Saturday, January 29, 2011

Plaidtastic, quilted, bound and done!

Inspired by Amish designs, driven to wonkiness, with a splash of batiks, and quilted with the spirit of Gee's Bend, it's plaidtastic!

Monday, January 17, 2011

Liberated me!!!!!!!

It all started with a request for help from a young mother in making a quilt similiar to this one.

I tried the technique here- sewing together strips, cutting the triangles and putting together the hexagon. It worked and I added end triangles to make it a rectangle. This will be for big brother. Then I had leftovers............so i became liberated and pieced this for the little guys' doll.
I could do the technique, so then tackled the baby quilt. The mom bought the fabrics and I added some yellows to brighten it all up.
This one will remain in the hexagon shape - something different.

Once again - leftovers!!!!!!!!!
This will be the crib quilt.


I really enjoyed using what I had and trying to get a rectangle out of cut off triangle pieces......
There is NO MORE fabric.........this is it!!!!!!!!!!!



Wednesday, January 12, 2011

No Words Necessary



I believe this fabric might have been from the 80s.  I had a whole bolt of it. Needless to say the rest of the bolt went in the trash.
 One thing for sure I will really give black fabric a good test before I use any of it again.
I think I will see if I can quilt NO WORDS and just use it as a wall hanging once in a while.  With a big label on the back to never ever wash it.
I wouldn't bother but this is the first Challenge I ever entered and my first Liberated Quilt and I hate to lose it.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Sad News

Christmas 2009 I made a quilt for my Son in Law.  He is a huge GA Bulldog fan.  When my Daughter washed it for the first time disaster  struck.  The black I used for the inner border just fell apart.



Well, this is a sad enough by itself but the real problem is I made my Liberated Amish quilt from the same black fabric.


I can't believe I didn't notice the fabric was rotten.
I guess procrastinating isn't all bad because at least I haven't quilted it yet.

Day Dreams

 Last weekend I completed side two of of my Day and Night Quilt.  The words have been pieced for five months but life got in the way and my sewing machine had to wait.  I am so pleased to finally have the second side finished. 

Next weekend I will start machine quilting this twin sized quilt. Hopefully side A and side B will line up easily when I baste them together.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
This has been a fun project to work on. I love having a chance to let my imagination run wild. 

Warm wishes from snowy Wisconsin!  Chris Daly

Thursday, December 23, 2010

Finally getting around to posting these

I made quilts this past fall for a fellow and his wife who were expecting twin girls. The fellow's mother had save a lot of his clothes - baseball t-shirts, jeans, a favorite pair of Michael Jordan shorts, etc. I made two quilts - one for each girl out of these items. Here are pictures of one of the quilts in process. They were a lot of fun to make and the father was thrilled with the results.







These are also for the twin girls. Their father is a huge Notre Dame fan which explains the colors. I rough cut the centers then just started improvising. I ripped the strips for the logs and then trimmed them with the rotary cutter as I pieced them together. I think orginally we were suppose to use just sissors - oops I'm bad! I was pleased with the way these came out and so was the father.







Have a happy and safe holiday!

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Merry Christmas

.. and a Wip and a finish :-)

Here's my finished test piece for ( still ) the first challenge

here's a bit of 'Befreite Dreiecke' showing my machine quilting . I think it will be 2011 when I'll finish it..



and this  is a small present on it's way to France



Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year
Heidi

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Orange Sqaure Quilt

I had so much fun making this Orange Square Quilt. I pulled out a few orange and yellow fabrics from my stash. I used batiks, solids,plaids and a few reproduction fabrics...some would say you can never use all these  fabrics in one quilt.  But it is so much fun to break the quilting rules!


 I love to stipple or meander my quilts.
 I also love  washed and crinkled quilts with simple clean lines.
Happy Quilting to all of you!

Sunday, November 14, 2010

My Challenge quilt


I'm so pleased to report that I have completed my challenge quilt . This quilt was a really big task for me. First, I researched Gee's Bend quilts and Amish quilts. I actually went to the library and looked in their reference books. I decided that Amish Bars pattern and some Gee's Bend quilts had a lot in common. The rules of Lazy Gal's Challenge were no rulers, templates or rotary cutters. And use a lot of solid colors. I found cutting long strips of fabrics using only scissors and by eye was difficult, unless I decided to simply have fun with it. You know that saying, "don't stress the small stuff." I pulled out a bunch of scraps for the scrappy row that I made going down the whole quilt. Then I used the size that that came out to be for the approximate length of the strips. If the strips were too long, I chopped them off, and if too short, I did what Gee's Bend quilt ladies do, and added a scrap to the edge. The edges of the quilt were quite uneven. So instead of quilting, I tied with size 10 crochet cotton. I use a curved needle when I tie a quilt. I think I ended up with what the quilting books politely call a "utility quilt." I didn't actually know if I liked this quilt all the way through the creating process. It was only after I finished hemming down the grey binding on the outside edge, that the full impact of the quilt was apparent. You know what, I decided that I like it just as well as any other quilt I have made!

Friday, November 12, 2010

Dancing Star


Dancing Star is finally finished . . .


You can see read more about this more-Gee's Bend-than-Amish quilt 
on my blog.

Thanks for the challenge, Tonya!


Quiltdivajulie

Monday, October 18, 2010

Triangle Quilt - "Amish Lib."

At last I finished!  
I took the center panel with me to Gwen Marston's Beaver Island Quilt Retreat the first week on October, promising myself that I would get the words and the borders finished while I was there.  Hooray, it happened!

After getting home I worked on the quilting, first covering those triangles with crosshatching.

Then I put uneven feathers in the two side panels, "echo-ed" the words, and put straight lines behind them.  [I had decided that the YEAR would be easier in Roman numerals because there are only straight lines for 2010.]

I know I missed the deadline, but I am really pleased with the result.  
It makes me smile!

Sara Homeyer

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Pinwheel Parade

I finished the quilt for the newest challenge.  I hit a point with it that I didn't much care for it.  So, I stopped.  Then, the next time I looked at it, I liked it.  Funny, that.  Does it ever happen to you like that?  I think it's just that we have to get distance from it and look at it in a different perspective.


 It's square, it just doesn't want to hang flat and I refuse to pin it because it's SUPPOSED to stay up on the darned design wall all by itself.  It's staying for now.  Though I suspect when I come home tonight from work it'll be on the floor.

-Wendy

Monday, September 27, 2010

Letters

I made my letters for my Liberated Amish adventure.  The D and I had quite a tussle.  I won, but just barely.  I'll be working on the finishing touches of the top this week.


-Wendy

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Diced pork is done


I've finished the Little Pink Pig 2, which is what I've been calling it to myself, slightly meaninglessly. The big stitch quilting gives it a nice rumpled texture, but I'm not loving it - I find it unrestful to look at. My eye wants to follow those little pink flags all over the quilt, before collapsing exhausted at the edge.



But it was lots of fun to do, and the slicing and re-forming was a great challenge. It is much more interesting than it was before the chopping! Thank you all for your help and great suggestions.



Wonky Log Cabin

The ' wonky ' log cabin quilt for my daughter is ready. It is machine sewn and machine quilted. I did a meandering in the log cabin part and a kind of freehand swirl in the border.

The size is 155 x 200 cm.