Category Archives: my finished quilts

goodnight, moon

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Goodnight, Moon (8 5/8″ x 8 3/4″) is my December Fast Friday Fabric Challenge piece. This time we were to choose the first or last line from a favorite book (Goodnight, Moon by Margaret Wise Brown: In the great green room there was a telephone…) and use the design element, value/contrast.

The first FFFC challenge I tried is still unfinished. I’ve since learned to work small and be quick. It’s very liberating to give my seam ripper a vacation and leave small mistakes in. It’s also great to try out techniques I would never have otherwise if I had to do them in a full-size quilt. I then get inspirations for other things which I might someday try full-size.

You can read about how I made Goodnight, Moon on the FFFC blog as well as see some of the other works posted.

let it snow, part 1

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I finished my snowman quilt in time for the guild meeting, but just barely. It was neat to see the different ways everyone used the snowman panel—no shortage of inspiration there! I didn’t bring my camera, but if you check the Citrus Belt Quilters website in a week or two, you should be able to see photos of the winners. We also had a magnificent potluck lunch. The CBQ members are not only wonderful quilters, they are great cooks too!

I enjoyed working with the polar fleece. Wintertime is definitely the right time to be making things with fleece. It took somewhere between 5000 to 6000 snips of the scissors to do the raggy seams. At least I was warm while snipping (yes, I did have the spring-loaded scissors which saved my hand from a sure fate of repetitive-motion injury).

The plaids in the plaid raggy quilt were taken from colors in the snowman fabrics so now we have a set of cozy Christmas-y quilts. These ones are for my family. Most all of the quilts I make are given away, and so we mainly have store-bought blankets and such in our home. And since I’m still gathering Christmas decorations, they really add to the Christmas cheer in our home.

happy quilting!

zéphirine drouhin

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Zéphirine Drouhin is a Bourbon Rose introduced in 1868. It is a thornless climbing rose with a rich, sweet perfume and the rare ability to bloom with only three hours of sunlight a day. My DD is the model for the fairy in this quilt and I wish these qualities for her as she grows into a lovely young lady: to bring beauty, not thorns, to this world; to spread the sweet fragrance of God’s love to those she meets; and to blossom even in times of shadow.

This quilt is machine appliquéd, hand beaded, hand painted with Tsukineko All Purpose Inks, machine and hand embroidered, and hand quilted with a variety of specialty threads, and embellished with Angelina fibers, glitter and hot-fix crystals. It is about 18×20″ and is much more square than the photo shows. I had a blast making it! The only reason I stopped was that I ran out of crystals and will have to go buy more to finish up another day.

I will post more detail images later on this week when the sun comes out again. We’ve been enjoying unseasonally cool weather (low to mid eighties) ever since Friday. I need more natural light to take better photos (and a finished hanging sleeve would help too).

happy quilting!
(edited 8/2/06 to replace really awful photograph with somewhat better one)

emmeline’s menagerie

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This quilt is Emmeline’s Menagerie. It took me most of 2005 to make. It was for a friend’s baby shower. Twelve blocks would have made a fine baby quilt, but I was having so much fun trying out different animals and fabrics, that it grew and grew. I hustled like you could not believe, but could only finish the top in time. At least I had that to show. I finished it by the time Emmeline was 6 or 10 months old (about the time babies would be able to appreciate it anyway). The background and border fabrics are regular quilting cottons, but all of the animals are different textures of fashion fabrics: faux fur, fleece, ultrasuede, etc. I wanted to have as many textures as possible for the baby to touch. Ultrasuede is GREAT to machine applique, easier than quilting cotton (doesn’t fray, the reverse side clings to the background, and the stitches look great!) The black furs (thick pile on bear and curly on dog) were absolutely the hardest thing I have EVER appliqued. I was basically stitching blind. I could literally not see a thing. I saved the hardest ones for the end, so I could practically applique them with my eyes shut anyway, my fingers already knew the curves of the faces by heart. I promised my daughter Annika to make one for her (she’s five) so I’d better get working on another before she grows out of it. We’re going to give her’s buttons, beads, crystals, charms and other embellishments that you couldn’t put on something for a baby.

adventures of a quilting diva

quilt of dreams 2005

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Here is my Quilt of Dreams 2005 entry, “Thai Dreamin.” It was inspired by a girl who dreamed of going to Thailand. So I chose two things that a child would enjoy in Thailand: riding an elephant in Chiang Mai and flying a kite in Sanam Luang (a park in Bangkok).

The technique I learned for this quilt was inking with Tsukineko all-purpose inks and fantastix brushes. I saw quilt artist Lura Schwartz Smith demonstrating them on Simply Quilts and simply had to try them. They are easy to use and so much fun! (you can buy them at Web of Thread, a marvelous Internet store that also carries amazing hand-dyed silk ribbon and a staggering supply of thread!)

My original plan was to create the girl with the inks in a photo-realistic style (based on photos of my daughter, Annika). It didn’t fit the playful mood I was aiming for, so I decided on the Japanese Manga style (after watching Anime with my daughter, neon-colored hair now seems perfectly normal to me, I’d better watch out when she becomes a teenager!)

I attempted to hand quilt with #10 cotton crochet yarn, going for the “big stitch” quilting look, but I cannot rock the needle properly to get the stitches the same size on both sides, so I outlined the heart and the sunshine in the small rectangle blocks in a hand-embroidery running stitch instead and then did the quilting by machine.

The back side of the quilt is a map of Thailand, which probably qualifies as the largest applique ever (the quilt is 45″x60″, I’m not sure about the map’s dimensions). This literally took days. I could not sit at the machine and finish it in one setting. Some of the islands must also be the smallest appliques. You can’t even see them on the photo here.

This quilt won best use of theme in the Southern California region. A salesperson told me several Hancock Fabrics stores were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina and my quilt may have been in one of them at the time. I hope not. I haven’t had the heart to check into this rumor myself.

All in all, I had a wonderful time making this quilt.

happy quilting!

quilt of dreams 2004

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Lest you think that I never quilt, here is one of my finished works. It was created for and donated to the Hancock Fabrics/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital Quilt of Dreams fundraising contest.

This is my 2004 entry titled “The Rainbow Maker” It won best use of theme for the Southern California district and the judge’s choice in the National. I won 3 yards of quilting fabric a month for a whole year! Yippee!

The point is to make quilts based on pediatric cancer patients’ dreams and you get to use delicious fabrics based on the children’s artwork. Then after the contest some of the quilts are given to the patients and some are used for fundraising.

One child wanted to be a “rainbow maker” and that’s the dream I used for my inspiration. (the rainbow maker is in the center, painting the rainbow in the sky) My entry description contained an exerpt from a children’s story I am going to write someday and illustrate with quilt blocks much like the rainbow maker quilt (another UFO! LOL!)

It has dimensional appliques (stuffed with cotton batting, filler cord, etc.), chenille for the hair, and hand embroidery (I finally conquered the french knot–hooray!). I always wanted to try making chenille. I made up my own techniques for the applique. It took forever, but it was a really FUN quilt to make and I learned a lot.

The machine quilting was a real horror story. I had only about 1 or 2 days before the entry deadline and it was the first time I had ever used my set of quilting feet and hardly knew step one what to do. I turned it in to Hancock Fabrics literally minutes before the store closed on the very last day. I’ll spare you the gory details. Also you wouldn’t know it by looking, but the whole quilt top was wavier than a tsunami before I started quilting. TIP: hold your iron just above the quilt top and steam like crazy–works wonders to shrink out the waves.

I’m really glad I participated! Next time I’ll tell you about my 2005 entry.

happy quilting!