Starry Night at the Bloggers' Quilt Festival!

I'm very excited to be in the 2011 Fall Bloggers' Quilt Festival, hosted by the talented Amy!


I made this quilt a year ago for S + R's new baby. I wanted to make something bright and colourful but not too babyish, as it would be big enough to use through the toddler and preschool years.

When I came across Bonnie Hunter's Sister's Choice quilt pattern, I knew this would be perfect for the jewel toned batiks I had been hoarding! I love these batiks - the colours are so vibrant, the designs are beautiful and varied, and they are completely colourfast so I don't have to worry about prewashing. (I only work with Hoffman and Kaufman batiks since I know they won't bleed in the wash, and the hand of the fabric is wonderful. I haven't tried anything else but if anyone has any others to recommend, I'd be happy to hear your suggestions!)

Using Bonnie's pattern, I made a dozen star blocks that were mostly scrappy. They all have various shades of green for the points, and the background is made up of a couple of different dark navy batiks. (do you see the rogue red block in there?) At this point I liked how they looked (the below photo is a little washed out), but wanted to brighten it up with an interesting border.

Auditioning borders

I chose the border on the right - navy in the middle.  To solve the problem of the corners (I didn't feel like dealing with a mitered corner, as much as I love how they look!), I just added a 9-patch block which also gave the corners a neat woven look.

The quilting is just a basic meandering pattern that I resort to far too often when I can't decide what to do.  I backed the quilt with a hippo print from Ikea, and bound it using the same navy as the background.  The binding was finished by machine using a blanket stitch. I usually hand-stitch the binding down on the back, but I most likely left this to the last minute and had no time!

And here is one last photo that shows the colours best (on my screen, at least), and also shows that crinkly texture we all love! There is nothing better than taking a new quilt out of the drier for the first time, when all its little flaws have magically been erased!

I hope you enjoyed this little post! Please go and look at all the other wonderful quilts at the Festival!

Repairs

The second quilt I ever made was for Nanu. I pulled together squares from various sources, including some boxer shorts and a dress of Anumasi’s. It was not the best-planned quilt though I did try to have some sort of theme (frogs, animals, foods, more frogs…) for each row of squares. It had not occurred to me to make it bed sized so instead, it was arranged to fit the backing, which was an end-of-bolt square-ish piece of fleece (that really didn’t match anything anyway, so I’m not sure what prompted that particular choice!).

This quilt went with Nanu to college, then came home for a while, then went off to grad school with her. I’m amazed that it lasted as long as it did before it needed a repair. Those boxer shorts had already lived a long and full life before they made it into the quilt, so it was not surprising that that particular square was the first to go.

After months of tripping over the quilt as it sat on my studio floor, I finally bit the bullet and got to work on it over the weekend. First things first, that square had to come out. I tried the seam ripper but it was easier to just grab the fabric and gently tug it out of the seams (carefully, of course!). Once it was out, I cut out a replacement square from… yet another pair of boxer shorts. These poor shorts were so old and ratty that, before she left, Nanu reluctantly gave them to me with the words, “use these up as a rag.” I couldn’t make myself use them up as a rag because these were her favourite pair, perfectly broken in and softened up. Plus, the fabric was still in good shape – it was only around the waistband that the fabric had given way – so I could definitely use a piece to repair the quilt!

I cut the square with 1/2” seam allowances which I folded and pressed before pinning in place, overlapping with the surrounding seam allowances and using the existing seams as a guide (another advantage to tugging out the old square rather than removing the stitches).

Hand stitched it into place and completely forgot to take a picture of it! The whole process took about an hour (mostly because my hand sewing is very slow).

Incidentally, this is my first attempt using Windows Live Writer. I can't say it was any more convenient than just writing it up in Blogger, especially since I had to format each picture as I added it which was a little tedious. Maybe there are some settings I can change somewhere? It did manage to get the colours and fonts right on its own...