Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Jungle Babies 4 For Isaiah

I made a simple baby quilt over the long Thanksgiving weekend.  This one was made for a brand new great nephew born the week before.  He's the only Isaiah I've ever known, except for Mr. Edwards    from "Little House on the Prairie".  I love the name, especially because its Biblical.  In fact, I had to look in my Bible to make sure I was spelling it right!



This is the FOURTH quilt I have made using the Jungle Babies fabric!  The first one I made was for my oldest grandson over 11 years ago!  I picked up pieces of the fabric when I would see it in a store over the years.  I may be able to make one more scrappy one from the leftovers! The date on the selvedge is 2006.

You can see the other 3 quilts I made from this fabric HERE, HERE and HERE.

Here are some pictures.   It was a rainy day, so I only have indoor pictures!






In the process of being quilted.
While making this quilt, I decided to keep up with my time.  I thought it would be interesting to see how long it took me to do each step in the quilt.  For most of the steps I wrote down my starting and stopping time, but a couple of them I had already completed and so I estimated those.  Keep in mind that this was a very simple baby sized quilt and so a larger, more complicated quilt would take much more time!

 Here are the results.

Cutting pieces for the top and sewing together (center panel and
three borders of different sizes, pressing as I sewed                                    2 hours

Cutting backing fabric and batting; Pressing top and backing in
preparation for pin basting -                                                                           1 hour

Pin Basting -                                                                                                     1 hour

Machine Quilting (41 X 41 quilt)   (meandering)                                         1 hour and 35 minutes

Trimming edges and squaring up corners                                                      15 minutes

Cutting fabric for binding, sewing strips together,
machine sewing the binding on the quilt, and hand sewing the
binding on the back of the quilt-                                                                     2 hours and 40 minutes

Making label-                                                                                                  1 hour and 10 minutes

Total -                                                                                                              9 hours and 40 minutes

Very interesting!  Now I can figure out how long it would take me to make a simple baby quilt, while fitting the work into small blocks of time before and after work and on the weekends or other days off work.

If I could do one hour a day, I should be able to finish a simple baby quilt in 9 to 10 days.  We will see if I can make that work!

Monday, November 26, 2018

Repairing and Patching an Old String Quilt

My daughter-in-law asked if I could patch up her Great Grandmother's quilt.  The quilt is in pretty bad shape with lots of holes (some big ones!) and stitches coming out all over the place.   Her request was that I just fix it so the damage wouldn't get any worse.

From a distance its a great scrap quilt:



This quilt is the perfect example of a REAL scrap quilt.  It contains every kind of fabric you can think of.  I'm pretty sure there are flour sacks in it, along with scraps from clothing.  Looks to me like nothing she had went to waste.  I love it!

Some of the different fabrics up close:









However, due to the age of the fabrics in the quilt, they are disintegrating in places.  The seams are coming apart in lots of places.  There is no way to restore the quilt, so patching and hand sewing loose seams was the only thing I could do.

The first thing I did was sit with this quilt in my lap while watching TV, and go over it bit by bit, clipping loose threads and strings of fabric that had frayed.  Any seams I could repair with needle and thread, I repaired.  Where there were big holes, I trimmed up the area and  repaired what I could, so that I could hand sew a patch over them.

A couple of the holes after I had trimmed them up in preparation for the patches:




There are a lot of red fabrics in the quilt, so I felt that the patches should be in red.  I found some muted red fabric in my stash.  I also used some beige calico fabric that I felt would would go with the vintage fabrics in the quilt.

A few of the patched areas:



The calico patch!


I love the pattern in this quilt and in fact, I made a small Christmas quilt in the same pattern many years ago.  The one I made is small and I use it as a tree skirt, or put in on display.  I would love to make more quilts like this.  This is the one I made:



Scrap quilts are my favorite and so repairing the old scrap quilt for my daughter-in-law was a labor of love. 

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Jake's Reversible Dinosaur/Tractor Quilt

I finished a quilt just in time for Jake, my grandson's, 4th birthday. Its a reversible dinosaur/tractor quilt.  He loves dinosaurs the most, but I thought he'd like both.  The center main fabrics are all one piece.  I added the borders so there would be enough width for a twin size bed.

The tractor side:


The dinosaur side:


I was almost afraid the dinosaurs on this fabric would be a too scary for him, but he wasn't afraid one bit.


His daddy has a John Deere tractor, so the tractor side is appreciated too.


The green and blue borders are 5 inches and the yellow border is 2 inches.   All of the border fabrics and the binding fabric were already in my stash.




This picture is blurry, but here is a matching pillowcase that I made.


It was an easy quilt to make, but at least I finished one quilt this summer!

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Twelve Inch Double Pin Wheel Block Tutorial

I am posting the measurements and instructions for the 12 inch double pin wheel block that I used in VICTORIA'S QUILT, for my own use in the future, and as a quick reference for anybody who might be interested.



12 inch blocks are great for baby quilts because 3 across and 4 down, makes a 36 by 48 size quilt, or 3 across and 3 down makes a 36 inch square quilt.  Both are good sizes for baby or toddler quilts.


I wanted to make a twelve inch block like this one in my old "Lap Quilting" book by Georgia Bonesteel.  The blocks in this book all use templates and I still have my cardboard templates that I made from instructions in this book in the 80s and 90s.  But, I definitely am only going to use my rotary cutter nowadays!  So what I did was to measure one side of the triangle template in the book, double it and cut squares of that size.

The size of the square needed for the large triangle is 6 7/8 inches.  The size of the square needed for the small triangles is 5 1/8 inches.  Then slice the squares in half like this.  


Then sew the triangles together.  Here I am chain piecing the smaller triangles.


One trick to insure that you are sewing the small triangles together correctly (white and pink dotted ones) is to always sew on the right hand side of the triangle like this:



Here is what they look like after being opened and pressed.




You will then  sew the larger triangles and the pieced triangles together to make 1/4 of the block.    In this picture I am using the leaders and enders system written about by Bonnie at Quiltville.  You can see some purple four patches that will be part of my rainbow double Irish chain quilt.  This saves thread and you are making progress on a second quilt at the same time.


You can see the 4 separate sections of the block here.


 Another hint that helps your blocks to lay flat is to put a stack of books on top of a freshly ironed and still hot block.  There's a block under this stack of books.



I tried different methods of pressing the seams on these blocks to see which one helped the blocks lay the flattest.  I have to say that opening the seams worked the best, but was too time consuming.  I ended up pressing them toward the dark and spinning the seam on the center of the blocks.

I hope this has been helpful!

Saturday, April 28, 2018

Victoria's Quilt - Finished!

In my last post I said that I was going to tie this quilt with yarn, but I decided to hand quilt it. I have been quilting it almost every single night for 3 weeks!  I finished the quilting and binding today and  as usual, I took a lot of pictures.  Sorry.... I just can't help myself. haha











This is what was going on behind the quilt photo shoot today. Tobacco is being set out in the field. My least favorite crop. I really love it when the farmers plant cotton, but crop rotation doesn't allow that every year!

Saturday, April 7, 2018

"Little John Deere Girl" Quilt Finished!

I've been hand quilting this sweet little quilt for Baby Victoria before and after work for a couple of weeks. It was a perfect day weather-wise to finish the binding. A rainy day outside and quilting on the inside! Heaven...



Rainy weather outside is not so good for taking pictures of a quilt.  But, I gave it my best try.


You know, there is just something about a hand quilted quilt.  This one is soooo soft and cuddly.  It  feels entirely different than a machine quilted quilt.  This make me want to do more hand quilting. 


I would love for Victoria to love this quilt and drag it around and NEED it to go to sleep.  That would make my heart sing!


The measurements are 36 by 40.



Here's a sneak peak at the next quilt I am making for Victoria.  My plan for this one is to tie it with yarn.   A tied quilt is also soft and cuddly, more like a comforter.



A rainy day at home helped me to complete the top!  The measurements are 36 by 48.  That's a pretty big quilt for a newborn, but she'll grow into it.  I used baby quilts with my own babies for lots of things.  They make the perfect "pallet" for them to lay on the floor, etc.

I also continued to work on the Rainbow Scrappy Double Irish Chain Quilt as a "leaders and enders" project while sewing the baby quilt blocks.  I made quite a bit of progress on the purple blocks.

I hope you have enjoyed your rainy Saturday!