little men

(From top left, clock-wise) Hippy Man in a tie-dye shirt, Metronatural Man in a graphic shirt, Enviro Man all in green and Messy Man in work clothes.

I made Little Men for the baby boy quilt I am completing. The quilt is a design-as-I-go project and I wanted something simple for the four corners as the rest of the quilt is visually busy.

Each Little Man is made with 22 pieces! I had to count them to believe it.

The design is modified from a magazine photo of a folksy quilt. The historic-style quilt top was laden with little men, little women, a barn, some roosters and sheaths of wheat.

I like the idea of the baby boy one day realizing that his quilt has little men on it. And when that happens, he will be a little man himself!

chinese coins

Batik Baby, 2007, 42" x 26"
GIFTED TO MIA AGUILAR

This is Quilt No. 3 for me. A sampler really, as it isn’t very big. The fabrics are from Maurine Noble’s bags of scraps. The inspiration was a set of pre-made squares I found in the collection of castaways—mauve triangles with coral heart-design batik triangles. I added some sashings of hand-dyed fabrics and a wrap-around border of random-width Chinese Coins to finish the quilt top.

I can’t find the origin of the name, Chinese Coins, anywhere. Instead I have found that there are other quilt patterns with similar names, such as Roman Coins and African Coins.

The quilt was machine-stitched “in the ditch” to make the triangles and Chinese Coins puff up. It was the first time I used Dorrit’s Pfaff with a running foot to stitch a quilt together with the batting.

Baby Aquilar is the recipient of this stroller-sized quilt. Her mother, Laura, worked at Belyea before getting pregnant, selling her condo and moving to Arizona. With only two week’s notice before her departure, the baby-to-be received an existing quilt instead of a new one made specially for her.

the careless quilter

The idea of careless quilting is to “design as you go.” No pattern, no plan. It turns out that it is not as easy as it sounds.

In my piles, I had some Kaffe Fassett fabrics that intrigued me. Then I found some colorful bits that looked good with them and starting stitching pieces together. Pretty soon, everything was out of control.

I realized that I wasn’t going to be happy if I kept proceeding helter skelter. So I ripped my seams apart, gave some thought to what I wanted to accomplish and proceeded again.

You can see in the picture above that I made some notes to myself with a sketch. So far I have pieced together a 16-inch square. It will be the jewel-like center of a baby boy quilt.

I intend to make four more 16-inch squares that will become the corners. Then I will fill in the rest of the quilt top with Chinese Coins—strips of different fabrics in a random pattern.

Although I now have a concept, there are many decisions left—such as working out the fabric and color combination of the final parts. It is this type of challenge that confirms to me that quilt making is truly a creative activity.

baby ob’bayi’s quilt

Indigo Baby, 2008, 42" square
GIFTED TO CHLOE OB’BAYI

In Africa, clothes dyed with indigo are a symbol of wealth. In Japan, indigo is the color of summer and is used to dye cotton cloth for lightweight kimonos known as yukatas.

In making a baby quilt for Heidi Ob’bayi, I chose a selection of indigo fabrics from around the world. The Japanese fabric honors the two years Heidi spent in Japan with the JET Program while the elephant fabric represents Kevin’s Kenyan heritage.

Today I gave Heidi her quilt at a lovely baby shower. Almost 50 guests attended the catered event at the PEMCO Home Office where the pile of presents was remarkable!

The quilt is hand-stitched vertically “in the ditch” with a little extra stitching around the elephants. The indigo blue and white fabrics are framed with a mustard and navy batik used for the binding.

marbled fabrics

At The Beach, 2008, 37" x 13"

Through Piece Makers I took home a thick stack of marbled fabrics. Most of the pieces are a foot square and while many have matching dye colors, no two are alike.

Maurine Noble is the person who marbled the fabrics. When I asked her how many months it took her to dye them all, she said “One afternoon.”

The fabrics are truly inspirational. I used some of them in a table topper for an Art Chix project entitled “At the Beach.” I liked how the swirls in the marbled patterns reminded me of waves in the ocean. I made the edge of the runner wavy and cut the binding on the bias so it would stretch around the curved edges.