FITF: Film in the Fridge | modern quilts, clothing, fabric, and photos

4 (of) hearts – an umbrella prints improv quilt

Posted on April 11, 2013

I’m thrilled to have finished this quilt! I was hoping to get some good photos, but lately I’m having a harder and harder time finding time for quilt photos. While in the past we could drive around until I found the perfect spot, unfortunately Max doesn’t find driving around aimlessly to be fun. So these photos are not what I was hoping for, but I’m posting them anyway, since the forecast for the next week shows lots of rain!

But back to the quilt! As I mentioned previously, I started this quilt with a couple Trimmings packs from Umbrella Prints. I love their unique hand printed fabrics, and wanted to make a quilt to show off these fun little bits. As I contemplated designs, I knew I wanted to make four large blocks. I started making them, then realized that the shapes would lend themselves to making a quilt along the lines of Jacquie & Katie’s Tunnel Vision quilt (from their wonderful book, Quilting Modern*).

I surrounded the blocks with this lovely Robert Kaufman Essex yarn dyed linen in black, and I really love the way it looks. The yarn dyed linen is really great to work with, and also has a really lovely feel.

The backing is made up largely of this great print from Lizzy House’s Constellations line. I had purchased it to use as a backing, though at the time didn’t have a quilt in mind, so it was a happy coincidence that the stars in this print pick up most of the colors I used on the front.

You might think that Max is expressing his love for quilts in the photo above, but in reality this was him telling us he had had enough of the quilt photography. (And when I say ‘telling’, I really mean whining. Be glad this is a photo and not a video!)

I really liked the way Jacquie and Katie’s Tunnel Vision quilt was quilted, so I did something similar (they used double lines for all quilting lines, while I decided to alternate a double/single quilting line). I used Aurifil 50 wt in white, and since the black is a yarn dyed fabric, the white actually blends in quite well. I used Quilter’s Dream Request, which is their lowest loft, and gives this quilt such a nice drapey feeling. The photo above gives you a good idea of the texture of this one. [By the way, since I’m asked often, Quilter’s Dream cotton batting is my favorite batting – I alternate between the Request and the Select, which is a midloft batting.]

I’m thinking this one will be for sale in a couple months – my local fabric shop, Nido, is hosting an Artists Pop Up series, starting this month, and I’m pleased to have been asked to be the artist for June. If you live in the area, or perhaps if you’re here for the Vermont Quilt Festival, I hope you’ll stop by!

(*Amazon affiliate link)

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

a ‘use what you have’ personal challenge quilt

Posted on April 8, 2013

This quilt got its start because I was really feeling the urge to sew with my Nani Iro stash. Periodically I take the fabrics out, admire them, and then end up stumped as to what to make.

I took a peek at my Quilts of Gee’s Bend book to look for inspiration, and came across this quilt, made by Annie Mae Young. Inspired by it, as well as the idea of using what you have, I decided to try my hand at a little something similar.

So the Nani Iro stash went back, and instead I grabbed some scrap Nani Iro pieces left over from a Washi top I made (and I guess never blogged about!). I tend to have trouble using up the scraps left over from making clothing. I hate that they’re always weirdly shaped, and washed while the rest of my fabrics are not, and consequently they tend to sit. So I decided to issue myself a little personal challenge – to use up some scraps left over from recent clothing projects. These aren’t necessarily fabrics I would select to go together – I had the dark purple Nani Iro pieces, plus a few small pieces of new Nani Iro gingham in pink left over from a pair of baby pants I made recently, and some aqua voile, which I used for a shirt (which ended up not fitting, and looking far too much like scrubs for my liking!). I allowed myself to add in some extra aqua solids in order to have enough for the background, and I added in a few small pieces of an orange Oakshott solid for some accent pieces.

(apologies for the poor iphone photos – I need to remember to get out the real camera for progress photos!)

I had the most of the purple Nani Iro, so those became my main squares. I decided to cut it all with scissors without a ruler. As I cut the squares I put them up randomly on the design wall and then started to fill in with the aqua background.

I sewed them into columns and then sewed those columns together.

And here it is as a completed top! It’s fairly small – definitely baby sized – but certainly a fun little experiment. It was interesting to see what I could make out of these clothing scraps. I’ve even decided to go all out and hand quilt it. This will be the first quilt I’ve hand quilted, so we’ll see how that goes!

Posted in baby, Fabric | Tagged Fabric, fabric scraps, gee's bend, improv, nani iro | 12 Comments

marcelle plus quilt

Posted on April 2, 2013

I must say, I’m in love with this quilt! I made it on a whim, after seeing so many people working on the Marcelle Medallion quilt from Alexia Abegg’s book, Liberty Love. As I mentioned before, I decided to use a portion of her pattern – the 7th border – and use those pluses to make up my entire quilt top.

I enlarged the block just a bit to make the pluses stand out even more and raided both my stash of brightly colored prints for the pluses themselves, and my stash of low volume prints for the background fabrics.

And how fun, right? Alexia has a great pattern here, and I love that I could find inspiration from her quilt to make up something I absolutely love!

I thought I’d concentrate the quilting around the pluses, but a quick survey on Instagram said straight line quilting, so straight line quilting it was. I went with horizontal lines this time around and again did some random spacing about 1/4″ to 3/4″ apart.

The backing is a print from Aneela Hoey’s Sew Stitchy line (great sale prices here, by the way!), and then I used the gray crosshatch from Carolyn Friedlander’s Architextures line for the binding. I decided to use one of the low volume prints for binding since I wanted it to blend in with the background, allowing the pluses to be the only bold bright spots.

We lucked out with a really lovely day on Saturday and found ourselves down at the beach to throw stones in the lake (Max’s favorite pastime!). It’s so nice to start to see signs of Spring again – I do love quilt photos at the lake!