Star of Africa

Anyone remember the time I made gecko soup? Of the lovely comments I got, there was one very mysterious and intriguing one. It said..Love your geckos!! Where on earth did you find this fabric?
Please hop over to my blog, there might be something to interest you :-)
http://maylifeonline.blogspot.de/2012/05/star-of-africa.html .

So hop I did. It was an invite to be part of a very unique bee and I wasted not a moment in signing up. It sounded less like a quilting bee and more like an adventure..a road trip. It is loosely based on the board game Star of Africa. Long story short, I am now one of 16 members of the Star of Africa Bee, my first international bee. We are from different parts of the world and will be making one block each month that is representative of the place we come from and yet stays within the specific requirements of the Queen Bee of the month. This is going to be very exciting. Thanks May, for inviting me over.

 The queen bee of the first month was Patti of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. (She made us say that thrice! Really fast!!)  She was fine with any block, any size, any colour. You wanna make people motionless, give them lot of choice! Nobody moved. They were too petrified I guess, of the vastness of possibilities. So started a barrage of questions to poor Patti who soon realised she had to get a little specific if she wanted the constant questions to stop :-). She narrowed down her block requirement to 8.5", warm colours, dotted border. Whew! 

This is the block I made for Patti using needle turn applique and some simple embroidery. The peacock being our national bird and saffron, white & green being our national colours, I hope this block is representative of India in some small way. I really really hope she likes it and that it will sit well with the rest of her quilt. 

Do checkout the blocks of the rest of the bee on flickr. 

Life is a game. You get to play it just once. So play hard and play well.
Happy playing!

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 !!