lightness of this quilt (it’s very soft in color), I’ve decided that I love it.

Stay tuned for a picture of the final image!

Posted in Baby Quilt, Work in Progress | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Tweet, tweet

Posted on May 21, 2011 by

I was planning a post on how to make hexies or about all the things I have that are orange, but I just haven’t really felt like much after a very busy week of writing blogs and articles at work.

So, I’m going to post some pictures from a finished project that was sent off (with my quilt from the last post) to Little Miss C.

I saw these great bird mobiles on Spool and thought they would make a great baby gift. So I summoned my friends to my house, plied them with wine and cheese, gave them pattern pieces, and basically created a mini-sweat shop.

I sewed up the pieces they cut out, and then my friend and my sister-in-law turned them inside out and stuffed them–with the help of chopsticks.

Stuffed and ready!

See the tails? I sewed them shut with white quilting threads. Looks bad, doesn’t it?

The original mobile is on a stick, but they don’t like you to send sticks to other countries, so after wandering the aisles in Michael’s, my friend Suzanne and I figured an embroidery hoop would work as well.

Well, as my friend grew a baby, I threw the birds and hoop into a drawer and ignored them while I finished her quilt. Then panicked when I realized the friend would not want a newborn and the task of hanging a mobile. So I tried to finish it in time to send to her so that she could hang it up while extremely, extremely pregnant.

Fortunately for her, I failed.

Anyway, the husband bravely worked though the stifling heat in our no-AC apartment (they turn it only after the first spring heatwave) balancing the birds and devising a way to hang it. He also felt they needed to be perching on something, so he cut up a dowel and sanded the ends.

Oh, and I ripped out the thread and took some of the stuffing and sewed them back together.

And, voila!

Claire, if there is no way to actually hang this thing up, I totally understand!

Posted in Baby Quilt | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Bloggers Quilt Festival 2011

Posted on May 16, 2011 by

Baby quilt for CRW

Here’s my entry for the Quilt Festival over at Amy’s Creative Side. It’s the first quilt I ever made all on my own–I did make a small lap quilt with my mom back in college, but she ended up finishing the quilting for me so I am not counting it!

So, this one is special since I started it and finished it on my own–with a little help from my mom with the machine quilting and a lesson on binding. And my friend Suzanne who let me use her machine for some quilting while I waited for a presser foot to come in the mail.

So I made it all by myself…sort of. Ok, no. Not really.

Anyway, it was a present for a very dear friend in England who just had a baby. Back in January, I emailed her some different fabric options, she and her husband picked the border fabric (which I bought from the awesome Tomato in Japan). In fact, I loved the border fabric so much I ended up using a big piece for the back.

I wasn’t sure what I would do for a pattern, but then I saw this post on design*sponge. I figured “Wonky Log Cabin” would be hard to mess up!

I used the solids that I picked up in Philadelphia at Spool (to go with some different fabric, oh well!) ages ago and then I bought some patterned fabric at Joann’s to match.

It felt like a fun and organic process–I just kept building on each square and it all came together. I learned some new things, like the machine quilting and binding. But mostly, it was about not being afraid to just go ahead and try without being an expert or using a pattern. 

Lessons learned? Next time I would probably quilt the dark blocks with matching thread next time. White thread stood out–and so did my mistakes!

I was worried about the crazy bright colors but I think it all worked pretty well….but it is bright. Really, really bright.

But of course the nicest thing was getting the text from my friend saying she had received it and loved it! It might be a while before I meet this little baby, but in the meantime, she’s got something that I made just for her. Welcome, Little Miss C–I’m so glad you’re here.

Posted in Baby Quilt, Making A Crafty Mess | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments

Ten hours equals five hexies?

Posted on May 13, 2011 by

Hexies!

So, I went to California last Tuesday morning. I slept 4.5 hours the night before.

This is what happens when you are an anxious packer, and you have a textile design class right after work and you are out of the house from 7.45 am to 10 pm. When you get home, there’s a package in the mail with a little packet of paper hexagons. But first you must repack your suitcase twice, and take out the garbage and wash the dishes.

So then  it’s 11 pm and you find yourself watching Rachel Maddow and frantically chopping up a piece of fabric that you are never going to use whole but first you have to iron it. At midnight, you need to put it all away and get into bed, but the closet where you store your ironing board is dangerously overfull and suddenly there’s fabric snips everywhere and you have to manhandle the ironing board back in with the toilet plunger and files and wrapping paper and bike helmet and you are pretty sure that 3,000 miles away your spouse’s spidey sense is tingling and he knows you are Making A Crafty Mess.

And then it’s 4.30 am and you are rushing out the door to catch a cab.

I love this fabric but was never going to use it as a whole piece, so it was perfect for cutting up.

But…it was worth it. I had a nice stack of fabric squares to baste over my paper, and I spent most of the flight making hexagons to sew together. On the flight home, I sewed some of them together. This was the flight where my male seatmate and the man behind me were extremely interested in what I was doing and what was my intent. The stewardesses on both flights were also very curious. Why was there paper in there? How would I get it out? Would I take out the basting? What would I make with them? was I going to make it all by hand?

Weird but oddly charming.

I noticed I was the only person on both flights doing any handicrafts. As an anxious flier, I have found that knitting or sewing is the most soothing activity, apart from reading an enormous, absorbing book. And hexies are the best size for traveling. (Thank you ladies of DC Modern Quilt Guild for showing me how to make them!)

I haven’t really decided what I am going to do with them but I am thinking baby quilt with dotted fabric between them. As long as they look a bit edgy and not too flowery.

Or should I make a solid piece of hexies?

Oh, and California was awesome. I’d like to live on Coronado Island, ride my one-speed bike around, and make quilts inspired by the sea.

Yes, I think I like it here....

Posted in Baby Quilt, Making A Crafty Mess, Travel, Work in Progress | Tagged , , | 3 Comments