Tag Archives: modern quilt

Modern Wall Quilt

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Isn’t that a boring title for a post? I don’t know what to call this quilt. Maybe after you look at the photos and read the post you’ll come up with a clever name for it.

Love this quilt book!

I bought a book for making baby quilts a couple of years ago. There are a few quilts in it that I thought would be very fun to make. There are ten projects, each one by a different designer. C&T Pubs just happens to have the book on sale right now. Make Baby Quilts includes designs by Camille Roskelley, Allison Harris, and Latifah Saafir – among others.

The Sweet as Pi pattern really drew me in though. Sure, it would be wonderful as a floor mat for a baby. Designed by Malka Dubrawsky, it is a strong graphic pattern and the colors could be changed as needed. But I decided to make it as a wall quilt.

Cutting the strips was easy. Choosing the colors – not so easy! I knew I wanted the colors to be bold and to have a strong presence in the quilt I had just made for our bed. After some back and forth with a stack of solids, these are the fabrics I selected. Assembling the wedges was a breeze. This all happened in early fall. With the holidays and all those silly viruses we all had, it was shelved until recently.

One wedge of the circle

Ignore the wrinkled appearance of this wedge! I was taking pictures to communicate my project to my son in Brooklyn NY. There are instructions for creating the template to cut the strip pieced wedges but I wasn’t getting it. Thank you FaceTime! Kyle was able to take a look and tell me what I needed to know!

Too long!

Somehow I made the template slightly longer than it should be. My sweet husband was able to trim it just a smidge and it was perfect.

Thread decisions

Once it was put together and basted, it was time to select threads. I normally quilt with a neutral thread and if this was to be a floor mat for a baby, that is what I would have done. However using gray or off white just didn’t cut it for these colors. Each stripe was quilted with a matching thread. I quilted a spiral in the yellow section (center). Then I switched to straight line quilting for the other stripes. No marking was done. It seemed if this was going to be on the wall, above the bed, no one would be face to face with it. (Unless the viewer chose to stand on the bed to get a closer look – haha). Viewing from a fair distance, the placement of the quilting lines wasn’t a huge deal. I basically set the width by using the outermost part of the walking foot as my guide.

It is done!!

Total honesty here – all the while I was working on this quilt, I never once considered the how heck it would be hung on the wall. It is quite large (approx 40″ across) and with a hanging sleeve on the back, it wouldn’t have laid flat on the wall. I was at a loss for a while. Then I thought about making some sort of circular frame with wire. I had florist wire but it was fairly light weight. So I measured out four (very long) lengths and twisted them into one piece to give it more strength. Then I pinned it around the circumference of the quilt. I wish I had taken pictures of this but I totally forgot. I sewed the wire to the back – butting it up as close as possible to the binding, being careful not to go all the way through to the front of the quilt. This kept the quilt flat and held it’s shape perfectly.

Hanging it was a bit of a chore. Ray was standing on the bed with level, screws and screw gun. He had to put screws all the way around because I really wanted it flat on the wall. Success!

I love it! The wall hanging contains many of the colors of the rather bohemian quilt I made for the bed so it just works.

I love looking at the quilt and the wall hanging together. Makes me happy!

It was my goal to finish this wall quilt in January and it is down! I checked it off the list of unfinished projects which is always a good feeling before moving on to the next thing! Now that you have seen it, what do I call it? Many of you are so clever at thinking of names for your finished quilts. This is not my strength. Help a girl out?

Linking to my favorites – check them out at the top of the page, under link ups!

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Sophisticated

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At the beginning of this year I set a goal to make three birthday quilts for three special women.  You can read about the first two of these quilts here.  Yesterday I finished the third of the birthday quilts!!  Yay! I will ship it out today in honor of her birthday, which is today!  Think it will make it from California to Chicago in time for her to open it tonight??  At least I am getting it in the mail – it will have to arrive a few days after the day.  I am sure she won’t mind. I really love this quilt. I had pinned this design on Pinterest a long while back and was so happy to have an occasion to make it.  I used the pattern called Sedimentary created by Debbie Grifka at Esch House Quilts. Before I got started I check with my son, partner of the birthday girl, Marisa.  I knew I wanted to use black, gray and white as the basis but wanted him to select the accent color.  He chose cobalt blue, which I thought was a great choice.  Nice bold contrast but not too bright. This is a really easy quilt to make.  Cutting pieces consisted of lots of strips in three different widths.  The pattern directions are crystal clear and easy to follow.  Once the strips are sewn together it is a matter of laying them out and moving them around until the layout is pleasing.  I think if I ever make it again, I would reduce the widths of the strips overall and just create more of them. The strip widths are a bit “chunky” looking and narrowing the width would help that.  Overall though, I am so happy with it and hope that Marisa loves it!! marisa quilt 6   It was a lot of fun to choose all of the different black and white and gray fabrics.  Some I had in my stash and others I purchased for the quilt.  I used two text prints that I thought were perfect for Marisa.  One was all about stories (fitting as she is absolutely a bibliophile) and the other is written in French (Marisa is multi-lingual and speaks French among other languages). I had not used text prints before and they look great. It is fun to personalize the quilt with  just the right text prints. marisa quilt 3   The quilting was easier than it has been.  I suppose that it truly is all about practicing and it seems that each time gets a bit more comfortable and looks better over all.  I used YLI thread in a varigated gray to quilt a random pattern of swirls. The pattern contrasts nicely with the linear direction of the pattern. The thread was heavier and showed off the quilting better. (Although on the swirls that were a bit herky jerky they showed up more than I wanted!!) The only real problem was when I was quilting on the darker black strips, it was hard to see where I was coming from and going to. The back – I love the back.  Sometimes I get more excited about the back of a quilt than the front.  I decided to make four modern blocks with leftover strips and insert them in a column.  It looks great. marisa quilt 7   It is bound with a tiny print of blue and black, setting off both the front and back nicely. marisa quilt 8 marisa quilt 9 Here is my favorite tale about this quilt.  When I had the quilt lying on the floor and I was squaring it off and trimming the excess before binding it, my 13 year old daughter came in the room and took a look at it.  She said, “Mom, this is so pretty.  It is sophisticated.  Just like Marisa.” I loved Julia’s  interpretation and that is how the name of the quilt came to be. Sophisticated. marisa quilt 10   Happy Birthday Marisa!!   Linking up with Freemotion by the River, Fabric Tuesday and Sew Cute Tuesday and Show and Tell Tuesday.  Also at the lovely Lorna’s, Let’s Bee Social and, finally with Freshly Pieced’s  WIP Wednesday.