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 :-)

Oops, I did it again !

First the background...Well, here's the fabric for the quilt that was conceived in a flash of inspiration on a lovely rainy day. Love the colours. So I go ahead full steam, cutting and piecing. Love the colours so much I wanna take a pic even before pressing..

And then again AFTER pressing ..

..and THEN I measure the finished pieced blocks and they are a full 1/2" smaller than they are supposed to be!! So now I have half the blocks that finish at 10" and half that finish at 9.5" :-(. Disaster!

So what do I do, what do I do? I make myself a nice cup of ginger tea, abandon the blocks and instead fashion a festoon for my bookshelf out of the scraps and selvages to cheer me up :-). (I'd probably have done that anyway, coz I just LOVE the colours and can't bear to throw any bit away.  But then, I already told you that!)

Cheer up, all you folks !!  :-) 

What goes best with a beautiful rainy day?

1.Chai and pakoras
2.A comfy window seat and the breeze in your hair
3.A wistful smile and bittersweet memories
4.A li'l bit of quiet and the music of the raindrops
5.The freshly washed green of the trees and inspiration for a new quilt...

Snip snip and voila !!

Enjoy the rains !

A quilt named 'Love, luck and happiness'

I'd like to make that someday. A quilt named 'love, luck & happiness'. Sounds so complete an idea of life. But having no luck visualizing that into a quilt. Since 50% of the followers of this blog at the moment are quilters, maybe I should ask them for ideas. So, Aliya, what do you think? Maybe I'll ask the non-quilting 50% too. So, Shiva, what do you think? :-)

Here's a completed block of the stained glass quilt that I am working on :

  

Wishing everyone loads of love, luck and happiness !