I'm moving into a new and tiny office and am using this chance to make everything look exactly how I want it. Which, of course, means lots of quilts.
The design for this one came as I was sitting looking at the couch that's currently in my office and seeing a little pillow laying on the back that looked like a stack of sideways half-square triangles. I thought it would be nice to make it look slightly plant-like by putting petals at the top.
The assembly was quite fast, given that I was using a charm pack from the Connecting Threads "Luminescence" line.
I sat and embroidered while watching lots and lots of Netflix.
The words come from a loving kindness meditation I learned in a class about Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, which I've used a lot, especially recently. Our little community has had a rough time of it over the last couple of weeks.
I machine-quilted in the ditches first and then echoing lines in the non-wordy triangles. The binding is yardage from Luminescence.
Hoping that I haven't missed the deadline to link up with Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday.
Happy crafting!
It's finished! And it's called "The Soccer Ball Quilt," and it was named by my 4-year-old. These are some of my old soccer shirts. I struggled mightily with how to design this quilt, given the various sizes of the designs and my utter inability to get squares to come out 18.5".
I didn't want to use stabilizer on all of the t-shirt parts, and I didn't run into much trouble with the t-shirt fabric. I made sure that I wasn't ever seaming t-shirt to t-shirt - everything is seamed together with quilting cotton. Making the big squares went so well that I used some of the excess tie-dye material as colored fabric for the square in the bottom right, and that went just fine, too.
A shot of the full thing. It's about 54"x62". The little blotty square is the back of a t-shirt that has a bunch of signatures on it. Blotted out what are probably mostly obsolete maiden names by now.
 |
| Ribbon Star |
The big patterned squares are a ribbon star, churn dash, and X marks the spot. These shirts were from 20+ years ago, so I decided to use a very old bit of stash, too, which is the blue heart/leaf batik that I got at Joanns slightly less than 20 years ago. I had a bunch of fat quarters of it, and used up nearly all of it.
The back is a recent purchase from a LQS (the black and white flower), more batik, and some Cyber Monday yardage from Connecting Threads (the green). With the borders, I didn't quite have enough batting without cobbling some together, so the last little bit of January's spending money + a 50%-off coupon got me some Pellon Cotton with scrim off of the big old roll. I felt like I was taking a gamble, because I'd never used that kind before, but I really love the crinkle that it ended up with.
The batting was nice and flat, too, which is more than I can say for the kind that comes in bags. I pin-basted most of the quilt and spray-basted the t-shirt fabric so that it would be less likely to shift around. I quilted this with an all-over loop, and there was only one big expanse of t-shirt (around the signatures) that got a little bunchy. I can live with it.
Quilt Stats
Style: T-shirt quilt without stabilizer
Size: 54"x62"
Batting: Pellon 100% cotton with scrim (off the roll at Joann's)
Thread: Essential Pro (for piecing and quilting)
Binding: Double-fold machine sewn to front and hand-sewn to back
Linking up with crazy mom quilts for Finish it Up Friday. Happy crafting!
