It’s been a long, long, time….. Between the holidays and family illness, I have neglected updating this page for far too long. I apologize! I have Brigida’s quilt posted now, although I am still finalizing details, like the “back/forward” navigation tools at the bottom of the detail pages. I mentioned before that this is a lap quilt for an adult, so keep that in mind as you pore through details with images of skulls and sexy senoritas!

I finally have Brigida’s quilt top completely assembled and am attaching it to the backing. It is fully personalized and has some version of her name or initials in every 9″ block.

This one has a layer of flannel between the quilt top and the backing for extra warmth and heft, and it does add noticeable weight. I think it would be a bit much for an infant, but feels very satisfying for an adult. I have started tacking the corners and will add the border today. So it won’t be long before I can show you the completed quilt in detail, with the sexy senoritas backing fabric and everything. Woo hoo!

And just between you and me, I’m already looking ahead to the next quilt, which is to be something very different from anything I’ve done to date– with much more muted colors and not at all exuberant like the baby quilts OR Ms. Brigida’s sexy senoritas and skulls. You might even go so far as to call it masculine and foresty. Oh, I do love all the things color can do.

The friend for whom I am making the latest lap quilt recommended a fabric store in Raleigh that I hadn’t known about, and wow! do I like it. It’s Sew Unique Fabrics, just off Strickland Road. They have a beautiful selection of batiks, so of course I had to buy some new bits of fabric, even though I don’t have a quilt in which to use them at the moment.

I’ve also been busy on the Completely Different quilt, of course. I finished the spiderweb, though I’m not satisfied with the spider yet and may change it later. And, of course, I need to embroider all the seams.

I’ve also finished the names and initials in all the squares; a few are shown here.

So that’s a much-condensed version of what I’ve been up to lately. Now that I have all the appliques, beads, and personalization done on the squares, the seam embroidery will be fairly fast.

Wow! As usual, I got completely engrossed in actually working on the latest quilt and forgot to post about it– I’m bad that way. I do have all the squares assembled. This photo does NOT show them in any particular order; they will certainly not be sewn together in this same order, but this is a simple way to show them all at once for the overall color effect.

This really IS different from the typical baby quilts I’ve been doing, with much darker colors, as well as the skulls and senoritas. I’ll try to post pictures soon of particular squares with beading and personalization.

My next commission, as noted before, is a lap quilt for an adult. She’s quirky, and loves Day of the Dead artwork– traditional Mexican art of all sorts, really; as well as skulls and skeletons, spiders and insects….. sort of a cheerful goth. She wants mainly deep jewel toned colors. This is a good time of year to be looking for fabrics with skulls and skeletons, so I have been shopping. First we found this Sexy Senoritas fabric for the backing.

Then at the store today I found this fabric, which seems to go very nicely with the senoritas.

Next, I found these fabrics featuring skulls:

I’m still not sure how well these will work, since they are very crisp images, compared to the very nuanced shades of the other fabrics, which are mostly batiks. Here is a more complete collection of the fabrics I’ll probably use:

I won’t really know how the fabrics will work together until I start trying to assemble squares. I’ll let you know how it goes!

I’ve been working on the Bluegrass quilt. The squares are all assembled, and these four squares are embroidered. This quilt is available for purchase, and if you’re interested in buying it, I can personalize the squares with your name or initials.

I also have a commission for a lap quilt for an adult friend that I’ll be starting next, and I’m very excited about it. It’ll be darker colors, deep jewel tones, with a lot of blue. I expect to hit the fabric shop on Tuesday, after reviewing the fabrics I already have in stock. I will post pictures of that too, of course.

No pictures this time, but I’ve been working on navigation on the site. On the gallery pages I’ve added “Previous” and “Next” at the bottom of each page so that you don’t have to go back to the “Guide to” page to select the next square. I know I found that very irritating, and this is a lot smoother. And there’s also now a “Home” link that brings you back to this page in case you get lonesome! I hope you like the additions.

I got Callie’s quilt posted in the gallery, as you can see in the menu at the right. The “Guide” page has thumbnails of each square; if you click on them you will get a close up view of the square.

I thought I’d also note a couple of things I particularly enjoyed while working on this quilt. The quilt is a gift from a grandfather, and the family has Arabic roots. We decided to put the word for “Grandfather” in Arabic on the quilt. I was inspired by the Persian paintings and calligraphy in my books to use gold for the lettering– well, not real gold, of course. I traced the letters onto the fabric, outlined them with a black chain stitch, and filled them with a “metallic” gold colored thread, using a couching stitch. This should hold up well to laundering, as will be required for an infant, and I hope it still looks good when the recipient is an old lady using it for a lap quilt. In real life, this is about 3″ long, and about 1.5″ from top to bottom.

I came up with a couple of new combinations of stitches recently, too. You can see how that would be a source of excitement for me!

I think the one above is beautiful, but it requires a lot of attention. I can’t work it if I plan to carry on an intelligent conversation and still expect the stitches to come out right.

I was relieved to come up with this combination– it’s much simpler to work than the first one. It may not be  as pretty, either, but you can’t have everything.

I’ve enjoyed making this quilt. I’ll be taking a short break to straighten up my house a bit and do some other things I’ve been neglecting, but I’ll be back working on the Bluegrass quilt, and posting about it, soon .

I finished Callie’s quilt on Thursday, and washed and photographed it on Friday. There are several reasons I always wash quilts  before I deliver them. I know that many people are allergic to cats, for one thing. For another, in the process of creation, I often mark on the fabric with a pencil and need to remove those markings. Finally, people are often nervous about the durability of the quilts when they see all the stitching, ribbons and lace. If I can say “I’ve already put it through the washer and dryer!” I think that’s pretty reassuring as to durability.

I’ll be delivering this quilt this afternoon, and will finish the webpages with all the close-up details after that, so you can see the stitches and some really neat buttons I found.

I have Callie’s quilt top finished, and tonight I placed it on the backing to pin it for tacking at the corners of the squares. Sam is being helpful, as usual. Once I got the deck cleared, however, I got a shot of the whole top, laid out on the backing fabric. There will be a dark green border, a half-inch wide, around the edges.