Roman Shades

After coming off the Appalachian Trail, I've been sewing with a friend, making shades and curtains.  I have always been intimidated about making Roman shades because of the stringing on the back.  They are easy to measure and sew, but getting the round plastic loops correctly placed on the back and stringing them so that the shade lifts correctly has always stopped me short.  My friend was determined to use this style shade though, and pointed out that we could get assistance with that part if we needed to.  My husband stepped up and did the stringing and hanging.  I had intended to watch him do that so I could learn something new, but became distracted with the next project, a set of beautiful, heavy velvet curtains.

A McCalls pattern was used as a guide for the Roman shades.  We used gorgeous dupionni silk that my friend had purchased on a trip to Cambodia a couple of years ago and lined the back with white cotton fabric. 

We made four shades, one for each bedroom window.  Decorative dragonfly pulls give a nice look. 

Baby Quilt for Our Navy Family

This is the last of the four baby quilts I pieced in Key West. It is for a baby girl, the second child but first daughter, soon to be born to our former midshipmen and his wife. We were his sponsors while he was at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis and it's true what we'd heard during our first sponsorship briefing that these relationships often become lifelong. Though he is assigned in California after a few years in Japan, we are still close. 

Last night, as I pulled this quilt out of the dryer at the Andrews AFB campground laundry and held it up to show my husband, I realized for the first time that the design in the middle was off-center.  How does something like that escape notice when you are working so intimately with a project such as hand quilting a baby quilt?

I yo-yo'ed about what to do with it.  Initially I thought it was too late to fix it.  After sleeping on it, I woke up with that 'duh' feeling, knowing that the fix was relatively simple - I'd just cut the bottom two rows off, re-sew the binding, and call it a day. But after looking at it some more and doing measurements, I decided to leave it as it is.  I didn't want it smaller, and didn't want to pull the top off as well to sew one of the strips there just to add a couple more inches. Perhaps this error will be part of the charm of this quilt.

One of my quilting mentors told me that every quilt has a mistake made either by accident or on purpose.  In re-building a vintage Sun Bonnet Sue quilt for a friend, I found about three mistakes that I doubt the original quilter realized was there, or at least not until too late.  I actually enjoyed finding those errors.  It made me feel an even stronger connection with the woman whose hands had held that fabric and whose eyes had studied every inch of it in excruciating detail, as had mine.

I don't profess to have enough expertise that I have to make a mistake on purpose.  I know I have several mistakes in my work.  The major causes of my mistakes are lack of experience and working too fast.  If I were working slowly, to achieve as much perfection as I could, as if I were going to enter each quilt in a contest, I would have very different work from this point forward.  That's not to say that I think I've done is sloppy work. I am learning as I'm going, and I know that hand work is not the same as machine work.  I'm not sure I want a quilt that is so perfect that it looks machine sewn and store bought. And working out of an RV that doesn't always have electric hookups, or if it does, the electric source may not be the 50 amps needed to power my sewing machine as well as heat or AC or even lights.

Having said that, I think I will slow down with my next quilt, and if that means waiting two months in the middle of a quilt while we do a long section of the Appalachian Trail, so be it.

This quilt was made with what they call a donut roll of fabric.  I was initially just going to sew the strips together and do some type of applique over them to add a personal, creative touch.  But the donut row fabric had a slight curve in each strip.  WTH?  I asked one of my quilting mentors about that and she said to iron them next time.  I'm pretty sure I'd done that.  And that was the second donut strip that I'd used for quilting a baby blanket and I had trouble with the first one as well.  I have a couple more of the donut strips (I have to admit, they are fun to buy and with on-line coupons you can get them almost half price) so I will approach even more carefully the next time.

As for this quilt, the design of smaller strips in the middle was my solution for trying to use the fabric in a way to minimize the obvious curve in the strips.  Again, working against the clock with our RV movements influenced my decision toward a quicker solution.

Diamond Edge Baby Quilt

This is my 15th quilt since I started quilting in January 2015. (That includes rag, tufted, and hand-stitched quilts.)

I made this baby quilt, with diamond edge, while in Florida, starting it in Key West and finishing it at Patrick AFB just south of Cocoa Beach. 

This quilt is for one of my nieces in Iowa, who is expecting a baby girl soon.

I machine pieced the blocks, then added batting and backing, and used the same fabric as the backing to make the binding. When I hand quilted it, I stitched 1/4 inside each square, making a square within the block.

I got the idea for the diamond edge on this quilt from the one on our bed in the RV.  I found that quilt at a thrift store several years ago.  It was a great find - hand quilted.  I just examined it, figuring out how it was done, and copied it.

Once this quilt is washed a few more times, the binding will be more pliable, softening in the dips.

Baby Quilt, Almost Done

Almost done. This is a baby quilt for one of my nieces. 

Finished Two Baby Quilts

Of the four baby quilts I started in Key West, I finished two so far.  This first one is a denim rag quilt four my third grandson, done with some of the same fabrics that I used to make quilts for my other two grandsons. I washed and dried it twice to help fray the raw edges some more. Then I trimmed it up, cutting the tangled threads off.  I was really happy with how soft and cute it came out. 

The second one is a memory quilt and a baby quilt, made with my sister's clothes.  It is for her first grandchild, a daughter, due in April.  I hand drew the stencils for the hearts, and hand stitched them on the patchwork.  I started it in Key West, cutting and hand stitching the hearts when we didn't have electricity, waiting in queue for full hookups for our RV.  As soon as we got it, I pieced it on the machine.  When we got to Key Largo, to a friend's house, I finished the hand quilting.

Initially I was going to try to quilt heart shapes in the border area but realized the squares weren't the same size as the rest of the patchwork due to the binding (shown on the right).  So I just did straight lines.  Well, sort of straight.

You can kind of see the two outlines of hearts in five rows in the body of the quilt.  It came out pretty good.  I was happy with it.

Hidden in Plain View

I just finished reading this book.  It's about quilting codes and research on how they were used for the underground railroad as secret messages to prepare to flee and mnemonics for remembering instructions and routes. It is fascinating history on quilting and on how it played a part in the struggle against tyranny in the United States.

Four Baby Quilts

I've been busy.  I pieced and basted three traditional style baby blanket quilts that I will hand quilt in the next couple of weeks.  I sewed one denim rag quilt that is finished except for being washed a couple of times to let the seams fray.

Here are the four quilts laid out on my bed, with the denim rag quilt at the top, and going clockwise, the applique hearts quilt  then a pink rectangular strips quilt, then the small multi-colored blocks with the zig-zag edge.

This is my first attempt at applique's.  I made my own heart pattern, drawn free-hand and hand sewn. This is also a memory quilt, done for my sister's first grandchild, a girl. 

This is my first attempt at a zig-zag border.  I started pinning the border on the right, just a couple of inches.  The rest of the border is wrapped in a circle in a plastic baggy laying on top of the quilt.