Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Gees Marimekko

I am so glad to have this quilt finished. It was the bane of my existence for a while because it was too hot and cumbersome to spend very much time under it while I quilted it. I call it Gees Marimekko because it was inspired by the Gees Bend quilts. I wanted to try to make one which looked kind of like theirs, and then I remembered the Marimekko fabrics I had. Crate and Barrell use Marimekko fabrics for decoration of their stores and they also sell yardage as does Ikea - but it is rather pricy. For a while the Crate and Barrell outlet in North Georgia sold remnants of Marimekko fabric for $0.39 per pound! So whenever I was in the area, I bought a bunch of the stuff.
I hadn't been able to use any of it really, since it is much heavier than quilting fabrics and doesn't go well in combination with them. And I didn't have a lot of any one of the fabrics. But they were perfect for this project. I just pieced a bunch of the remnants (most of which turned out to be approximately the same size) in no particular pattern or order for the front and the back. In fact, I don't think this quilt has a back or a front. Both sides are about the same, just different combination of fabrics. I hand quilted it with perle cotton using lots of different colors. I thought the big hand quilted stitches would be most in keeping with the Gees Bend look.

Since I didn't have any Marimekko zebra fabric, I appliqued on this zebra I had from somewhere. The front on one side and the back on the other. The finished quilt measures 85" x 101" and is plenty big enough to go on top of the other quilt on our bed to help us stay warm during the winter.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Odds and Ends

I didn't get around to doing much quilting during December, but I did finish an item which has long been on my to do list. While visiting a fancy hotel in Philadelphia last year, I kind of fell in love with the bed cover. I decided to replicate it and bought two large pieces of upholstry fabric, sewed them together right sides facing and turned it outside in, and that's it. No quilting. It falls nicely and is pretty to me, but I have no idea what I will do with it.
I saw a pattern for gift card envelopes somewhere and as two of our presents this Christmas were indeed gift cards, I decided to jazz them up a bit by making these very easy but cute little envelopes for them.