I can’t believe I’m only posting update #3 on this project. It feels like it’s been going on forever. Due in no small part, I expect, to the fact that I’m also thinking about how the whole guest room will come together. Continue reading…
I’ve been plugging along on the quilt for our guest bedroom. Life has intervened somewhat – big surprise – and my quilting space, as wonderful as it is, is a little small to lay out all the squares, even on the floor. I tried moving over to D—’s side of the basement, but he has guitars, drums, mic stands, you name it over there. And I could still only find room to lay out about half of it.
I love making baby quilts. They’re small so they are quick projects. And they can be wildly colorful. At least as far as I’m concerned, they can be. There’s nothing that I dislike more in a baby quilt than something cute or pastel-y.
Here are some of what I’ve made for the friends and family in my life.
One week later…I have all my fabrics cut. It’s likely I will discover I have either too many or too few of some. 
There were templates to use for the pattern pieces, but I’m not a fan of templates unless I have no alternative. So I measured them and laid them out on the back of my gridded rulers.
The trapezoids were a little trickier. I cut strips of yellows and whites at 2 3/4″ and then cut the trapezoids from that. This ruler is a 12 1/2″ square. Very versatile.
After I had cut all the blacks, I realized that while the pattern in the book was square, the pattern I designed was on point. Hmmm. Continue reading…
My husband and I have lived in our home about 7 years now. In that time, we have remodeled the kitchen/family room, living room, dining room, sunporch, and basement. The only room untouched on the first floor is the half bath. But we’ll get to that later.
The only room on the second floor that has been done is my step-daughter’s room. We wanted to make sure she was comfortable first as she wouldn’t be living with us that much longer. She was a junior in high school at the time and would be leaving for college soon.
This is all a very long way of saying that I am finally getting to the guest room. My husband took the lovely wood duck wallpaper border off years ago, but that’s as far as we got. I’ve decided to do the whole room in yellows, grays, and whites. Me being me, I am starting with the quilt. It will take the longest time.
My usual modus operandi (can you tell I’m an avid mystery reader?) for designing a quilt is to pick the fabrics first.
Whites
I will likely not use all the fabrics I’m showing here, but you never know. Because I also like the scrappy look of lots of different fabrics.
Grays
The one on the bottom of the gray group has bits of yellow in it too. It’s sort of hard to see in this picture. Hopefully, the wild pattern won’t be too distracting and will simply hold the colors together.
Yellows
The fabric on the top of the yellow group is leftovers from the backing on Lightship (see Quilt Sampler). The walls in the room will be painted yellow, so the overall look of the quilt will dictate which paint I end up with.
Blacks
Blacks are included to give it a little punch and definition. I went through lots of books and catalogs to get my inspiration for the design. I settled on a fairly basic pattern that I liked online before going through my books. The pattern I chose is from Kaffe Fassett’s Glorious Patchwork. The book was a gift from my cousin Sascha almost 10 years ago when I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. But that’s another story.
Fassett’s designs aren’t all that complicated, but his colors choices are something else!
My design on the left. Kaffe Fassett’s on the right.
If you look carefully at these, you can see that they are almost the same thing. The only change I will be making to mine is to split each patch to match the shading of the one from the book. This is why I needed a black. The squares that are gray on my design will be the pyramid shape in the middle.
Next step is to calculate how many of each color I need to cut and go at it. There are templates in the back of the book, so I won’t have to draw that part.
But for today, I am painting the “woodwork” in my upstairs hall. I use the term woodwork loosely, because it’s all that hollow core stuff. Practically pressed paper. Anyway, it’s all a hideous shade of dark walnut now. And I’m just not happy unless I’m doing 4 things at once. So look for the cut pieces of quilt in about a week!
Batiks are my favorite fabrics. I love to see them paired with a super traditional pattern. I’ve been sewing since I was 10 years old and quilting since I was about 31. One of the first books on quilting that I bought focused on the Jacob’s Ladder pattern. I didn’t really like the book all that well. It’s hard to get excited from a bunch of black and white drawings. But I liked all the different ways the standard Jacob’s Ladder block could be arranged.
Two years ago, my sister Bekkie married her long-time boyfriend Joe. At that point I thought, here is the perfect time to make that pattern I’ve been wanting to make for the last 20+ years.
Sections Ready to be Sewn into Squares
I sorted my batiks into lights and darks. In one case, I had a fabric I used as both. I was planning a queen size quilt, so I drew up my pattern on graph paper and figured out how many of each section I needed to make. I cut strips for the 4 square sections and triangles for the half square sections. Weeks of sewing ensued. (Since I have a full time job and a soap business on the side, it takes me a while to do something this large.)
Sorting into Squares
The Design Wall & Table
The Design Wall
My goal with each color choice was not to duplicate the same fabric in any single square.About a week was spent on the layout. I ran out of room on my design wall, so I worked on the table as well, eventually sewing sections together as I went so didn’t lose track of what went where.
In some places the edges seemed to blur, and in others, it was very defined. Just what I was hoping for. But, as I usually end up doing, I had too many final squares in the end. It’s like those things that mysteriously multiply in your closet. You can’t figure where they came from, but you look at it as a bonus! So I made 2 matching 16″ pillows (12″ squares with 2″ borders added.)
It was done in time for a first anniversary/Christmas present.
Front and 16″ pillows
Back
I love making quilts for with funky colors and traditional patterns. Marrakesh is a Snowball pattern with batiks – my favorites! – and Lightship is a Storm At Sea around a Mariner’s Compass.
Raymond’s Quilt is an original design inspired by a trip to New York City. I loved all the grid work on the buildings there. Raymond lives in Manhattan, so this was the perfect choice for him.
Okeefenokee Swamp was an exercise in using only fabrics that were primarily green or blue.
