Oh Deer! – Quilt Project

‘Booooorrrriiing!’ my best friend Jens said, when I said ‘pillowcase’ in reply to his question what I intended to do with this lovely deer panel. He said a pillowcase would not do it justice. Uhm, OK, then... Boring indeed. Pah!

Some back story

At the beginning of the very beginning of last year checked a few of the Finish-A-Long lists of fellow quilters to see what UFOs they had in mind finishing. June, a fellow bee at Stash Bee that year, had quite a few interesting projects on her to-do-list.

Among others there was a picture of this wonderful deer panel, which June hoped to transform into a finished pillowcase or… uhm…– June, say what did you have originally in mind for the deer? =) Anyway, I left a comment complimenting on the deer and also said half-jokingly that I would happily give the deer a home on my couch if she did not want it anymore upon completion.

This was around the time when I asked for help with the cancer relief Polaroid photo quilt. June jumped to my aide and one fine day in February when her Polaroid photo blocks arrived on my door step, what should fall out of the envelope as well? - the lovely deer panel. Since then the deer bid its time. Once the pillowcase idea was off the table other ideas started slowly developing.

I have wanted to make a quilt for my friend Jens for quite some time now. It was just not easy to settle on a design. Some of the things I really like he though horrid and when we checked for what he might like, I was in for a few surprises. We did not settle on anything but the wish to make him a quilt quietly simmered on the backburner of my mind. And the deer panel would go into that quilt just because - 'boring' - you know?  =)

So what design then?

This has been a fairly long decision making process as I simply could not decide what design to go for with this quilt. I had the fabrics all pulled since forever but have changed my mind two dozen times as what to make with them.

Finally, I settled for a simple design of divisible squares of 10 x 10, 5 x 5 and 2.5 x 2.5 inches. The design, although it might be so basic it does not need a name or goes by two dozen monikers, has been dubbed ‘Penny Patch Quilt’ by Rachel Hauser @ Stitched in Color and you can see many pretty versions if you search online using that term.

The main idea for my quilt was to compliment the fabulous ‘Deer’ block. Therefore, my main colours are orange and blue combined with low volume prints and unobtrusive amounts of red. The contrast colour is dark blue and the pop colours were burnt orange and violet. All those fabrics make a fabulous impression together.

I cut my pieces and sewed my little ‘Penny Patches’ and arranged them together for the first time and … do not like it. It looks too busy, too overwhelming and smothers the deer. So I hope it is not one of these great-in-principle experiences that kind of crash and burn when you try them for real.

Back to the cutting table it is, this time reaching for a lot of white to create breathing space for the deer. I hope this will help to calm things down.

In case you wondered, that pretty deer block is a foundation paper pieced block designed by the super talented Julianna Gąsiorowska of 'Sewing Under Rainbow'. It is called 'Not so spring Deer' and can be downloaded for free (!) on Julianna's Craftsy page.

I link up with 'Let's Bee Social'

Stash Bee 2016 - October Block - Fussy Cutting Deluxe

Queen Lisa asked for a fairly simple block - a kind of 'Post Stamp' meets 'Irish Chain' variation in mainly pink, purple and coral with a bit of  blue and yellow thrown in. At least that is what I see in the sample pictures. This month though we were to pay special attention to pretty details in the fabrics. Time for fussy cutting.

Apart from that, no solids, black or grey. If we could find a motif for the middle square that had some variation of yellow along with the squares that make the "X" of the overall square, that would be considered awesome, 'as Yellow is a the color of friendship'.

In the German language and culture it is not. Yellow stands for jealousy. We are not green but yellow with envy. I am happy to re-cast the colour in terms of friendship though. Much nicer.  =)

Technically, it would be possible to not have a single fabric repeat in this design. And how amazing a quilt top would that be. As however quilters tend to have similar fabric selections on hand - or maybe not enough fabrcis or scraps to accomodate 25 different ones in one block -  the probability of that is after all low. Nonetheless, this is bound be a beautiful quilt top provided all bees stick to the requested saturated colours. =)

Luckily, the desired colours are very close to what I chose for my own Stash Bee bee block so that I had plenty to chose from. 

This was a very fast and fun block.
=)

I link up with 'Let's Bee Social' =)

Simple Patchwork Baby Quilt in Orange, Blue and Yellow

The starting point for this quilt was some vintage yardage of GDR made terry cloth I found on a flea market. I was already thinking about a patchwork baby blanket for the second baby boy due to friends of mine, when I spotted the cloth and fell for the vibrant orange, yellow and blue.

The cloth is very soft and thus perfect for a baby. I picked the rest of the quilting cottons to match the background fabric.

I did not have all that much time on hand so I decided on a very simple design of easy fabric squares.

An orange binding completed the quilt. My friends, who had mentioned about three times on seperate occasions in a by the way manner that they really like baby quilts, were still flabbergasted when they actually got this one from me. They liked it and it is being used as you can see from the very first picture above. 

It always shows in the quality of the light when pictures were taken either in autumn or winter. 

=) 

Simple Framed Squares Patchwork Quilt - Indian Summer

Let me share with you the first bed sized patchwork quilt I made, which was a simple squares-within-squares separated by white borders affair. It is called 'Indian Summer'. 

For this patchwork quilt that is now living on my sister’s living room couch, I went for warm autumn colours and bright contrasts. You will spy some Joel Dewberry and some Kaffe Fassett fabrics and many Polka Dots making up the simple framed squares.

At the project planning stages I had initially included a green fabric in the colourway. It seemed to work well. But once I had laid out the fabric pieces for assembling the effect was downright noxious. That left me mid – project with not having enough fabric for the quilt. The offending green was abandoned and off to the fabric shop I went.

Unfortunately, the pictures, taken during the crafting process and of the finished project leave much to be desired. That is the case for many of my early projects, partially because documenting the process was not at the forefront of my mind then and partially because I do not yet own proper camera.

As far as labeling is concerned, I embroidered my sister’s name into the backing fabric. The first few quilts I made went without any sort of proper labelling. I usually embroidered the recipients name and sometimes the year of completion into backing fabric and left it at that.

Recently, I have started to look into labelling properly. The idea of enabling some sort of identification and recording of the quilt related details like its name, the name of the recipient, maker and sometimes the occasion of gifting appeals to me. I have not made up my mind yet which is my favourite labelling technique but am looking forward to trying different things. The last two labels I made were painstakingly embroidered. That means something for someone as inherently impatient as me. One label has already found its home on my Late in Summer Quilt and the other one lays in waiting to be used for a future quilt I have in mind for a friend of mine.

What do you label? Quilts only or each and every of your sewing projects?

That green fabric still has to find a home by the way. It is lovely in itself but somehow refuses to gel with much else. I might just pair it with Black and White at some point and be done with it.