QuilterGeek
Quilts by Julie Ramsey
Day & Night
Mar 9th
The “Quilt in a Day” series has lived up to its name: I put together a Day & Night crib quilt in a grand total of about five hours this afternoon.
There were a LOT of points to line up, so there are a few spots where things aren’t quite perfect, but I think the overall effect still definitely works. Not quite sure what I’m going to do with it– maybe it’s good enough to include in my Etsy launch??– but I’m sure it’ll find a home of some sort.
Plenty to Do
Mar 7th
Exciting news: I picked up two quilt commissions this week! One is from my mom, who would like a quilt to give as a gift to her doctor. The other is for a second cousin who liked the pictures I posted on Facebook so much that she wants me to make a quilt for her grandbaby. Unfortunately, I’m still waiting on some batik fabric to come in the mail for the first quilt, and my cousin is still picking a design for her quilt. This leaves me, gasp!, with nothing to work on for the moment.
I picked up a copy of 200 Quilt Blocks to Mix and Match at the used bookstore the other day, and found lots of fun stuff to play around with. One of their suggested layouts was something along these lines:
I picked up fabric for it last night– thank goodness for Electric Quilt’s “calculate yardage” feature!– and will be starting in on it today.
Flower Garden
Mar 7th
Friday is my husband’s “guys’ night out,” so I spent a cozy evening at home by myself, holed up in front of the sewing machine. I decided to use some fun focus fabric I picked up to make another Quilts for Kids project using the same pattern as the kit I recieved.
I really like the bright colors in this one, and hopefully a child out there will feel the same way!
Quilts for kids kit
Mar 2nd
My Quilts for Kids kit finally showed up by UPS today. Talk about timing, I was just starting to dig through my stack of quilting books to look for a new project to start! The fabrics are great (I was really hoping for something with dogs or cats!) and about two hours later, I had the top, which I’ve dubbed “Puppy Parade,” completed:
I’m one for bright colors when I quilt, but this is even brighter than I expected! It’ll definitely bring a smile to some little kid’s face, I’m sure.
I got it all sandwiched with fusible batting, and I’m doing a quick free-motion meander on it right now (after a brief and failed attempt to stitch-in-the-ditch). With any luck I’ll have it finished up in the next day or so, and then I can send my package of two or three quilts off to the charity! 
“Just a spool of thread…”
Mar 1st
I stopped by the fabric shop today because I needed a spool of invisible thread to finish off binding two almost-complete projects. Of course, I had to take a quick swing through the fabric section… would you expect me not to?
This fabric store has a little more eclectic selection than Jo-Ann, and sometimes there are very neat things hidden in the clearance section. Today was no exception! I was on the lookout for a fun kid-friendly print that I could use some of the rainbow scraps from the Tetris quilt, but instead I found something else fun: a Hello Kitty quilt panel!
This will be a great way to get some practice at free-motion machine quilting, which I have sort of a love-hate relationship with. I’ve become very good at doing different size meander patterns, but I’ve only ever attempted to do any sort of planned design once. I really need to stretch myself and try something a little less free-form, and I think this will be a great way to do it. I can trace the shapes in Hello Kitty’s body, do echo quilting of the outside silhouette, “stitch in the ditch” around the square borders, and maybe do some sort of large, loopy pattern in the open spaces and border.
I tend to dread the machine-quilting bit of projects, preferring instead to do the planning, shopping, and piecing, but I’m actually looking forward to playing with this one. If that’s not a good motivation for learning, I don’t know what is!
Great-grandma’s scrap basket
Feb 27th
This morning, I decided to take a break from the Tetris quilt and pull out some blocks that I hadn’t touched in months. Nothing like needing a break from a big project to reduce the number of UFO’s sitting around, huh?
These are simple pinwheel blocks I made from a sampler-pack of 1930s reproduction prints. I decided the pattern would be something my great-grandmother (who was an amazing quilter and made many hundreds of quilts in her lifetime) would have made with similar fabric. Granted, it probably would have taken her much longer, and the quilting would be much nicer than what I have planned, but I still think it’s a neat sort of tribute.
As it turns out, I had just enough blocks to make a top just the right size for a Quilts for Kids project. The workmanship isn’t quite up to snuff for something I’d want to sell on Etsy, though I imagine I’m being much too particular; there are a handful of spots where the pinwheel “arms” don’t match up to one another, even though you can’t really notice unless you’re looking for it. Regardless, I’m sure this one will keep a kid warm in the hospital!
Interesting note: the quilt that’s hanging in the background was actually made by Great-Grandma, probably sometime in the ’50s. I love the way it brightens up the room, and it’s very inspirational!
Fun with embroidery
Feb 24th
I got an embroidery machine as a late Christmas gift, and up until now I haven’t had much of a chance to mess around with it. I’d eventually like to embroider designs onto the center of plain squares to offset with pieced blocks, but that would require buying some design cards or the software to make up my own designs. So for now, I can play around with the various alphabets that come standard on the machine (and the bonus fonts that came on a memory card) and try my hand at making quilt labels.
This one is 4″ square, and I think it’ll work nicely to be appliquéd onto the back of my Easter egg stack-and-whack project. I’ll try making some with different colors of thread and other fonts, and play around with the text size a little bit, but overall I’m pleased with the way it turned out. The whole thing took maybe half an hour to do, so maybe tomorrow I’ll take a few hours to make labels for all the quilts I have in progress.
Progress
Feb 20th
Finally got all of the blocks completed! Nothing like seeing something close to a finished result to make pushing through the repetitive tedium of piecing worth it, huh?
I was unsure about some of the extreme color contrasts for a few of the colors, but seeing the whole thing laid out makes me feel much better about how the whole thing looks. Now I’m very excited to get the blocks put together and start getting borders on it!
Charity Work
Feb 20th
A poster in the Livejournal Quilting Community made a post about Quilts for Kids, a charity that provides donated quilts to sick children. I plan to donate one of my Easter-fabric pinwheel quilts to the cause.
Not only do they accept donations using fabric from your stash, but they’ll send you fabric to turn into a quilt to donate. They get scrap fabric from major designers and use it for quilt donations rather than sending it to landfills.
If you need yet another project to keep yourself out of trouble, work up a quick baby quilt for the charity!
Tetris progress
Feb 20th
More Tetris blocks done! Two more colors to go, and then I’ll be ready to start assembling the top. Off to the fabric store today to buy materials for the borders
