Film in the Fridge

nani iro baby improv quilt

Posted on April 24, 2013

What started out as a little experiment happily turned into a favorite new little quilt! I wanted to use some lovely Nani Iro double gauze fabrics, and decided to challenge myself to use up some Nani Iro scraps left over from a couple clothing projects – the burgundy floral and the pink gingham.

I paired those two prints with some aqua voile left over from another shirt I had made and added in a few other aqua solids in order to have enough for the background.

I turned to my Quilts of Gee’s Bend book for some inspiration and came across a wonderful quilt by Annie Mae Young (you can see a photo of it in my previous post about this quilt).

As I mentioned in that post, I even decided to hand quilt it – a first for me! I opted for a simple solid backing in Cotton Couture Stone, and used Quilter’s Dream Request batting (their lowest loft, and quite nice for hand quilting!). I drew out a simple crosshatch pattern and spent several evenings on the couch hand quilting. I’m certainly a novice in that area, so don’t look too closely at those stitches!, but I was surprised to find that I really enjoyed spending the time sewing this one by hand. And I do love how those stitches look! I used an aqua pearl cotton, which was part of an Anna Maria Horner box collection.

(Max tested it out for me, but really it’s destined for the baby!)

I was a bit apprehensive about throwing it in the wash, but it came out with all the stitching still in place (yay!), and it’s truly the softest quilt I’ve ever made. The double gauze, voile, lightweight batting, and hand stitching makes a great combo!

strawberry patch quilt top

Posted on April 22, 2013

This new line, Briar Rose, by Heather Ross for Windham Fabrics is one I’m super excited about, so it was wonderful to receive a surprise charm pack of these prints. I think it only sat overnight before I had dropped everything else to tear into the charm pack.

Heather’s fabrics are absolutely gorgeous! Just look at these prints – those strawberries… I’m in love! Briar Rose is inspired by summer, and indeed it feels so cheerful and bright and transports me right back to my childhood - sunny days in the berry patch, fields of wildflowers, and picking clover (though all the clover was picked and admired while I was supposed to be playing soccer…)

Did I mention those strawberries? I’m quite certain that I’ll be needing to make a crib sheet out of one of the strawberry prints for the new baby!

I pulled out a bunch of coordinating Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids and started pairing the charms with corresponding solids. My usual goal when I have just one charm pack to work with is to see how large a quilt top I can make, while still featuring the charm squares. Initially I thought I’d add in a bunch of white and use the bright solids as accents, but after seeing the charms along with the solids I decided I liked the idea of the quilt being made up of all these juicy solids.

Then I had to decide how to use the charms – I started thinking about a couple older quilts I had made, coincidentally also out of Heather Ross’s fabrics, and decided to surround each charm with a brightly colored solid. I cut all the blocks down to 8″ square, and was going to sew them all together as is, but ultimately felt it needed a little something more.

So who says that the blocks all have to line up nicely? I added in strips of the solids randomly in between the horizontal rows of blocks and then sewed the rows together. I suppose if you like everything square and straight and all lined up (like my brother! oh wow, I’m linking back to all the old quilts in this post!), this wouldn’t be the quilt for you, but I think it’s pretty fun and I’m excited to use it as a colorful play mat for the new baby.

Posted in baby, Fabric, Posts about Quilts, Quilt Blocks | Tagged baby quilt, briar rose, charm pack, charm quilt, handmade, Heather Ross, play mat, quilt top, windham fabrics | 21 Comments

farfalle… again!

Posted on April 18, 2013

Thank you so much for all your sweet comments about my recent quilt! It’s so much fun to find the perfect location to photograph a finished quilt. I enjoyed reading your comments and while I wish I could respond individually to each of you, I’m afraid that if I did so, there might not be any time left for making quilts! But I really hope you know that I read and appreciate each and every one, and as a small token of my appreciation, I thought I’d select one person from among those who commented to receive a selection of the leftover gray prints I used in that quilt. Carly, commenter #22, that’s you!

If you’ve been reading for a while, you might remember my Flying Farfalle quilt, which I made using small scraps of Anna Maria Horner’s Little Folks. It’s a fun and quick quilt to make, and uses up (and showcases!) tiny little scraps. Nova recently made a gorgeous one using Liberty of London scraps and after seeing it, I couldn’t get the idea of remaking that quilt out of my mind. My low volume prints were still out, and I had a bunch of brightly colored scraps left over from my Marcelle plus quilt, so it seemed a perfect match.

You can find an image of this block, called the Exquisite block, in Gwen Marston’s Liberated Quiltmaking II book. I don’t think (I can’t remember, and to be honest, I can’t bear the thought of getting off the couch to run upstairs to check!) there are specific instructions for making the block, but Jacquie and Katie also devote a portion of their book, Quilting Modern, to the stitch and flip technique, which you could use to make these blocks. I couldn’t remember what size blocks I made originally, so I went with 5″ x 7″ rectangles for this one (which look to be a bit larger than those in the Flying Farfalle quilt).

I like how different both versions are. I think I’ll always be drawn to the stark white which really makes those triangle pieces pop, but now I also quite like the fact that this one uses so many additional fabrics – more to admire when you’re laying under it!

(book links are Amazon affiliate links)