Upcycled woven t-shirt rugs

So there's a reason I put "and more" in the url.  Here's a recent project I did with my Daring Boys' Club, weaving upcycled rugs from discarded t-shirts on used PVC looms.  The boys had a lot of fun.  I have to say I haven't seen this exact idea anywhere else on the web (though I'm sure I'm not the first to have thought of it), so I thought I'd put it up here to get the idea out.  We sure had fun.  (The boys didn't opt for pink and purple like I did).  

Custom quilt for the Edison Spring Fling Auction

I'm excited to offer a custom quilt for this year's Edison Elementary School auction.  I will make either a twin size or a baby quilt (or a patchwork quilted duvet cover). I'm looking forward to helping bring someone else's vision to fruition.  I've had several people suggest that I make quilts to sell, but I find it hard to imagine making a quilt without a specific person in mind (and even harder to imagine that it could actually be profitable).  Each time I make a quilt it is a labor of love and a meditation on the person I'm making it for.  So this way, the profit won't really matter, because it's for a good cause, and I'll get to make it for someone with a specific vision.  Stay tuned.

Noah's Bright Chevrons

I decided to try a second patchwork duvet cover, this time for my son Noah.  He wanted bright colors, green to match his room and then yellow, orange, and blue.  I did the top in patchwork, quilted it with a layer of flannel (no batting), and then sewed that to a green sheet that matches his bedding for the bottom of the duvet cover.  I used a long green zipper to seal it up, to make washing a cinch, which is kind of ironic, because really how often do I wash it, so how significant would that extra minute or two of buttons be.

Avi's quilted patchwork duvet

This was my first attempt at a quilted patchwork duvet cover.  I love quilting, but the reality is comforters and duvet covers are easier in a lot of ways, especially with kids who kick all their blankets around.  They are warmer and stay put better because they are heavier and bigger probably.  However, there is absolutely nothing on the market that I want to purchase for my sons' rooms.  I refuse to put some licensed character on their bed, solid colors are boring, and really, what matches with the three-shades-of-sky-themed bedroom that he has?  So, I decided to take all the different scraps of blue I had from all the different projects over the years and put it together.  I gave him the choice of a pattern or just a mix of rectangles.  He obviously chose the latter.  He worked on it with me for about the first third of the project.  He'd pick out the next fabric and help push down the presser foot as we sewed it to the existing piece, but the project didn't move quickly enough for him and he lost interest and spent the time I was at the machine throwing fabric all over the room.  That didn't help create a we're-doing-this-together vibe so much, but rather a kid-you're-driving-me-crazy feeling on my part, so I asked him if he wanted me to finish it on my own and surprise him with it when it was done.  I did for Hanukkah.  He was less than impressed.  See more here. Anyhow, a few months later, I'm pretty sure he likes it.

Crazy Dinosaurs

For my third and last boy I was inspired by my nephew Colin's bright room and bright quilt to do something else bright and cheerful.  I chose tangerine, teal, and lime green for his room.  Bold, but it turned out.  I was inspired by the pictures in a series of dinosaur books by Jan Lewis.  Of course any dinosaur print was by itself too cutesy and tacky for me to want to use as is, but I dealt with this by chopping things up again. Like the doggy quilt for Zachary, I was challenged by the non-square and inconsistent shapes of my cut out dinosaurs, but I modified a design called Crazy Patch Saffari by BrendaBarb Designs in the book Quilting for Baby. I used crazy quilt blocks in a window pane design with lots of bright borders around them.  The hardest was the saw-tooth border.  I knew that's what I wanted, but because this part wasn't in any pre-designed pattern from a book, I had to figure out how to incorporate it.  That wouldn't be hard if it was just a plain border, but with the triangles, I had to figure out mathematically what size the triangles needed to be in order to not have a half triangle at the end of the row.  It was not fun, but I'm glad I did it.  I like those dino-inspired teeth around the edges.

Crazy dinosaurs out the windows

tangerine satin on the back really shows off the free motion quilting

a close up shows his name and date embroidered and the free motion quilting curlycues. 

Two quilts for two cousins

My sister and I were both due with babies within a month of each other in the summer of 2007.  I decided to make two quilts with the same pattern, but different fabrics.  We chose a very simple design (from Alex Anderson called Buzzing Bumble Bees), but I really like how it looks and how different it can be when you change the fabrics.  The quilts hardly look like the same design.  Avi's was made to fit his sky-themed room and my sister wanted hers to be bright! My nephew Colin became very attached to his quilt, more so than either of my boys ever have been.  It became his lovey, and went with him everywhere, including all the way to Peru.  I've had to re-do sticking on Colin's several times because he has loved on it so hard.  What's an aunt for?  (Avi on the other hand chose a store-bought stuffed animal to become his lovey.  No problem.  Glad they both had something.)

Colin's cheerful quilt

the satin back with his name hand embroidered name on flannel sunshine

Avi's sky shades quilt... Call me superstitious, but I've never want to embroider their names on the quilt until after they're born, which means that then I end up not finishing them until they are about a year old.  

Avi's, the reverse of Colin's has a flannel back with satin clouds and stars and moon for a sensory corner.  

The lone girl

After so many boy baby quilts, I finally had a chance to make a girl quilt in 2008.  I hardly knew what to do.  I was so excited to use some pink!  For once I actually chose a pattern from a book and followed it - a rare thing for me.  With all those roses, it doesn't look much like "railroad tracks," but that's what the pattern is called.  I wanted roses because Ali's middle name is Rose.  And when I found this rose fabric with the coordinating yellow with smaller pink roses, I knew it had to come together since her room was going to be yellow.  The stripes are made by strip piecing a dozen or so different fabrics and then laying them out a little differently for each row.  I found some white with pink roses fabric to work perfectly with the ensemble as a binding and I finished it off with a yellow satin backing.  I love how multiple people have told me you can't put satin on the back of a quilt.  What do you mean you can't?  It works just fine, and the babies love it.  Cool in the summer and soft on their skin.

Zach's doggy quilt

My nephew Zachary was really into dogs by the time he was about 2 and I was finally getting around to making his "baby" quilt.  I found this potentially charming dog fabric, but it was overwhelming and cheesy as is.  The dog faces in it were adorable however, so I had to figure out a way to use them. The trick was that they weren't square or even consistently-sized.  So I cut out the pups' faces and embedded them at jaunty angles in larger squares.  Then I pulled together the black in the dog fabric with the border and the fabric around the the letters to really set off his name.

 On a subsequent trip to the fabric store I ran across this cute "woof" and bone fabric for the backing and so I set aside what I had originally planned because I just couldn't pass it up.  This was the first quilt that I tried free-motion quilting on.  You can see it if you look closely at the back.  I've definitely improved since then (having the right foot for my machine has helped), and I love this technique now.

I love how cheerful this quilt turned out.  Just right for a dog-loving toddler boy - who is now 5.

100 Squares

Kids in preschool and the primary grades often make a big deal of the 100th day of school.  Bringing in collections of 100 pennies or 100 macaroni noodles or such things.  When Noah was in preschool and I was taking a year off from teaching because Avi was a baby, I decided to do something extra cool with him.  It turned out to be one of my favorite projects.  I had so many remnants from previous quilts at that point that I figured we could probably come up with nearly 100 small scraps of different fabrics.  So we embarked on choosing the 100 pieces.  He would choose and I'd cut out a square and then he'd line up 10 in a row until we got close to 100.  I decided to buy a couple colors in the end to supplement our supply to help with the rainbow effect, since I was heavier on some colors than on others, but we otherwise we would have had the full 100.  After cutting out all the squares, Noah helped arrange them in a rainbow pattern and then he would bring them to me one at a time in order while I sewed the rows together.  He also enjoyed sitting on my lap and feeding them through the machine or pressing the peddle to make it go.  when the top was all completed, he went with me to find a backing and binding.  Though I wouldn't ever have gravitated to the fabric we used for the back, in retrospect I think it really works.  He was so proud of this quilt, and still is I think.  He was just 4 when we did it, but he took it to school again in 1st grade to share on the 100th day of school.  I like the simplicity of the 10x10rows which makes the concept of 100 square so visually clear.

100 squares of color

bright and black go well together for back and binding

Tumbling Blocks with a Twist

I learned that I was pregnant with my first baby about 6 months after my wedding and when I shared this news with my best childhood friend I discovered that she too was pregnant with her first baby (nearly 6 years after her wedding).  We couldn't believe the timing.  We were due within two weeks of each other.  I wanted to make the babes matching quilts.  I still had tumbling blocks in my mind because of how I'd used them unconventionally to make Jewish stars in our wedding chuppah.  So I returned to the tumbling blocks idea for Noah and Luke's quilts.  I just love how three-dimensional they look.  I'd learned a lot since the days of my roman square, so I worked carefully to make sure the fabrics created the right sense of shadow and depth. The pictures don't show it very well, but there are several different light, dark, and medium fabrics in Noah's quilt, because I find I often like to use as many fabrics as possible.  Back then, childless, I had more time on my hands, and so I created all these custom little appliqué images to go in the quilts as well.  Noah's green and yellow room was inspired by the enormous old cherry tree out his window and I wanted to make a quilt that represented things we would find outside his window, so between the tumbling blocks are a squirrel, moon, leaf, ladybug, moon, sun, cloud, dragonfly, flower, bird, caterpillar, bee, and butterfly.  Luke's room had a jungle theme going, so he had giraffes, lions, alligators, palm trees, snakes, and elephants.

Luke's jungle-themed tumbling blocks quilt

Noah's "Outside My Window" tumbling blocks quilt

Wedding Chuppah

This is our wedding quilt.  I scrambled to get it done in the months and days and then finally hours before the big day (12/21/2002). And thanks to the help of a few extra hands like my friend Kay Perkins and my Aunt Jan, it was ready.  Turns out a queen size quilt might be a little big and heavy for a chuppah, but that's okay.  We got it up there on those tree-braches turned chuppah poles somehow and when we got home the next day, we found that friends had already put it on our bed, where it was used as our bedspread for several years until the dog started sleeping on the bed and I refused to let him sleep on it.  The stars of David are made with variations on tumbling blocks and the center is crazy quilting and appliqué in the design of our wedding invitation and ketubah. I hand embroidered the lettering, which may have been why I was so rushed at the end.  

This is a picture of it hanging on the wall at our reception - another thing that just magically happened, who knows who did that.  

Grandma's Christmas Quilt

When I returned home from the Peace Corps late in 1999, I lived with my grandparents for about two months, helping to take care of them when they were both in poor health. I had brought home a bunch of fabric and was working on a huge embroidery project of the Kiribati flag and the Peace Corps emblem that I wanted to turn into a crazy quilt. It is mostly done, but is my one unfinished quilt after all these years.  It sits in a box, and I have no idea if it will ever be pulled out again.  I have no time and not much interest in it at this point.  I got sidetracked that fall when my grandma, who always loved Christmas, brought out all this old Christmas fabric that she had from various projects over the years.  We were also looking at old quilts made by her mother and grandmother and admiring interesting patterns.  I decided to put all those leftover scraps to use and make her a lap quilt for Christmas, using a pattern inspired by one of those heirloom quilts.  Who would have known that she would pass away a year latter on Christmas day?  And who would have known that two years later I would be well on my way to forgoing any celebration of Christmas as I decided to become Jewish after a long soul-searching journey.  This quilt came back to me after Grandma passed away, and then, not having a lot of use for it in my home, I gave it to my sister.  But the memory of working on it at my grandparents' kitchen table that holiday season in their warm and quiet house will stay with me forever.  I miss you Grandma.  Can you believe how many quilts I've done since then.  

Eight-point star in cream and blue

While I wasn't happy with my first quilt, I was thrilled with my second attempt.  Perhaps it's because my sister picked out the fabrics.  She's always had a good eye for color.  Though it was also made in the mid-90s, it doesn't show it's age so much, as the colors are just classic.  Cream and pale blue.  This project was a big step up from my first attempt because instead of just straight lines and strip piecing I was working with triangles and tricky seams.  I'm sure there's a better way to do it than the way I did, but it worked. This was my second and last quilt to hand-quilt.  I finished it for her as a present before leaving the country for three years.  

My first endeavor - ugh

So my very first quilt was a rather large endeavor, which is unfortunate because I really don't like it.  It's well made with perfectly matched up lines, no significant wrinkles, and some pretty darn good hand-quilting for a beginner.  But I hate it for two reasons.  For starters, it was the mid-90s and the colors and fabrics clearly show that.  Cream with burgundy and forest green.  Ugh.  So heavy.  But I didn't think that then.  Secondly and more significantly, is the pattern and/or the pattern and arrangement of fabrics. what a lesson for a beginner quilter.  I picked out a simple, classic pattern that was good for a first endeavor, the roman square.  It was for a double bed or maybe even a queen, I can't remember now.  I put it together using strip piecing, which meant that I had all the green, combo, and burgundy strips sewn together before I ever had a single block made.  By the time I started making blocks I wasn't really looking at the big picture.  I was excited about the process.  I sewed it all up and then set to work hand quilting it.  Yes, hand quilting!  What century was I in?  That's the second-to-last quilt I hand-quilted, because who wants to spend time on that?  I've since decided I would much rather move on to the next project.  I spent weeks hand-quilting it until it was finally done.  Somewhere in that process, someone (I can honestly say I don't even remember who at this point, whether it was family, friend, or stranger, I don't know, but someone) commented that it looked like a swastika.  I vehemently objected.  What?  It's a roman square, which is different from a swastika because the center lines (green in this quilt) don't go straight across but jog.
Interestingly, a swastika was a very common quilt pattern long before it was a repugnant sign of hatred.  How sad to think of all the swastika pattern heirloom quilts that people no longer wanted to use.
Anyhow, swastika it wasn't, and I was upset that someone even suggested a similarity, but their suggestion stuck.  I hate that damn quilt now.  Nearly 20 years later, it is kept folded up in the chest in the rumpus room and used only as a back up blanket when all the other things have been pulled out and used up (so hardly ever).  I can hardly look at it even then.  I usually turn it over so I'm just looking at the lovely cream fabric with all that tidy hand quilting.
I never saw that pattern while I was making it, whether because of the technique that I used or because I just wasn't looking for it.  I can see now that if I had just rearranged the colors, it wouldn't have looked so similar to a swastika at all.  It's the order of the green, combo, and burgundy that caused the problem. Then I would have just been stuck with a boring quilt in 90s colors.  There are worse things, like a almost-swastika quilt for example.
The irony is that even 20 years ago I was well on my way to becoming Jewish (though I didn't know it yet), and anything remotely like a swastika is the last thing I could have ever wanted on a quilt.
So here it is.  I can barely look at it, but when you do, know that IT'S A ROMAN SQUARE!

Look at all that hand-quilting; was I insane?

Roman square, not to be confused with anything else