My Mother's Birthday Quilt



     Happy 85th Birthday to my mother!  This has been a cold, cold winter (the ice is now gone, but this picture was taken only a week ago).   My mom loves yellows and blues, and so for her birthday I made her a cozy string quilt in her favorite colors.

     I wanted to use fabrics from my stash, and found so very many blues and yellows.  I kept the blues to one basic shade, and then used many gold and yellow fabrics.  I used a Kona Cotton in Copen as the one solid.   Despite being limited to blues and golds, I ended up using 24 different fabrics for this quilt.   I started by cutting my fabric into 2 1/2 in strips of various lengths.

     For piecing the quilt, I cut scrap paper into 8 1/2 inch squares, and used my 1/4 ruler (I am not sure of the real name) to draw the center diagonal lines.  I was using the blue solid for each center.

     With the blue in place, I started sewing on the strips, picking mostly at random, but trying not to use the same fabric twice in a block.   These blocks come together quickly and easily.

Blocks without the final little corner piece.



The pile of blocks being used by Chester as a little booster as he checks out the book on top of the bookshelf.



The back of the finished block.



Trimming off the excess fabric  



The trimmed blocks



I love putting the blocks together to start to see the pattern emerge!





     I am never sure whether to sew the blocks together with or without the paper.  In this case, I removed the paper first.  This makes it easier to sew, but the blocks do tend to stretch out of shape a bit.  In either case, little bits of paper and usually left behind.

     I used tweezers to remove the little paper bits before putting the quilt sandwich together.

      I made a string quilt last year with more blocks that had no border, but I decided this quilt needed to be just a bit bigger.  I still had some yellow fabric left over from another yellow quilt, and decided to use that for the border as well.







     It took me a while to decide upon a quilting pattern, and I decided to use a walking foot to do a lattice design, but rather than straight lines, I used a zig zag setting on my machine to make for a little different design.  I wanted to make sure the lines started out straight on the border fabric, and so I used a disappearing ink pen to draw the starter lines.

     The backing (pre-washing) shows the quilting more clearly than the front of the quilt.

     Since the strips were the same width, I quilted down the middle of each strip.  I also did a straight stitch in the ditch around the center solid blue lines, and the border, just for a little more definition.  This was a very forgiving quilt design!

A close up of the quilting on the front.

     I still had some stars left over from the big star stash that I used for the other yellow quilt.  I used some of those stars, some IKEA number fabric (I didn't have enough for the whole back) and some of the border fabric to create the backing.

The back of the quilt



A close- up of the finished front

  Here are some close-ups of the birthday girl!

My mom with her mom, circa 1954

My mom, today.  Happy Birthday!

   A few more shots in the wind of the finished quilt. Thanks to my daughter, who filled in for my regular trusty quilt holder.

     Happy Birthday, Mom, and Happy Mothers' Day soon to all the moms!
Linking up to Amy's Creative Side Bloggers Quilt Festival
Take care,
Gretchen

Musical Table Runner

      What to do with too much novelty fabric?  Both of my children became involved with music at an early age.  We had them both take piano lessons, and they chose another instrument at the end of third grade.  Our school district has a fantastic music program, and we wanted to take advantage of that.  My daughter chose the oboe, and played in ensembles through high school and college, and now plays with a community orchestra.  My son chose the trumpet, and played jazz in high school, and then decided to play classical trumpet.  He is now studying trumpet performance and also getting music education degree. 

 

     Over the years, I accumulated many music-themed novelty fabrics.   My son had scheduled his senior trumpet recital, and I decided to use up some of those musical cottons and make some table runners for the reception following his recital.   I had a great variety of fabrics.





     I ended up choosing only six of the fabrics, focusing on the black, gold and tan fabrics, which all featured trumpets, with the white music score fabric as well.  I used the big piano key fabric (I had purchased yards of that for some reason) for the backing of the runners.   I also thought this would be a good project to try some new techniques.  The first was the pattern of the design itself.   I wanted to try a chevron pattern with strips and found a good  tutorial.   I cut the fabric into 2 1/2 inch strips.  

     I sewed the strips together in sets of six fabrics, offsetting them a bit (but not enough!) and then cutting them at a 60 degree angle.   It took a bit of figuring to do both sides of the pattern the right way, but it worked out.

     I cut the strips into 6 inch wide segments. 

Oops - ended up a bit short!

Add a few scraps, and carry on!

     I cut segments going both ways (a little trial and error there!), sewed together some 6 piece parts, and then sewed the two sides together for the sides of the runner. 



     As to the center of each runner, I decided to fussy-cut the trumpet section of the dark orchestra fabric as a little tribute to my trumpeter son.

     I sewed the halves of the pieces together, and opened up the center seam to prevent too much bulkiness.

     Without a template or pattern, I had to do some figuring to get the size and angle of the center unit to fit.  

 

     I also decided to try using batting pieces sewn together.  I saw a reference in another blog to "frankensteining" the batting, which is just a perfect expression of what happens.  I ended up overlapping slightly the two pieces, and then cutting with a few little extras (like the markings on a dress pattern), which made it easy to fit the pieces together.  A large zig zag pulled it all together.  

This picture shows off the patched batting.

      I decided to quilt simply on this, and using a yellowy gold thread, just quilted 1/4 inch on the side of each seam. 

     I like how the quilting highlights the chevron pattern, and pulls the gold in from most of the fabrics.

      I used my piano keys fabric for the back, The gloppy parts of the quilting on the edges was outside the finished piece!

     I ended up using more of the orchestra fabric for the binding as well, and and getting much better at finishing off the binding with a flat seam!

     I also decided to try to totally machine sew the binding.  I always machine stitch the folded binding to the front, and usually then hand sew the binding on the back of the quilt.   These runners were over 6 feet long and a perfect opportunity to try a new technique.  I decided to sew from the back, and used invisible thread for the bobbin so any goofs wouldn't show too much on the front.   I usually hate invisible thread.  I find it hard and scratchy in anything, but since these were just table runners, I figured it would be okay.

 

     Machine sewing the binding was certainly a time saver.  The binding finished up in no time at all.

The binding sewn on the back

This was the worst spot on the front.  Not too bad with the invisible thread. 

     I tried out the runners on my own table and buffet -

     I also used the runners for the little cookie reception after my son's recital.   Those cookies didn't last too long with a crowd of college students!

 

Congratulations to my son on a fine recital in a beautiful church!

    I am also celebrating my first year of writing this blog!   This has been a great way to chronicle my quilt making, and inspires me to keep working on new quilts.  I am looking forward to this next year!

Take care,
Gretchen