Monday, January 7, 2013

Window Quilt - made from Shirts and Sheets

I recently blogged about the floral window quilt I made ... 
Here's the boys' room window quilt: the non-flowered window quilt; the shirts and sheets window quilt.


I've frequently mentioned sewing with recycled men's dress shirts (see the Dress Shirt Quilt label in the right-hand sidebar) ... 
For this window quilt, I used shirts, combined with recycled bed sheets.


I love the stripes and solids and plaids, the bright colors, the simplicity ...


I'd been wanting to try some fast quilt blocks made from a square with a triangle in just one corner. It's like a "snowball block", with just the one corner triangle. (See my shirts quilt top, which is a two-corner variation of this block, accompanied by a nine-patch.)


I'm pretty sure that some of my inspiration for this look comes from the many versions I've seen of Amanda Jean's "Up, Up and Away" quilt, mentioned by her here and here, as well as in her book. (Since I don't have the book, I'm not sure whether I constructed mine like she did. But the idea is very similar.) I love the look of lots-of-white, with just some little triangles.


I used a variety of different white & off-white sheets for the blocks - and I love how the woven-in textures and the tone-on-tone prints provide variety & consistency at the same time. 


The solids, stripes, plaids & COLORS are just fun.


For the quilting, I did some more loopy free-motion quilting. I like this style. As before, I used a piece of regular batting I had handy, and a piece-of-a-white-sheet for the backing.


And, my boys seem to like it in their room. And, it looks great when the quilt is seen from inside or outside the window.


The quilt works well with the boys' "jeans valance", their curtains, and the jeans quilts on their beds. The colors work for the guys, and, after all, this is made from shirts, which is pretty cool. 


When the sun comes in, it looks pretty neat. Lots of light comes through the quilt, but it's also easy to take down from the window. Like on my other window quilt, I just put a dowel in the casing at the top of the quilt, and rested the dowel on the brackets that were leftover from another window treatment. This way, I can remove and roll up the quilt any time, or take out the dowel and throw the quilt in the wash. 


We don't live in a really cold climate. But I still figure, on cold nights - the more insulation, the better. In the winter especially, a lot of the heat/cold transfer happens at the windows. So, I've decided that this is a fun, decorative way to insulate the windows just a little.


A quilt blog I like to follow has a Monday link-party ~ "Little Quilt Monday" works for a lot of my quilts, since I do make a lot of little quilts - so I'm linking this post to this week's Little Quilt Monday at Elizabeth's Pieceful Life blog.

Update: My blog post tomorrow is a picture tutorial for making these quilt blocks!

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