Joanna's Nautical Quilt

I recently finished this nautical-themed quilt as a custom order for my friend Joanna.

This was a fun design challenge, and a special project to work on.

A couple of months ago, Joanna sent me a message, asking if I could work on a quilt for her family. A dear relative of theirs was cleaning out his closet, and had given them a stack of shirts. Not being able to use the shirts, but not wanting to give them away, Joanna had the inspiration to ask about turning the shirts into a quilt.

A nautical theme was chosen, which is a perfect fit - many of the shirts were nautical prints and colors, and this relative loves all things nautical.

I started out with these stacks of shirts, and a list of nautical quilt-block ideas ...

 After some design work, I sent Joanna this drawing as the plan ...

And then, there was a lot of cutting and measuring and figuring and stitching and quilting!

I may have mentioned before on this blog that my favorite "quilt fabric designers" involve shirt fabrics! I've made quite a few quilts out of men's dress shirts (see the label in my blog sidebar "Dress Shirt Quilts"), and this one was a lot of fun.

Here are a few close-ups, in various stages of assembly ...

Mariner's compasses, and life preservers ...

Lighthouses, of course! Just pieced, before quilting in the details ... 

  

Nautical knot and rowboat  ...

  

Ship's wheel getting some "wood grain" quilting ...

An assortment of blocks in progress ...

Sailboats!

Lake Houses and a sunset ...

Sea gulls, made from a fleece shirt ...

With plenty of shirts (about 2 dozen), I made the borders and backing out of shirt fabric, too!

Here are borders in progress ...

The back includes big shirt pieces, small shirt pieces, and quite a few shirt tags!

Here's the entire quilt back.

I decided to use a quilt-as-you-go assembly method (like I used for this quilt and one of these ones), to give each block its own custom technique. This was helpful, since I had a variety of pieced and appliqué blocks that need a variety of quilting techniques. Each block (or border row) was put together: front, batting, and backing, and it was quilted all by itself before being put together with the other parts of the quilt.

One of the fun things about this quilt is that all of the fabric in it came from that stack of shirts, except for the tiny gray borders between each block and row, and the solid white fabric. 

Even though I don't usually, I decided to take this quilt outside and lay it on a sheet for a whole-quilt photo. That seemed like the best place to get a full view of the quilt.

I know how much my family enjoys having quilts around to keep cozy, and I hope Joanna's family will get just as much enjoyment out of theirs!



One of my favorite quilt blogs, which is full of lots of quilt-y inspiration, has a weekly link party for finished quilt projects. I'll be linking this post to this week's Finish It Up Friday at CrazyMomQuilts, and I'm looking forward to seeing what other quilters have been working on and finishing up this week.

Orange UFO ...

A long time ago, I posted about playing with orange fabric ...

Much of that fabric is still partly-assembled ... Orange sheet fabric, and solid, striped, and plaid shirt fabric.

So, the other day, I used the orange Un-Finished Object to test my "new" sewing machine. I assembled more triangles that were already cut out, and I developed a layout for the pieces I have.

I got a great deal on the sewing machine at my favorite thrift store, and it runs well. Even though I have multiple sewing machines, I like them all for different reasons. And since sometimes I'm not the only one sewing, it makes sense to have a collection of reliable machines!

I only occasionally find myself sewing these days, but I'm always impressed at how much progress can be made in little bits of time.

I'm linking this post to this week's UFO Challenge at Jo's Country Junction. What Jo said in her post makes sense to me - a regular Wednesday UFO post is motivation to get "just a little more" done!

Shirts-and-Jeans Quilt

During the past few months, I've finished several quilts, but I've been short on "blogging time", so, I'll be playing catch-up for a bit, sharing some quilts I've finished lately.

Several weeks ago (see this post), I mentioned the Shirts-and-Jeans quilt that I finished. I've been meaning to add a few more pictures of that quilt.

Lately, I've been blogging from my phone a lot, since blogging from my phone is usually faster. (Snap a pic ... write some words ... press publish -- that works pretty efficiently, and efficiency is key some days!)

In order for my pictures to be "more interesting", I've been trying out the concept of outdoor pictures of quilts.

 

While I've never been one to take my quilts on field trips, or lay them in the grass/snow/tree ... this one kind of worked.

  

 The more natural light, the better, right?

I stuck the quilt to the metal shed with super-strong magnets. Like I said, it kind of worked. :-)
(Full disclosure: There was another quilt that did not fare so well, and did not stay up long enough for a pic. So I don't necessarily recommend this method!) 

Shirts and Jeans. A classic combination.
This one's about twin-size ... 65" x 75".
This quilt is for sale on eBay for a little while. 

Just finished Shirts and Jeans Quilt

This was a fun quilt to finish up this week.

I mentioned this one a couple weeks ago ...

Jeans squares, surrounded by little colorful squares of shirt fabrics. There are 42 jeans squares, and over 800 little colorful squares!

I've made several jeans quilts (see the "Jeans" label in my blog sidebar), but this is the first one I've made that included cotton shirt fabrics. The solids, plaids, stripes, and prints add a lot to the quilt.

This quilt measures 65" x 75", so it's nice and big. It's backed with new fleece, so it's warm and cozy.

For a little while, this quilt is available for sale on eBay.

When Friday comes, I'll be linking this post to Finish It Up Friday at CrazyMomQuilts, and I'll be interested to get some more great inspiration from other quilters' finishes that are linked there.

Two Little Quilts for Two Little Guys



Not long ago, I finished up these two little quilts.

I may have mentioned bits and pieces of these quilts in the past ... 

The one on the left showed up a few weeks ago when I posted about Playing with Orange Fabric.

 The one on the right was in progress a few months ago, and I blogged about it in a post called Another Shirt Quilt Project FMQ-QAYG-style.

These fun little quilts were gifts for my friend Christy's newest little sons.

I mentioned a few months ago (see this post) that my friend Christy would be adopting a little boy from Eastern Europe. As it turns out, God has allowed Christy and her husband to adopt TWO little boys!



So, of course, I wanted to make the little guys quilts to welcome them home.

These quilts are smallish sizes - The square one is 38" x 38", and the other one is a little narrower than that, and a little longer ... The boys are 1 and 3, but small for their ages, so I wanted quilts that would be little, but not babyish. 

Introducing my new favorite combo: Shirts and Sheets! (Perfect for Guy Quilts, if you ask me!)

The squares on this one are all cut from shirts; the beige sashing and binding was a sheet.

Putting together a Quilt-As-You-Go quilt was easier than I expected. (See more on "quilt-as-you-go" here and here and here.)

For one thing, quilting a 10½" square is SO much easier than quilting an 80" x 80" square! Because of this, I've been enjoying "the quilting" part of quilt-making a lot more lately.

For another thing, the method in this video works great for putting the pieces together.

And the orange fabric was a sheet (and so was the green on the binding & back of the orange quilt) , while the remaining triangles were all shirt fabrics.

  

I love the bright, happy look of the shirt-plaids & solids!

  

I though how fun it would be to take pictures of these quilts outside, on the clothesline.

It was windier than I thought it would be, so, not surprisingly, I ended up with a lot of this ...

... and this ... which made me laugh! I did a lot of waiting around for the wind to settle, so I could snap pics really quick before the wind picked back up!

The quilting details for the quilt-as-you-go squares were in this post.

For the triangles quilt, I decided to go with a spiral design, because I figured spirals would contrast nicely with the angular lines of the patchwork.

If you look closely at the middle spiral in the picture below, you'll see the "spiral" that's probably my favorite. Even though most of my spirals were tolerably round, and some of them were pretty near perfect, THIS one ... wasn't! I thought about taking it out and redoing ... But more and more, I realize that I'm quilting better and better. AND, more and more, I'm realizing that some things don't require stressed-out perfection. It's O.K.; it's unique. And it was made by a human, and not a robot. :-)

Speaking of favorites, I LOVE this puzzle-quilting on this block in the quilt-as-you-go quilt. Like I mentioned in other posts about this, the puzzle-quilting inspiration came from here.

Probably my very favorite block in the quilt-as-you-go quilt was this rocking-horse one, the last one I finished. Traced this little rocking-horse from a printable coloring page (I think it was this one) and added some details to make it work as a quilting design. Because the little guy getting this quilt happens to have a thing for rocking horses.

I finished off the little quilts with the boys' names ... stitching them in like the lettering I did at the end of this post and the end of this post.

Many congratulations to Christy and her family on the newest additions to their wonderful family!

Playing with Orange Fabric

Every now and then, I find great deals on quilt fabric in unusual places ... 

My kids are amused that sometimes, at the thrift store, when looking at clothing and linens, I don't see shirts and sheets; I see "FABRIC"!

I've mentioned in the past (in one of my all-time-favorite posts) that my "favorite fabric designers" aren't the usual ... and I've made some fun things out of shirts and sheets ... also known as "reclaimed textiles". (For more posts on the subject, see my sidebar labels for Dress Shirt Quilts and Recycled Crafts.)

The bright orange fabric in this post was a 100% cotton sheet, and all the colored fabrics are cut from 100% cotton dress-shirts. 

The nine-patches are still in a stack, awaiting whatever's next.

The triangles have become a little quilt, which I'll be blogging about sometime later on ...

I don't usually work with this much orange -- but so far, I'm liking this orange-plus-solids-and-plaids combo.