Why it's always good to have those unfinished quilt tops lying around

I finished this quilt top last fall. I even put together a backing for it, but it's been on my shelf ever since. It started when I made this pillow a couple years ago, then made a replica of that block for myself, but then decided to add 8 more and make it a lap quilt. All that to say, I had no purpose in mind for it or urgency to finish it until last week.

That's when I found out a friend from college- my age, two kids- was diagnosed with breast cancer and would have surgery a few days later. And, she was 12 weeks pregnant with twins. Needless to say, this was awful news and I couldn't wrap my mind around all the what-if's and all the worry and fear. But at the same time, everything I was hearing from her and her family was full of hope to beat this thing. Such an amazing attitude, the least I could do was finish this quilt for her. When you make things all the time, you are even more compelled and obsessed when something like this happens to someone. It's like you can't think about anything else until it's done. Part of me feels like it's weirdly a selfish act- like I need to feel better that I've actually done something in a helpless situation.  Is a selfish gift still a gift? Sure. I'm rambling now, but I'm hoping some of you quilters and makers out there can relate to the feeling.

Anyway, lucky for me, when I messaged her husband to ask her favorite colors, he said purple. This quilt had a sealed fate, and a very clear deadline date.

The pattern is based on the popular granny square block, but they are enlarged to 3.5" squares instead of 2.5", then I put wide sashing between the blocks out of the same Moda Bella Feather solid as the background. Most of my quilts don't have this much white in them, so I really wanted the quilting to stand out on it.

Free-motion quilting is something I've become a lot more comfortable with (even though I know I have SO much room for improvement), but I always have mixed feelings about the finished product. I seem to love the flow of my little practice quilt sandwiches-where I try out all different designs that all run together- much better than most of my quilts that have an all-over design, or even different designs based on the piecing. So I decided to treat this whole quilt like one of those practice pieces. I would just go with the flow and change designs when I got bored. Sometimes I would follow the lines of the piecing and sashing, most times I ignored them. It was definitely the most fun I've had quilting, and I love the way it turned out. It was just like quilt doodling, and the resulting crinkle is amazing. With such a simple and symmetrical piecing design, the quilting really helps to move your eye all over the place and make it interesting.  I'll definitely be "free-stying" like this more in the future.

I took these pictures after washing the quilt so it doesn't look so bad, but I wanted to show you the pucker action I got on the back. You can kinda see it on the right of this picture. Totally not that noticeable and I'm not one to unpick for something like that. But it happens. Adds to the charm.

I even labeled it before mailing. I always say I'm going to label my quilts, but then I never do. I felt like if this quilt stayed around in her family for any amount of years, I wanted them to know when and why it was made for her. It can be a small part of the some-day-story of how mom beat cancer while growing two (TWO!) babies :)

I didn't have a good binding on hand, but I got lucky at the local small town Sew&Vac here and found this Art Gallery Oval Elements in the perfect dark purple. I love framing all that white in a dark color.   I think the quilt finished at about 55" square. 

The package arrived the day of her surgery and her husband let me know that he'd bring it to her in the hospital that afternoon. Surgery went really well by the way, for all three of them!

Teacher Quilts x2

Hi!

This morning as I was sitting down to write this post, I got a very sweet comment on my last post (from over 2 months ago) asking if I was taking a summer break and saying my posts were missed. Well gosh. That made me feel great! So at least one person will be happy to read this. That one person, and my mom.

I guess you could say I have been taking a summer break, though I didn't really try to, it's just the way things go during a time of lots of transitions. And I mean LOTS. We have moved to the Nashville area from Cincinnati, my husband just started a new job, Hendrix just started Kindergarten, Elsie is in full-time preschool, and I'm signed up for some courses and going thru the many ups and downs of searching for full-time-work-after-stay-at-home-motherhood myself. Phew. Of course I've managed to sew a few things during all this time, (how do normal people cope with changes if not with furious stitching?) and now I have quiet mornings alone in the house and I've got that cyclical "I'm gonna blog again, gosh darn it!" feeling going on. Life is made of seasons, so are blogs and ideas and relationships and ambitions and run-on sentences, turn, turn, turn.

Obviously, when you are a slow and seasonal blogger, not all the makes get posted about. (Most of them are on IG though, @alittlegressica.) But I always feel like I owe it to the quilts. The quilts must be honored! Well yeah, they take a long damn time to make.

Back in May, I set out to make a throw quilt for both of Hendrix's preschool teachers from last year as end of the year gifts, just like I did the year before that. I made the same designs, just 10" squares in 6 rows of 6, and I used the opportunity to use up some larger scraps and tie them together with some other fat quarters in my stash.

So with a simple design like that, I always assume it will be quick and don't leave enough time. But then I think I have enough time, so I irrationally think, hey! Let's use this quilt to practice a different free-motion design in every single square! Yeah, that really adds to the work time. I was kicking myself and whining about my shoulders like a big wuss, but it was fun, and definitely good practice. It was great to learn which designs I really enjoyed doing, and which ones were just good to know, but not my go-to's. At first I thought the patchwork of quilting squares you can see on the back was too weird, but after washing, the crinkle brings it all together in a coziness of rad quilting.

This teacher got the more teachery looking quilt- with the primary colors and typographical prints. Those are from some Moda panel I got on sale ages ago, and it ended up being perfect for this purpose.

I wised up on this one and did a quick and simple quilting design. This design really is easy for free-motion quilting, but I loooooove the way it looks and feels on any quilt. Definitely a go-to. 

Now that Hendrix is in school school for like the next 13 years, I'm not sure if his teachers will keep getting quilts. But Elsie's preschool teachers might... I just love giving special people quilts more than anything, so I'm sure I won't be able to resist.

These quilts end up about 57" square. The first is bound in a Lotta Jansdotter Mormor print, and the second in a Carolyn Friedlander Botanics print. Man, those are some sexy bindings, now I need to go bind something...

Scrappy Strings Quilt

This was another quilt I finished back in January and photographed when we were in Florida that month. It was a gift for my oldest brother and his family. I started on it at the end of November, just picking up some scraps on a whim and making string blocks on 8.5" squares of printer paper as foundations. 

The technique is similar to the string quilt in this book, only I changed the size of the blocks and I cut my strips to all different widths without measuring, some of them at slightly wonky angles. That really made this project go fast for such scrappy quilt.

I'm not 100% happy with the back. I wish I had made those pieced strips just as scrappy as the front blocks, but I was lazy and just chopped up 4-5 fat quarters to fill the space I needed. The gray is actually a tiny sketchy black and white print from Carolyn Friedlander's Botanics collection. I love that choice, but it would have looked a little better with more colors against it. No biggie. Just one of those choices you get  a better perspective on after everything is finished. 

The binding is a deep purple Joel Dewberry woodgrain print. 

The quilting is a little hard to see in places, and equally hard to do in those places. I did dense straight lines that crossed thru the solid star. But then in the leftover areas I free-motion quilted in scallops growing out from the star. By the time I got to the edges of the quilt, I was doing lines of scallops that got way too wide to be done very easily, but in the end it worked out. I like the contrast in the two quilting styles.

I can't remember exactly, but I think it ended up about 60" square. My sister-in-law especially appreciated the gift because she has started to really get into sewing too, even a little quilting. It's always fun to see someone new take up your obsession! My younger brother's wife is also a very good quilter, so between us and my mom, we somehow ended up with a family full of sewing women. One day when we aren't scattered all over the country we'll have girly sew dates together :)

In the meantime, my mom and I will be going to Sewdown Nashville together in just a couple weeks! I'm getting really excited about the workshops (seriously, check out our AMAZING teachers!) and fun social sewing time. Anyone else going??

The Florida Quilt

When we were in Florida a couple weeks ago, I finally had the chance to give my mother-in-law this Christmas present. While she doesn't do a whole lot of cuddling up to stay warm down there, she has alway made it clear how much she admires the things I make. So I was happy to finally make a special quilt just for her.

She loves bright sunny Florida more than anyone I know, so I tried to pick colors that felt Floridian. They even feel kind of specifically like the beach town I grew up in there. I actually had a hard time with these colors when I was working on the quilt top because they are SO unrelentingly bright. I normally need some toned down shades along with black or gray in my schemes, or at least some soothing natural linen. And I don't usually use so much bright white, but I do love the subtle stars scattered in there on this Lizzy House print from Constellations. (I have to say thanks to Ara Jane for sending me the extra fat quarter I needed of that fabric!) And to top it off, I really hated a few of those larger floral prints in there. So many little things irking me, how neurotic of me.

But really, once I got it all finished, the front and back and quilting and binding as a package really made me love it. It definitely has that Florida feel I was going for. And most importantly, she really liked it and it looks at home in her home. Good good.

The back is a length of ombre fabric from Sewn Studio with a strip of scraps up the center. I'm really liking those ombres for quilt backs lately.

The quilting was really fun to do.  Cloudy Florida skies. (Yes, it's mostly sunny, but every summer afternoon needs a freakishly short thunderstorm, just for fun.) It's not the most amazing quilting job ever, but it's so nice to finally feel like it's not a huge deal to try new things with my FMQ skills. And I love the puffy, cloudy texture!

So it's the most electrically eye-searing quilt I've ever made. But it took me back to my roots (both literally and by way of fabric), and it turned out to be a really happy thing. Giving a quilt to a loved one who really appreciates it is always a happy thing.

I used the "Small Plates" pattern from Elizabeth Hartman's first book, but kept it a bit smaller at 56" square. Next up, I'll show you the very scrappy string quilt I made for my brother and his family. It's much more me.

Anchor's Quilt

I made this quilt for my good friends' baby who was born just a couple weeks ago. It was her third baby and second boy. Their other son received this quilt, (which I just realized has a kind of similar HST design) but I wasn't quilting back when their first kid was born, so I guess I owe her something! To me, there's no better satisfaction than giving a baby quilt. I just love being able to make something that can literally wrap them up in homemade love. And also be rolled around on and spit on and drooled on a lot. 

These fabrics all came from my stash. The color scheme started out with me trying to use up some of my orange. I've found that I like the idea of orange sometimes, if it's a good print I like, but then I have a hard time using it. All but two of the orange prints I started with ended up being edited out, but I love the resulting orange/yellow/gray/teal/navy scheme here. Each of the 9 blocks only used (2) 10" squares. I put them together using this method to get (8) 4.5" HST's. It was the fastest way to do it I've discovered yet, and we all know there are about 79 different ways to make them. And the little size chart is so helpful! My original plan was to make a 9th of each set to go in the middle of the block, but I took the lazy route and decided on white in the middle. So the "window" design was kind of accidental, but I really like it. Add 2" strips of white sashing, and the quilt is about a 44" square.

So after I already had the top of this quilt done, I found out that they were going to name this baby Anchor. ANCHOR! Not only is it a badass name, but one of those pesky orange fabrics I had kept in the line up has tiny anchors all over it! Now I couldn't wait to finish it up and send it. 

At that point, I knew I had to include a little nod to the two siblings' names with these scraps added to the back. I'll just let you guess what those might be  :)

I finished it up with my favorite straight line quilting, about a .5" apart all the way across. I took these pictures before washing, but after I did it crinkled up so softly.

The binding is a Lotta Jansdotter stripe that I got at Sewn Studio. At first I was disappointed that the wavy lines went in the same direction as the binding instead of across it, but the end effect is pretty cool. Stripes in either direction are a always a win for binding.


Now I have two quilt tops done that need quilting before Christmas. Totally seems doable, but then I remember all the other Christmas stuff I have to do! That's all part of the fun of it though, right? (That's what I keep telling myself.) Are any of you still trying to finish up gift quilts this close to C-day?

Blogger's Quilt Festival: Scrappy Stars for Ruth

I started this project back in May (or maybe June?) I knew it would be a slow-burner that I took my time with. I really like having a project like that always going on in little chunks between the other things I finish more quickly. It's soothing and satisfying and eats thru the ever-growing bags of scraps. 

This one is just for Ruth. Ruth was one of my very best friends from 7th-12th grade. She is one of those people who everyone loves, and I was lucky enough to hang out with her constantly during my formative years. She was a big fan of the scrappy + & x quilt I made last year so she asked me to make her a crazy colorful quilt like that. For her? Of course. 

The block design is from Elizabeth Hartman's first book, Practical Guide to Patchwork. I just treated each block as it's own color story and pulled fabrics from my scraps, trying to use a variety of values for the backgrounds and star points.

 I also put my flying geese for each block together using the no-waste method instead of the traditional way.  I was always especially excited when I got the directional prints to all point the right way using that method. Like those lions. Geese victory!

The backing fabric is not the most original choice these days, but it's just too perfect for a scrappy quilt like this. The large script print is from Ikea and looks so striking on the back. The quilting is just dense straight lines made with my walking foot, about 1/2" apart. The feeling and look of that quilting is always worth the extra time to me. I took these pictures before washing the quilt, but man-oh-man was the crinkle awesome after I washed it. 

The binding is Domino Dot in Jewel by Violet Craft.  I love the way that color tied things together. And dots always look nice in binding form, I think.

I would have been finished with this quilt a little sooner had I not made really stupid mistakes with the backing. With the wide Ikea selvedges left on, the backing was exactly as wide as the top. So I went ahead and pin basted it without adding any wiggle room. Not a wise choice when you are planning to do this much quilting. So when I had the middle half of the quilting done and it became apparent that there was no way around that lazy decision, I had to take the pins out of the sides, trim off the selvedges and add on those long strips of dark gray. Re-baste. Finish quilting. Then, after all that, the bottom edge had shifted so that the backing didn't cover a little bit of the corned there. So aggravating! Such a rookie mistake to not making the backing a few inches bigger on each side. But I fixed it with a tiny sliver of quilt-as-you-go (pictured above), which didn't end up being very noticeable in the end.

The quilt is a large throw, about 60" x 72". Ruth should be picking it up from her post office box any time now and I can't wait for her to get it!

I'm entering this one in the scrappy category at the Blogger's Quilt Festival. I'd love to be nominated as a finalist because this is probably my new favorite of any quilt I've ever made. Even so, I was still happy to send it off to such a good friend who will really appreciate it. And it helps to know I will probably begin scheming up a new super-scrappy project to replace this one any day now. I can't resist the lure of my scraps.

do. Good Stitches Flying V Quilt

I finished this quilt a few weeks ago and finally took pictures today. This is definitely my favorite DGS quilt yet! Do Good Stitches is a charity bee I've been in for nearly two years. Every few months, I get to be the designer of the quilt my circle of the bee makes. 

This one was inspired by my friend Andie's minimalist flying geese quilt, featured in her awesome book. 

Of course, mine couldn't be quite as minimalist as hers, or else my group wouldn't have had much sewing to do! Instead of the standard 2 12" blocks, I instructed everyone to send me a strip of 12 flying geese units all joined together going the same direction and on a white background. They each finish at 6" x 3". 

I told them to block the colors together instead of mixing them all up, and to use this block for color inspiration:

They matched those colors pretty perfectly right? It's my most favorite block from my scrappy Japanese +&x quilt.  

So once I had everyone's strips in the mail and made my own, (second from the right side is mine) I added more white fabric on either side of the geese and joined them together, staggering one unit off with each one, and alternating directions. Originally, I imagined them all going one direction and all facing to the side of the quilt, rather than going vertically. But once I laid everything out, this way just looked much better. Flexibility is my middle name. (Actually, it's Elaine... I know you were wondering.)

I did straight line quilting, vertically just like the geese, about 1/2" apart. With all that white space, I knew I wanted to do heavy quilting. I think the simple straight lines are just perfect here. Always my favorite. 

The binding is the dictionary text print from Moda's Mama Said Sew, ordered a while back from Pink Castle. Except that one little spot where I ran out and had to use some Flea Market Fancy. (See? Jessica Flexibility McFlexyFace!)

The backing is all this pretty Vintage Modern print (Bonnie & Camille for Moda) from Sewn Studio on clearance. I just love the color.

I didn't wash this quilt before taking pictures, which is the opposite of my norm. I just wanted the smooth look for pictures, but I'll definitely be giving it a good wash-n-crinkle before dropping it at Project Linus this week. It's a good thing, because I've already got most of the blocks in for my next do good quilt!

2 Quilts in 4 Days

As in I started and finished two quilts last week, within four days. Sometimes I'm really good at convincing myself that some crazy sewing task will be much easier than it actually will be. And then, once it's started, there comes a point when I realize I was way wrong. But then at that point, not finishing would be a giant failure.  Totally rational right?

Friday was Hendrix's last day of preschool, which was really a big class picnic at a park. I started thinking about gifts for his two teachers on Monday. Again, I'm not really sure that there was a lot of logic that led to the decision that I would "just" make them each a simple quilt by Friday morning. But that night I picked fabrics for this first one and got it cut and mostly pieced. 

These were nearly all fabrics I've used in recent projects, so I really enjoyed the challenge of picking a cohesive scheme from just scraps. I knew this teacher liked purple and fun, bright graphic things. So I started with the light purples and the pink Melody Miller typewriter that was leftover from this bag I made last fall. From there, it was pretty natural to go with some more pinks, the navy ships, and some aquas and limey greens. I also really liked the idea of that dark green moon print from Tula Pink's Nightshade, but was nervous about keeping it in there. It was leftover from Hendrix's Halloween bat wings. But once it was all together, I loved it. Every quilt needs that "out of left field" kind of fabric. 

So for each quilt, I only had to buy some backing and binding, which I of course went to Sewn Studio for. I don't know how anyone lives without a good local shop nearby for this kind of thing!

The white print on the back is from Julia Rothman's new Ride line. It's little bike gears, but it just looks like a really fun dot. I might need a bolt of it. The binding is from Jay McCarroll's Center City line. The quilting is just a quarter inch on either side of all the seams, plus a diagonal grid in the same way. 

So by Tuesday evening this top was pieced as well. For the other teacher, I knew she might like a little more conservative color scheme. I started with the Joel Dewberry Deer Valley print in red and then added some dusty blues and golden yellows. And even browns! I almost never use reds or browns, but I loved this color scheme once it was all together. This was also a lot of scraps, but I had to cut into a few fresh fat quarters in my stash too. 

With both of these quilts, the initial fabric pull got changed up a little once all the cut squares were lined up. On a quilt like this, it would be impossible to get it just right the first time. Well, for me anyway. Usually, you lay everything out, notice a couple of the prints don't quite work, then go dig around for the replacements. That's all part of the fun. 

Here on the back you can see my quilting a little better. This was definitely the biggest quilt I've ever done an all over free-motion design on, and I'm so happy with how it came out! I recently sat in on my friend Millissa's free-motion class at Sewn. Just hearing her tips and watching her do it helped me improve so much. Just buying quilting gloves made a huge difference for me. The best thing about quilting this way was how fast it got done. The worst thing was how bad my neck hurt afterward. Gotta figure out how to avoid that!

I went with solid red binding and this great backing fabric from Timber & Leaf by Sarah Watts. I had Hendrix write his name in the bottom corner of each quilt back and I wrote the year and who it was for.

So they both got finished pretty late Thursday night. I was so relieved, and SO TIRED. Nick helped keep the kids out of my way a lot during those couple days, which was very sweet. He must have seen I had my sewing crazy eyes on. But it was all worth it because Hendrix was so excited to give them to his teachers and they absolutely loved them. They both mentioned how perfect the colors were for them. Sometimes you just wanna make everyone a quilt. You can't, but I think the ladies who made Hendrix love his very first year of preschool really deserved it. Plus it was fun.

They are both made with 36 squares, 10" unfinished, which makes about a 57" square throw quilt. So if you wanted to make this kind of thing even faster, a precut layer cake would work great. I don't think I normally would have made something so simple if I hadn't been time crunched, but now I want to make more just like them. Sometimes simply letting the fabric choices and quilting be the stars of the show is really satisfying.