Secret Quilt Blog

Wedding Chuppah Quilt

For our wedding in June, I’ve asked our friends and relatives to mail us fabric with their RSVPs.  Now invitations haven’t gone out yet, but I’ve gotten a bunch from people I see regularly so that I could begin already.  In my mind, I need a minimum of 25 blocks, I have a goal of 36, and the most I could do without it becoming ridiculous is 64. 

There are 200 invited guests and they’ve been given the prompt to “send fabric or fabrics representing yourselves -or-send a pre-made 12 inch quilt block” - if everyone does the assignment, there are 112 physical invites going out - so that means with 2 color blocks - 56ish possible - so far we’ve gotten one fabric per couple - athough I think a friend is planning to send fabric to represent each of her, her husband and her kids, which if people go that route would change things - I also am really hoping that someone sends us a quilt block because that would be pretty cool - but if they don’t I can handle it.  :) 

So far we’ve gotten some purchased fabric and also some clothing - a friend tried to give me a silk robe - which was pretty, but not washable.  Jersey and nylon are *super* hard to work with in this context.  I’ve been sure so far to match up stretchy and floaty fabrics with really stiff counterparts - but you can see from the paperpinwheel that it doesn’t always go as planned.  That block is actually a little smaller than the others, I might have to border it honestly - something about the silky fabric in the middle changed when I cut and sewed it.  I love a good challenge, though!

I’ve also cut the the front and back motifs off of the t-shirt in 12.5 inch squares - and then cut 12.5 inch hunks out of the fabrics that I have enough of (some I don’t or haven’t - the vintage came in pre-cut squares and the spoonflower was just the sample swatch and I used *all* of it) and hope to make the back in 12 inch blocks that line up wiht the front - which sounds crazy, but I think is doable…so that when I quilt it, the stitch in the ditch lines grid up on the back. 

I’m probably going to quilt it in a grid since it’s a sampler quilt and I probably won’t have much time in the finshing stages - this is a wedding and it’s gonna be my chuppah after all - must.be.done.  So I’ll stich in the ditches and then I’ll just go down the middle line at 6 inches on each square.  That should hold just fine and be easy enough to do.

3 down - 22 or 33 to go!  Invites go out in a few weeks, so hopefully fabric will start piling in at that point…and also my birthday party happens about a week after the invites go out, so I hope I can encourage people to bring their RSVPs with them.  This seems like a good idea.  I guess we’ll all find out.

Streak of Lightning with Vintage Scraps & Spoonflower Custom

My Blue Heaven with a t-shirt & some quilting fabric.

Paper Pinwheel with silky shirt & cotton fabric.

2011 Retrospective

This is what I accomplished in 2011:

Rose’s 30th Birthday “Friendship Block” (January)

Taco’s “Trip Around the World” (March)

Tara’s 30th Birthday “Friendship Block” (March)

My Wool/Denim “Rail Fence” Monstrosity - which I should have a better shot of as it’s wound up on my bed - for chilly weather - but I don’t. (April)

My Girl Scout Camp twin cot blanket - “Morning Star” (July)

Nathan & Natalie’s Wedding Quilt - “Bridal Path” (September)

Lindsay’s College Graduation “Bear Paw” (December)

Shena’s 30th Birthday “Friendship Block” (December)

Big Boy Bed

Over Christmas (and untouched since then, sadly) I also started a quilt for my nephew for a different type of graduation - he’s about to turn 2 and has a toddler bed in his future.  His parents are big baseball fans - so I picked a pattern with a bit of a baseball diamond shape to it - this Snowball Nine Patch. 

It may be a little hard to see the baseball diamond in the demonstration colors - but this is what it looks like with “grass” in the middle and “bases” on the outside.

Also, my toes.  Hi toes.

The nine patch parts are all the same and pieced in strips - which makes the work-up super quick.  That’s two rows of blocks - there are going to be 3 more and then borders like what’s on top.

I’m pretty pleased with it.

Lindsay’s Graduation Quilt

Over the Christmas holiday, I made a quilt for my little sister as a college graduation/christmas present.  After a triumphant victory lap, she graduated from Kutztown university with a Bachelor’s in Sociology - and I couldn’t be prouder of her.

The Kutztown mascot is the Golden Bear, so I went with this Bear Paw block.

This shot shows the motif in detail:

Here’s the whole quilt:

I used the fake panorama program on my phone to get the whole thing in one shot - so some spots look a little funny - but you get the point.  It’s a queen (and maybe a little generously sized).  I wanted to make her something that she could grow into.  I also know that she likes aqua and lime green - so  I toned those down a bit and took them as theme colors.  I’m really pleased with how it came out.  It’s the first time I’ve done anything “on point” and I think the border option I chose is a little elementary -but all-in-all I think it came out well.

Girl Scout Quilt All Done (ish)

Back in July, I finished this one (except for the free-motion-middles, ran out of time) and then took it right to Girl Scout Camp and used it.  I was very pleased with myself.

Some day I’ll get to those middles…I hope.  I figured out how to do them…I also figured out that it’s not as hard as I thought.

Nathan & Natalie’s Wedding Quilt Done

In a spree in September I finished Nathan & Natalie’s wedding quilt, literally just in time to leave…actually I was still snipping threads on the car ride up and didn’t end up wrapping it.  Worst, presentation ever- here’s your wedding gift…in this trash bag.  For the middles, I ended up finding pictures of continuous line paths online, blowing them up in photoshop to the size I wanted and then printing them on drafting tissue paper…then sewing through them and ripping the paper out.  It worked pretty well, and with practice, I think I could be pretty good at it.

I’ll get steadier with practice.

Looks better from a distance.

Looking as tired as I feel….stayed up all night to finish it!

My favorite part, the creepy ass matrimony patch.  Secret joy.