Pixels in warm tones

 Bobbi and I just finished up another pixelated photo quilt - this one of her beloved Biology teacher from back when she lived in Bulgaria. Kind of an unusual gift, but Bobbi was certain this was what she wanted to do, and she and I enjoy having a regularly set time each week to work together on a project. 

Instead of the gray-scale that we used on the Toygar quilt and the one we made for Jared and Dondi last summer, she wanted to go warmer, so we have white and cream through beiges, caramels and deep espresso brown. 

We had some fun with the quilting pattern, going with a swirly pattern where her hair is, as it's such a defining, graphic element in the quilt, and frames her face so nicely. The rest of the quilt is just quilted with straight lines to complete the grid - lighter thread on her face, and dark brown over the background.

We finished it with a fun colorful science-themed backing since their connection is biology class.

This quilt just flew over the ocean to be delivered in person! Curious what her former teacher's going to think about receiving a gift with her face on it!

Anniversary gift

 After the success Bobbi and I had with a pixelated quilt last year, we decided to tackle another one, and THIS time she wanted to do one of a friend of ours who for many years had been part of a regionally well-known acapella singing group. She calls him "Superstar" and, with he and his wife being good friends of me and Matt, and sharing the same wedding anniversary, she decided to do this for an anniversary gift!

Almost completed...

And here it is hanging up at the County Fair with all the other quilts. The further away you are, the better it reads!

Pixelated Toygar quilt

 Bobbi's been wanting a blanket with her favorite music artist's face on it. But she doesn't have any images of him with high enough resolution to get something decent, so Dad had the brilliant idea of pixelating his face and recreating it as a quilt made of squares!!!

It made a great project for her and me to work on together for an hour once a week, little by little - she counted the different shades off the gridded pattern, and we built it one vertical strip at a time.

Here's the end result!

Gloria's Tripper quilt!

 Gloria was inspired by Evania's Tripper quilt, and decided to make one with a few similar fabrics, as the girls share a bedroom, but with some fun additions to make it her own.

The strawberry fabric and the pale cream teddy bears match Evania's, and the rest are pulled from our stash of leftovers, with the exception of the strawberry shortcake print.

Grandmother's Flower Garden

 

It's finally finished! My great-grandma (dad's mom's mother) started this quilt many, many, many years ago. When she died it went to my grandparents' house, and when my grandma died (even though my grandpa does some quilting), it got passed to me. Most of the flowers themselves were completed, with two or three that were missing the outer row or just one hexie. I think I was in late high school. I thought it was really ugly, and my quilting skills were still just beginning (I preferred straight seams in the machine) and I wasn't really sure how to hand-piece hexagons.

A few years later I decided to give it a try - I didn't want to invest too much extra time, so instead of doing the classic join with a border between the flowers, I just began stitching the flowers together directly. By hand. (Because I still don't know a better way to join hexagons!)

But I didn't like how it looked, and after getting it about 80% of the way done, set it back aside again. And had ten children.

But THEN, Covid hit! And with it, stay-at-home orders, and with the new routines that provided for our family (our favorite was Andrew Peterson reading aloud his Wingfeather saga a few chapters a night), I got it back out again and decided to cut green hexies for the border between the flowers, UN-did all of the joining I'd done, and then re-joined all of the pieces by hand little by little by little. To finish it around the edges I decided to make new half-flowers, which were created from my own collection of scraps.

I chose a pink flannel for the backing, and the binding is a scrappy binding using three different greens.

I machine quilted the layers using free-motion quilting. The flowers were done in four different styles (shown below) and the green borders I did a meandering vine with a leaf in each hexagon.

This iteration of the flower quilting breaks the center into sixths and follows the hexagonal shape of the "petals" for a honeycomb appearance.

This version swirls in the center and does two rows of curved concentric petals, kind of like a zinnia.

This iteration was a "rose" in my imagination, with wavy lines creating a swirl that starts in the center and works to the outer layer.

And the last version was a daisy form, with a single row of long, skinny petals radiating from the center.

Evania's "Tripper" quilt

 This one has become almost a rite of passage, as Leah, Owen, and Bobbi have all made one. It's neat to see how very different the choice of fabrics makes the final result!

Evania's has a nice range of browns and pinks, with a fun horse fabric (left over from Bobbi's!) complemented by the red barn print and brown saddle print. The strawberries were a fun way to bridge the pink and red, and the pink leopard print was an obvious choice. :) She worked with a good balance of fabrics we already had and a few that she purchased just for the project.

Ebenezer's quilt!

Reuben has helped a bit - that's his signature scribble!

 I've been working on this for close to four years - one benefit to it taking so long is Ebenezer has gotten to watch the process from start to finish. I remember at  one point early on he was so taken with the idea that he walked around with a smaller piece of fabric, holding it against himself saying, "My quilk! My quilk!"

Ebenezer is one of two of the kids that has a twin size quilt instead of a throw size - partly because I wanted that size for the proportions for what I wanted to do, and partly because I knew he would NOT be a baby anymore by the time it was done. Ebby thinks it looks like a cross roads!

I enjoyed playing with a variety of different quilting methods in the different zones of the quilt.

This is a photo Eben took of the quilt. :)

A star grid in the reds...

...swirls around the blue dot fabric (which, incidentally, glows in the dark)...

...and a whole mixture of things on the intersecting grid where it all comes together. It was really fun to have a reason to use some of the 1.5" squares that I've been collecting! All of the kids' quilts have the purple paw print fabric in them somewhere (except Krassi's, which has a green paw print and is a copy of Owen's quilt in a different colorway...and Evania's has both the purple and the green), and if you look towards the right of the above photo, you can see the 1" square of it in Eben's quilt.)

Luke 22:54-62

 This was created as an art piece for one of the weeks leading up to Easter. Our pastor reaches out to the artists in our church on a regular basis to invite us to let different Bible passages inspire our creativity and share it with the rest of the congregation. I don't always have time to participate, but with this one, I could see so clearly in my head what I wanted to do that I took the opportunity.

The quilt grew from scraps and a few purchased fabrics on the living room floor while I was teaching math to Gloria, and other similar tasks!

I'll add some more photos once I get it back (it was displayed on Feb 26, and will be again on Easter Sunday).

“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”  Peter said to him, “Lord, I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death.” Jesus said, “I tell you, Peter, the rooster will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me.” ~ Luke 22:31-34

Then they seized him and led him away, bringing him into the high priest’s house, and Peter was following at a distance. And when they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard and sat down together, Peter sat down among them. Then a servant girl, seeing him as he sat in the light and looking closely at him, said, “This man also was with him.” But he denied it, saying, “Woman, I do not know him.” And a little later someone else saw him and said, “You also are one of them.” But Peter said, “Man, I am not.” And after an interval of about an hour still another insisted, saying, “Certainly this man also was with him, for he too is a Galilean.”  But Peter said, “Man, I do not know what you are talking about.” And immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly. ~ Luke 22:54-62

The quilt with the interesting history

 This one isn't *totally* done, but done enough to be used, so I'm running with it, and will post again when it's completely done.

Many many years ago, probably in the 70s, my maternal grandmother, who as far as I know was never really into sewing, started piecing this Lone Star quilt top. Not an easy project to tackle! But, so I was told, she completed the pieced top and then had had enough, so it didn't get finished.

Eventually, my mom met my dad and they were married, and his mom was a quilter. So somehow, my maternal grandmother passed the quilt off to my paternal grandmother, who dutifully took on the job of quilting. She layered it and added the backing, then basted it all by hand, and began the slow work of hand quilting. 

Eventually, her hands and eyes got beyond the point where hand quilting was an option, and by then, I was a young teenager who was into sewing and quilting and fabrics, so *I* inherited it. Of course, by the early 90s, the colors that Grandma had chosen in the 70s were atrocious. I thought the quilt was so ugly, BUT also really loved the Lone Star pattern (one that to this day I have not yet attempted, finding that I prefer right angles!) and the sentimental quality of a quilt that both of my grandmothers had worked on - that can't be the sort of thing that happens every day!

Fast forward over 20 years, and the thing is still sitting in my closet in an old cushion cover. For some reason, it came to my mind this past summer (partly, I think, because the colors in it so beautifully match my daughter's bedroom!), so I dug it out and determined to finish it. It's funny how tastes can change. I no longer at all think that it's ugly, and am so glad I didn't get rid of it years ago! I also decided that I'm not as much of a purist as I used to be, so did not feel the need to finish the quilting by hand, but rather decided to play up the multi-personal, multi-generational aspect of the quilt, and finished it up with a combination of standard machine quilting and some free-motion quilting. Six months later, it's ready! 

I didn't really plan out the whole thing, but rather did each little remaining chunk piece by piece. On the two narrower borders, I tried a meandering free-motion feather pattern that I wanted to try, and that I also thought was a nice nod to the more formal feather that Grandma F. had hand quilted in the central yellow squares.

I then started with a "ribbon candy" pattern in the pale green border, and decided mid-way through to switch to script and capture the history of the quilt in writing. "This quilt has an interesting history...it was pieced by Grandma Kelbe...hand quilted by Dottie...and finished by me for my daughter, Leah."

Then, I told Leah that she could pick what I wrote on the two wider yellow borders. She picked "A Man said to the Universe" by Stephen Crane (one they came across in their literature/history class at school, and it fits in the space perfectly), but hasn't decided what she wants on the other border. Once she decides, I can put it on there. In the meantime, it's going to live in her room, and not on my in-process quilt rack!

Nine of ten

 Three of the quilts I made for the kids ended up going through the laundry in the last 24 hours (two of the girls' got hit when Ebby sat on them in a past-due diaper yesterday morning, and Reuben had another vomiting episode in the middle of the night last night), so when they were in the living room with the other folding, it started something, and each of the kids wanted to grab theirs, and the others and look at them all together in relation to each other. I so love talking through with them all of the thoughts and ideas that went into each of their very special quilts.

Leah thought we should take a photo of them all laying out.

We're missing Eben's. It's not completed yet, but is sitting in the living room just out of sight waiting for the quilting to be finished. But there are the rest of them!!

Tsvetomira's quilt

 Finally got baby number nine's quilt finished! While I started Tsvetomira's at the same time as Bobbi's and Gloria's, there's been a lot going on since the beginning of it, and even though I've been working on it regularly, it's just taken that long to get it done. And she doesn't know (which is why the other two were higher on the completion list!) But we know!

I got the basic design (the squares "sliding" on the horizontal bars) from a book that I'll have to dig up the name for eventually! Pinks and blues have been our theme for Mira's things, so the quilt was designed to bring them together.

This vivid pink batik for the backing was something I picked out when we had first started talking about adopting Mira, before we had even seen Bobbi's photo!

A second fabric, blue and white background with pink flowers, setting the color theme for everything to follow, was the only other that I purchased specifically for the quilt; everything else is made up of memories and connections to other projects.

I continued my experimentations with free-motion machine quilting, and though it's not as uniform as I had hoped, it will be sufficient. My favorite thing was the attempt at including lettering!

It's maybe a little hard to see (maybe a different color thread would have been better?) but there it is: Made for Tsvetomira 2020. (Note: the fabric in the upper right of this square is the blue/white/pink that I chose for the theme-setter.) After that success I tried a few others:

And, like all of the others, she's got a bit of the kitty-paw-print fabric in her quilt, too. It just wouldn't be complete without it!

Daddy had a great idea to keep Mira's quilt in her hospital bag so she'll always have it with her when she's sick. It keeps it cleaner than everyday use around here can, and is something special to leave with her so everyone knows she's special to us. :) So now, once I finish Ebenezer's (I have an idea/sketch!) I'll be caught up. 

Used my favorite low-loft cotton batting. Binding was bias cut from a fabric that one of Reuben's paras from school (who also used to work with Krassi) gave us last spring. It's pink and white and has glitter on it! Certainly not an upscale quilting fabric, but totally fun and just right for this quilt.

Gloria's quilt

Gloria's is probably right up there with my favorite quilt that I've ever made. It's kind of funny because one of my first favorites had a similar color scheme. The design/layout is one that just came to me. I sketched it out once on paper, and then adjusted it slightly to come up with this. The variety of scale of the stars and squares allowed me to use some bigger chunks of fabric that I had as well as sneaking in some small leftover bits that have special meaning (like the purple paw print that all of the kids' quilts have in them). I particularly like how the stars (the large one and one of the small ones) break the borders.

The quilting was as much fun as the piecing - the stars are outlined with varying thicknesses of space between the rows, and the field is stipple/swirl free-motion quilted, making the back of the quilt almost as interesting as the front.

As I've done on other more recent quilts, I've taken advantage of the seams that are a necessity to get quilt-sized backing fabric, and accented it with a strip of left over tidbits of the front fabrics.

Gloria was about three years old when I finished the quilt.

Bobbi's quilt

This was supposed to be finished two years ago, but instead I managed to quickly finish it up on the two-year anniversary of Bogomila's home-coming from Bulgaria.

I decided to make Bobbi's quilt a full-size bed quilt instead of the throw/snuggle size that I did for the other kids who got theirs as babies. Good thing, too, since she's a legitimate eighteen-year-old adult now by the time I finished it!

The color scheme was based on her telling us she liked black and blue, and green and purple. The fabrics are a fun mix of leftovers from other projects and some that I purchased just for her.

The purple paw print has featured in every one of the kids' other quilts (well, Krassi's has a green version I found of it), and the one at the bottom is a large-scale cabbage print!! That one I bought in honor of Bobbi's love of cabbage. Again, all of this was purchased and begun before we really knew her, so I'm happy now when I've been working on it and she tells me that it's one of the prettiest quilts she's seen. She's not known for meaningless flattery, so I know she really likes it.

I was particularly excited about the black and gray background fabric. That was probably the most challenging part of the quilt - finding something that would function as a solid (which you can see it does in the photo of the whole quilt), but that would not be too boring up close, since it's such a large percentage of the quilt. The mild herringbone mimics the pattern of the pieced "feathers" while still acting as a neutral.

Quilting this one was an interesting challenge as well. I started with the background, following the linear pattern of the fabric, back and forth, back and forth, but wasn't sure what to do for the feathers. I had to sketch quite a few back options before finding a motion that was simple enough to do without having to rotate the quilt in the machine, but still was an effective enough suggestion of feathery-ness.

On the back of the quilt you can see more clearly how the two machine-quilted patterns work together:

I used my favorite low-loft cotton batting. The narrow binding was made from a conglomeration of scraps I had laying around to avoid a trip out to the fabric store!

(The inspiration for the pattern of the quilt top came from this book: Strip your Stash)