Quarantine and me: Week 4

April 5, 2020 SewtropolisLeave a comment

What a week! It started off with me registering for Grad school. I am attending Washington University in St. Louis, Masters in Law program. All classes are online which meant that I needed to get logged into their system and store all my IDs and passwords – which I did. The next day, my computer crashed! It won’t even turn on!

I can’t say I am surprised. The computer is about 12 – 15 years old, and I have been waiting for it to crash… but a week before school starts?? Needless to say timing is not ideal and with the “Stay home, stay safe” order in effect it’s not like I can go out and pick up another computer! So I took a deep breath and ordered one from Apple.com and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it arrives before classes start on Monday.

On the sewing front I finished a total of 100 masks; 50 were donated to the Seattle Indian Health Board, and 50 were given to my brother and his co-workers. When my brother came over to pick them up it was sad not to be able to give him a hug. But I had to laugh that we exchanged homemade chocolate chip cookies – unplanned! Yep, we’re related!

Once I was done with the masks I finished this beauty! Which was mostly long arm quilting and binding it.

Quilt, pillow shams, throw pillow front, and smaller panel (pillow).

I saw this at the Quilting and Sewing Expo at the end of February… before shit hit the fan on this pandemic! I saw it hanging there and stood for about 5 minutes just admiring it! It was so pretty and unlike any quilt I’ve seen before…… so of course I bought the kit!

Image of full quilt! Love at first sight

It was designed by Sarah Watts for Ruby Star Society, and the kit includes a queen sized panel, two pillow shams, 18” throw pillow, an small panel to make a baby quilt (or wall hanging), and a extra panel which I made into a small pillow! The fabric is a beautiful sateen that is super soft and makes all the colors bright and beautiful

I bought enough backing fabric to complete all the projects, including the binding, but after I finished quilting it I decided that the pink binding looked better, and added an extra pop of color.

If I were 13 I would put this on my bed and never take it off….. but as it is, now that I have admired it, pet it, and added my ‘artistic’ touch to it, I will list it on my Etsy site. My hope is that someone who admires unicorns, owls, flowers, full moons and pretty birds will find it and claim it as their own.

Stay safe my friends,

T-shirt Quilt: Part 2

February 17, 2020February 19, 2020 SewtropolisLeave a comment

I made another t-shirt quilt this week for a friend of mine’s daughter!

I love how this one turned out! Once I had the t-shirts we scheduled a call to go over what her daughter wanted. She pretty much left the design up to me, but knew that she wanted the borders to be a gray… and that she wanted the backing and binding to match.

Some of the shirts were smaller (child size) so I had to ‘build up’ some blocks to make them large enough.

When laying it out I thought it would be cute to have Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse looking out across the quilt to each other.

I quilting it using a longarm, and super fine thread that blends in so nicely with all the blocks.

Like I said, I’m really happy with the way this turned out. this quilt is about 55″ x 55″ and I used about 15 t-shirts (a few front and back) to make it. I have my listing up on Etsy if you’d like to your own t-shirt quilt.

Projects

Quilts Gotta Go

November 2, 2015 SewtropolisLeave a comment

It used to be that when I made a quilt I had a recipient in mind for the quilt. But after a few years most of my friends had at least one of my quilts, my kids had multiple quilts even my animals had their own quilts… and yet I just kept making quilts.

When I left Minneapolis I got rid of so much stuff, but what I couldn’t get rid of were a few of the more recent quilts that I had made with no recipient in mind. I did donate some of the smaller quilts to the children’s hospital, but some of the larger ones I just wasn’t ready to part with.

Now that I’m settled in Seattle I don’t quite have the room for all these quilts! So I decided it’s finally time to part with them. I’ve had a few quilts listed on my Etsy store for a while, but I recently listed these three quilts in the hopes of making more room in my closets:

This quilt was a Block of the Month sew along from the Minneapolis Modern Quilters. It was a mystery sew along, which means you are making blocks for 10 months with no idea where they will end up in the quilt. On the 11th month you get the layout pattern… Even though I do like this quilt, it is not my favorite and had I seen this pattern before I started I might have passed. But, here it is… and it’s for sale here!

Now, this quilt is one of my favorite quilts! I started this quilt during a workshop with Jacquie Gerhring from Tallgrass Prairie Studios! I love the colors, I loved working on it, I love the way it turned out…. I’m just very happy with this quilt, but now it’s just hanging in my closet… so it’s for sale here.

Of all three of these quilts – this one is definitely my favorite one! Before my move I had to sort through my stash and decide what fabrics were going to come with me and which ones were going to be left behind. During that sort, I realized I had a TON of little scraps of fabric that I just couldn’t part with… so I cut them into 2 1/2″ squares and sewed them together. I think this is one of my favorite quilts because it is a good representation of some of the fabrics I had in my store. But unfortunately I don’t have the wall space to display it, so it’s for sale here. I’m hoping someone will fall in love with this quilt as much as I have and the bed or wall space to let it shine!

Since moving to Seattle I finished four other quilts that where in various stages of being finished. Two are for my kids, but the other two will be listed as soon as it stops raining and I can get out and take pictures of them.

Happy Quilting!