Throwback Thursday: Moose Quilt for my sister N

Posted on December 18, 2014 by rozsamaria

Here’s the quilt I made for my sister N for her birthday several years ago.

N’s favorite animal is the moose. You may have noticed that if you’ve viewed my posts on the moose ornament, pot holders, and apron I’ve made her. This is the original moose present – you’ll recognize a lot of the fabrics. I spent several years buying up every moose print I could find, and by the time I got around to making her a lap quilt I had more than enough fabric to do it. I’ve still got leftovers!

The design of this quilt is pretty simple. It’s just a layout of 25 squares, five by five. The center moose is from a woodland animals panel I bought specifically for the moose. (It also had a bear, an elk, and a deer. I still had the rest of the panel in my stash last month and it went to my guild’s charity committee with some coordinating green solids – because I wasn’t a fan on those shades. I had thought to myself that maybe I could make something with the panel for charity but I decided I was better off donating it. Everyone has a different aesthetic and I thought maybe other people in my guild could make something awesome, whereas I would just be making “something” because the rest of the panel doesn’t inspire me at all.)

The cream print with the brown on the bottom row is actually coffee beans, but it reminded me of hoof prints so I pretended that’s what it was.

I quilted a very large meander in green thread, meant to resemble an animal’s wandering path.

I hand quilted the outline of the center moose and around the circle in the top and bottom center squares.

The quilt isn’t bound because I hadn’t learned how to bind.

I had completely forgotten what the backing fabric is; luckily, I took pictures of the quilting from the back. I pieced a back using all sorts of woodland fabrics. I think that bottom one with the snow came from a panel kit that I bought and took apart. There’s some trees and leaves, wood grain, and non-moose animals (bears, deer, ducks, etc.).

How awesome does the back of the moose look?

I love how the quilt came out. It’s very versatile, too – because of the color palette and the woodsy/animal theme, it’s not the kind of quilt that screams “GIRL.”

Throwback Thursday: Quilt for my Grandma

Posted on December 11, 2014 by rozsamaria

Hello habibis! It’s Throwback Thursday and I’m bringing you the quilt I made for my grandma a few years ago.

I had bought a panel with grandma sayings – it was really cute – and I wanted to incorporate them into a quilt for her. I decided to use photo printer fabric to include pictures of my grandparents and all their children’s and grandchildren. The quilt is like a snapshot frozen in time from the period when I made it – I had chosen all contemporary pictures, so everything is from approx 2006-2008. I think I made the quilt in 2008 or 2009. (I don’t know why I can’t remember now.) I used fabrics in her favorite colors – yellows and oranges – to round it out.

The photos are offset by little borders to make them wide enough – I think I used 5 inch squares for the rest of the quilt, but at the time I didn’t realize that the foot of my machine wasn’t a quarter inch, so the squares came out between 4 and 4 1/4″ inches. (Maybe I used 4.5″ squares with really scant seams? I’m not sure how I got these results.) The blocks with the photos come out to about 8 1/2″ wide.

Like with my grandpa’s quilt, there is some pattern to the arrangement – all yellow or alternating yellow and orange, etc. (The four center rows alternate yellow and orange, then the row above and the row below that are all orange, then two rows of yellow, then alternating again, but by the time I got to the end rows it’s not necessarily alternating orange and yellow – it’s more of a design because I had a lot more squares left of the yellow prints and the white-based prints with orange and yellow in them than of the orange prints.) The photo blocks and pre-printed squares form the main design: four photo blocks arranged vertically in the center of the quilt and another four arranged vertically on each side of the quilt. As I look at it now, I would have moved two of them up and I think I may have flipped the order of two of my yellow rows. The quilt is symmetrical horizontally but not vertically. I placed the pre-printed squares in columns to the left and right of the center photo blocks and in the four corners of the quilt.

The quilting is simple in the ditch with yellow thread. I didn’t know how to bind so I turned the edges under. The back is a low volume yellow print.

As I mentioned last week, when my grandparents died I took the quilts I’d made them back. The train quilt is at my parents’ house, but I have my grandma’s quilt. My dad hung it on my living room wall for me. (Luckily my roommate J doesn’t mind.) It’s nice and bright and I can see pictures of my family every time. I love it.

Stop by tomorrow to read more about my magnum opus!

Throwback Thursday: Train Quilt for Grandpa

Posted on December 4, 2014 by rozsamaria

Today is the first of my Throwback Thursday posts, all of them featuring quilts I made several years ago and never blogged about. Today I’m showing you a train-themed quilt I made for my grandpa back in approximately 2009.

My grandpa LOVED trains. He used to play train video games, read train books, watch train movies… He and my grandma bought a house near train tracks, where he lived for most of his life. I still take that train to go home sometimes and I think of him and my grandma every time the train passes their house.

For the quilt I bought a bunch of different train fabrics and supplemented them with geometric prints in basic colors.

I started with a large four patch and then I added borders around it.

I think the center squares are approximately 10″ each and the rest of the borders are made of 5″ squares (or 5″ strips for the first border) – but the math of that doesn’t quite add up, does it? It’s been so long I don’t remember.

When the quilt got wide enough I added rows on the top and bottom. All the rows and borders have patterns of some sort with specific colors. The first border is clouds with coordinated blue and white corners. The next border was red and white prints (with the red, yellow, and green on white print at the corners). The next border is green and blue prints, mostly stripes. The next border is grey and black – including the train tracks. Etc.

I ended up making it too big. I’ve never measured it but it’s very long. I finished with a navy blue border.

I didn’t know how to bind so I turned the edges under. I sewed that down and did all the quilting with red thread. The quilting is in the ditch, I guess. I quilted around different borders – but not around everyone, I don’t think.

The back is this red print – which pops up periodically in my other quilts (I must have bought so many yards of it!!) and which you’ll see again in my magnum opus in a couple of days.