As a kindness to my family members, I installed a retractable clothesline along the side of the back porch so they wouldn’t have to stand there and hold quilts up for pictures. I told my husband he could quit working out now, but he says it’s become a habit and he’ll stick with it.
It was very easy to install, not expensive (about $17 with Amazon Prime) and I discovered that quilt binding clips can double as wonderful little clothespins.
It works!
This quilt is for my in-laws. When I first started thinking of a quilt for them, the colors red and gray stuck in my mind because they used these colors in some recent updates and redecorating in their home. I don’t think there’s any real need for a quilt to match anything else in the house, but knowing that they like those colors gave me a starting point. I tried to think of what else was important to them, and the first thoughts that came to mind were their grandkids and their love of being outdoors. Although our daughters are older (20 and 15), most of their eight grandchildren are still small enough to crawl into their laps to hear a story. That’s a special time that doesn’t last nearly long enough. I’m hoping this quilt will help commemorate those special times spent with all their grandchildren and their own kids when they were little.
When I saw two Aneela Hoey fabric lines, A Walk in the Woods and Little Apples, I knew I’d found what I was after. The colors were perfect, and they combined an outdoorsy feel with wonderful “magical childhood” images. The two lines worked perfectly together.
The quilt design is Small Plates from Elizabeth Hartman‘s excellent book The Practical Guide to Patchwork. The simple design frames fussy cuts and the overall layout has a nice sense of motion. The back is a vintage sheet bought still “new in packaging”. I love that it’s vintage AND new all at once. (And while this was hanging outside, a honey bee investigated the flowers!)
It’s a twin size quilt, so they can use it in the spare room when grandchildren sleep over, but I think I’d be using it for some serious couch napping if it were mine. I hope they’ll enjoy it!
I made some quilt progress this weekend with lots and lots of half square triangles. I bought a special template to help speed up the making of all those half square triangles, a skinny little tool called the “Quilter’s Magic Wand”.
Tracing from corner to corner will give you lines to follow for perfect quarter inch seams. There’s a little line etched into the template to help you match the corners. Here’s a close up so you can see it better.
I bought mine from Donellefritz on Etsy.
This quilt will be for my best friend who is engaged, and I’m hoping it will make her think of the blending of two hearts, two families and two lives. I think she’ll understand.
… of Dad’s Samurai-ish quilt, and I think it’s just fine without borders added. Yay! I’ve changed my mind about backing fabrics, so I’ll have to order something else and then get this baby to the quilt shop.
I’ve slowed down a little too much on my hand sewing of binding. There’s another quilt that only needs a little bit of work to finish, but every time I try to sit with it on the couch, kittens crawl all over me. It sounds really odd to be complaining about kitten affection, but it does make it hard to sew. I think I might have to switch to binding completely by machine or it’ll be forever before Dad gets to use his quilt.
We’ve noticed that as Diego has grown up, his markings have gotten much darker. His love of quilts, however, remains unchanged.