quilt

 

Here is a terrible picture of a quilt I made for my former supervisor who retired 3 years ago and I finally got around to making this for her.  People at her retirement party made blocks and I put them together.  It looks much better in person, but you get an idea.  The fabric is red background with leaves and trees on it and is mixed in with a plain green.

   I think the last quilt I made was during Hurricane Sandy, which was 7 years ago. 

 

Brooklyn quilt show

This weekend was a show for the Brooklyn quilt guild.  Here's some of the ones that i liked.

A cross between the periodic table and quilting terms. 

Tea cups 

This was called I love my Bernina

This is the same pattern of the last quilt that I started and my mom finished for me. 

The red truck

They had a wall of quilts from a challenge. The theme was "flight". This was my favorite from that section. 

NYF quilt

I made this quilt for a coworker who left both the agency and NYC back in November, and I just finished it today.  Our coworkers made individual blocks and I mixed in some NYC themed fabrics, as well as some other cute fabrics.
 

my latest fit of creativity

This is a quilt I finished over the weekend for one of my colleagues at work. I stumbled across this blog and loved this quilt pattern, so I got right to work and I was able to use up some of my scraps. Since I think traditional boy fabric is not as cute as traditional girl fabric, and there are all kinds of weird rules about what is okay for boys to have in a two-inch square of fabric, which I don't subscribe to at all but some people do, I did have to supplement a bit. But that's okay, too, because I do love our quilt shop.

"No pictures, please!"

Here's baby Jake with the quilt I made for him. We finally got some fall weather for him to enjoy being wrapped up.

new quilt

another baby born last month and I dusted off my sewing machine to make him a quilt.

I have the fabric and a reason to make another one... but will I have the energy and time? Remains to be seen.

quilt show

On Saturday, my mom and I went to see the Empire Quilt Guild's show. We thought that would be the highlight of the day (and was actually the whole reason my mom decided to come to NYC this time around). But at the quilt show, they had information about a quilt exhibit, happening now in connection with the Folk Art Museum, called "Infinite Variety." It has over 600 red and whilte quilts, all from one woman's collection. We were totally blown away. I didn't bring my camera, but was so impressed by this exhibit that I took a lame picture with my lame phone. But it gives you an idea. All the quilts were clustered in 8 or 10 circles, or "pavilions," with quilts hung in 3-4 rows from the ceiling, on the interior and exterior of the pavilions, so you could walk around and through all of the quilts.

This is just one random quilt that I took a picture of. Not because it was my favorite or anything, but because I thought it would super easy to make (and still really cool looking).

Years ago, my sister Valerie asked my mom to make her a quilt that was all red and white (Ocean Waves was the design). My mom prefers quilts that are scrappy and bright, so she said Val's idea was "boring," but she did it anyway because that's just how she is. After this exhibit, she's changed her mind.

Here's my latest quilt, which I made for my friend, Allison, who just had a baby boy.

Two quilts in one year. I'm back, baby!

(not really.)

Quilt for baby Andrew

My BFF Esther just had a baby so it was time to get to work again. I find it hard to find cute stuff for boys, but my quilt shop put some boy charm packs together which made it a little easier. It's about the finished product anyway, and I love this pattern.

A little something I whipped up this week

My week of Quilts

This week I had two quilting related meetings. On Thursday, I went to my ward quilt group, which I started two years ago. Or something like that. It never really happened the way I envisioned it and it kind of limped along the whole time, sometimes only having one or two people besides myself there. But, whatever, I tried, even when I felt really discouraged. So, somehow, at the end of this Thursday meeting, and without much discussion, it had become something completely different with a different leader and a different focus and not even about quilts anymore. I went home in kind of a daze, thinking, "What just happened?" and later, "This must be how Governor Patterson felt after the Republicans staged a coup in Albany over the summer."

What? Too dramatic?

Then Saturday, I went to my guild meeting, which is not connected to church people, but if it's possible, people that are even more annoying than church people go there and in much bigger numbers (but the fact that they are annoying has nothing to do with this story). They do this thing called "Block of the Month" where anyone that wants to can make a quilt block (in a pattern that they assign) and then, if you make one, you have the chance to win everyone's blocks. This was apparently a record setting month because there were over 100 blocks. When my friend won a few months ago, I think she got 7.

Anyway, I won the freakin' thing and now I have enough blocks to make a whole quilt. Just proving once again... you win some, you lose some.


here are the ones that I made:





and here are the ones that I won!





I think it's pretty awesome and I don't think my mom can say this is going to be a boring quilt!

Stacked coins

So, I've been a little slow to make new things since I declared that I was going to become a quilter again. Turns out, I'm super lazy! Also, it's too hot. Oh yeah, and my machine was broken for a while.

But here's a quilt that I pieced a few months ago and Kendra quilted for our friend Joni who magically had three babies all at once. (I don't machine quilt and we wanted them to be the same-ish, so Kendra was nice enough to finish it off for me. I think I might learn to machine quilt as I think she said it took her about 3 hours and it would have taken me at least a week to hand quilt it.) I'm sad that these photos didn't turn out better, but you get the idea.

Here's the front:
and the back...

You can't tell but the back is brown with tiny white polka-dots. But you can see the quilting. I like the little strip of stacked coins on the back. If I ever make this one again, I may or may not do that again (being lazy, and all) but it is really cute.

Disclaimer: Although I do own my laziness, I did put in quite a few hours helping Joni make three quilts of her own. She is a novice and I volunteered to teach her how to do a simple strip quilting project. She did most of the piecing and hand quilting, and I am still working on quilting the third one. I started the binding on one and am going to work on binding the others. Although she is willing and wants to do her own binding, she has her hands full with three preemies. So I will do what I can until they move out of the city at the end of August. After that, she's on her own!

Returning to my roots

A few weeks ago, I went to the quilt show here in New York. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to join the quilt guild. Isn't it inevitable that we all turn into our mothers? So last Saturday I attended my first official meeting. At the end of the meeting, there is a show and tell portion. All of the quilts were beautiful, but see if you can figure out which one I went nuts over.

It inspired me to start creating again. We'll see how long it lasts. But here's the last quilt I made for my BFF Esther, who recently had a baby. (the white fabric has little cupcakes on it, so she'll never forget who made it for her!) I'm working on a new one which I'll post when I get a little further.