Two Tops and Three Tops-

Two tops--My quilting group, The Calendar Girls, got together all day Saturday and sewed quilts for community service. We'd independently been making 9" blocks for a couple of months in two color-ways, red, white and blue and batik and white. We had a little contest to guess how many total blocks would be turned in to make the quilts and I was overwhelmed with the total: 141 blocks were made by the 15 people in the group! No one came close to guessing that many. After 7 hours, we had 6 tops made! Here are 2 of them, before borders.

Three tops--
Remember that duct tape dress form class I took a couple of weeks ago? I put it to good use this last week and had a great time making 3 tops that I LOVE! The white one with the red and pink border is made from a vintage linen tablecloth from the 50s. The blue one is the same Simplicity pattern made of a flowy rayon. The other is a gauzy fabric with a Butterick pattern that wasn't so easy to work with but I Frenched all the seams and it will be nice and cool in our 100+ degree summer.
 So, did you post to Judy's Design Wall Monday today?

Round Robin--FINISHED!

Is there a better feeling than completely finishing a quilt? I finally had time to finish the round robin quilt I made in a series of classes at Thimble Creek, that wonderful quilt shop in Concord, CA. We started with a center block of our choice and had four more rounds. I was inspired by Freddy Moran's love of "brights with black and white"so that's what I made for the center. I also told everyone that I wanted this quilt to be small so I could hang it in our foyer. Boy, did everyone come through! the first two borders were made by the quilt shop's owners, Roxie and Joe Wood--aren't they cute?! The third border, sorry to say, was made by one of the other talented round robin-ers whose name I can't remember--sorry! At that point, I was ready to say that I didn't want a fourth border I loved it so much as it was but Sandy Klop (of American Jane fame) said, "Oh, I know what I'd do with it!" Tell me, would you say 'no' to having sweet, wonderful Sandy add something fun to your quilt? Me either!! And look at the adorable 'twister' blocks she added for the perfect finish!

I love my round robin quilt! It measures 41" square, perfect! And I quilted it really nicely with little circles in the yellow border and following the peaks in the colored points and making flowers in the colored squares all using variegated thread. I certainly do have an easier time completing smaller quilts. I tell myself over and over to just do small projects. Hasn't worked very well.

Get over to Judy's design wall Monday post and see what other clever people have finished!

Duct Tape Dress Form

Two things to show you this week: the "colorful" duct tape dress form I made in a group class and my finished "words" quilt top.

I used to make lots of clothes, way back when I was in jr. high and high school especially when Home Ec was still an important part of the curriculum. I'd always wanted a dress form and I finally got one about 15 years ago. Dress forms are made to be shaped to fit you with wheels and cogs you turn until the measurements are the same as yours, You can also elongate or shorten upper and lower torso. But there are essential measurements that have to be padded and shaped that are much tougher to do. For instance, I've always had trouble with sleeves and I suspected my shoulder angle was the problem.

So, when a couple of my friends decided to go to a class to make personalized duct tape dress forms, I was IN! We donned an old t-shirt and started wrapping each other starting with a criss-cross and filling in with smaller, 3-inch pieces around the "round" parts, then covering all this again and yet again before slitting the whole thing up the back, taping it back together and stuffing it.

It's sort of ridiculous-looking but, can you see why I've had trouble with sleeves? First, my right shoulder is lower than my left and when I put this over my dress form at home, the edges of my shoulders were a full INCH wider than the form I'd been using all these years! My shoulders are more square too so I'll have to pad them higher on my form. Now, I can't wait to make some clothing!

I titled my 'words' quilt "Hyphen Comma Hashtag". When I went to my favorite quilt shop (Thimble Creek in Concord CA) to get opinions on how I should border and bind it, they all said I SHOULDN'T add borders, that it would take away from the 'modern' look of the quilt, that I should just bind it, as is, with one of the gray fabrics in the quilt. Well, you don't have to tell me twice not to add to a quilt, not to make it any larger so it's more difficult to quilt on my domestic machine!

I'm going to have to wait for the fabric I've chosen for the backing to come in. It's so perfect for this quilt! It's Windham fabric's "Type". What do you think?

 Go see what other creative people have on Judy's Design Wall Monday blog!

Getting There

I've finished all the words and have sewed a frame around them all and am filling in the rows with color blocks. I'm almost done sewing the words together into rows and will surely be able to get the top done by the end of the week--finally have a pretty empty week!

Although I don't have a good photo of it, I attended a class today in El Cerrito that the Spindles and Flyers Spinning Guild put on teaching us to make a duct tape dress form. We donned a close-fitting t-shirt and started wrapping the tape around us fitting it closely to every contour of our bodies. The 'bumps' and 'valleys' needed small pieces of tape and I probably tore or cut 150 pieces for mine. Because we needed to make the form quite thick to be sturdy, we each used 2 whole rolls of duct tape for the process! With the great patterns of fun duck tape available now, I used pink and purple!

At the end, we cut the whole thing, t-shirt and all, up the center back and will tape it back together and stuff them for use in making future garments. Can't wait!

Take a look at Judy's 
blog see what everyone else has on their design walls!

This Word Quilt is FUN!

I've been very busy this week flying to L.A. on quilting business, making a presentation closer to home and teaching a class all day Saturday so I haven't started anything new. That doesn't mean I'm not quilting.
    Yes, I'm still working on the "word" quilt! I'm telling you, Tonya Ricucci's "Word Play Quilts" book (see here) is such a fun way to put fabric together! If you think about it, quilting is usually very precise: measure this, cut that, sew this, all VERY exacting. But making letters by this method and turning them into words of totally freeing and I'm loving it!

I'm up to 16 words now with only 2 to go (poem and screenplay). I'll put them them on my design wall and get them arranged the way I want them then I plan to put 'frames' around each word and somehow construct a quilt top. I'll show you the process the whole way!

Come back week to Judy's Design Wall Monday and you'll see my next step.

More Words

    My design wall looks vaguely similar to last weeks, right? I actually added 3 more fun words: Hashtag ("spelled" with a pound sign instead of an "h" which I thought was rather clever), Asterisk (which is pretty hard to see here but better in person) and Exclamation Point. These words are so fun to create and I'm really looking forward to making more! My list includes: Ampersand, Apostrophe, Period, Paragraph, Parenthesis and Slash. I'd love more ideas if you have a suggestion.
     Take a look at what everyone else has on Judy's blog!

Words On Quilts

My design wall has three little words on it. They may seem odd but I can explain: I've always loved quilts with words on them so when I saw this book, "Word Play Quilts" by Tonya Ricucci, I just had to buy it. Her method is totally free-style, no measuring, no dimentions. It's not at all like any quilting I've ever done and it took me a little while to get used to it but it was totally freeing and I LOVED it!

So, about the words: I recently bought a fat quarter tower of Moda's new "Comma" line. I love the colors but the real reason I bought it is, it's perfect for a quilt for my daughter and her wife. They're both writers so the asterisks, commas, dots and swirls on the fabric will be perfect. I'm going to make about 20 words that have to do with writing such as comma, dash and hyphen (the last also happens to be their cat's name) with period, semi-colon, paragraph and others to come. 

The book suggests making each letter individually then put them together. After they're all done and you've arranged them on your design wall, you put a fabric 'frame' around all the blocks and put the quilt together. I'm looking forward to making more of these fun blocks and I'm sure this quilt will be a big hit when I give it to them for Christmas!

See what everyone else has on their design walls on Judy's blog!