Sending our Love....

My mom's youngest sister -- who reminds me in a million ways of my own dearest youngest sister -- is fighting cancer right now.  There are 35 cousins on this side of the family, so even removing her own kids there are 29 of us praying for her and sending her love.

Over the course of December the idea of actually "sending her love" took shape.  A call went out for cousins to send in a fabric block of any design with approximate size specifications.  Over the next 6 weeks they popped up in the mail.

As expected, the final result has all of the mis-matched-but-perfect beauty that only family can create.

The top half.  The first row features some blocks with names from people that didn't get a chance to contribute directly but are very much sending love; the "Ohio Star" squares are from one set of cousins, a few quotations and inspiring words make up many of the blocks.

The bottom half.  More "Ohio Stars", more quotes, Katie's drawing with some fabric crayons, and an iron-on photograph of a large group of the cousins from probably 20 years ago, made scrap book style by a crafty cousin.

The backing is a soft flannel, and I did a very simple square design with machine quilting (I know!  I lose my quilting badges!) and then I did a quick machine binding, too (Boo!  Hiss!  Throw her in the pond!)  I'm sending it out tomorrow so hopefully she'll have it for Valentine's Day--more of a coincidence than anything, but what better day to get a box packed full of love?

Baby S Quilt

Heart and chick

Family tradition means a new baby quilt for the firstborn in each of my 40+ cousins' families.   The work has been spread across a few households, but we're still woefully behind.  This project came together today and will be for a little girl who is nearly 2, I think!  Probably just as well she's not a baby anymore; these bright colors are better fit for an active toddler!

My aunts and cousin taught me how to do "chicken scratch" embroidery years ago and using the patterns on Katie's baby quilt, some I found online, and just some free form guessing I made the four for this quilt.

Frog

Elephant.  This came out huge and will hopefully look cuter with the quilting around it.
Attempted reproduction of this based on what I could count.

Wrapped in Love

Rob's sister passed away a month ago today. It's hard to believe it's already/only been a month.

As part of their grief counseling, it was suggested that each of her young daughters pick out a few items of her clothing to have made into blankets to snuggle with. I was given the honor--truly, I'm honored--to make the blankets. My brother-in-law gave me the shirts a few weeks ago but I was too nervous to make the first cut until this week.


I think they turned out very sweet. All the materials are a tight knit and won't fray so I didn't bother to back or hem it; leaving each shirt at its full cozy softness. I tried to keep necklines and any other identifying details as much as I could. There's something deeply moving about running a finger along the buttons or neckline; so much more than just seeing a series of small squares and remembering a shirt once upon a time that used that fabric.

After stitching each seam I pressed the seam to one side, top-stitched it close to the edge, and trimmed the edge for a relatively polished looking back, but it's still not as pretty as the front.

I read a tutorial (here) for making these little wrapped flowers out of a ribbon or any fabric, really, and decided to use the hems of each non-green shirt to make a few flowers.

The green shirt had a collar on it that was trimmed with a delicate crocheted edge so I cut off each end of that into a triangle and gathered them into a leaf.




That would have been it, but as I was sewing down the last seam my machine was possessed. I blame my sister-in-law. Because after it finished sucking a solid inch or so of fabric into the feed-dogs and I had to completely dismantle the machine to remove it, it ended up with a bite out of it. Here I was thinking I was nearly done.

 Desperate, I grabbed one of the extra sleeves that were too small to make a square from and cut a heart-patch. I lined up the stripes to make it less obvious but let it overlap into the adjacent square to make it somewhat easy to find, too. I thought it turned out beautifully. And, of course, then I added one to the other blanket so both sisters could have a little extra love in their blanket. It gave it the little something extra it needed; thanks Debi.

Quilt: done!

I got the border put on (a 3" wide strip of 2" wide bars; sort of like fat piano keys; a little of each fabric) and tonight we pencil-ed on the quilt pattern and sandwiched it and then I promptly folded it up and packed it into a shipping box to get to the mom-to-be for her baby shower this weekend.

And then realized I forgot to take a final picture. Doh!

From some of the leftover fabric I pieced a scrappy doll quilt. The border of the main quilt is the same as each row of this quilt.

It's about 18" x 30" and will be a nice blanket for a baby doll or even to toss over the car seat. I sent it off with the package but will probably request it back so I can actually quilt it.

The only details left for this project (aside from all that actual quilting) is to make the binding. For what I have in mind I need about 1/4 yard of the strawberry colored fabric which, apparently, no one carries anymore. I guess that's what I get for using something out of my 2+ year old stash.

Oh, right, I have this blog, too

It's been almost 2 years since I posted anything here, due entirely to lack of quilting time.

But my dear cousin, Michele, is expecting at the end of the summer. She's the other quilter in the family and between the two of us we carry on Grandma's tradition of making quilts for all high school graduates, newlyweds, and first-borns. When you have 35 cousins to cover, that's a lot of quilting. Given she's the one expecting a baby, I was tasked with making this particular quilt.

Michele is also the creative one who makes the embroidered animals for all of the baby quilts. Thankfully between the two I have photos of and the ones I've helped assemble I managed to figure out a few animals. Those took an hour or two each, but made for nice busy work during TV watching.

Then it was a matter of figuring out some sort of design that would allow me to fit in a few 6x6 squares for the animals. I landed on this for inspiration. After a particularly frustrating week at work I was sorely in need of a project that stayed done, and so this weekend I shut myself up in the basement for a few hours of therapy.One trick with working off of just a photo was first figuring out the pattern, then the sizing, and finally the most efficient way to put it all together. This one wasn't too hard to pick out the pattern: each color grid consisted of 4 blocks, and each of those was a large square, bordered with a rectangle 1/3 its width on either side and another square in the corner. But to make it fast, I took a little time to figure out the easiest way to do it with strips.

[Originally I only saw the photo from the inspiration quilt, not the site, so I had no idea what the pattern was called. I found the original site for the link in this post and read it, then googled "Disappearing nine-patch" and found a tutorial that would have been really really helpful. For anyone else considering it; look here.]

Here was the first step: joining the 6" blocks to a long 3" strip, then cutting those apart and ironing them. First step: Done.

Lots of strips and cutting, then joining to make the 9" blocks; joining those to make the 18" 4x4's, and I had these:

The spot where the four meet doesn't look all that pretty, so (based on my inspiration picture) I put a spacer piece between them and added more color blocks at the intersections. I also added a border to pull the design out a little more.

As it stood Sunday night:

The last step will be to add a colorful border. Since this is already way too huge for normal baby quilt standards, the border will be a little scaled down from the inspiration picture.

Then I just have to pick a backing, pencil on the quilt design, sandwich it, make the binding, and ship it all off to the family to present to her (un-quilted) at her shower in early June. It'll go in the frame to be quilted in the fall and hopefully she'll have it ready for the baby's room before the baby's first birthday.

Sara's Baby

My sister is expecting in August and this weekend was her baby shower. As such, the last 2 weeks have been spent piecing together a quilt in the stolen moments between thesis and Katie.

The pile of fabrics: bright colors, alphabet on white, and 4 embroidered gingham animals, courtesy of my beautiful talented cousin Michele.


Starting to piece the blocks.


Not bad...not bad...needs a little something to make those diagonals pop.


Maybe if I just add a few more blocks...


Perfect! Now to hand it off to the quilters to work their magic.

Welcome Maria: Done!

The quilt for Maria is done. Rob designed the quilting pattern and did the majority of the stitching since I have been so busy with schoolwork that, left to me, this would become a first birthday gift.

The design is esentially a star pattern inside the pink regions, with just small X's tacking down the center of each green square of the chain. I hand embroidered Maria's birthdate onto the binding before stitching that down.

Maria 11-29-2006

And for big sis Julia, I did this little shirt with felt appliques. Yep, I'm going to be that aunt.