It's A Cynch!

This is the fun part of creating a tshirt quilt. It's like a game of Tetris or a big puzzle. I don't know how all of the pieces will come together until I'm working on them.

I completed my first rag quilt! Ok. Two rag quilts.  They look great and I'm pretty happy. It's a gift (as are all of my quilts) for my sister-in-law,  Stephanie. I made the twin of the rag quilt for my mother-in-law, Joan (her mom). The quilts are really warm and soft. I did have to wash them several times to get them to rag correctly.  The other thing I need to work on is designing more digital quilt patterns to use on the blocks. I designed some on Babylock's Palette 10 software like the one on the left quilt square below. I'm not a very artsy person, so I need to figure out how to get more creative.  I also need to work with the software to figure out how to "stitch" the designs together in order to fill the entire square. On top of that,  if I make the squares larger then the 7.5 inch width of my largest hoop for the Unity, an unquilted (is that a word?) area is left.  That bothers the engineer in me because the squares look unfinished. You ca...

There is a minor problem with embroidering a quilt square.  The backside of the square ends up with birds' nests everytime it trims a jump stitch. The only way I found to stop this is to turn off " trim jump stitch" and to bring the bobbin thread up to the top at the beginning. There will still be a little bit of nesting that occurred when it finishes the stitching,  but it's not too bad.

I found a new use for my Babylock Unity. I took a Designs In Machine Embroidery (DIME) class and had my eyes opened to endless possibilities! I've downloaded and created my own designs to use on my quilts. I'm experimenting with a rag quilt. Instead of just sewing an "X" across each square, I'm quilting an embroidery design. So far I'm happy with the results. I'll post the finished product when it's been washed a few times. The material I'm using is I believe from the Robert Kaufman flannel collection.

  I finished another t-shirt quilt for a very special friend, Swapna Kakani!  I have so much respect and admiration for this young lady.  She has gone through a lot in her life and never complains and always has a smile on her face.  I was very honored to make this quilt for her.  I hope every time she uses it, she remembers that she has a friend who is thinking of her and praying for her constantly!  She actually came over and helped work on it.  She had never learned to sew before, so I tried to be a good teacher and give her some really good lessons on building quilts and working with tshirts.   She graduated from the University of Alabama, Birmingham.  So she had all of her old t-shirts that she wanted made into a quilt.  We were going to do a double sided quilt, UAB shirts on one side and her charity work shirts on the other side.  (Here is where my admiration comes in...she has so many things going on in her own life,...

I've been sick and haven't been blogging.  But I am on the mend and wanted to share with you that I finished the baby quilt! I actually finished it back in April. My cousin and his family were thrilled! I was also pretty happy with my first baby tshirt quilt.  The hardest part was figuring out how to use the clothes without taking away the memory of how tiny the baby was when he wore them. I didn't want to cut up the pieces too much. So I ended up using the applique technique. And, oh by the way,  baby socks are really difficult to work with! It takes a little patience to get them sewn on! So here it is! My masterpiece....now to find my sons' baby clothes....

The "quilt as you go" technique is the best thing I was taught since learning how to quilt!  It makes putting together a large quilt more doable.  Basically,  you sew all of the blocks,  quilt each block layer and then piece the layer together. The final quilt ends up with sashing between each block.  So the quilter can have fun with colors.  The navy blue strip is the sashing.  You first zigzag the two blocks together then use the strip to cover up the zigzag connection on the topside and bottom side.   The finished piece is shown below. I usually try to strategize when I sew the blocks together so that I end up with two halves. It makes handling a large quilt easier.