Evening in the Garden Quilts

Adventures in Fabric Art

Tag Archives: Crazy Mom Quilts


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Finished Donation Quilt

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I finished up the blue and orange donation quilt yesterday.  I had a lot of fun quilting it with straight lines and feathers in orange thread (Superior Highlights, 40 wt.).   The textured blue fabric was weird and stretchy to piece together, but not too bad to quilt with the walking foot.  It has great cozy texture now that it’s washed up.

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I have to admit that I like the back almost as much as I like the front.  These are orphan blocks from a double nine patch that I had made, and some from this quilt, when I discovered that too many nine patches would make it too busy.

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So much of the stash fabric I have and need to use is floral, and makes pretty feminine quilts.  I try to switch off by making every other donation quilt out of something a little more appealing to anyone, including men.  And, apparently, cats.  Lots of help.  This is headed to Moore, OK.

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You could have knocked me over with one of my own feathers yesterday when I answered the phone and it was Judy Laquidera from Patchwork Times!  I was sewing the binding to this quilt when she called.  She called several of us who had donated quilts for West, TX, to see if we minded if she sent them on to Moore.  They have all they need in West, and Judy knew of a truck with people she trusts going to Moore.  I told her I was fine with that, so I guess my pink and gray quilt will go there, too.

Doesn’t it seem like there’s been a lot of need this year?   I sorted some strings last night to start a new donation quilt for whatever comes next.  Don’t even want to think about that.

What have you finished this week?

I’m linking up to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.


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Finish It Up Friday: Flower to go with Elephant

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This little quilt with the floral fabric and flower and leaf quilting took very little time to make.  This was great and sad, because I thoroughly enjoyed every bit of making this, especially the lucious colors, and I wanted to keep gazing at it forever.

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Don’t you love these spontaneous little quilts where you just pull fabric madly from your stash, cut with abandon (partly because it’s such a small project), and have it mostly pieced  before you have time to second-guess yourself?  These are my favorites.  It also felt good to work on something small after the queen quilt.

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When I made Elephant, I was throwing some stash fabrics together to put a bright, boy’s quilt in my shop, but I decided to keep it.  While I worked on other projects, I kept my eyes open for more feminine stash fabrics that might do for the girl’s quilt.  My first grouping was too pink and floral, though I still want to use those fabrics together soon (for one thing, they’re still grouped in a basket under my cutting table…).  When I found this aqua print, I knew I had a companion quilt that would coordinate with Elephant without being matchy matchy or sickly sweet.

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The cabins are Kona Salmon, Coffee, and Azure, with a green Grunge.  The solids aren’t dead matches to the print, but they work.  The sashing is an off-white grunge.  Every block has a quilted flower in the center (Sulky white rayon), and the sashing is quilted with leafy vines.  I know, leaves again, but I love to quilt them almost as much as feathers.

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My twin great niece and nephew aren’t due till August, but these little quilts just happened and they feel right.

Of course, my studio is a mess because all the pulled fabric is still out (but I did cut up and put away all the scraps!), plus I have a pile of orphan blocks I want to use on the back of the new scrap quilt I’ve started, plus someone contacted me about making a baseball baby quilt, so that fabric is out…  It looks…creative!

I’m linking up to Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.  Go there to see lots of finishes!

 

 


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Finish It Up Friday: Nicey Jane!

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Yes, Nicey Jane is all finished and bound and ready for our bed as soon as warm weather truly arrives and we can put away the down comforter. I’m fairly happy with how it turned out. The colors are certainly perfect in our bedroom.

 

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Yes, I have a light green bed and raspberry night stands. Doesn’t everyone?  I’d say it was the quilter color thing, but actually my DH picked out the nightstand color and painted them and a vintage dresser.  The walls are light green, too.  I rubbed glaze into existing tropical leaf wallpaper.

 

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The wool batting.  Hmmm.  It did shrink some, which is all right.  The quilting isn’t as poofy as I was hoping, but it’s fine.  Bearding!  Wow.  All over, both sides, really a lot.  If you see any in the photos, it’s after I spent quite a while with the lint brush.  I guess it will resolve over time?  I’m very glad I used white batting with fairly light colored fabric.  It would be a disaster on a dark quilt.

 

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In the end this wasn’t nearly as much work as I built it up to be and put off finishing. It was unwieldy, especially the last day when I had joined the two halves and had to drag the whole thing around. It fit under my machine harp okay, but every rearrangement was cumbersome and hard on my shoulders. The binding seemed to go on forever. I am glad that I had enough of the bright pink to bind it. It’s perfect.

 

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I’m linking up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.


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Christmas Pillows Finished!

Pillows largeThese six Christmas pillow covers were really finished yesterday, but it has been pouring steadily for two days, so I just now got pictures of them.  It was still drizzling when I took them out to the wet bench for photos. They turned out very well, especially since they are for my own living room.  I made a few mistakes, and learned a new technique, so it was a good project.

Pillows backYou can’t see this zipper, can you?

New technique:  I used this tutorial from Sew, Mama, Sew for inserting a covered zipper into the backing.  (I heard about this recently from someone else on a blog, but I can’t remember who’s Ah, is was Jacquie, from Tall Grass Prairie Studio. Just look at her beautiful pillows! Thank you!)  It worked really well, especially after the first one.  I was able to assembly line the last five covers and achieve a very nice look in no time.  I liked this much better than the velcro I’ve used before.  I had some trouble with the 1/4″ Steam-A-Seam2 Double Stick Lite Fusible Web.  It was supposed to be sticky to stick to the project before ironing, but it wasn’t at all.  The web kept separating from the paper backing and it was a little fussy to use.  Also, the cat was very attracted to these slender, curly strips I was trying to work with.  It was worth the fuss, and I got better at it, and it really made the zippers go in easily.  I will use it again.

Pillows greenMistakes:  The red and green strips showed through the Kona Snow.  I only noticed this after the tops were quilted.  They were actual strings, with frayed edges.  In the future, I will trim these edges and check the pieced top carefully for any seams that are showing through.  Live and learn.

Urbana-20121208-00514Also, I’m used to shaping the corners of pillow covers by trimming 1/2″ from each corner, tapered on back to the middle on each side.  This works great with home dec covers to keep the points on the corners from being too “pointy” and sticking out.  I think it was the fact that these covers were quilted that caused this not to work so great. They’re just a little wonky, but look fine on the couch.  Next time I will just sew them square.  These covers were sewn right sides together, then machine bound like a quilt.  I much prefer this to covering cording, inserting it, then turning the pillows, which I’ve done for years.  I like this method and this look.

Pillows red and greenNot a mistake:  Even though I pre-wash all my fabric, I still thought that all that red and white could be trouble.  I washed the covers with two Color Catchers, and I’m very glad I did.  I have six nice clean pillows and two very pink Color catchers.

Pillow green insideSo my living room looks better for Christmas.  What are you working on for yourself?

I’ll go ahead and link this up with Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.