Monday, December 31, 2012

Square in square

I've made a number of quilt tops using the basic square-in-square block, for donation to the Linus Project. This is one that I pieced and quilted, but never got around to donating. Maybe I'll find a good home for it in the coming year.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

Non-ugly quilt

This is the same block ("Thrifty") as the ugly quilt, but in a more controlled color palette, it's much nicer looking.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Four-patch

Here's another example of how yellow can tie together a difficult combination of scraps (red, this time).

Friday, December 28, 2012

Checkerboard

This is a lap-sized quilt, made of assorted left-over green squares, paired with yellow, which is a wonderful "neutral" color for tying together scraps that would otherwise fight with each other. Green, in particular, can be difficult, because of the range from pure green to blue-greens in one direction, and yellow-greens in the other direction.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Sagey stars

Okay, time for some non-holiday colors. This one is a design I've made in a number of color combinations. It's one of the few quilts I've ever designed the easy way -- by choosing the border first and then picking colors from that print. Usually, I piece the whole quilt, and then panic over finding a border print that works with the center of the quilt.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Leftovers

This is a lap-sized quilt made of left-over squares and strips from a variety of other projects. It seemed appropriate for the day after Christmas, when we're dealing with leftovers -- leftover food from Christmas dinner, left-over chocolate from stockings, left-over holiday supplies, left-over gifts we forgot to deliver.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas!

This is a table-topper (about 14" square) for a friend who has a rocking horse theme for Christmas. The block is one that I've admired for years and I've been meaning to use for a bed-sized quilt, and this gave me a chance to work out the math and the piecing order.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Christmas runner

This is an example of what I mentioned yesterday -- the white background seems to calm down the battle between the red and green. It's a table runner, although I use it over the back of a recliner, to bring some holiday color to the living room.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Nine-patch Christmas re-visited

Here's a nine-patch I finished quilting just yesterday. I'm always amazed by how different an unquilted quilt looks from the finished product. I didn't much like this one before it was quilted -- the red and green fought for primacy, and could have used some white to calm them down (as in yesterday's quilt). Once it was quilted, though, I liked it again.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Nine-patch Christmas

This is an early quilt I made, when I still hand-quilted. There are white snowflakes quilted into each of the green setting squares.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Teal the end

I don't limit my teal obsession to quilts. Here are some chemo caps I knit, including -- yep, a teal one.

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Twee teal

I'm not a twee kind of person, so I'm not sure why I had this too sweet for words panel. In a fit of sorting out my fabric stash, I decided to make it into a toddler-sized quilt, to give to charity or keep for whenever I met a doll-appreciating child.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Ugly quilt

Sometimes even teal isn't enough to salvage a quilt design. While I was working on it, I called this one "the ugly quilt." Which it really is. (I'm sparing you the sight of the whole thing; you can get an idea of how ugly it is just from this corner.) The individual blocks are fine -- a scrappy block called "thrifty," that I made out of assorted left-overs early in my quilting career -- but they just don't work together. I tried to tie them together with the teal alternate blocks, and the yellow inner border, but it just didn't work. The nice thing about quilts, though, is that even when they're ugly, they're useful.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Delectable teal

This was a graduation present for someone who couldn't decide if he wanted a blue quilt or a green one, so he got a blue-green one! The design begins with a traditional Delectable Mountain block, in a setting I saw decades ago in Quilter's Newsletter Magazine. You can't tell from the picture, but there are several different teals in the blocks and surrounding sawtooth border. Someday, I'd like to make the same basic design in a wildly scrappy version, where it's just the contrast of dark and light, with no limits on the actual dark colors.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Teal fish

I really do like teal! Here's one I'd forgotten about, with a teal fish print as the focal point for the blocks.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Yep, teal again

This is kind of my contribution to what's called "modern" quilting -- very geometric, but less emphasis on block repetition, and more swaths of uncut/unpieced fabric. The back is pieced too, out of some left-over bits:

Saturday, December 15, 2012

Teal album

I do have a teal Christmas print, but haven't made a quilt out of it yet. This teal quilt has blocks in the traditional "album" block, and the contrast color is black. (At the time the picture was taken, it hadn't been quilted yet, so the white "spots" are the basting pins.) The quilt is now owned by a friend, who has a wonderful poster over her bed, and the artwork has some teal in it that coordinates nicely with the quilt. Much more nicely than the burgundy wallpaper in the room where the picture was taken!

Friday, December 14, 2012

Teal four-patch

I'm running out of Christmas-themed quilts that I have digital photos of. How about a couple quilts in my favorite color: teal. This is a simple four-patch with navy setting squares (another Moda marble).

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Blue Christmas

A lot of my Christmas quilts are actually "winter" quilts, in blue and white and sometimes a bit of silver. This one is a table runner.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Christmas wrapping

I sometimes make gift bags to put my little quilts into. This is one made out of the left-over scraps of backing material from a Christmas quilt.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

December warmth

I've always loved the traditional strippy style for quilts. This one uses scrappy four-patch blocks with the "streak of lightning" setting. I played around a bit with the setting, though, using two different shades of green in the Moda marble collection to unite the scrappy blocks. It turned out to be just the right color for a friend's camper, but my plans to finish it during camping season kind of fell by the wayside. I just finished it this weekend, so it's going to be used in their home during the winter, and then it'll go out to the camper for the summer. Bonus kitty picture -- the quilt being cat-tested, in between working on the binding (which is held in place with clips).

Monday, December 10, 2012

Classic red and white

The red fabrics are non-holiday prints, but I use this as a sort of slipcover on a sofa during the holiday season.

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Christmas gardening

Right around this time of year, I get the catalog from Johnny's seeds, and start planning my summer garden. My two main crops are garlic (planted already) and sweet peppers. I just love peppers. This quilt -- a table runner -- is my quilted homage to peppers. (For pix of the purple pepper plants I grew this year, you can check out my gardening blog.)
I used the same basic design to make a larger quilt for a friend of a friend, featuring his favorite summer fruit: tomatoes.

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Christmas sorbet

This one has nothing to do with Christmas. I just like it. Think of it as the sorbet to freshen the palate, between servings of Christmas.

Friday, December 7, 2012

Christmas gift

Not all Christmas quilts come in red and green. This one -- a runner for a lovely antique buffet -- was a Christmas gift for a friend.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

The gift of friendship

One year, a friend and her kids and I set out to make a single quilt in the kids' school colors of orange and black. I think we ended up making five variations on the theme. These are two, being modeled by Trix.

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Monkey Wrench in green and red

I love the really traditional blocks -- Monkey Wrench, in this case -- and teeny-weeny triangles. It was just a pieced top when the picture was taken (yes, that's painter's tape attaching it to a wall for photography), but has since been quilted and given away.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Cousin quilts

These quilts -- same basic design, same Christmas theme, but different borders and different shades of red and green (one bright and clear, the other more burgundy and earthy) were made for my nieces.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Christmas stars and Tilda

A lot of the quilt pictures that I take just for myself tend to have furry accessories. This one is Tilda (short for Maitilda, not the symbol: ~ ). She was brilliant at photobombing, but only when quilts were involved.

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Christmas with Trix

A little Christmas quilt, being inspected by my harshest critic -- Trixie.

Saturday, December 1, 2012

Cherry Red

This quilt has a winter feel to it, but if you look closely, you can see that the red print and black print have little cherries in them. That could still be Christmasy, in keeping with the Cherry Tree carol, but in reality the quilt was inspired by a group of Jenny Crusie fans, known collectively as "the Cherries."