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Other Quilts
When I first
taught myself how to quilt, I tried to make a Double Wedding Ring
quilt. It's still not finished.
When my mother heard that I was interested in quilting, she gave me Mary Ellen Hopkins' book "It's okay if you sit on my Quilt."
This is the second quilt I made from patterns in that book. Originally it was to be a baby quilt, but I decided to make a quilt with brighter colors for the baby, and this one just sort of languished as a top.
When my mother heard that, she volunteered to quilt it. Since the background of the bowties moves from white to black, diagonally, she nicknamed it "Zen Bowties."
Tired of easy traditional quilts,
I found this pattern in a quilt store in Arkansas while visiting my
sister.
I used different fabrics that I already owned to make it look "scrappy"...eventually I discovered you could go to the quilt store and buy "fat quarters" and acheive the same effect.
The quilt was eventually given to a friend of mine from work (who loves cats) for her baby. I don't recall whether her baby actually received the quilt, but MOM was really, really happy with it.
Later I adapted this pattern for use in a swap. You can download directions for the altered block from my Technical Writing Samples page as a PDF.
When I was an active member of
about.com's quilting forum, I participated in several swaps, the
most intriguing of which was a half-square triangle swap.
We all made several sets of 10 half-square triangles, shipped them to the swap hostess who traded them among the partipants. The posts from her about her house literally covered in half-square triangle blocks were hysterical.
Fun as the swap was to participate in, I got back a bunch of half- square triangles in colors and fabrics I never would have picked, and I had no idea what I would use them for.
Eventually, I found this pattern, added some squares from my stash and came up with "Sailing Ships." True to form, I have yet to quilt it.
Eventually, it's going to my chiropractor.
When I discovered televised
quilt shows, my long isolation as a quilter who had to learn
everything from books was over. The first quilt show I watched
was Georgia Bonesteel's.
The next, after a long dry spell, was Simply Quilts with Alex Anderson.
What made Simply Quilts a great show for me was the variety of quests, quilts and techniques that Alex showed (that and it was on every weekday, twice a day, so if you missed it once, you didn't have to wait long for a repeat.
Bethany Reynolds introduced the "Stack n Whack" method of making kaleidoscope quilts on one of the shows.
I was hooked. The only problem was that it requires lots and lots of only one or two fabrics (one of which has to be a rather large print.)
I made two Stack n Whack quilt tops, one of which I gave to my mother (who eventually bought the book, but I don't think actually made one of the quilts.) This one was intended for a friend of mine, but, as usual, I got held up on the quilting end of it.
This is quilt is the result of
another about.com swap. This time we mailed 10in squares in
envelopes to every other participant in the square. This is what
is known as a "non-centralized swap.
And, of course, I got back lots of fabric I never would have chosen for myself and had no idea what to do with. A number of the swappers had felt that small printed calicos were what everyone wanted.
I took those small calicos and made Flying Geese from them using the two-square method of making Flying Geese, popularized by Eleanor Burns.
The border is made up of left-over squares of the swap fabrics. The background was some Ginny Beyer fabric that I ended up not liking in the original quilt I got it for.
...And, yes, I WILL eventually quilt this one, too.