What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I've made a lot of cityscape quilts, and I always have a blast doing them. Here's one, "Nonsense Town." 

And here's a closeup of some of the buildings. Let's look at that orange one. 

Below is an even simpler example, a potential skyscraper made from two print fabrics. It would take 4 minutes to cut out and sew together. The darker perspective side gives it a nice dimensionality. Modern skyscrapers require so little time to ...

Here's my latest commission, and although I live in California, and the client lives in the southeast USA, it was made with help from one of the best Judaica machine embroiderers on the planet, Marilyn Levy of Ontario, Canada. It's a tallit (prayer shawl) for a young man's bar mitzvah. 

Like all my commissions, this one started out with a  discussion with the young man's family. They wanted cotton, with a leafy design, in blue and grey, so I drew up choices.

They liked #1 best, the simple vines. What was most unusual - and why they ...

I hope you have a wonderful holiday season!! I know it is a busy time of year, but I hope you got to spend a few moments at peace… possibly sewing. Last week I picked out some fabric to make another quilt for a class I will be teaching next quarter at the Quilt Basket. You guessed it! It will be using the Mountain Breeze pattern. I can’t wait to see how it turns out. I always like to try to change the colors dramatically so it looks like something different. Speaking of different, here is the Mountain Breeze ...

Last week we decided on the layout we’re going to make and picked out our fabrics. This week, we’re cutting them up so that we can sew them back together. This is my favorite part of quilting. Well — if my favorite rotary cutter is working and has a fresh, new blade.

The prize this as we are week is a rotating cutting mat, ruler, and rotary cutter. 

Pre-Iron Your Fabrics

First, you need to iron your fabrics to get all the folds and krinkles out. For this quilt I only used a spray bottle of water. 

This is ...

Dreaming in Sea Glass 

Currently, I’m pretending I’m at the beach. Baking in the sun, enjoying the birds as they dance with the waves, breathing in the salty air, thinking about the Terracotta Fiori quilt, and searching for shells as I trek across the sandy shore. 

That is where this quilt is taking me… That is what I channeled every time I took a stitch. 

I’ve become enamored with solid fabrics — I’m using them more and more in the projects I make. They are so interesting because you are creating your own pallet like this one ...

Here's what I just made, instead of a quilt

There are two immutable quilting laws that correspond to Murphy's law: (1) Your bobbin is low; and, (2) Anything that can look like a phallic symbol, will.

The latter law kicked in when I decided I needed to make a quilt that would encourage people to get vaccinated.  I'd been thinking a lot about about friends who struggle with needle phobia, but desperately want a vaccine. I admire their courage, and want to thank and encourage them and others.

Would it be possible to make a quilt with ...

Fresh from the photographer! My newest quilt - it's about 70" high. I should have blocked it, look at that top edge, curved like an archery bow, oy!

 I just love this pattern!

Floral Trip Around the World 90" x 100"

Floral Trip Around the World (back and binding detail)

I made this quilt once before with a travel theme. This time I used florals and a range of solid colors. It was another quilt that requires careful planning and organization, but it was fun to make!

I used a cheater fabric for the back to continue the floral idea, then I added a striped binding to finish. It is brighter than it looks in the photo--I took the photo on a cloudy day.

Happy Quilting!

 Day 21: Magic Door

A Finished Quilt

Are you a loss for new projects? Quarantine is the ideal time to look at your finished quilts and ask yourself a melancholy yet potentially engaging question: Is this quilt really finished?

When I finish a quilt, I usually don't love it - I mainly see the flaws. It takes a while to figure out whether it needs more. But this improv-pieced quilt was an exception. I just loved it when I finished it in 2017.

Then, the people I showed it to went "Very nice, meh, next."

Then QuiltCon rejected it. Dang, I was soooo not-understood.

I held my ...

Help!

I'm going nuts making masks! 

If you are one of the thousands of quilters giving time and fabric to make lifesaving masks, thank you. For me, making masks is not only a good deed, but a powerful way to reduce anxiety in a tragic  time. 

I don’t know what is happening to me. For almost a decade I hadn’t made one single quilt using all solids fabrics. Now however, well . . . I just finished this quilt using Shades, a Basic Fabric (tonal) solid. I am currently working on a quilt that uses shot cotton (a woven solid). At the beginning of the year, I finished a quilt with Confetti Cottons, another basic fabric that is a true solid. Last year, I made a queen size quilt for Bluprint with what else? All solids. Even now, at this very moment, I have a pile of ...

Here are the two latest fat-quarters to enter my fabric stash. I'm certain that no one else on earth owns these fabrics. The first:

What the heck is it? A photograph of my recent Chicago quilt, downsized from its original 72 inches wide, to only 9 inches across. Six copies fit on a fat-quarter of fabric (FQs are 18" x 22"). 

They were printed onto a lovely organic cotton sateen by the custom printer Spoonflower.com. Spoonflower's usual price is about $13.00 per FQ - I took advantage of a two-for-one sale to pay that price for the ...

I'm on a roll with city quilts! I've made two New York quilts,  a Chicago quilt, and now, a second Los Angeles quilt. (Photos of  earlier quilts and an instructional booklet are here.) Below is the second Los Angeles quilt: