Blog tags

I want to make the blog more reader-friendly, and I realized that tags are a good way to do this.  I’ve gone through all of my posts and added tags based on various themes. I’ll tag this post with all of them so you can more easily find anything you’re interested in, and my goal is to be more conscientious about tagging in the future.

In the course of doing all my tags, I realized that I posted twice about the Storm at Sea runner I made my parents, once in 2011 and again last December during my Advent posts.  Perhaps if I’d had a better tagging system I would have remembered that I’d done it before!  It was fun to go back and look at the old posts – I’d forgotten what some of the blocks were called and I had to read the posts to see which quilt I was writing about.  Most of my pre-blog quilts are on here, although I know of at least four that aren’t.  Perhaps those will be fodder for Advent 2014!

The tags fall into several categories: block type, type of item if it’s not a quilt, language if I was quilting in something other than English, etc.   The blocks I have thus far are as follows:

Drunkard’s Path – Storm at Sea – Hunter’s Star – Lone Star – hexagons – pinwheels – Steps to the Altar – Rail Fence -Windowpane – Log Cabin – “Elegance” fan block – Korean patchwork – Amish Square – Bow Tie block

If you happen to notice that I have the wrong name for a block or if there’s another name for it, please let me know!  In one case – the wedding quilt I made for my friend N last year – I’m not sure if there is a name for this kind of quilt.  (https://habibihomemade.wordpress.com/2013/07/16/wedding-quilt-for-n-and-a-part-i/)  If there is a name, please share it with me.

I made a tag for doll quilts, since I make so many of them, and if I used a particular block I tagged that as well.  I may have missed some, so leave a comment if you notice that a block went untagged.

Tags for non-quilts include, in no particular order: pot holders; kitchen/household; holiday; decor; pillows; napkins; clothing; ornaments; aprons.

I’d forgotten how many pillows I’d made, for example.  Kitchen/household covers pot holders, napkins, and aprons; aprons fall under clothing, too.  Decor includes pillows, runners, and wall hangings, but runners and wall hangings don’t have separate tags.  Holiday includes ornaments and stockings, the latter of which also don’t have a separate tag.  If you think it would be helpful for me to make a runners tag or a wall hangings tag or a stockings tag, let me know.  If you see anything I haven’t tagged that you think I should – a quilting design or a specific stitch or whatever – just leave me a comment.

Hopefully this way my blog will be much easier to navigate.  I like to read other quilters’ blogs and I’ve learned not just from what other people are making but from how they’re blogging about it.  Tagging struck me as a relatively easy way to be more accessible.  This is for you, so feel free to give me your input.  If you want a “wedding” tag or a “birthday” tag or some other category that you think would be useful, I want to know about it.

Enjoy!

my second quilt ever

I periodically read quilting novels by Jennifer Chiaverini (the Elm Creek Quilts series), which are a relatively quick read, and I find that reading about other people quilting keeps me in quilting mode.  Sometimes I learn things to (mostly, I learn that I do not possess the skills of most quilters and/or that I am doing things wrong).  In one of the books I read over the summer, she wrote that women used to make twelve quilts by the time they were married, and the thirteenth quilt would be a culmination of all of those skills.  I think I will have made thirteen-ish quilts by the end of this year, although I’m not in possession of most of them.  I thought I might do a quilt retrospective, of sorts, showing some of the quilts I’ve made as gifts for people.  I’ve already posted about my first-ever quilt, for my friend F.  My second quilt was for my friends J and N, who got married about six months after I finished the first quilt.  I made a log cabin quilt, because the pattern seemed relatively simple.  I used blues and reds/pinks.  Like all of my quilts, it looks very busy.  I wish I could provide more details about things like sizing – I think I used two-inch strips, but it’s been over four years and I don’t remember anymore.

I didn’t know, for example, that the centers of log cabin squares should always be red to represent the warm fire burning in the home.

Here’s the best shot I have of the full quilt.

I counted to double check, and the quilt is four rows by six rows of log cabin patches with one vertical strip and two horizontal strips in between.   There’s an outer border of dark blue.  I can’t remember what color the back is anymore.  I think it’s a solid pale yellow.

I’m not even sure how I quilted it any more.  The pictures I have don’t show enough detail.  I *think* I (hand?) quilted the center squares.  If I remember correctly, I was rather rushing to finish it before the wedding.   I thought it came out nicely, especially for my sophomore effort (as if I ever make anything that doesn’t have mistakes in it).  The colors and the pattern seemed to fit them.