Murphy's Quilting Laws

Yes, they exist. Murphy's Laws of Quilting. And you experience quite a variety of them if you are a novice quilter seeking the path of greater quiltdom. Like, for instance, 'If there is a better way of doing something, you will learn of it only when you are already halfway thru your project'. I learnt today (yeah, halfway thru my project) that if I am making snowballs by attaching little square pieces to the corners, I do not, nay, I must not snip off both layers on piecing them (pic on left). Snipping just the small square after a seam allowance and then folding it open leaves the block nicer, firmer and unskewed (pic on right).

Oh well, better late than never I guess.

W.I.P. progresses despite Murphy and his laws:

Bug jars!! With lots of non-bugsy stuff too :-).

Happy weekend !

My progress to Level II

Once upon a time I used to occasionally design and sew clothes for self and kids. And neighbours and friends. Then their neighbours and friends. And friends of neighbours and neighbours of friends. And...well, you get the picture.

Then came a time when I stopping sewing clothes but picked up the scraps instead. Which, of course, I had saved over the years, fabric-hoarder that I am. Picked them up and started sewing them together into scrappy quilts (or at least my version of what I thought were quilts!) purely with the intention of finishing my unintentionally built up stash.  

Ha! Ha! Ha!

As if.

This is what happened yday when I went to buy one piece of fabric....

I realize two things:
1. I should NOT be allowed within a few hundred feet of fresh fabric. I just may end up like this:

(Picture source:Pickledish)

2 .Now that I have begun to BUY and hoard fabric, I am now a LEVEL II Quilter !

Yay!! :-)

Oh, here's my W.I.P.

Can't tell you yet what its going to be :-).

Have a great day y'all !

Heartstrings

What sorta quilt do you make for a friend who is a self-confessed Romantic? Why, a Heart Quilt, of course!

This is my first string quilt; inspiration from here. (The heartstrings quilt project is an online (mostly) group that makes heartstring quilts for charity. Absolutely admirable.) Did think of an alternate name for this quilt -  'The Romantics', what with one pink heart (hers) and one blue (his), and, bits of each others hearts enclosed within theirs, and... and I'm getting all sappy I think, so shall stop describing it and post pics instead:

For the romantically challenged, here's the pink heart (with a wedge of his blue), saying, "you'll always be in my heart"..

..and the blue one saying, "ditto"..

Hope my friend, allergic to any kind of wadding, partial to turquoise blue and fuschia pink, and, a hopeless romantic, will like this as much as I do. Since there was no wadding, quilting lines were kept to the minimum. And since the strings are pieced on a foundation, it is still cozy enough.

This view of the foundation is only for hardcore quilt-ers/lovers :-) :

Lots of love.

Playtime!

Rule #1
Neatly square your blocks.

Rule #2
Throw the rules in the bin and play with your lovely blocks. :-)

Rule #3
When done with playing with the blocks, play with the discarded trimmings. :-)

Ah, pretty, pretty. Like tiny Tibetan flags. Almost makes me spiritual. :-)

Have fun !!

East meets West

Been itching to make a stained glass quilt for a long time. Managed to lay my hands on some suitable fabric and was raring to go. Picked a simple enough pattern off the net. But the next in the 'make-me' list was a quilt I wanted to gift a friend's parents who are to visit soon. They are Germans who happen to be total Indophiles and I want to make them an 'Indian' quilt. I ask my friend what they like best about India as I jot down their favs on a paper napkin-
- The beach
- The colours
- Pongal (a harvest festival where a symbolic offering to the Sun God is made by boiling rice in a new clay pot. It is allowed to boil over as a thanks for agricultural abundance. Freshly harvested sugarcane is also part of the offering)
- Tamil film songs
- The beautiful ladies with lovely long braided hair
- The dance festival at Mahabalipuram
- Guindy park
- The sun
- The autorikshas
- The markets
- The elephants, the cows, and what have you

What, oh what, do I make?
Stained glass quilt? Or Indian quilt? Stained glass? Or Indian?

BOTH!!

Two birds, one stone, eh? I hope they like my fusion 'East meets West' wall quilt. (Baggage restrictions, so it had to be a wall quilt rather than a king size one). There was one lovely pink fabric which wouldn't go anywhere, so guess what I did? Inserted it in the back, of course!

I should learn how to make labels. Anyways, here's a peek at my turquoise blue-fuschia pink WIP..

The best thing about finishing a quilt is you can start on another one :-)

Happy endings! Happy beginnings! :-)

Adjust, Improvise, Adapt, Evolve

As with life, so with quilting.

After a long, hard look at my mis-sized rainy day quilt blocks, I decide to trim them all to the smaller size. I know the scrap-elf is being naughty again coz the blocks keep becoming smaller and smaller and the pile of discarded trimmings, bigger and bigger! Now the only option I have is to add a sashing. Unless I want it to end up as a crib quilt. Which I don't. So something that was supposed to look like this...

...ends up looking like this...

Hmmn. I like the sashing. The red kind of balances the bright pink and green. Good. It'll still too bright though. Am afraid the receipient will need to wear a pair of sunglasses. Maybe I'll tone it down a bit with a sober border. Hmmn.

Put together this palette for a friend who loves turquiose blue and fuschia pink :

Oh wait, isn't it similar to the rainy day quilt palette? I guess I love it too. More than I realize. :-)

So, adjust, improvise, adapt, evolve. Happily. 

Evergreen

That's the name of the quilt I made for my evergreen Mother-in-law for her 65th birthday and that's a pic of the birthday baby all happy and cozy in it :

She is one awesome person; wise, caring, selfless, hardworking; all that and much more. Very inspiring. My good karma I guess, to have her as a MIL. The green is for her evergreen-ness, the brown for how grounded she is, and the pink for the little girl in her. Her home decor, of course, is also green :-).

Got the pattern idea from a 'ten minute block' video I stumbled upon on youtube. Some more pics:

Now that this one's done, itching to start a new one. Wish me luck :-)