Rock and Roll All Night

As promised, I am using this space to share completed custom orders.
Most of my more regular musings can now be found on Facebook and Instagram-- please join me!

Anyway, I just completed a custom T-shirt quilt out of an amazing collection of shirts:

Many of these shirts date back 30 years or more.  The oldest one with a date on it is from 1984.

Most of them are from rock concerts by iconic artists, including:  Elton John (twice!), Rod Stewart, Tina Turner, Fleetwood Mac, Counting Crows, Taj Mahal, Marshall Tucker Band, George Jones, James Taylor, the Eagles, Robert Plant (also twice), Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Petty.  There are also a few non-musical shirts from art shows, car shows and other personal events.

The biggest challenge for this project ended up being preserving the integrity of the designs (some of which are really iconic) while fitting them into the confines of a queen size quilt.  I mean, what are you going to do:  cut Tina off at the hips to achieve a standard 15" block?  I DON'T THINK SO. 

There's not a lot of additional fabric on the front of the quilt since I had a large number of t shirts to use but I did have a little room for a few fun guitar fabrics that I already had in my stash.

I love using extra wide 108" fabric for the back of a large quilt-- having a one-piece back just makes basting and quilting so much easier.  The cheerful magenta and white print is available here.  The binding is solid black fabric.

I did an all-over stipple quilting using a medium gray thread which blended nicely into both the white and black shirts (and everything in between!).  I used lightweight Quilter's Dream batting and, of course, my HQ Sweet 16 machine for the quilting.

I hope it looks as good in my customer's bedroom as it does in mine!

For The Girls

My first custom order of 2016 has arrived in the form of clothing quilts for twin girls who live in my neighborhood.  They're 7 years old now and their mom brought me some of their favorite baby/toddler clothes to be made into quilts, one for each of them.  What a great idea!

Like all memory or t-shirt quilt projects, it starts with a full bag of clothes.

Actually, there was one bag for each child, but I decided to work on each quilt separately-- meaning, I will complete one child's quilt top entirely before I start on the other.  That way there's no danger Clothing Cross-Contamination between the sisters.

When I started really digging into the bag there were some beautiful dresses!

The pink and green one on top has a Lily Pulitzer label-- fancy!















Also, due to the pleating on a lot of them they yielded a surprising amount of usable fabric once I started cutting them apart.

The clothes also had many pretty embellishments, which are always fun to include in this type of quilt.

I always try to reflect the recipient's personality in the quilt.  I have found out that this child loves animals, is concerned about the environment, and her favorite color is pink.  So I'm thinking a pink animal print plus coordinating fabrics might work well in this quilt.

I was feeling a twinge of guilt over not having made a quilt like this with my son's baby clothes, but then I remembered:

He was a cutie all right, but not much of a fashion statement.

1998

Going to the Dogs

An unusual custom order has come my way.

A customer wanted to know if I could make a quilt out of dog kerchiefs.  Apparantly, she had saved the kerchiefs her poodles had been given at the groomer's.

She owned a series of 5 poodles over the course of

nearly 20 years.  And every week the poodles

went to the groomer for a bath, and a kerchief.

So she had saved literally 100's of kerchiefs, enough for a queen size quilt.  Almost all of them are cotton or cotton blend, perfectly suitable for quilting.

They had already been washed and dried and stored in bags.
The first thing to do was to sort them by color.  

Next:  find a pattern!

The kerchiefs are all different sizes, and some only roughly approximate of a triangle.  Further trimming down to a standardized size will be necessary, regardless of pattern.

Surely this quilt will EPITOMIZE the spirit of scrap quilting, so this book (which I've owned for awhile, waiting for that perfect scrap project to come along) seemed like a logical place to look for a pattern. 

I think this pattern will be perfect!

 If I make the blocks exactly 2x as large as the pattern the quilt will be queen size.

It will also enable trimming the kerchiefs into a manageable rectangle for easier and more accurage pieceing.

And it's a cool pattern!

Hold the Phone

Literally:

Hold the phone!














Meet my newest Little Project Obsession, the Gadget Cushion.  If you're on my holiday gift list you can pretty much count on getting one of these this year.

I took a class in the construction of these at Scrap and Sew quilt shop, a newer sewing machine dealer/fabric store about 30 minutes away from me.  Not only did I have an excuse to go to a new fabric store but the class was taught by the Quilted Magnolia herself, Katie Ringo.  We have been following each other's blogs for years but had never met, so it was great to finally meet her in person. (Check out her blog and teaching schedule here).

Anyway, these are super easy to make:

The pattern and directions are printed on a piece of fusible web, so it's a one-time use pattern.

Cut out the pattern portion, then iron the pattern piece to the wrong side of the fabric and follow the directions.  All of the sewing lines are printed, so it's really easy.

You'll need about a 12" square of fabric (that's including room for trimming) so it's perfect for using up fat quarters or just small leftovers.

After sewing according to the directions, and then turning so it's rightside out, there are two holes left open for stuffing, one on the top part, and one on the bottom part.

There were small bags of aquarium pebbles available when I took the class, so that's what I used for the bottom portion.

A little bit of weight is what's needed here so the cushion sits nicely.  You could also use rice or sand.

I have a large bag of fiberfill stuffing already at home, so that's what I used for the top portion.

The openings then need to be closed.  I used fabric glue (and a few clips to hold them while they dried) but they could be hand sewn closed as well.

I'm ready to make more!

To buy the pattern:  you can contact Scrap and Sew (here) or you can order them directly through Quiltsmart (http://quiltsmart.com).  I bought a lot of them through Quiltsmart and the cost came out to less than $1.50 per pattern including shipping.

A Little Embellishment

How about a little something for me?

 I bought this fun linen blouse/jacket a few months ago at a local thrift shop.

It still had the original shop tag on it, and an extra button-- so it's never been worn, despite being sold at a used clothing store.

It's great as is but I thought it might look even better with a little fabric embellishment.

I dug out some odds and ends that were laying around, waiting to be useful.

I ironed fusible web to the backs, then used the "Autumn Medley" Accuquilt Go die for the leaf shapes and little circles.

I pinned the leaves to the bottom hem of the jacket, then ironed them on once I was happy with the layout.

Pretty!

Keep Living Until You're Alive Again

^  This quote is my new mantra while I climb what feels like a mountain of grief (see this post).

It's all about coping, and adjusting to a vastly different life than the one I had.  This new life will be fine. I know it will be.  I just need to adjust to The New Normal, and this adjustment will take as long as it takes.

In the meantime, I have so many blessings in my life to focus on.  Like quilting!
 

It's probably not a coincidence that I've had the urge to make something cute and cuddly and full of novelty prints.

 Woof.

It's a dog quilt!

More of the red and black paw print will be the borders, and the black and white polka dot will be the binding.

The squares are 5" unfinished, and I'll probably cut the borders the same width as the squares, making this a small lap quilt or maybe a toddler-size bed quilt.

   Is that the perfect backing fabric, or what?

Cat lovers:  please note that The Quilting Violinist is an Equal Opportunity Employer!  While I was waiting at the cutting counter at Joann's yesterday, I saw this Accuquilt die on sale and it went into my shopping cart with the dog fabric.  So a cat project is also in my future.

More Scandinavian

I've said it before and I'll say it again: craft retail is a fascinatingly fickle business.  You just never know what's going to sell (or not), what's going to end up being an unexpected big hit, and what item that you think is absolutely gorgeous that then sits around unsold forever.  I try not to sweat these things too much.  Since I love everything I make, everything ends up being worth the time and effort it took to produce it.  I market my things as well as I can but beyond that, there's only so much you can do.  So I concentrate on enjoying the process and letting the rest take care of itself.

Case in point:  the Scandinavian placemats from my last post (here).

A Facebook fan bought them almost immediately after they were posted, then custom ordered 4 more placemats and a big table runner (85"!)  Plus several other people asked me about making more of this style placemat set.


Thus proving my point:  you just never know.

As it turns out, in the fickle and serendipitous world of Fabric Production, this line of prints (Robert Kaufman's "Stockholm" ) is of course out of production.   At the top of the picture on the left is the fabric I had left over from the placemats (luckily, I had enough of all 3 fabrics to produce 4 more placemats for the custom order!)  The bottom 3 fabrics are from the same collection, and I was lucky to find them still available at The Quilt Asylum.  These will all go into the table runner, along with some solid fabrics to make a neat modern patchwork design.

Going Scandinavian

Maybe it's hearing about all of the snowy weather that's going on north of here, but I had an urge to finally cut into my stash of Robert Kaufmann "Stockholm" collection, which has been sitting on my fabric shelf for over a year!

I bought it at City Quilter in New York City summer before last.  That shop is an absolute Must if you're in the area-- I loved their modern, urban oriented fabric selection.

It's going to make a great set of placemats, with enough left over for a table runner too!

The Pink and The Purple

I have a fun custom order in the works that I'm going to get started on now that the Holiday Madness is nearly over.  (One more church service Christmas Eve, and then I'm off for 2 weeks--hooray!)

A food vendor at the Seminole Heights Market asked me to make her 2 baby quilts-- she's having twins in the spring!  Her "official" due date is early April but of course likely to be earlier.  I told her I would get started on the quilts as soon as possible AFTER all the Holiday Hoopla was over.  Today seemed like a good day to start pulling fabrics.

One quilt will be pink.  It was fun to pull these cuties out of my stash.

The other quilt will be purple, and she GAVE me all of these purple fabrics, and told me I could keep the leftovers.  Wow!

Her fabrics are a good starting point but a little dark on their own, especially for a baby quilt.  I pulled a few lighter ones from my stash to brighten things up a little.

This is going to be a fun project!

Up and Running

Well, there's been no "ease in" time to the start of the orchestra season this year-- once work started about 3 weeks ago it's been Full Steam Ahead, with lots of different programs, lots of music to learn, just busy busy busy.  Throw in a little free-lance work on the side and I've been one busy violin player.

As much fun as it's been to be back to work after a long summer off, it was a relief today to have a day off and a little quilting time!

A new baby girl quilt is on the agenda.

You just can't go wrong with tumbler blocks in bright colors, and the Accuquilt Go cutter makes the shapes quick and easy.

Once I had all of the blocks cut out and laid out, I numbered them with tape.

That makes for fast and easy piecing, with no worries about whether I'm sewing the blocks in the correct order, and I know that they will be facing the right direction (some of the fabrics are directional).



This small quilt will be finished quickly, so I'll look forward to bring an update very soon!