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