Tangerine, royal blue, and grey. Oh my!

On my sewing table now: a baby quilt for a precious little boy who I got to hold when he was ten days old.  I made a quilt for his big brother seven years ago. Again, I am behind--I usually get baby quilts to their new owners before those owners have taken their first breath, but I'm doing my best to finish it FAST! I found the pattern at this wonderful blog, Blue Elephant Stitches:
http://blueelephantstitches.blogspot.com/2012/01/granny-square-quilt-block-tutorial.html

These overview images gives you a feel for how differently each of the blocks turned out:

I was so excited to use the oranges and blueberries from my recently purchased stash of hyper-realistic food fabrics:

There are few things I enjoy more than watching fabrics come together unexpectedly:

I am really loving this project! This is a completely new color combination for me. What a treat it has been, using a wonderful variety of fabrics from my stash. I'm working on a really wild backing, and then I'll quilt it up.

House Quilt: finally finished!

Life got in the way of quilting for a while--I can't believe how long it's been since my last post! I have a new job, new home, new city, and new sewing space now, in beautiful Charlottesville, Virginia. I'm so lucky! I have finally finished the quilt I was working on for so long: baby Veronica will enjoy it, I hope, but she is too old for swaddling! Oh well. Here are some pics of the final product. First, the whole quilt. That's Veronica on the bottom as I imagine her someday. While the remainder of the quilt is original improvation, I got the idea for this square from a great flickr group, "sarah and molly's free piecing":

Next up, the skyscraper is my personal favorite block. I love how the cynical owl turned out, and the butterfly floating above. It did seem a bit intense for a baby quilt, but I decided it was too wonderful to leave out:

My second favorite block is this one, of a little girl wistfully standing outside a house. I have had this retro kid fabric for at least ten years, and I finally figured out how to use it without it looking corny. The snippet on the left is from a wonderful fabric designed by an artist in the southwest somewhere, purchased at the Houston International Quilt Festival a few years ago:














Everyone else likes this modernist block best! I don't mind it myself:









I think the reason it has taken me so long to finish this quilt is, I don't really want to let it go. But it will head off in the mail tomorrow. Goodbye quilt!

Rainer's coin quilt

I was so busy this month, with an exhibition launch and lots of other things on my plate, when I realized that a wonderful colleague's baby boy was due REALLY soon. So I whipped up this quilt fast as I could, using the simplest pattern I could think of.

Here's my favorite thing about this quilt: I learned a lot about color while finalizing the fabrics. See the single yellow rectangle at the bottom of the middle row? Cover it with your finger. See how the quilt gets so dull suddenly? That one little bit of yellow makes the other colors sing.

It was fun trying out a grey background--I've seen this done so beautifully recently. It was also satisfying using my strip collection. I've been turning my scraps into charm squares and 2.5 x 5 strips, and I used a ton of different fabrics:




























I had some multi-colored quilting thread left over from another project:














I've had this large piece of striped fabric sitting in my stash for more years than I can remember. It always looked too hippy-dippy, and I had no idea when I was ever going to use it, but it is the perfect backing for this quilt. Never underestimate your stash!:

The baby was born in the middle of the night during a massive rainstorm that hit Austin, at the end of the hottest summer in the history of American weather records, a drought of apocalyptic proportions. It is chance that my quilt is the color of rain clouds, but not chance that the baby's parents named him Rainer.

Improv houses

I am making a baby quilt for some friends having a little girl this summer. For some reason, I've gotten really into the idea that they should have a house-themed quilt, and finally decided that I didn't like any traditional house quilts, so I would improvise! I decided on a creamy-tan background, rather than white, and have shot these against the wonderful green wood-grain fabric I will use for the sashing (that is, if sashing is the way I go--this is improvised after all!). I am having SO much fun with this. I've uploaded the images in the order in which I made them. I'm working on a high-rise apartment building right now:

I got the idea for the girl block from "sarah and molly's free piecing study" on flickr:

This modern house is inspired by my sister Anne's research on the architect who built her house--he liked big heavy flat roof styles. This is my favorite block so far. Check out the selvage curtains in the window, and the stop-light chimney:

Matisse blocks

I'm having a blast with Jackson's quilt. I've been chopping up segments of the Alexander Henry Matisse fabric and framing them to insert in the quilt. Sorry for the crappy iPhone photos, but keep scrolling to see good photos of the whole quilt as it is now! I'm pretty excited--it's sooo Jackson:

Here's the whole top of the quilt (borders in progress) plus a close-up of a special little added kitty:

Jackson's jazz improv quilt

My friend Jackson takes wonderful care of my kitties when I'm out of town sometimes. I asked her if I could make her a quilt to thank her for this endless generosity. So she came over one day to pick her fabrics:

Her color palette rocks! So bright, with this crazy blue and white combination. I asked her some questions about what she likes aesthetically, but told her the quilt was going to be a surprise. Turns out, it took me ages to come up with an idea. I decided I wanted to try an improvised quilt, so I googled till I found this wonky coin quilt concept and imitated it. Maisie was helping, since Jackson's catsitting benefits her, too:

I was liking it but not thinking it would work for a WHOLE quilt, and then, at the Quilt Store on Anderson Lane I found this amazing Alexander Henry Matisse-inspired fabric. Apologies for the cat, but I didn't have it in my heart to move him (when he's on the ironing board he is the lion king overlooking the savannah). Jackson is a very jazzy girl, and I realized this could be a Matisse's-Jazz-inspired quilt. Next post will show how I'm using it!:

Pinwheel Quilt

When I found out my colleague Megan was having a little boy, I decided to make a blue quilt. Turned out that pinwheels are really fun to put together. I was able to go crazy with blues and greens to create a super-saturated effect. No white whatsoever:

it all came together even more beautifully than I imagined. The quilt feels like being deep in the ocean, I think. The layout is a close copy of a quilt in Mary Matshuta's Confetti Quilts. Here are two views:

The quilting up close. Not my strongest effort, but it will be nice and strong for baby to play with!: