Garnet Gals Birthday Quilt

Here's another one that may not seemingly seem like me, but one that I treasure. This is my Garnet Gals Birthday Quilt. And the Garnet Gals are?

When I first made my way online in quilty explorations I landed on the World Wide Quilting Page and their chat pages. For a couple of years I participated as one of the only young (under 30 then) ones. I met women who are still good friends and inspirations. I participated in block showers for sick friends and family. And I learned.

About four or five years ago the chat board started to get ugly and a few of us decided to start our own little Yahoo group.  It was done under the banner of the Red Hat Ladies. I know, I'm not exactly Red Hat material, but they gave me a pink one and let me in. We've been chatting and sharing ever since.  

In our first year we did birthday blocks for each other. On everyone's birthday they were surprised with blocks. 19 blocks plus one we made for ourselves.  The blocks were to be in Red Hat colours, or Pink Hat, in my case. This is what I did with mine. There was that one odd yellow and purple block, so that led to the choice of that starburst fabric. The setting isn't particularly unique, but it isn't exactly common.

The back was pieced from some sale fabric I found and that gorgeous dahlia fabric.  Did I mention that my Red Hat name is Lady Dahlia? And that dahlia's are my all time favourite flower?

The entire quilt is about 84 inches square. At the time I pieced the top I had never quilted anything so large so I sent it to the long armer, Berny Sproule.  She found a dahlia pantogram that finished the whole thing off perfectly.

I remember my mom or Hubby dropping this quilt off at Berny's when I was on bed rest when pregnant with The Monster. I think she was about 6 months old, at least, before I even picked it up.  And I only got the binding on this past winter. 

And I finished the label, and all that needle turn applique, on Inauguration Day this January. The label is my favourite part of the quilt.  Not only for the fabric, but because it shows the history and the makers of all the blocks.  This quilt may not scream Cheryl, but it shouts friendship. 

Butterflies

Welcome to my niece's room. B is a cute, cute, cute 5 year old. She is a girlie as they come, loving tea parties, dresses, and jewelry.  She has a wonderfully pink room, filled with animals, frills, shells, and a mural of country life surrounding her, complete with Charlotte's Web. 

When I walked into her room the other day this was the view that greeted me. Not perfection, not the sign of a mom-made bed. But the sign of a played in, jumped on, and snuggled in bed. And right there was the quilt I made when she was born.

That is a paper pieced quilt.  Yes, me, paper piecing.  This wasn't a one time experience, either. I actually really enjoy paper piecing. Have you lifted your jaw off the ground yet?  

The butterflies were a mish mash of pink scraps. And though you can't see it (I neglected to get a close-up) I embroidered the antennae in black, with a little eye too.  The butterflies also have some detailed quilting.  The rest of it is quilted in a grid pattern and free motion heart motif.

I love that the quilts I've given to my nieces and nephews are loved and used.  They aren't hiding away on a high shelf or in a box of baby stuff.  Okay, maybe two are, but those kids are older. I forgive them.  But it gave me great pleasure to see this quilt a little bit dirty and just piled on the bed.  That meant it was loved.  No matter the design, the technique, or the recipient that's all I can ask for.

New York Beautiful

Not much is happening on the quilting front lately.  Hubby is out of town, the house is bearing down on me, and I'm simply exhausted by the time the girls stop jumping on the bed and chattering to each other, finally collapsing in the heat.  Rather than leave you with another picture of a chubby baby in a bathing suit I thought I would open the vaults and share some of my older quilts.

This New York Beauty was a pivotal piece of work for me. It was my first truly scrappy-style piece, although not truly a scrappy quilt. At last count I think there were 23 different fabrics in this quilt. Before this quilt I was quite set on simple patterns on a white or single coloured background.  Since this quilt I've barely made a quilt that way.  Looking at this quilt again, I've also barely made a quilt with borders since.  One step forward, one step back.

I made this quilt as a wedding present for my brother and sister-in-law.  Actually, Hubby and I made this quilt. When I first started giving quilts as presents Hubby insisted that his name also be on the label.  My insistence was that he actually help with the process if he wanted his name on the label. Usually that meant expressing an opinion on the fabric choices or the layout, or helping me baste the quilt.  In this case he helped pick the pattern and even took the class with me to learn how to make the block.

For the record, if you have any single male friends sign them up for a quilt class.  If there are no young, hot chicks in it, there are lots of moms and grandmoms with single daughters who will be happy to set him up. I was in the room with him and they were still trying to set him up with other women! 
The colours for this quilt were chosen to remind my brother and sister-in-law of the beach. They met and started dating in California. And my sister-in-law is from New Orleans. It seemed appropriate to do what we could to remind them of warmer weather since they were moving back to Edmonton after they got married.  And we chose the New York Beauty block because my brother proposed on the top of the Empire State Building.  Such meaning, it might be a bit too much.

It is probably safe to say that this is one of the most-used quilts I've ever made. My sister-in-law uses this, with a duvet and a heating pad to sleep. I mentioned that my sister-in-law is from New Orleans and moved to Edmonton, Alberta, right?  

Can You Quilt the Grass?

Generally, no two quilts of mine are quilted the same.  Honestly, I don't think I've ever even stippled the same sort of way twice.  Many times I am inspired by a certain fabric in a quilt - flowers on a quilt with flowered fabric, for example.  Sometimes I am inspired by the graphic nature of a quilt and choose to reflect or accentuate it with the quilting design.  And sometimes, the original inspiration brings out the quilting design.  Such was the case with my Grass quilt.

I wanted the quilting to look like blades of grass.  There is all that white that was begging show off some cool quilting.  Really, the quilt top was even designed with this quilting idea in mind.

In order to pull off a new idea effectively you can't just throw some thread in the machine and see what happens.  As anxious as I usually am to start quilting the second I've closed my last pin I do like to do a bit more prep work before the needle hits my quilt sandwich.

The first thing I do is sketch.  More than once a quilt pattern comes from some random doodle done in a fit of boredom.  Last week I was on a conference call and my mind was wandering to exactly how I was going to quilt blades of grass without actually sewing a bunch of vertical lines down the quilt top.  I have no idea what was said about feed-in-tariffs that day, but from my first doodle on a sticky to this full sheet sketch I knew I had a good pattern. 

It was important to me to capture the randomness of growing grass and the movement you see when you get down on the ground and actually look at the grass.  I also didn't want it to look like a whole bunch of scratches stretching horizontally across the quilt.  I think the full sketch captured what I had envisioned in my head.  On to testing.

An old quilting friend of mine once gave us some really good machine quilting tips at a retreat. One of the tips she passed on was to create a binder of machine quilting samples.  Take note of thread, tension, and tips to make a pattern work.  That way there will be no second guessing when you want to do that pattern a second, third, or fourth time.  It also works well for testing a pattern and working out any kinks before you tackle a big quilt.

This was the sample I made to test my sketch.  In this case making a sample was a very good idea.  On my machine, when I do more curves I have to have my tension set quite light. That did not work on this pattern.  Problem corrected I also realized that this pattern was going to require some good speed control.  In just a few minutes I worked out my frustrations and was able to develop some rhythm for quilting.

On to the quilt.
Holy crap, I'm in love with this.  I still worry it is a bit to flame-like, but it really is exactly what I wanted. The amount of thread this is using is phenomenal - one bobbin doesn't even do two horizontal passes of the quilt.  Really, I could care less about the thread costs (I am so not doing that math at all).

Now, just to finish.  I'm only about a third done. Sometime in August...