Quilting is the perfect medium when painting began to feel too serious and I have too many scraps from various sewing projects. Gifting quilts to my many friends who were also new parents in the early 2000’s also allowed me to create without worry of storing or marketing new projects.
My first baby quilt was also my first attempt at the log cabin pattern design. I remember how difficult this first attempt was, but my best friend from high school and her baby were really happy with the results.
I was excited by the different possibilities that can be made from this design. Luckily for me a family member was pregnant. worked hard to design a defined pattern in this log cabin quilt. The style was a fortunate match. The little girl who received it is very feminine and loves glamor.
I wanted the center of this quilt to feel like a sun or a star. I get attached to all the left over pieces of favorite fabrics, hence the tiny squares in the border. I frequently visit this family, and it’s sweet to hear how much their little girl loves this quilt.
This is the last and most ambitious of the log cabin quilts. It’s also the least free and spontaneous, but I’m very impressed with it in hindsight. Most of these fabrics came from the Oakland Center for Creative Reuse Depot.
Apologies for the bad lighting on this one. This quilt is made up of all those tiny precious pieces left over from other projects. The plan was to alternate light and dark bands which gradually changed color/value as they progressed across the quilt.
This is a variation of the basic strip quilt pattern. I was ready for something easier, and was nice to do a more spontaneous pattern for a change.
This baby quilt was a collaboration with friends. You can see the lotus I embroidered on the far left.
My most recent baby quilt was made from my left over fabric donations for the fire quilt project of 2017. If I really love a fabric and don’t want to cut it up, I’ll just sew a border around it and call it done. The family who received this quilt has a flower garden with similar colors in their backyard.
I have also made some large quilts for myself as well. The orange and green floral fabric came from my sister’s trip to Japan. I loved it so much I chose to frame it with various silks and other favorite scraps.
Here is a close up of the awesome border of this quilt. Note the diagonal seam in the silk tie fabric in the corner to make a rectangle. That’s called determination.
In the early 1970′s, my mom bought a tin filled with over 24 quilt squares from the neighborhood St. Vincent de Paul. Half of the squares were six pointed stars and the other half were multi-colored circles, both sewn onto muslin. The fabrics are printed flour sacks, which were popular during the 1920s-1950s when fabric was scarce.
I took initiative and turned them into a duvet cover for our bed. I removed the backing from the stars and used them to cover the holes in the center of the circles. The detail and work some anonymous woman put into these pieces is staggering. I can’t imagine sewing one of these circles or stars so perfectly. I had fun pairing the circles with the stars and finding border fabrics that resonated with the squares.
My biggest and most elaborate quilt is made of lots of little triangles that make your eyes cross. Most of them were left overs from a quilt my mother had finished, and I was eager to give triangles a try. I’m glad I chose calm blue as the main color since the pattern is so busy. The dragon from my embroidery page is in the center of this quilt.
You can check out more quilts from my Fire Quilt collection of 2017. I organized a group of crafter friends to make and donate quilts for survivors of the Sonoma fire. It was a great experience to witness other people’s styles of working, as well to do something helpful for a situation in which I felt so powerless.