Trekkies Need Quilts Too

While I was out at Craft Warehouse just yutzing around, I found some Star Trek fabric, and I thought I'd buy some to stash away for John.  Now, I'm going to preface this by saying I am not a big Trekkie.  I haven't watched Star Trek habitually since I was 7, and other than that I've just seen the last couple movies that have come out. Anyway, this fabric I guess shows the Shatner era Enterprise flying through space. 

 Somewhere someone on that fabric is overacting.

I got only a yard of it, thinking maybe John would want a quick and easy pillowcase to surprise him when he got back from the Douglas Complex.  Because I get too stoked about it when I make stuff for people, I told him about the fabric I found and asked him what he wanted from it.  Of course, he didn't want a pillowcase, he wanted a full on quilt. 

Lucky for him and unfortunately for me, he is one of the very few people I cannot say "no" to.  So, a Star Trek quilt it is.

The problem was, I only got a single yard of  a very directional print.  Sure, in space there is no up and down really, but uh, I think he would notice if there were Enterprises flying upside down. So, I decided to not cut it up and use it as one would a panel.  I know John would want this to be at least a lap size quilt to use while he's manning it up playing Call of Duty, so I had to make it bigger...which also means I made it simple because math and I? No.

While I am not a huge Trekkie, I do understand the concept of the shirts.  I knew of three shirts - red (you die), blue (spock) and yellow (Kirk) from the original series, but I needed a fourth color.  Thank God my family is family full of nerd because Mom pointed out that Kirk had a green shirt too. I'd hate to upset the Trekkies by improvising with a color not in the show.

Pretty stylin' there, Captain...

So. Four sides to a quilt, 4 shirts...I can make that work.  So I decide to put 4 insignia blocks in the quilt, one on each side and one in each shirt color. I looked up the original insignia and make my own applique. Easy peasy.

It needed borders around the insignias, and John said he wanted space fabric, but nothing too campy.  (Nothing campy?  Isn't the original Star Trek pretty campy anyway? C'mooooon man!) I needed way more yardage than I thought so of course the perfect space fabric I had in my stash was short by half a yard.  Thank God there's no quilt police to arrest me for mixing cotton and flannel because that's exactly what I had to do.  I used a space print flannel that looked reasonably realistic and it turned out pretty nicely. 

Oooh. Ahhh.  (He better say)


It is simple but I know he'll like it.  It turned out a decent size too, about 70" x 70". All that is left to do now is pick a backing and get it quilted!

Baby Quilt

I got suckered in to making a baby quilt...and my first t-shirt quilt. Suckered isn't right...my friend Sarah asked and I said yes, mainly because I have no problem saying "no" to grown ups but I am absolutely incapable of denying an infant pretty much anything (within reason of course).

So I go over to her house and she literally hands me a bag of onesies to make a quilt out of.  What did I get myself into?  I have never made a t-shirt quilt, what thee proper hell am I going to do with these 30,000 onesies?  Make a quilt of course!  I took as many as were useable (meaning, the design wasn't a quarter inch from the seams etc), stabilized them and then cut them all as close to 7" as possible.


There were some REALLY cute ones in there. I love the T-Rex!



Since not all of them could be cut to 7", I had to make them bigger. These are the fabrics I chose to add to the too-small blocks.



Blocks done!



Quilt top, done!


The border fabric is better than anything I could have asked for. I love it when a plan comes together!

It's off at quilting now.  I showed Sarah, and she loved it! I'm really glad. After the last baby blanket I made for a friend, I stopped doing them because of how coldly it was received...I still never see it in pictures being used or anything, and so the fact that a quilt I made for their child has gone unappreciated hurt.  Luckily Sarah and her husband Casey love the quilt and I know their baby will too as he gets older.  Feels good to do good for a friend :-)

Hand-Me-Down UFOs

Lately a very common statement I hear at the shop and with quilting friends is that either A) they need to use up their stash, or B) they want to finish UFOs before getting anything new. I've even tried to commit to those ideas too, with medium style success.

But even with a lot of determination, we look at our old projects with mixed emotions. Sometimes we see them with renewed vigor and get back on track ...but then other times... we look at those unfinished projects and just groan and shove it back to the back of the bin. And if we reeeeeeally never want to see the project again, we "donate" it to family or friends who sew and who we hope will finish them so we don't have to!

Well, in the past few months lots in my life and in the lives of my family and friends has changed - people have moved, gotten ill, had surgery...all that great life event stuff. So as folks cleaned out their sewing rooms and revisited those UFOs, I ended up taking a handful of them and I'm glad I did! They may have hated them, but I sure don't. Some of them are sets of completed blocks, and others are close to finished.

Here are a few of them. Looks like I've got my work cut out for me!

This one is an old project of Mom's that she started when I was...a toddler? It's definitely from the early 90s and it was one she utterly detested. So instead of her scrapping the blocks, she gave them to me to do whatever with...so I made it. All I added were the borders:

   
 This one is another from Mom. She just decided she was never going to get to again and again, instead of roundcanning it, she gave it to me to finish. Really all that needs done is stitching the applique down:

And this one a customer brought in for me. She just wasn't happy with where it was going, had run out of fabric and was just not inspired to ever work on it ever again. As luck would have it, another customer completely unrelated to the one that gave me the quilt to finish, gave me the very same fabric the other quilter had run out of - 6 1/2 yards to boot!

So if you really hate one of your UFOs, you might just find it a home with someone else! Not me though...looks like I've got plenty to keep me out of trouble :)

Man, having a social life really cuts into my quilting time :P

Hello again! Yes, I'm back. I know it's been a while but I'm sure my readers can forgive me, right? Lately I've had an upswing in the ol' social life, and wouldn't you know it, that tends to cut into the quilting time just a wee bit. That being said, my roommate just moved out and headed back to the east coast. It's a real bummer, but I suppose it was pretty inevitable. So for close to the past month she's had a friend from VA here to visit and they took a road trip, and had to get all packed and leave. She just left on Wednesday. Plus, on a brighter note, my time is also getting tied up by a new guy in my life, which isn't a bad thing at all! He's a smart, sweet, good looking guy who fire fights and appreciates quilts. I think I'll keep him :-)

So on a related note, what have I been working on? Well, a few weeks ago my boyfriend was asking (knowing I'm an avid quilter) where he can buy a cheap bed quilt. I was waiting for him to just ask me to make one so I told him a few places and told him, "...but you know you're dating a quilter, right?" I finally was just like, "do you want me to just make you one?" We all know what the answer to that question was! I asked him what he wanted, and bless his heart he told me to pick something I liked and he'd be happy with whatever I made. But you know how it is when you make a quilt for someone; you don't think about what you want, you think about what you think they'd want, which is exactly what I did. Granted, I've been looking for an excuse to use the focus fabric I chose for months now, so I was happy I could finally use it somewhere. It's not been without its frustrations in terms of assembly (oh holy crap!) but I'm really pleased wht the colors....it's just a matter of getting them distributed well which has been, to this point, easier said than done.

Great basic quilts that are perfect for toying with color

I chose to do a quilt out of the City Quilts book, basically a quilt set on point with a bunch of multicolored snowball blocks with a square in the middle. They look almost like donuts, but the books says they were inspired by the Houston, TX roadways (what, empty?). I think I'll stick with the donut theme, thanks.

But his quilt is done up in rust, orange, brown, burgundy, ice blue and teal. When you see the focus fabric, it makes more sense than just listing the colors. The focus fabric is what you'll see in the setting triangles.

Here's the quilt I chose. I have to say, I do NOT like their version of it at all. I'm not partial to quilts using all solids (they're pretty, but not my thing) and I don't care for how they blocked the colors...but the best part about quilting is you can do whatever you want. To the right is my focus fabric. The picture doesn't do it justie, it's a really beautiful batik with teal and ice blue running through the rust.

Color choice part 1. The blue isn't as intense as shown here, and the focus piece is third from the bottom. After this and the following picture was taken, I realized I didn't pick enough fabric and had to go stask diving at mom's house for a few other pieces I didn't have at home.

And here are the others. At the top, of course, a firefighter has to have a wood print (duh) and then the bottom southwest print is going to be the border (which isn't called for in the book).

The beginning of what has got to be the most frustrating experince I've had yet in color placement. Ho-ly crap.

More blocks

The colors have moved around some since this was taken, but hey, progress.

Aaaaand assembly has begun, where I learned that I may have stretched the bejesus out of parts of the blocks, necessitating the use of nothing less than 30,000 pins. lol. Okaaay maybe not that many but good grief they don't want to go together cleanly.



Well, i was going to keep it's progress a secret from John so he would be totally shocked and awed when he saw it done, but I was too excited and showed him a picture anyway. He loves it so far, which makes me happy. My goal for today is to get the rest of the inside of the quilt top pieced, by which I mean all of the blocks, and then while he's away this weekend, get the borders put on and call Frances to quilt this thing for me. I want to have this thing done by Valentine's Day so I can give it to him then, but we'll see.

Anyway, after all the flooding that's been going on around here, I hope everyone has been safe and dry!