Saturday, August 25, 2012

And another quilt.

Last week, a friend of mine was over, and we were hanging out in the living room, where I have a ladder-style quilt rack for my growing collection. He was like, "Where'd you get those quilts, your grandma?" Oh.... sadface. Whatever, quilting is cool. Especially when it's giant houndstooths. Houndsteeth? 


This one is lap-sized, and it was an accident. I was making new pillows for my living room, and I thought, wouldn't it be cool if one of them was quilty? So I decided on houndstooth, cut out the pieces, got them all sewn together, and realized that just one houndstooth was about 20" square. This was too big for a pillow.


So I thought, eh, what the heck, let's make a quilt. I had exactly enough of the brown patterned fabric to make 9 houndstooths, so I put them in the middle and made it really punchy and graphic. Found this perfect fabric for the back: it's tiny houndstooths!


This was only the second free-motion quilt I've made. I did a paisley pattern. It's a little hard to see because I did white thread on white fabric. I think it hides mistakes better. 


I think if I did it again, I'd do a colored binding to make it a little more fun. Houndstooth is kind of an old man print, but a fun colored binding would make it younger. This is not a huge problem for me, since I apparently only have old people hobbies. At least I end up with useful things, right? It's just a bonus that they're pretty.




Wednesday, August 22, 2012

New Fixation: Quilting.

Not that I will ever not love knitting best... but I cannot get enough of modern quilts. I can't wait to get home from work most days so I can hang out in my sewing room and quilt. I think I've read every modern quilting blog out there. I am in love. Here's a modern baby quilt I made this past weekend.


It's "improvisationally pieced", which means I just made random, not-straight strips and sewed them together in a manner I found pleasing. The only patterned fabric is the orange polka dot one; the rest, including the back, is all solids. It's more modern that way, dontchathink?


Mostly, I made this quilt because a) I wanted a quick, instant-gratification project, and b) because I'm trying to get better at free-motion quilting. I did a pebble pattern for most of this one, and I love it. I did some triangles coming out of each side just to break it up a bit.


The back:


Baby quilts are so satisfyingly quick. I wish I knew a dozen babies. But I only know one, and hopefully I can get this quilt to them before they read this post. If not, surprise! There's a quilt coming your way! 

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Makes me giggle

I made this t-shirt because my husband the bird nerd had a good idea.


Funny, right? I totally understand why people have little at-home screen printing machines. I did all that by hand, and ohmygosh did it take a long time. But it came out perfect, don't you think? I love it.