Artful Homemade Quilts Have A Way

[HannahBagrich]

I just fell in love with this quilt, and after I get done with the 2 I'm working on, this is it.
*sigh* Too little time, too many quilts!

View attachment 301383
Can't wait to get started on this one. I just drew up a 3x5 card
I may not use the black, gray and whites. I have enough
mustards/yellows, hot pinks, limes, and aquas to do the 5-patch areas on point.​

This quilt is so beautiful. I absolutely love it! It's bright, cheerful and put together so nicely!

It would be so great to make something similar for my little one's playpen. We've got this one: Ingenuity Smart and Simple Playard Review (UPDATED) 2019 But I'm not sure if it is a proper fit.

 

[beautress]

I just fell in love with this quilt, and after I get done with the 2 I'm working on, this is it.
*sigh* Too little time, too many quilts!

View attachment 301383
Can't wait to get started on this one. I just drew up a 3x5 card
I may not use the black, gray and whites. I have enough
mustards/yellows, hot pinks, limes, and aquas to do the 5-patch areas on point.​

This quilt is so beautiful. I absolutely love it! It's bright, cheerful and put together so nicely!

It would be so great to make something similar for my little one's playpen. We've got this one: Ingenuity Smart and Simple Playard Review (UPDATED) 2019 But I'm not sure if it is a proper fit.

Get a 3x5 card and a box in which to put information. Hopefully you have a measuring device or a yardstick and can measure it in inches or centimeters, whichever is your preference. Is your playpen a square meter or yard or other size? How old is the child? Will your 40 hours of work (more or less) Keep up with the child's size for 3 years after it is completed? How large an area do you wish to cover, and will the child be wrapped as swaddling or be on top of a comfy mattress? Do you wish it to lap over and tuck under the mattress or pad on the floor of the playpen, if there is one? Keep in mind your child is a 3-dimensional being and could be a kicker if the playpen is ever used to double as a bed for naps or overnight. Write the measurement of the floor of the mat at the bottom of the playpen. If you are wanting to tuck ends under, add 12" all the way around (or 24" + measurement top and bottom to lap edges of quilt under and still have room for the little 3-D bouncer kid. If the mattress is square, side measurements should also be 24" wider than the mat or mattress cushion at bottom. If the quilt is to be a thin one with a flanellette batt, you may wish to double its size if you have very cold winters, and use all cotton batts, fronts and backs.

If you've ever read a fire marshall's manual, you will understand that polyester and synthetic materials used in any layer of your quilt can be quite lethal upon ignition and dispersion of poisons that are released before the poly molecules become flames, and your baby will die of inhalation if you fill you home with polyresins and a fire breaks out. Not to worry too much, though, because 2% of the population has a serious fire and 98% do not, and the 2% are mainly due to falling asleep while smoking in bed or leaving a burner on in the kitchen "for just a minute" and then forgetting it's on until you smell the curtains going up. *sigh*

Better safe than sorry, I say. When the house is half burnt and there is still a person inside, he is probably dead from polyresin/manmade chemicals in paints, liquid cleaners, and aerosol poisons. If you have kept chemicals in explosion and fireproof containers sealed by precision of metals fit together, you have a better chance of survival of little ones and yourself, and chances are you've skirted your small one outside before things start exploding. Some polyresins are lethal within one minute of ignition; others, the time is a fraction of a minute, and we're speaking in seconds. If you read a fire marshall's manual on burning vegetable matter and burning chemical matter, you will "get it." I asked the fire marshall what is the safest thing you can do about a house fire, and he said there is something you can do. Be sure all your fire alarms have current batteries in them and you know where the fire extinguishers are in every floor of the house, condominium, or apartment, and that the extinguishers are checked out by the fire department every 3 years. They may refer you to a fire service if you ask them nicely. And no, it's not free. But if you smoke, you owe it to your child that in case you fall asleep with a non-extinguished cigarette burning, that is the biggest threat known to a child. Other threats could be old and faulty wiring near a heater, or use of gas in water heaters, stoves, fireplaces, etc.

Another 3x5 card might tell you where you put the fire extinguishers and what years in the future you need to take them to the fire checking service and make sure they still work, because they barely last their promises these days of what's written on the outside, which may not coincide with your purchase date.

The other way to protect your family from a house fire is to stop smoking while the children are still at home. My mother didn't stop smoking, so my baby brother and sister lost their mother when she was 47 years old and they were 11 and 12, respectively. She died of an anurism broughton by chemicals in her cigarettes, not a house fire. Cigarettes can be a curse to a long enough life to see your kids graduate from high school. By the time she cut down her 3 packs a day down to 1 a day, her aneurism had already been diagnosed and burst the day she went swimming in the pool dad had built, and the pressure assisted its burst. She passed 3 days later in a small neighborhood hospital, but would have been a vegetable had she survived back in 1973 when they had no cure except prevention, which she refused due to her 30-year habit.

Just sayin'. If you wish to avoid a plastic container for your 3x5 cards, that will poison you upon ignition in an accidental house fire, invest a little more in a metal one at a business supply store, if they have one, or troll the antique stores till you find a metal one that will do no further damage in such a 2% chance situation for life. The percentage is somewhat lower if both parents neither smoke tobacco nor cannabis (equals in a fire risk) while raising a family.

 

[beautress]

Yellow quilts

 

[beautress]

A few yellow quilts I collected from others online who make quilts and tops...

Oh, my goodness. This quilt followed me to the sewing room, but all I had precut 2.5" were greens, so I went fornot the gold, but the green! lol And while I was sewing gree, I thought how lovely it would be if March and April would come sooner, so I could indulge in the beautiful spring Texas roadside flowers like bluebonnets, paintbrushes, etc., so after I finished piecing the green squares in the center, instead of using a white white, I found this absolutely yummy white background with roadside flowers we see--paintbrushes, bluebonnets, daisies, bluebonnets, and bluebonnets, and bluebonnets... Ok, really there was a balance of all kinds of pretty bloomers, so the print was huge, so I cut huge strips! and by the time I got that done, well, there was another print that dominated with green and paintbrushes, pink lupines, bluebonnets, daisies, and bluebonnets...so by the time I got that piece around, it was more than big enough, but nope, I had already cut 5 pieces of dark green and darker green stripes for a lovely border, then added more regular green after that. It took an evening to put the squares together, and the next morning to do the borders before I went to the doctors for asthma treatment. She also noticed I wasbearing ldls and high cholesterol out the wazoo, and I'm allergic to all commercially available cholesterol-lowering drugs. Don't know why, so if I kick the can, they'll find me sleeping by the sewing machine, fabrics stacked everywhere...5 or 6 months later. I'm pretty shy, and only travel to the quilt store that hosts our guild's charity bees where I try to deliver as many quilts as I make in a month. I noticed they had basted and put batting in November's lot of 10 quilts, but the blue ones delivered early in January were still neatly folded for people to pick up and baste, or take the already-basted ones to quilt. I did 30 quilts in 4 months, and it looks like a dozen at least of that 3 groups were either done or went home with guild members at the last meeting. Sometimes they don't have enough quilters, but there are about 120 members in our guild, so hopefully a few of them will take pity on the little ones and do the quilting since I cannot without severe cramping and issues of advanced age.
The green quilt looks so lovely to me. I hope whoever gets to quilt that one gets a premonition of how beautiful I hope its going to be this year when the bluebonnets are in full blues and to die for. *sigh*

Oh, the center is 8x8 or about sixteen inches square, and mine turned out to be about 9 by 14, or eighteen by 28 inches, and about 1 out of 6 or 7 squares were zoo animals from a green background child's print that was just too cute. Whoever made those animals sure made them happy-looking, which is what children love. And sometimes you let the fabric talk. The only challenge I really had was to make the animals with heads directionally as if you were looking the animal straight on, head at top, feet at the ground. And both flower prints were one-ways, too, meaning they had stems that came from below to rise to the end of the stem that had a flower on top. For some reason, the flowers didn't have to be resewn, except once I started and had the wrong side up, so I only had to rip out half a seam due to sleeping at the wheel while piecing the quilt together.

That yellow quilt with the squares. I just gotta cut some 2.5" yellow squares and put them somewhere and make a little quilt center with them. Not sure what to do around the outside, except I found this terrific yellow fabric with red floralesque butterflies on it that's really a dynamite piece of fabric. I guess I could always piano-key a red border.

Well all I found was this yellow quilt with green 9-patches, but *green piano key outside border!*

Goodness, I already have squares the right size for those 9-patch green squares, yellow bright fabric for outside the squares, and somewhere I have a lot of green 1.5" strips to more than make a border like the one above (we call it piano keys) in quilting.

 

[beautress]

I'm gonna try and find a red piano key border.

This is all I could find, but there's more than red in the piano key outside border, here:

Also rans:
(not quite piano keys)

Well, this chinese coins quilt could have made a piano key border around a small quilt

Well, again, almost:

So much for ever finding an all-red piano key border, although I've made at lest 2 red piano key borders in the last 5 years. lol​

 

[beautress]

Now, I am just searching "quilts with a piano key border, and this is what shows up today:

Beautiful modern quilt with piano key border

A lot of work went into this little gem:

This quilt got a "best machine quilting" award:

Occasionally, if you like music quilts, piano key fabric can be found every couple of years or so:

They look like this when you make them:

I found a similar fabric that went around the... ?green quilt? Well, it's in the stack, No, it was the quilt that had the big black squares and black bars in it. That's the one I found a blue music fabric for and decided it also needed a piano key outside, so what's above is close to what my outside border looks like, except that I put something else outside of that. hmmm, I just finished it this morning, too, and made a red strip quilt top after it was done and a nap. lol

This pineapple quilt is so well bordered... I love it:

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[beautress]

No words, just piano key borders...

 

[beautress]

Oh, Piano Key Borders, forever!

 

[beautress]

What a lovely Christmas quilt...Almost piano keys, but she used squares on the border.

Stacks of chinese coins, and surprise! piano key border between the orange strips:

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[beautress]

I Located and found the Christmas quilt, which she called "Christmas Strings:

and its maker later made this quilt with the piano key border from her leftovers:

And one of the best borders of all is simply squares, but oh, how they sparkle...

These jewels were found here: Super Stash Bowl

 

[beautress]

Her man is a guitarist;

Oh, I gotta make this quilt:

This is the quilt I put the real piano key fabric around. I did not use the on point little squares. Mine came out pretty but wasn't quite the amount of work because of having three yards of rows and rows of black and white piano keys:

 

[beautress]

Speaking of music quilts...

 

[beautress]

Music themed quilts

 

[beautress]

Love the optical illusions in this quilt entitled "Mirror, Mirror"

It's a beautiful idea and looks so easy to do on youtube.

 

[beautress]

I spent all afternoon looking for small projects to help a friend with their Church-supporting fund raising with a crafts sale. Wow, got more than i bargained for! I will try to post some of the cute stuff here if anyone wants to see what bazaars are doing right now, if you have a fundraiser at your area. A lot of the buildings are old and need new roofs, and the population has gone from everyone to senior groups, it seems. Some pics the craft finding on the internet:

State maps are always good sellers. This one is way cute:

I also have a way to transfer small state shapes onto 8" potholders, etc.

I have some small map pictures, too such that when you use a fabric frame around the state, the work is about 8" square, just right for a potholder. I just add 8 more layers, and it's pretty sure to keep your hands from burning when you pick out a hot skillet from the oven.​

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[beautress]

This folded fabric would make a great potholder or resting pad for placing on the table under a hot dish.

 

[beautress]

If the bazaar is in the early fall, this design would be cute as a placemat, tea towel decoration, or as a table topper:

 

[beautress]

fabric frames, zip bags with lace zips, tote bags, place mats with front pouches on front to hold sewing machine supplies,​

She suggests make things people who come to the bazaar would like-- put doll clothes on a made up mini-clothes-line.

 

[beautress]

This one shows "ear bud pouches."

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[beautress]

Sewing Machine Matt:

Other ideas:

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