Final NYC post...for now

 The quilt is done. The first one I have made since the 70's when all quilting was done by hand. My previous post shows my start and how I just wanted to jump in and make these fun blocks, but then...

 I had no idea how I was going to put them together. Originally I thought that using the yellow taxis on black fabric would make great sashing but after some discussion with a quilter friend and others I settled on a more subtle arrangement with gray. I did include one little taxi on the front. Can you find it?

 Mimic-ing streets, I quilted two lines of gray quilting and a yellow line down the centers. I'm not happy with the rippling, but considering my lack of foresight the thing is not (IMHO) horrible.

Here is the back where I included more of the rushing taxis and the I (heart) NY logo.

My favorite thing is the binding.  I didn't have enough of any one fabric so I pieced a bunch into narrow strips and then cut them on the diagonal to create bias. 

 But I still had some bits and pieces left so...

A pillow pair (front)

                                                        Back of smaller pillow

                                        Closeup of snap detail on back of larger pillow
                                                 These are now in my Etsy shop

Now I am getting really busy sewing up all kinds of things for a little craft fair in August.  This stair rail is right outside my sewing room and this is how it looked in January.
I have now started using the blue bag myself but the enormous dot bag is still there buried under some of the many others I have made.

Sometimes I am asked what I make when people hear that I sew.  Pretty much anything. I have a low boredom threshold.

Still hanging out in NYC

The fabric has me hooked and I have been messing around with using up more of the New York fabric  I showed you in the last post.  It is being made into a mini-quilt or wall hanging and I thought I would be done by now.

Way back I used to quilt all the time by hand.  Now quilting has been transformed for the machine age and I still can't get it done by a deadline.

 This great little magnetic guide is really helping me maintain the 1/4" seam.

The quilt is using the old 9 patch block and each one is totally random because I am too anxious to get down to sewing and lack the patience for meticulous planning or following directions!

                              Each block will be machine quilted with different patterns

 All the others are done with straight lines EXCEPT this one. It is my homage to the Guggenheim.

Here you can see the stitching from the wrong side.  I just used fusible batting and they will be attached later and quilted to a backing along the sashing lines.

To be continued...

Sewing with the Ancestors

For the last few months I have been spending a lot of time with musty old photos and ancestry websites creating family trees and memories. 

TIP: To help out all future generations put names on your photos, both digital and print. I have piles of unidentified people and at my advanced age I have no elder around to give me any hint about them. I didn't even know the pictures existed until quite recently. 

 This is a quilt made by my great-grandmother, probably around 1900. It was said that she purchased the fabric especially for the quilt instead of using the usual fabric scraps and old clothing that was a common source at the time. This was her masterpiece.
Although I would have to say that the color choices would never have been mine, it is quite effective.

This is my great-grandmother on my mother's side of the family. They seemed to be the quilters in my ancestry although since I didn't know my Dad's side so well, they too were probably wielding the needle, too. It was pretty much expected that girls would sew. My grandmother on my Dad's side is the source of my favorite heirloom. See it in this previous post.

Great- Granny must have made a small error in calculation when buying her fabric because there are a few pieces that are not the same shade of green. I wonder if she agonized over it or subscribed to the Amish theory that only God could create perfection and so they always left something amiss. She was German-Catholic so I suspect her attitude was a bit stricter. But, I never knew her and it is only approaching my seventh decade that I have become curious about these people that preceded me.

Years ago I was really into quilting when I did it all by hand like this quilt. However, I never completed a full size quilt. ADHD, I suspect.

My hand quilting was never the quality of this. My grandmother could stitch with the best. Her mother must have taught her. Her quilts were all kit quilts, however and I don't have a single one of them. They were used and washed and worn out and not kept as well as this one.

Grandma Lizzie

This quilt has never been washed as far as I know. It has a few dark spots on it, but in great shape for being over 100 years old. In all of the books on quilting and patterns I have seen over the years I have never encountered this same motif. I guess you would call it a pineapple. I tried to duplicate it once and it was a complete failure.



Has anyone ever seen this design  before? Please comment and let me know.

Just for fun, I am adding a few of these great old photos I found. These are well-dressed unidentified ladies.

Project Run-Away

I have spent many hours the past week putting together a one-of-a-kind quilted jacket for my 2 year-old grand-daughter.  It was a good mind challenge for me since the pattern was not intended to be lined and my "model" was not available for fittings. I was pretty much winging it.

 

Simplicity 2292 was my pattern choice. First, because it has raglan sleeves which would make sewing AND fitting easier. Second, because it had other patterns for pants and a jumper and if I have to pay so much for a pattern it better have options. Yes, there is a hat included BUT really??

The girl version is strange. I might have fallen for it if it was only from the illustration. I guess they were going for a cupcake theme. I did make my own interpretation that is more like the boy's.



 

 The Cloud 9 organic fabric from Joann was my inspiration. The lollipop flower, gray chevron and the birds in the branches are from the collection. The other coordinating fabrics are from my stash. I just cut a pile of 2" wide strips and started piecing them together in roughly the shape of the pattern pieces.

 

I cut a light batting to the pattern size and used it to cut into the patchwork.

Utilizing some of the fancy decorative stitches on my new Janome machine, I went to town on the patchwork surface with white, greeen and hot pink thread. This was the fun part and went very fast.

 

I put all the pieces together at the raglan seams first. The pattern called for sewing up the sleeve seams first, but I could see this would be really hard when doing a lining. Essentially I made the lining in the same way then sewed up the underarm/ side seams in outer layer  and lining. But not yet.

                                     FIRST I added the zipper.

 



 This is the lining. Sorry. I could not resist this polka-dot fleece. I have the zipper pinned into a sandwich between the 2 layers.
Here it is with the zipper that I got from Zipperstop on Etsy. They have actually been a shop in NYC since 1941 and can get you just about ANYTHING. I find the local supply in both type and color to be severely limited.

As usual, because I tend to make this stuff up as I go along Ihad to fudge a bit. I wanted to put my grand-daughter's name on the jacket with the cool ability my new machine has to do text (albeit, only very small) but I had progressed too far to do it directly. Well, I tried but messed up. So I spelled it out on another piece of fabric and hand stitched it on. Close up I see a problem with that lower right corner!

Considered a nice hanging loop in the inside back, but again I thought of it too late.

Now it is done EXCEPT for the final sleeve cuff. Angela and her older brother are coming and I can't wait to put it on her and have her pose adorably. Riiiiight. The day was great for an outdoor photo shoot but a bit on the warm side for a fuzzily lined quilted jacket. About 5 minutes would have done it,  however she is a two-year-old with a mind of her own as do all children. If I force her into it the pictures would be ugly anyway. Her dad is going to try for one IF she ever thinks it worthy to put her little body into it!!

 
This is as close as I could get to having her AND the jacket within camera range. Got it onto her long enough to see that it fits, however it wasn't long enough to even get the camera turned on. Having a lot of leftover giant pink polka-dot fleece, there is also a pair of pull-on pants, a tasseled hat and a stuffed bunny her six year-old brother requested. He amused himself much of the day playing with fabric scraps turning them into blindfolds, tails, etc.
He even draped a piece of fabric around Angela into a sort of a garment. Maybe he has a future on Project Runway?

The hat stayed on just long enough for this snap.

Creativity abounds.