Black & White Quilts with Pops of Color

And poof!  I'm back on the blog after a two-year absence.  That's how I roll!  A friend wants to make a black and white quilt with her collection of black and white fabrics.  I started to compose a big long email to her with a bazillion links to click on.  Then I remembered a thing called pinterest, and then I remembered that I had a crafty blog!  Doh!  So, I decided it was time to resurrect the blog.  I searched for "black and white quilts with pops of color" because I thought a pop of color would jazz up a black and white quilt.  Here are some of my favorites, with and without pops of color.

(source)

(source)

(source)
 

(source)

No pops of color on this one, but the white backgrounds make things pop!

(source)

Quilty Love snuck in pops of color with the backing and the binding on this one.  Clever, right?!

(source)

Here's a Kaufman fabric designed by Emmie K that might serve as great inspiration for a black and white wonder!  It looks like a bunch of half square triangles would do the trick!

(source)

I am smitten with this mid-century design!

(source)

Well, I could do this for hours, but I must stop and wash my hair.  Click here and here for a LOT more inspiration.  Toodles! 

Remembering Bill

It's hard to believe that my stepdad passed away 13 years ago.  At the time, he and mom were living in San Diego and Howard and I were living in Needham, Massachusetts.  Bill stayed in a nursing home for nine months after having a debilitating stroke.  My mom had already retired and was able to be at his side constantly.  She would visit him twice a day for several hours to make sure that he was being taken care of properly.  I never saw him alive after his stroke because we lived so far away.

Bill always called me the human loom because I was always knitting something different every time he saw me.  In Needham, I continued to knit but also started to quilt.  After Bill passed away, I helped mom go through his clothes and discovered a bunch of blue flannel pajama bottoms and thought they would make a great quilt to remember him by.  He was obsessed with flying and airplanes so I backed the quilt with some airplane fabric that I found at the Franklin Mill Store in Franklin, Massachusetts.  I can't believe that I remember that! (Confession, I remembered the location of the shop, but had to look up its name.)

I created a plane template out of a manila folder and traced it with quilter's chalk in the non nine-patch squares.  I quilted each plane separately and back stitched the heck out of each starting and stopping point - hoping that it would hold through multiple washings.  Time will tell.

Here's the plane fabric that I used for the backing.  Also, I used my favorite technique of pieced binding.  I love the "scrappiness" of it.

PS  The interface on blogger has not changed one bit in my three-year absence, which is both a blessing and very disappointing.

Wisconsin Quilt

We lived in La Crosse, Wisconsin, for one year and we wish it could've been longer.  We loved everything about it, except for the winter that lasted for 6 months and the bazillions of mosquitoes that descended upon us during the muggy summers.

I started quilting in La Crosse and tried my first paper piecing project with this candy box heart pattern.

Don't you just love quilts with legs?!  Anyway, I usually avoid anything with hearts, but this was a special group project.  We wanted the young women at church to have an ongoing service experience.  Somehow we found out that the Renal Dialysis Unit at Gundersen Lutheran Hospital was drab and needed some holiday decor to cheer up patients who spent many hours at a time there.

We kicked off this partnership by taking a tour of the unit and learning about dialysis.  Then, after that, each month we would devote one of our weekly meetings to making decorations and one of them to decorating the unit.

We worked on the quilt together during a few of our weekly meetings.  I know we taught the girls how to applique and they made most of the star blocks.  I think some of them also helped sew the 4-patch blocks.  I can't remember if I made all the hearts or if we taught some of them to do that too. 

We gave this quilt to the unit to hang on the wall permanently.  I wonder if it's still there?  I hope the girls and other leaders cherish this experience as I much as I do.

Sam-I-Am

I finally finished the Sam-I-Am baby quilt.  The only problem, Sam is not a baby any more.  Okay, he just turned one recently so it's not like he's in college or something.  But, I know his personality now and he is ALL boy, so this quilt seems a bit babyish for him now.  I still love it, though!

I call it the wonky star pattern.  The designer, Elizabeth Hartman, calls it the Sparkle Punch Quilt.  Go here for the tutorial on how to make the stars.  It was a lot of fun making wonky stars.  I highly recommend it!

I decided to put one star on the back in the corner and use it as the label.  Notice the 2013 date.  This quilt was sandwiched and ready to quilt back in 2013, but I froze up because I didn't know how to quilt it or what color thread to use.  I ended up using off-white, as a friend recommended, and I ended up stippling it.  Since the piecing is so sharp and pointy I thought it needed curvacious quilting.

Can you see the Sam-I-Am fabric in the star?  This could only go to a boy named Sam.

Kathy's Wonky Paper-pieced House

Wonky.  Hubs says that I love that word and use it all the time.  So, when the Music City Modern Quilt Guild challenged me to create my own 12-inch block, I just had to make a wonky house.

The challenge was to use Moda Flirt fabrics.  It's not my favorite fabric (all pink and cutesy flowery), but I made it work and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

I would call this pattern 'intermediate level' because you have to sew it in sections.

Here's what it looked like before I trimmed it up.

When you do a pattern in sections like this, you have to remember to leave a 1/4" seam allowance on all edges of each section.  It's a good idea to leave a 3/8" or 1/2" seam allowance on the outside four edges to allow you more flexibility for squaring up your block after all the sections are sewn together.

Now it's time to tear off the paper and sew the sections together.  I find that it's easier to tear the paper off of each section in reverse numeric order.  For some reason it always works better.

And here it is again, Kathy's Wonky House.  

Here's a miniature version.  I reduced my 6-inch block pattern to 75%.  I wanted to show my fellow guild members why paper piecing is an awesome way to deal with tiny pieces and sharp angles.

No, you can't have the $20!  I took this picture so you could get some perspective on how small some of the pieces are and so I could use some fabrics that I like from my stash.

Here's the pattern if you want to give it a try. Let me know how it goes.

Today's Forecast

Today will be foggy with a chance of half-square triangles.

Spain

My quilt is 'famous' in Spain.  Look!

Anna's Quilt

Pinwheel quilts are fun to make.  I just sent this one to Anna, my niece who's almost two years old now.  For some mysterious reason I already had all of these feminine girly pastel fabrics in my stash.  I really have an aversion to pastel colors, especially pink.  But, I'm pretty much in love with this quilt, especially when I imagine Anna dragging it around the house with her.  I hope that when it's all tattered with love, I can take it back and convert it into a stuffed animal or something.  That goes for all of the other baby quilts that I've sent out recently.

I took a 'Hail Mary' shot outside on my deck.  My toes are in all the shots and I decided to leave them.  So why is it that beat up chippy furniture looks cool and trendy, but beat up chippy decks just look old and beat up?

Ever since I made this quilt, I have felt compelled to name and label every quilt.  I should've made the pinwheel the darker color and the border the light green color.  I actually considered taking the label off and redoing it, after having sewn it onto the quilt.  But I didn't.  I'm kind of glad that my perfectionist tendencies are lessening as the years go by.  It's a relief actually. 

Floral Applique

It seems like I've had this book forever.  I've had it so long that there's now a new and improved version available, although I prefer the cover of my older version.  I'm in love with everything about the quilt on the cover - the color choices, the curvy design, the use of many reds for the background, and the folk art style.

So, why haven't I made it yet, you ask?  And on a related note, hubby keeps wondering why I'm making all these cool blocks and sending them away.

I've known for a long time that I'm much more productive when there are deadlines.  When I make something for myself there are no deadlines, which results in lots of UFO's.  Being a part of the Long Distance Quilting Bee (LDQB) has given me deadlines.

So, one of the gals from the LDQB requested a block with flowers.  I seized the opportunity and finally made a block from this quilt.  It was difficult to part with when it was done, but I'm now inspired to make the quilt for myself.

I modified it a bit because I didn't want to hand applique all those little berries, leaves seemed a lot easier.  I'm happy to say that I stuck with my goal to use fabrics I already owned.  The flowers and leaves were made with Kaffe Fassett fabrics, leftovers from a quilt that I made for me - that I actually finished long ago!  It probably would've been better to use a different stem color but I ran out of greenish Kaffe fabrics.  Anyway, I love how it turned out and am excited to get started on mine!

More Boy Quilts

In a year's time, three nephews were added to Hubby's side of the family.  I made three quilts from the same stash of fabric.  I love that each quilt has denim from Hubby's old Levis, scraps from a dress that I made for their grandma a while ago, and scraps from one of my favorite denim dresses from back when denim dresses were 'all the rage'.  I also included scraps from one of my mom's old denim dresses.

None of the plaids are from clothes that we wore.  Some of the plaids came from an era when I would buy plaid shirts from the thrift store and cut them up for fabric.  Most of them were just collected from fabric stores in different states over time.  These quilts are multi-generational, multi-familial, and multi-statal.  How do you like all those big fancy words?   

The first nephew got this quilt.  The second nephew got the one that I've been calling Plaid Pinwheels.  I really like making pinwheels.  They're super easy and accurate if you use the half square triangle method of piecing. 

[source]

Many quilters suggest starting your free motion quilting in the center of the quilt and working towards the edge.  On the pinwheel quilt, I followed the diagram above and found that it worked really well.  I'll definitely use that technique again.

The third nephew got the one below, which was inspired by this quilt that a friend made.  It's weird how the same pattern can look completely different depending on the fabric choices.

I ran out of Levi pockets for labels, but am in love with this label also.  I've been calling this quilt 'Words with Sun'.  Sun is nephew number three's mom and we're addicted to playing a certain game.

A member of my quilt guild asked me what it's like to use denim for binding.  I wouldn't recommend it.  The edges aren't too bad if you have a good thimble, but the mitered corners are a nightmare.

 [source]

Speaking of thimbles, I discovered this awesome thimble at Joann's right before I started sewing on the binding.  I love it because...

• It doesn't continually slip off of my finger like a metal thimble does.
• I can push the needle through the fabric by sitting the end of the needle in the metal indentations.
• I can pull the needle out of the fabric by gripping it with the rubber.
• There's a handy dandy size guide (a hole in the packaging) to help you pick the right size for your finger.

Happy quilting! 

Outer Space Quilt

Last year I made this paper-pieced rocket quilt block for Joy.  I was so excited to design the pattern myself.

[source]

Joy received all kinds of fun space blocks from the Long Distance Quilting Bee and made this quilt for her nephew.  My favorite block is the one directly below mine - so unique and very modern!  Zoom in and check out the cute quilting in orange thread.  I wonder if she did it herself?

[source]

Here's a closer look before it was quilted.  So, this reminds me that I have two years of blocks to put together.  I better get started!

Elefante

Lately I'm a paper piecing maniac.  I got this elephant pattern from A Quilter's Ark by Margaret Rolfe.  One of the gals in the Long Distance Quilting Bee wanted 'anything baby'.  The pattern calls for embroidered details, like an eye and stuff.  But I kind of liked it without all the details.  I think a checked body and a plaid ear is detail enough.  What do you think?

Paper-pieced Pitcher

That title is a tongue twister.  Just see if you can say it five times fast.  This is one of the first blocks that I managed to make without changing my mind about the fabrics a gazillion times.  I wasn't sure I was going to like it - too girly for me.  But, I really love it.

The April challenge for the Long Distance Quilting Bee was to make something with blues and greens with a light background using our current favorite method.  I continue to be intrigued with paper-piecing so that's what I did.  Once again, I used a pattern from my favorite quilting book.  One of these days I'm going to design my own pattern again, like this one.

How to Name and Label a Quilt

How do you name a quilt?  I've never done it before, but I like the idea - in case it becomes famous some day or something.  Yea, right!  There are lots of ideas on how to come up with a name,  but I've discovered it's not that easy.

Here's the quilt that needed a name.  It's for a baby.  (Well, when I started the quilt, he was a cooing baby and now he's a talking toddler.)  Some people might name a quilt after the fabrics or the pattern they use, but 'Used Denim and Plaids' or 'Old Denim and Plaids' were too literal and too boring.

Since it's made out of some old denim dresses and hubby's old Levi's, the name 'Family Scraps' might have worked.  But then you might envision a brawling family or a family digging through the trash can for dinner.  I could have named it for the recipient and called it 'James' Quilt' or 'Scraps for James'.  Again, too literal and not quirky enough for my taste.

The truth is, every time I see this quilt I think of Roseanne.  Awhile ago Hubs discovered all nine 'play now' seasons of Roseanne on Netflix.  Yes, that would be Roseanne Barr.  (I know, it's hard to imagine us watching that show, especially Hubs, but it was pretty comical to us as newlyweds.)  Anyway, I had a Roseanne marathon while piecing this quilt.  I'm sorry James, but the name of your quilt is:

I've given away a lot of label-less quilts.  But I couldn't pass up using this pocket for the label.  After researching the topic of labeling quilts, I've decided that putting labels on quilts is not only important, but it's another fun and creative component of quilt making.

By the way, we stopped watching Roseanne in 1995 so we missed the last couple of seasons.  I have to say that the last two seasons were the worst!  The plots got too wacky, DJ wasn't a cute kid anymore, just when you got used to Becky #2 they brought back Becky #1, and John Goodman wasn't even in several of the final episodes - a fatal error in my humble opinion.

There you have it - more than you ever wanted to know about Roseanne and about naming and labeling quilts.

Quilted Jars

There are two challenges for March's Long Distance Quilting Bee - the garden one and the jar one.  Amy, the Bee coordinator, wanted the standard jar pattern without the bottom strip.  The first jar I made for her is filled with strawberries, the only fruit fabric that didn't make it into the fruit salad blocks that I made for her last year.  

My husband thought the other block was a sand art jar.  I wish I would've thought of a clever idea like that!  Look below to see what it really is.

 Broken Butterfly Wings

By the way, I started to wonder how people make those sand art jars.  It's pretty amazing.  Check it out.

Paper-pieced Butterfly

This has got to be one of the most complex quilt blocks I've ever made.  One of the challenges for March's Long Distance Quilting Bee block was to make something related to gardening.  I got the pattern from this book, the same book that the kimono and crane came from.  The pattern calls for this block to be 6" x 6".  That's just loco!  Fortunately Joy wanted bigger blocks.  Check out the amazing points you can get with paper-piecing.

Butterfly Guts