Bibliosophy Handmade

finished quiltiness

A finished Big Stitches Quilt, just in time for a trip to the northwoods of Wisconsin!  The batting is a thrifted wool blanket, so it will keep us extra warm on those still-chilly spring nights.

Yes, we are going to make our way to my parent's cabin, in the car, for 13 hours, with two babies.  We are crazy.  DH expects them to do worse than we think, and I expect them to do better.  Hopefully he's the one who's surprised, and pleasantly.

So all you more veteran parents, any handy tips and tricks for keeping the progeny content on long car trips?

inspired quilt-making

  Since taking up quilt-making last year, I've enjoyed playing with the gorgeous fabrics on the market and designing them based on things from my everyday.  My Spring at Siebenthaler's quilt was created this way, inspired by the local garden center's annuals greenhouse.  Each rectangular section represents a table with a variety of annuals, with the cream sashing the walkways between tables.

Jane Brocket takes a similar approach to quilt-making in her new book, and with an idea or scene from her life, she weaves a story about the quilt which helps her make fabric and color choices.  In an interview I read in Fat Quarterly with her about the book, she says she writes "from the point of view of an enthusiastic amateur, someone who isn't a designer and doesn't have advanced quilting skills...[she's] keen to emphasize that rules and ideals of perfection aren't as important as enjoying yourself with fabric."  Yes!  This is why I quilt: to play with fabric, and make something pretty that pleases me.

The book is quite nice, and she uses bright, colorful fabrics to great advantage.  I particularly like this Russian Shawl quilt:

And I think this Suits and Ties quilt would be a great gift for a man:

 

It's made from old woolen suits and ties, sewn together in patches.  (The only problem is how to wash it?  Any ideas?)

I'm paying more attention now to the things around me, and hope to be struck by inspiration for a new quilt soon!

a busy day

We did a lot of creating yesterday:

A surprise gift for a grandma....

Some new prints...

And more stitches on the Big Stitches Quilt; with a few more, we'll be done!

What have you been making lately?

still gestating

Our baby, that is, but thankfully, not this quilt!  Apparently some of my projects take as long to cook as my babies; this one was started right after I found out I was pregnant.  It's been sitting, fully quilted (by a lovely local lady, not myself alas) in my workroom for months; all that remained was the binding.  With an hour and a half of babysitting by the girl across the street, the binding was made, sewn on that night, and I've enjoyed handstitching the rest in the evenings.

I love these little girls all over the quilt, there are twelve of them, all different, and someone really poured some love into the applique and embroidery.  I purchased these squares last summer on an antiques jaunt, and they are still one of my most favorite purchases! 

What great finds have you made recently?

big stitches

My quilting ethos is very different from most modern quilters, I think.  I prefer to use large patches of the fabrics that I choose, to let their full color range and pattern make the impact, rather than cutting them up into tiny pieces to make a new design.  This was the approach I took with my Spring at Siebenthaler's quilt, and this new lap blanket turned out somewhat similarly, except this time the design was more of a modified log cabin.

I decided to hand quilt it myself, with large chunky stitches of pearl cotton, so that the stitches add another dimension of color and texture, kind of like these quilts by a Danish designer, Rie Elise Larsen: 

This is kind of a budget quilt in that the fabrics were all Kaffe remnants that I've been collecting, and I used a thrifted wool blanket for the batting, with the backing from an old sheet of ours.  The wool makes it very warm to work on, and I'm enjoying the long, slow stitches.

Wool (and cotton) gathering

I'm brainstorming this morning about starting a prayer shawl ministry at our church, and I want to solicit your advice.  Does anyone have any experience doing this, and, if so, what are your recommendations?  I have been working on a prayer shawl with the Lion Brand Homespun since the last time I was pregnant (I'm embarrassed to admit!), and I am not impressed with the yarn.  It is difficult to knit with, and not very soft.  Also, knitting a shawl takes such a long time.  I'm thinking that the answer may be to make lap quilts instead of shawls, which would also be more suitable for men and boys.  Quilts are faster to put together, and they can involve crafters who don't know how to knit or crochet, as there is always cutting and pinning to be done.  It could be a great way to get teenage girls involved in the process.

One parish member suggested knit dishcloths, and as we have a lot of African refugees in the neighborhood, these would be useful as they set up households.  Also, dish scrubbies, made with yards of tulle knit or crocheted together.  And of course baby blankies, made from soft flannel, could be given to new baby arrivals...

Any more item suggestions, or suitable patterns for knitting or sewing lap quilts/blankets?

P.S.  Isn't that little tablecloth above lovely?  My mother-in-law brought if for me yesterday.  It was made by my husband's grandmother when she was a newlywed.  It's going in the hope chest for any future daughter:)

The Birthday Party

By John Singer Sargent, in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Such was the scene at our house last weekend as we celebrated a first birthday!  We had a cake, a great car from grandma and grandpa, and some Mommy-made toys.  Before DH and I were married, I purchased a panel of Alexander Henry fabric thinking it would be perfect for a nursery.  I found it recently, and decided it would make the perfect safari playmat, with it's bright graphics of jungle animals.  One playmat and some knitted toys later (purchased from mamma4earth), Little Guy has a great animal play set, complete with matching drawstring bag. 

He even had his own piece of homemade chocolate cake, but he didn't enjoy it quite as much as I thought he would. 

Needless to say, I am now enjoying the rest of the cake for him!

Serendipitous Circles

It's always nice to finish a project and start planning the next.  Look at these books I picked up from my library reserves the other day; they just happen to have covers that mimic each other!  The one, a Georgette Heyer mystery from the '30's, and the other, the new Quilt Romance, by Kaffe Fassatt, et.al.  There is a whole lot of inspiration to be found in these quilts, and though I still prefer to make up my own designs, I can appreciate the time and work that goes into these.  My Kaffe fabric stash is slowly growing, little remnant by little remnant, and perhaps eventually they will all be put to use in a quilt.  I hope so.

But first, a "bookish" quilt is in the works.  More later...

At the finish

I present...

....my finished friendship quilt!  I sewed the binding and appliqued our names on last night, and it now awaits those good books to curl up with!  To all the ladies who contributed blocks, thank you again, it is now most definitely my favorite quilt!

 A close up of the back too; I like it almost as much as the front.  And because I quilted as I went, I actually enjoyed the quilting process this time, instead of having it be a frustrating and self-esteem-sapping experience.

My thank-you's are wrapped and ready to go out, and I'm already cutting into fabrics for the next project!  What new projects are you working on right now?

Thank You Very Much-es

These little needle books will be making their way to my quilting bee friends as small tokens of gratitude for making the friendship quilt such a success!  I had fun yesterday combining my felted sweater stash with fabrics, buttons, and some embroidery to make these (and I should have made one for myself while I was at it!).  They were simple to make with a rectangle of felted wool for the cover, some flannel rectangles for pages, a simple line of sewing through the middle for the spine, and then the joy of embellishing them.  The perfect use for small scraps of fabric too small to be sewn with, but too precious to discard.  Same goes for the oddly assorted buttons, looking for a special home.

The quilt is so close to being finished, but all of a sudden I'm in no hurry.  It was great fun to work on, but when it's done, it's done, and an exciting project over.

I'm savoring these last few stitches, and can't wait to share the finished product tomorrow!