A year in the making...

From $2.50 shirt from Housing Works...

To nugget of a quilt...

To fully realized top...

Quilted...

And bound...

And it only took 14 months.  ;)

Ever since I made my first quilt using reclaimed/repurposed fabric (this blazingly bright quilt) I've been keeping an eye out for interesting fabrics in clothing items during my thrifting. I found this brushed cotton shirt for $2.50, cut it up into about a million 5.5" squares and thought I'd add multiple blue sashings until I had a large quilt. Well. No.

I stalled after making the first twelve, and the pieces of the quilt were added back into my stash for some nebulous future time when I'd get back to it. About a year (!) later I decided to cut some strips and just get it done. I hadn't intended to add alternative colors, but I had some scraps on my cutting table which turned out to match perfectly. Once I got to 25 squares I stopped because I was bored. Also, I have an idea of making twinned quilts (similar but not identical) for my hypothetical quilt shop that I am hypothetically running in my head, and this way I have enough squares left over to make the fraternal twin. Hypothetically.

For the backing I used a slightly odd fabric I found at Housing Works Buy the Bag. As far as I can tell it's some kind of commemorative fabric for the 50th anniversary of Mali and possibly an associated music festival.

I think this guy is supposed to be a conch, but he kind of looks like a poop. It amuses me.

The fabric wasn't quite wide enough for this 50" square quilt, so I added a stripe of the same yellow as the front. The striped binding was something that "accidentally" fell into my cart at Fabric.com from the clearance section.

I like it.

Dogged Quilt

A few weeks ago I started my own version of a Bullet Journal, basically a page-a-day list of things to do (work and private life), events and appointments. It's helping keep me on track with the niggly little things that keep slipping my mind, like washing my make-up brushes or throwing out that odd looking thing in the the back of the fridge that may or may not have been a vegetable in a previous life. I think I'm ready to start adding blogging to my list (the fridge is now clean), once a week, and to be honest I have a backlog of stuff to post about. So in no particular order I'm hoping to get a few of them up here on the blog.

In-keeping with the honesty theme in the previous paragraph, I'm going to admit that I'm having trouble finding my blog-voice. I post so frequently on Flickr that I feel like when I finally get around to posting here everything comes out sort of stilted and "well here's a quilt/hat/whatever that I made and wrote about somewhere else." Recently I read an older blog post by rOssie about the idea of "mutant" vs. "modern" quilting, which got me thinking about focusing more on documenting my reasons for making a particular item and the process by which it came into being. So for now, that is the framework on which I'm going to hang this blog. I generally have a hard time recalling or explaining my inspiration and choices when it comes to anything I make, so it's about time I tried!

One crafter I follow on Flickr has been catching my eye a lot recently. Linda Miller is both artful and prolific! I was particularly smitten with her kaleidoscope quilts and after a quick google I found a great tutorial on Collecting Threads. Luckily I received a 60 degree triangle ruler for Christmas, but I had nothing in my fabric stash that was suitable for this technique. Naturally I had to go fabric shopping to find a print with a short enough repeat to make my blocks. And because I'm me, I chose the most rediculous print I could find. Dogs. ALL THE DOGS.

I swear the pinning of the layers of fabric is the most time consuming part of stack and whack, and I was positively giggling as each hexagon came together. I mean really, I had sections of dog butts making rosettes, one dog's face sniffing the next one's butt. Yes, I am five.

 I wasn't really sure how to set the blocks, I knew I wanted sashing so that it wouldn't be too noisy because, lets face it, it was loud enough already. After auditioning just about every one of my solids I settled on a dark green Kona and set the corners with a reddish-brown. This colour scheme is not not my personal taste, but it works in two ways: firstly with the dog print, and secondly, it matches my parents' living room and style to a tee. Oh hello, joint birthday present!

 I kept the quilting simple, straight lines in a grid a half inch from the seams, mostly because I'm having a hard time adapting to basting on a rug rather than on the floor (I'll spare the internet the rant). There was more ripping that I'd like to admit because of pin tucking and there are still a few ticks in there, but overall I'm happy with the finished quilt.

 

The back was made from mis-cut half triangles, the same red-brown, a nameless fabric from a Fabric.com grab bag, and more Kona in a slightly different shade of green. I think it works.