Monday, December 15, 2003

Maddie's Quilt

I had wanted to experiment with block in a block. The opportunity arose when Pat and Maggie brought me some lovely green and purple fabrics from Africa and then proceeded to have a lovely daughter. This quilt was made for Madeleine Etienne Keenan as a baby gift.
Here's a picture of Maddie several years later.

Scrappy Postage Stamp Quilt

One of the things which makes quilting attractive to me is using all the scraps, using old fabrics, old clothes etc. The recycling aspect of quilting. But - I also LOVE new fabric and I LOVE buying, having and using new fabrics. So I don't do as much scrap quilting as I would like.

This quilt is truly a scrap quilt. I collected scraps for it for quite a while. My own scraps and scraps donated by others - or retrieved from trash cans at quilt retreats. I cut all the scraps into 2" squares and gradually sewed them into 9-patches. I don't recall how long it took, but it was something I would do in between everything else as I had enough 2"squares to make another couple of 9-patches. As finished, there are 360 9-patches in the quilt, which means that I sewed together 3,240 2" squares. I subsequently hand quilted it. And since it was finished it has been on our bed every night.

Saturday, November 15, 2003

Drunkard's Path

I had always liked the drunkard's path, though I had no idea quite how versatile it is. I put off trying it as I was weary about piecing curves and really didn't like the idea of having to cut an entire quilt using templates. But, I bought these fabrics on line and decided they would work well with this pattern. I didn't plan ahead but made a whole bunch of blocks, and when I got ready to put them together, I had no idea what to do and was completely at a loss. I finally called my friend Taffy for help and she invited me over. I brought my blocks and we spent some time - or rather, Taffy spent some time while I watched - figuring out what would work. Taffy designed the quilt and sent me home to make some more blocks and it finally came together. It was machine quilted by Regina Carter.

I gave the quilt to my cousin Birgitte as a wedding present for her and Rasmus. But, in the summer of 2008, I got it back. They had bought a new and bigger bed and I volunteered to enlarge the quilt so it would fit the new bed. After consulting with friends in Atlanta, I decided that it would make a lot more sense and be a lot more satisfying if I made a new bigger quilt for Birgitte and Rasmus and just kept this one. Time will show how their new quilt turns out! And meanwhile I am enjoying this one.

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Emil's and Emma's Baby Quilts

I made the above quilt for Emil, who is the son of brother Mads and Lotte. I even got a picture of Emil on the quilt.
A couple of years later, when Emil's little sister Emma was born, I made a quilt, below, using the same red, white and blue fabrics. Both quilts are hand quilted and backed by fabric Lotte's mother gave me.

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Blue and Yellow I

I made this quilt for our dear friends Mary and Jerry. The blues are batiks and the yellow some gingham I ran into. Somebody at AIQ cleverly suggested that I add the thin red border which I love. I hand quilted this quilt.

Sunday, May 11, 2003

Alphabet Quilts

At some point in the late 90s somebody brought to our guild the idea of making alphabet - or ABC - quilts. In this type of quilt, every square represents a letter of the alphabet. One can use novelty fabric in which each square includes an images which start with each of the letters. This is what I have always done. Others are much more creative and elaborate about it. The idea caught on like wild fire in our guild, and at first a bunch of us made ABC quilts for a charity project - unfortunately I do not remember where the quilts went. The quilt above is my charity ABC quilt from 1999.
I had so much fun making the first one that I proceeded to make a Danish alphabet quilt for my nephew Jens, seen above with his quilt, for his 4th birthday in 2000. In this quilt I also paper pieced all the letters of the alphabet - including the three letters in the Danish alphabet which are not included in the English alphabet - and placed them in random order around the border. After studying the quilt for a while and figuring out what the idea was, Jens informed me that next time I needed to put each letter of the alphabet next to the square representing that letter.
So, when I made another quilt for Jens' sister Anna in 2003, I did as suggested and the result is seen above.

Thursday, March 27, 2003

Purple Sampler

I made this purple sampler to hang on my office wall when I started a new job in 1998. But when my mother was very ill and hospitalized for an extended period of time in March of 2003, I sent it to her to use as a lap quilt. However, after she recovered she hung it in their beach house where it still is.