Friends forever

I have a husband. (Ya, I know most women do, but wait, this is a long story and I promise there's a twist in the end) So, as I was saying, I have a darling husband. He has a darling niece. She has a darling friend. And the friend has another darling friend. (What? I did say it was a long story!) The other friend has a birthday coming up and friend1 wants to gift friend2 a special gift - a quilt. So, she tells the niece, and the niece tells the aunt, and ee-ei-ee-ei-o..

With a snip snip here and a piece piece there..here a stitch, there a stitch..ee-ei-ee-ei-Friends-forever-o...

I had terrible bearding with this one. The batting fibers were loose, the top fabric was dark coloured and fine woven. Perfect recipe for a bearding disaster :-(. By the time I put on the binding, the quilt was looking like a sheep. The lint roller saved the day. And the quilt. And the Birthday. Yep, ee-ei-ee-ei-ooooo..

I love my lint roller. My lint roller and I. Friends Forever.

(What? I did say there's a twist !)

Nice squares now

My previous adventure where I played with printed circles and turned squares into curves only whetted my appetite for more such adventure. So I thought why not play with printed stripes and turn triangles into squares. And thats exactly what I did. Came up with this baby boy quilt called 'Star Baby'. Its for my niece's 6 month old son who btw is the ONLY person to have received a second quilt from me so far. Its my wish that I make a quilt for every single person I care about. And my list is loooong. I guess its ok for a 6 month old star baby to occasionally jump the queue. :-)

All the square boxes are from the same printed striped fabric. 

Added a 6" mitred border in coordinated stripes. A first for me. The mitred corners I mean. In 6 inches! Feeling very proud happy about it :-).

A pieced back. Very cherryful..er..cheerful.

So sending the quilt off, bundled with much love and hugs..May the baby have many many happy adventures!

Nice curves !

Ok, so here I am, in the middle of sewing my daughter's school uniforms, for school reopening is just a day away...and out of nowhere comes this searing flash of inspiration..for the June challenge of our group Desi Quilters, the rules of which are - Make a quilted item, any size, using ONLY squares. So, I sew and sew (the inspiration, not the uniform) and finish my entry for the challenge. Tada !!

Gotcha!!

I know what you are thinking, but believe me they are all squares, only squares and nothing but squares. Yes, including the backing and the batting. :-)

Remember the 'Totally Dotty' quilt I'd made sometime back? And the lovely backing it had? Well, I had a bit left over...

I cut out the huge dots with the intention of quartering them. To my horror, I found the print was far from perfect and the dots were elliptical rather than perfect circles. Still, managed to somehow square them and chop them in quarters.

And what do I have? Why, tiny li'l fake drunkard's path blocks! Clever, huh?

Then I count the number of li'l squares I have and decide to go with a 5x10 arrangement. (Yes, I do have a tendency for doing things in the wrong order.) This is where one can have the most fun, 'coz the possibities are endless. The squares can be flipped in four different directions to give four different effects. The possible  permutations and combinations are mind-boggling. Not that I give my mind that much stress. Nope. I just go ahead with the very first arrangement that strikes my head!

Now for the backing and batting. The rules of the challenge are very clear. ONLY squares. So I construct the backing and batting by piecing up two biggish squares of each. Now how does one do a binding with squares?? Not one to stress my head too much, I do away with that headache altogether. Keeping the right sides of the top and backing together and then the batting on top, I stitch all around my fakey, leaving just enough gap to turn it inside out.

Its a breeze once I pull it inside out. One more line of stitches all around and some quilting lines following the fake draunkard's path and my June challenge is done.

Nice curves someone said! Bwahahahaha !!

Gecko Soup

Murphy's brother-in-law's law : One good thing leads to another. Blogging led me to Gecko Soup.

I started blogging...stumbled onto IMQG (India Modern Quilt Guild) on Facebook...read a post there about a workshop in Bangalore on traditional quilting...attended it for fun...met Su there, a first time quilter...she then joined IMQG and posted something about a friend of hers who wanted to get a quilt made and if anyone was interested...I volunteered as usual biting off more than I could chew...Su eventually left IMQG saying it was all geek to her (!!) but by then her quiltseeker friend Mel was already in touch with me...she wanted to gift her 18 yr old daughter a memory quilt...we threw some ideas around...and then we had ...Gecko Soup !!

May I present to you a very special quilt named...Gecko Soup! :

Mel wanted to present her daughter with a special quilt on her day of graduation. She sent me her daughter's pic and described her to me as a vivacious and fun loving youngster with a dozen dear friends. Since all the friends were going away to different placed to study, she (the mom) wanted it to be a memory quilt with a patch devoted to each friend. After considering hand prints, signatures, and other designs, we settled on giving each friend a piece of fabric and fabric pens/paints and leaving it to them to leave a memory for their friend. Super idea it turned out to be. Don't you just love these patches?

Since it was to be a surprise, and worse, exams were on for the kids, it must've been a logistical nightmare for Mel to get everything together. Hats off to her! She even picked up this adorable gecko fabric on one of her foreign jaunts to go with the plain patches. Love them geckos.

Decided to frame the blocks and go with a simple arrangement coz one, we were terribly short of time to try anything complicated, and two, I didn't have the heart to chop up the geckos any more than necessary. Quilted in the ditch zig zag lines in variegated thread and some squares to frame each patch.

And since I realized the geckos looked less like they were chopped up and more like they were playing hide and seek, I went ahead and bravely added borders. Mel said I could keep any excess fabric and believe me, I had to really fight the urge to slap on some boring fabric for the back and hide the geckos under my mattress. It was a tough fight and I'm glad good won over evil. :-)

Just folded the top over to the back and avoided the binding thus saving precious time that I didn't have in the first place. Hastily took some pics for memory's sake (mine) and sent it off to Bangalore by Express courier.

 Am happy to report that Gecko Soup reached its delighted recipient JUST in time on her graduation day. She loves it !

Cheers to all those lovely moms out there ! Geckos rule !!

Spots and Silence

In the last couple of months, I attended a quilt meet, I made a few quilty friends (for life I'm guessing), I churned out a few quilts, I had a few blogposts in mind, and I had a shock.

I had some cute spotty fabric and just for the heck of it, posted a pic of the fabric on my facebook wall asking if anybody would like to have a baby quilt custom made. To my surprise I had four requests and after a li'l thought, decided to make it for a friend's one and a half year old baby girl.

I whipped up this quilt in a week's time for this adorable child over whom the parents are understandably 'Totally Dotty'. The father came to pick up the quilt and as per his wishes I embroidered a couple of hearts and the nick name by which he called his child. He took it happily that evening. And the next morning he was dead :-(.

His heart had given out. A strapping young heart surgeon and his heart had betrayed him. My quilt was probably the last thing he gave his daughter..the last symbol of his love. And I have been so shaken by this that I have not dared to go anywhere near my sewing machine or even talk or blog about quilting :-(.

Now, as I gather my courage and send out yet another prayer for his family, the best I can do is post pics of the quilt which has so much of love bundled up within it. A quilt named 'Totally Dotty'.

Peace be with all.

Inquiring minds want to know

Life happens. Shit happens. Usually pretty simultaneously. Plenty of both happened over the last month. My last blogpost was more than a month ago and the next one would probably have been more than a month later if I hadn't been shaken awake today by the sweetest of reprimands from blogland. Got an email that went..

Subject line : Hey! I've missed you!

Tina,

I know everyone gets busy, but I've been patiently waiting for another installment on your blog.  I want to see what you have been up to, including your monthly challenges! 

No pressure, but inquiring minds want to know!!

Hope all is well with you!!!

Jen 

Jen, if I could give you a hug across the seven seas, I would ! Thanks for bringing me back :-)

Anyways, as I was saying (a month and a half ago), the India Modern Quilt Guild (IMQG) had its first ever meet and being the correspondent, I dutifully reported the goings-on in a three-part blogpost on the IMQG blog. No point doing it again here, so I'm just gonna give the links here and do hope you folks will hop over and take a look at what we've been up to.

http://indiamqg.blogspot.in/2012/04/everybodys-invited.html

http://indiamqg.blogspot.in/2012/04/imqg-meet-blast-off.html

http://indiamqg.blogspot.in/2012/04/imqg-meet-and-so-we-sew.html


Cheers to inquiring minds!! Love them ! :-)

I was featured! - 2

And this time for real !!

Carol, of Happy Turtle, has another wonderful blog called Quilting in India, on which she documents, well, Quilting in India. She has recently started a series called 'Quilter spotlight' on which she interviews Indian quilters and it was my honour and pleasure to be 'subjected' to her questions :-).

Double my pleasure lovely people, by hopping over and reading my interview here.

To make things even better, my mini landed up gracing the posters of The India Modern Quilt Guild (IMQG), thanks to Shruti and Vidya !

IMQG is holding its first ever meet from 19th to 22nd of this month and all us Indian Quilters are very very excited!! Very.

:-)