OK. This will be one of the many quilts that I’ll be posting about that I’ve made in the last year or so. This one was a quickie. Well, sorta.

Last year the LA Modern Quilt Guild was lucky enough to host Elizabeth Hartman of the blog Oh, Fransson! I don’t take many classes but, wanted to take one with her because, well because she’s Elizabeth Hartman. I picked the Text Class where we learned two different techniques for adding text to quilts. One was an applique technique and the other was for pieced letters.

First of all, if you ever have a chance to take a class with Elizabeth don’t hesitate. She is patient, thorough and pretty much all around awesome.

Because of the million and one projects that I have in process at any one time, I didn’t want to have another project to add to my WIP list. So, I wanted to finish enough letters in class for a completed project. Plus, I needed a gift for a friend that was having a baby. I wanted something clean, nice, and simple for a new baby girl and her family. My friend Lori who took the class with me suggested “shhh. . .” for the words and the quilt idea was born.

I used a color combo that I was digging at the time: mint, purple and orange. Well, I think I still dig it. A lot. The top half is a print called Mountains in Mint from the Monsterz line from Cloud 9. I LOVE this line.

And the bottom half has the characters that spell out  “shhh. . .” appliqued on. They’re really fun because each of the letters are patchwork.

For the pieced letters part of the class, I thought that it would make a fun label out of my initials that would go on the back of the quilt. And, I thought I was being smart by choosing the larger pieced letters. I figured I could finish them because they would be less tedious to piece. They were less tedious but, for a label they look sorta ridiculous. Oh well. I added my little easy Spoonflower label so that my initials would make a little sense.

Fun simple quilting, with the top half quilted with straight line quilting. And the bottom half quilted with wavy lines.

It sorta looks fun from the back.

I chose a binding that was pieced with my favorite fabrics from each of the three colors. You’ll notice in the other pictures the corners were also rounded which adds to the simplicity.

And, most baby gifts from me get a ball. Dad’s and babies generally love these more than the quilt. And they are pretty easy to whip up.

Many of you saw glimpses of this quilt in the tutorial on the Modern Quilt Guild blog but, it wasn’t quilted yet and I literally just showed a peek of it in the tutorial. It’s a very simple quilt using HRT’s that makes for a quick baby quilt. I love the color combination of the coral-ly reds, pink, citron and gray! I think I’ll definitely be using it again.

Kite Tails Quilt, Latifah Saafir

This quilt layout completely reminds me of kites in the idyllic image in kids books with the bows on kite tails blowing in the wind. Kinda like this:

I have been struggling SO much to get decent pictures of my quilts. Does anyone else have this problem? Please let me know I’m not alone. But, the stars (and the clouds to be honest) all lined up perfectly today to allow me to easily take a few decent shots.

Kite Tails Quilt

This quilt is pretty small at just 34″ x 36″ but, it was made specifically for the tutorial. It would be perfect for a tiny baby girl though.

Kite Tails Quilt

The backing uses three of my current favorite fabrics. I’m sort of in love with the Timeless Treasures Crosshatch Sketch fabric – like, in all of the colors!! The upper left corner fabric is one of my favorite colors of the Crosshatch Sketch called Citron. To the right of it is Simon & Kabuki Juicy Blossoms Gray Dot (which I desperately need to find more of). And the bottom is Laurie Wisburn’s Modern Whimsy Circles in Saffron.

Kite Tails Quilt Back

The quilting is super simple.

Kite Tails Quilt Detail

The binding is Kona Coral.

Kite Tails Quilt Folded

And, last but, not least my go to label when I’m too lazy to create a real one.

Kite Tails Label

I’ll be back soon!

This week we’re going to look at a fun little tutorial that I wrote up on the Modern Quilt Guild blog for making HRT’s. What is an HRT? Well, if a Half Square Triangle is an HST shouldn’t a Half Rectangle Triangle be a HRT? Plus, Half Rectangle Triangles is just too many syllables so we’ll just call it the HRT. The fun thing about HRT’s is that they are maybe even more versatile than the HST. [Geeky side note: Since a square is a rectangle, isn't a HST technically also a HRT? Just sayin!]

This week I’m going to show you a few quilts that I’ve made or am working on using HRT’s. Plus, I’ll fine tune the tutorial a bit so that you too can make long skinny HRT’s with minimal fabric waste.

The first quilt in the series is a quick baby quilt made with the long skinny HRT’s that I call the Merge Quilt. Ever since I was able to accept that Green was my favorite color, I always stash great green fabrics when I see them. I also have a pretty substantial collection of grey prints as well. So, when I saw the super cute Green Owl fabric by Annika Wester for Kokka I knew I had to make a quilt with all my green and grey fabric! I love this quilt and think that it is quite unisex. I have an idea for a much larger quilt using HRT’s of the same dimension but with lots more solids and a little less juvenile. If I can only find the time!

(Now that I’m posting this I realize that all of my pictures are blurry.   So I’ll have to update this and share a few clearer pictures with you later. But, I’ll go ahead and post it for now.)

Here’s the clearest shot:

A little detail of that great Owl fabric!

The blurry front.

The back – also blurry.

Merge on a turtle.

I’ll take a few better pictures and post them soon!

XO

A dear friend of mines Katie had a beautiful baby girl, Cici in December of last year. This project was almost completed. But, it has taken me this long to finish it up and give it to her! Life sometimes happens and before you know it months have blown by! But, it was made and given in love and I hope they enjoy it. I started out with a stack of 1/4 yard pieces of Art Gallery fabric mainly from the Paradise line and added lots of coordinating prints along with Kona Bone and Eggplant.

We all knew the baby’s name and nickname before she was born and I knew that i wanted to somehow incorporate that into the quilt. So, here’s my version of Cici (CC). Kinda reminds you of the Chanel logo but, this wasn’t the idea when I sketched it out! I wanted to make it personalized but, not make it super obvious and cheesy. I think I achieved that!

When I design a quilt for someone in particular like this and have an idea I brainstorm first by just doing rough sketches on paper. I ran across one of these pages recently and thought it was fun to share! This is obviously very far into the brainstorm process because it looks very similar to the final project BUT, there were many, many iterations on paper before the decision was made. And the multi-colored markings on the center of the page are bleed through from other brainstorm pages!

I didn’t get great shots of the back because it was starting to get dark when I was taking these photos BUT, here’s a close up of the back.  As some of you know, I’m a bit obsessive about baby gifts and I almost ALWAYS make more than a quilt. There’s a dress and coat set that I’ll share with you soon. But, I used the leftovers of the two main fabrics I used for the dress on the back.

And, here’s a really dark shot of the whole thing.

More detail. . .

And, yes for those of you that might ask, this is sort of an iteration of the Huckleberry Quilt. The big circle is just cut in half!

Guess what mom? I’m a teacher now! I’m teaching my “Perfect Puddles” Modern Circle Sampler Quilt at Sew Modern in Los Angeles. My mother always said that I’d be a teacher – I just don’t think she thought I would teach quilting. So fun! We had our first session this past Saturday but, if you’re interested you can still sign up and I garuantee I’ll get you through the whole quilt. It is a great quilt for an advanced beginner. The circles look intimidating but, I promise they’re the easiest part.

I actually designed and completed this quilt a while ago. It’s a fun version of a circle quilt because it’s a Sampler Quilt with a different piecing method in each of the nine circles. I call it Perfect Puddles. I wanted to create interest in this quilt using a fairly restrained color scheme. The main color is gray, the feature color is green and the “pop” color is pink (in two shades). The two feature fabrics that the quilt was designed around are the Gray “Go By Bike” by Erin McMorris and “Retro Umbrella” in the Rainy Days and Mondays line by Melimba and Beccabury. Each block has each of the feature fabrics and one piece of the “pop” color of pink. Then of course I framed each circle in a white ring using the Six Minute Circle Method. The background fabric is Kona Ash.

One of the fun things about this quilt is the Machine Quilting lines. Each circle has a different quilting design that compliments the piecing of the circle. I wanted to make each design using the walking foot to eliminate the need of free motion quilting in this quilt. I love looking at the back of this quilt. Even though it is just one piece of fabric, it is very interesting because of the different straight line quilting techniques that are shown. The backing fabric is a very pink Kona Cotton – I think it’s Bubble Gum.

Here is a view of the front laid out flat.

And a detail shot.

Enjoy!

As some of you know, I’m a little obsessed with giving gift “sets” for baby gifts. Generally the set will be a quilt and bibs, burps and a ball. But, this time it is a bear. And I actually saw the pattern for the bear first and then whipped up this quick quilt to go with the bear.

I am not a big fan of using patterns since my motivation in sewing is seeing the ideas in my head become a reality BUT, sometimes I see a pattern too cute to pass up. Enter Kwik Sew Pattern 3246. I glanced at it while browsing at my local fabric shop and immediately envisioned a soft cuddly classic teddy bear and a clean modern quilt to match. I just knew this would be the gift for my co-worker Sasha who was expecting her second little boy. I even thought that since it would be a classic teddy bear that I should make the quilt in super classic baby boy colors – blue. This is not in my normal color scheme. You know I LOVE bright, bold, and crazy colors but, it is fun stepping out of what I normally do and still create something true to my design aesthetic. Plus, I needed a simple pattern I could throw together quickly. I was able to get 1/8 yd cuts of most of the fabric (most quilt shops don’t do this and should!) and I loved the thought of short wide strips.

To achieve that “classic” look I used the super creamy Kona Eggshell as the background fabric and framed and bound the quilt in a dark Kona Nightfall.  Uber- classic! I used Alexander Henry’s Granville in blue as the inspiration print and picked lots of fun blues and creams to coordinate.

I love how it turned out, Simple, clean, quick:

For the quilting, I stippled the main patchwork quilting area and for the cream background area I alternated decorative stitches with a straight line stitch using a different decorative stitch each time. I very rarely use decorative stitches on my quilts but, I find that they can be great for some baby quilts. In this case, they help to create a sort of classic heirloom feel to the quilt.

The quilt is backed in a soft tan gingham flannel fabric. I thought a gingham added to the “classic” factor and the flannel is perfect since it is so cuddly and soft.

And, I especially love the Teddy Bear. Once again, it pains me to use patterns but, this pattern was more than worth it. It is even more cuddly and soft and perfect in person. This will definitely be difficult to part with! And, my awesome friend Chris suggested Harold for the bears name and it kinda stuck! I realized there were a lot of B’s associated with this quilt, Blue, Boy, Baby, so of course it became the B-Boy Quilt!

Just look at Harold. Don’t you just want to pick him up and squeeze him!

For anyone curious, this is the bear pattern. It was fairly easy to put together. I of course chose the most difficult material to work with – fur. I was covered in fur and my sewing area was one big furry mess when I got finished. But, with a little patience I was able to put the bear together in a couple hours. Super quick and easy. And, the fur wasn’t THAT difficult to use – I just had to relax and accept that I and my sewing space would be covered in fur until the end of the project. Then I was able to barrel through the actual sewing. It was my first time using a Kwik Sew pattern for anything and I found it to be clear and easy to understand. This bear is huge though. I made the small one and it is 20″!

I love looking at quilting in new and fresh ways. Oftentimes “new and fresh” refers to looking at traditional and established methods and making them your own. I’ve been thinking a lot about designing whole cloth quilts. I’m a little hesitant in calling this a “whole cloth quilt” because most whole cloth quilts are such intricate works of art. I’ve even thought about referring to this as a Plain Quilt a name the Amish use for a whole cloth or almost whole cloth quilt. The word “plain” is quite the misnomer though. There was little to no piecing in Plain Quilts BUT, the stitching though clean and simple was beautiful and often quite intricate.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with the term a whole cloth quilt is simply a quilt made from two pieces of “whole cloth” basted together and then quilted. The highlight of the quilt is of course the actual quilting stitches as there isn’t any piecing. So, for my version of a whole cloth quilt, I started to think of some creative, clean, modern machine quilting patterns.

I’ve been very obsessed with the herringbone pattern lately, sketching many herringbone quilt patterns in my sketchbook and decided to go with a herringbone quilting design for this quilt. I so love how it came out. It is very simple but, very classic and clean. And the rich colors just make the design pop.

I designed this quilt with a specific friend in mind. Liz of Lady Harvatine fame (and one of the most awesome and inventive quilters I know) is having a little Baby Harvatine and I wanted to make something special for her and her little one. Luckily, we knew what her colors would be since the blocks we made for her for the Bricolage & Butter Bee will eventually be a quilt for a guest bed that would go in the babies room. Yippee! So, I set out to find the perfect fabric for this quilt. I figured she would receive a whole slew of quilts (which she did) and thought that she was the perfect candidate for a unique quilt style – that she likely wouldn’t get from anyone else. I auditioned a number of fabrics, including some luscious dupioni silk. In the end, I settled on a  two pieces of linen for the front and the back – very similar in color and texture to the fabrics in her quilt. And a simple cotton binding – again with two fabrics from her quilt.

The front of the quilt is a turquoise blue and the back is a yellow gold color. I don’t know the brand, they are just linen’s that I purchased at Michael Levine’s Fabrics in downtown Los Angeles. I did pre-wash all the fabric since I knew the linen would shrink quite a bit.

Of course, since the highlight of the quilt would be the quilting, I had to decide on the thread that would be used. I chose to use a Yellow/Gold Gutermann Variegated Cotton thread. I love the effect. It adds a subtle character to the quilt that you don’t even much notice until you look at the stitching.

The contrast of the thread with the turquoise on the front was perfect.

The beauty of this quilt is in the texture and color and this was difficult to capture in pictures.

I chose to make the backing yellow even though it was just a complementary color on Liz’s quilt. I love how the quilting lines created texture and depth.

I like how the binding frames the quilt and adds another subtle detail. It is a 1″ binding which works well with a simple quilt like this. It includes two fabrics from Liz’s original quilt. I can’t remember the line the green comes from (if you recognize it let me know!) and the red is a Shot Cotton.

Let me know what you think about it. I’d love to see what others interpretation of a modern whole cloth  or “plain” quilt would look like.

This must be the year of the baby! This is the fourth baby born in my office this year and we only have about 20 people! And, we still have one to go! Not to even start counting my friends. . . . But, I’m not complaining. More babies mean more fun baby gifts to make and give. I was trying to do something simple for this one since I found out about it last minute. I had most of these fabrics in my stash so that made it easy. I just had to pick up one or two more. The “feature fabric” on this one was the Michael Miller “Giraffe Garden” in Citron. I love giraffe’s and this showcases them in such a fun way. Of course it wasn’t until I took these pictures that I realized that I could have done a little fussy cutting to actually get the little giraffe heads in but, luckily, giraffes have cute legs too. There are a number of other fabrics on this quilt too but, the majority of them are Michael Miller prints.

I call this the Jack-In-The-Box Quilt. The accordion shape that the different colors make in the quilt reminds me of the Jack-In-The-Box toys where “Jack” I presume pops up out of the box and bounces around. Does it remind you a little of the accordion body? This quilt started out as an experiment in using trapezoids in piecing a quilt. I had so much fun playing with them. The problem is that there are only about a million different arrangements you can put them in.  This isn’t really a problem but, then you have to choose just which of the arrangements you are going to use. Luckily, I was working on this at a weekend sew at the LA Modern Quilt Guild and my good friend Katie helped me to lay this out and decide. Thanks Katie! I think it turned out awesome! I’ll have to share some of the other trapezoid layouts with you too – traps are awesome!

This was my first time using flannel on the back of a quilt. It makes it so soft and cuddly. One of my favorite local fabric stores, M&L Fabrics in Anaheim has a wonderful selection of flannels for under $3 a yard so I thought I’d try one on this quilt. Believe me, it won’t be the last time! I really did like the effect. Of course, I forgot to put my label on before I basted and quilted this baby, so I had to put it on afterward. And then, I put the label on and hadn’t written the details on the quilt so I had to write it on the quilt after it was attached.

The quilting lines are very simple. They just shadow the lines of the accordion shape.

They show really cool on the back of the quilt though!

I probably shouldn’t do this because the label is not my finest work but, here’s a closer view of it. Note to self: Put label on BEFORE the quilt is basted and quilted AND write the information on the label before you attach it!

Oh, I chose to bind the quilt in white. There were so many colors going on that I thought a nice white would frame it well.

Once again, I didn’t get around to stitching up a card with a piece of fabric the way I like to so I used the jpeg images of three of the main Michael Miller fabrics in the quilt. I kinda like how it turned out. Simple and cute. Of course, you didn’t think I’d make a baby gift without a bib, a burp cloth and a onesie, did you? (One day I’m going to fool all of you and do something different!)

And, here’s the ball!

I love how the quilt looks all rolled up and tied and ready to go into the basket!

And, here it is all put together! I get pretty lazy on this last step and just get a basket, tulle and ribbon. I’m going to have to be more creative next time. Overall I’m happy with how this came out. It’s a nice, easy, quick baby quilt to throw together! I hope baby Eli likes it. His dad took it home tonight.

Does anyone else have this problem? You make a quilt as a gift for a friend or family member and then fall in love with it SO much that it is almost painful to give away? Well, this was my experience with the Huckleberry Modern Baby Quilt. Luckily I was strong and was able to give it to it’s intended recipients, the absolutely adorable Baby Jack and his wonderful parents tonight!

It is something about the massive circle in circle and the colors. I just love this blue! It’s Kona Robin’s Egg.

I wont even try to name all the fabrics that were used in this quilt but, the “inspiration” fabric was “A is for Alligator” by Jillian Phillips for Hoffman Fabrics. I am not usually a big fan of novelty fabrics but, some of them are just perfect for baby quilts and gifts and Jillian Phillips nailed this one.

The little animals on this fabric are c-uuuuuu-ute! A square elephant and a square faced lion? Are you serious? And look at the little kangaroo! The inchworm and the chipmunk are equally adorable. But, I think the panda bear may be my favorite though.

This quilt was made for friends of mine. The dad is a musician, hence the Michael Miller “Groovy Guitar” fabric. The rest of the fabrics were picked for the mom to love!

Of course it’s a baby gift so it gets Bibs, Burps, and a Ball!

Oh, and I had some onesies left over from another gift so I appliqued a guitar on the front of one.

(My balls lately have been a little bit more wonky than I’d like. I’ve used the Purl Bee Beach Ball pattern for awhile but, I’m thinking maybe I’ve used the same paper pattern too many times and have trimmed down the edges a bit thus resulting in a more wonky ball than originally. Maybe it’s time for me to come up with my own pattern!)

I’m SO in love with the bib and burp cloth too. For a minute, I was really trying to justify at least keeping them and just giving the quilt away maybe with the ball. But, I figured Jack could use them a little bit more than I could. (Sniff. . .) Once again, I had to take a deep breath and reach deep inside for the strength to give these away as well. (Wiping away a tear. . .)

The Bibs and Burp Cloths are both backed in the flannel “A is for Alligator” fabric.

There’s only one thing that is comforting in a situation like this and that is to know that these particular friends will love and appreciate this just as much as I do.

So, I had to name this quilt the “Huckleberry”. This was the dad’s idea of a great baby name but, I see that mom has prevailed with awesome strong affirming name of Jack. But, for better or worse, the name Huckleberry is going to stick with this quilt.

The circle in circle was pieced with the Dale Fleming’s 6-Minute Circle method. It took a few more minutes than six since this was such a large circle. It also took a lot of tape to make the freezer paper the proper width and a whole bunch of crawling around on the floor. But, all in all, it was a fairly straightforward process.

I quilted this with concentric circles in the blue area. And the big patchwork circle in the middle is stippled.

The back is a random selection of patchwork rectangles from”leftover fabric from the quilt front separated by strips of the Kona Robin’s Egg. The finished size of this quilt is: 43 x 44″. I love how you can see the quilting lines on the back of the quilt too!

You can’t have a gift without a card, can you? This one is pretty simple. Just a printed blue circle in a black circle which mimics the quilt design.

And, of course here it is all bundled up and ready to be delivered.

Goodbye precious quilt. Goodbye. (I need some support here. Please tell me I’m not the only one with this problem. . .)