Anatomy of a Shirt / Shirt Seas

I’ve been saving old shirts to make into a quilt. The first stage is unpick or “fillet” them into their constituent pieces. I was having a rummage in the bag the other day and I thought what a shame it is to cut all the parts into regimented rectangular pieces.What about just using the parts of the shirts as they are? How about starting with a central panel of upper back pieces, as above? And then I thought that they looked like waves on the sea, so I could spread them around and make a very rough sea with maybe a boat of two being tossed around. I think I need to play with idea some more.

People Planning

I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time. How can I preserve MLD’s cartoony drawings that she was always scribbling on bits of paper. I had at least scanned a few so they wouldn’t disappear into recycle heaven.

By chance one found itself snuggled up against an old brown and white gingham curtain and I decided what I would do. I would stitch the characters in brown embroidery thread onto calico and make a quilt of squares alternating between the calico people and the gingham squares.

So far Iihave stitched the people but I need to decide whether to surround the calico squares with dark bown sashing, or not. I can’t quite make my mind up.

Where do babies come from?

or what I really mean is where do all these Summer 2009 babies come from? Everyone that MLD (My Little Darling)knows seems to be having one.     I made the mistake of making a pinky quilt for a baby girl and so in the interest of gender equality I had to make this red green and black one for a boy.

Just Hanging Around

Offcuts and offshoots

27 cm x 20 cm  overstitched interwoven scraps of hand-dyed cotton

After Two Nights in Labour

A quilt is born

In Gestation

How time flies. The first of my daughter’s old school friends has just given birth to a little girl named FREYA DAISY MAY, so it was decided to make a not-too babyish quilt that demonstrated traces of her name.

The lime green is for freshness – the “Fr” at the beginning of Freya and the rather grown-up white daisies on a black ground are of course for Daisy. I think the binding will be daisies also. Now what about the back? Should it be all one fabric or maybe I will cut large deep random stripes of all fabrics.

Auditions over, roles cast and the fabric performs

A while ago I was auditioning fabric for a quilt destined for my own bed this time. So here is the result.
The fabrics in the quilt are:

some samples of shibori indigo dyeing that I did several years ago
an already tie-dyed sheet from a jumble sale
sections of a curtain from another jumble sale
one or two small remnants from a friend
some old pieces of sheet dyed by me in yellow & blue

The whole thing was backed with a dark blue piece of sheeting and now I have started a sort of sashiko type quilting. In other words I am using a very visible cotton thread. On the reverse side this often shows up in high contrast. Particularly noticeable are the flowers, fish and “compass”. I still have quite a lot of the quilting to go but I am not going to reush it. When the spirit moves I will pick it up and do a little. I might even take it on holiday with me at the end of September at least I won’t be cold.

It’s cold oop north …

… or so I have been told. TLM (The Loom Monkey) saw the quilt I had made for MLD (My Little Darling) and proceeded to tell me why he needed a quilt more than her. Having put the finishing touches to MLD’s red, black and white quilt while we were on holiday in Cornwall I had to immediately start work on TLM’s so that he can take it back to Durham with him for year 2.

I tried to use fabric I had already so the plain fabrics were from my stash and I spent real money on the patterned purple for the sashing and borders. I didn’t quilt it much because I quite like the puffy look. I quilted through the middle of each sashing strip and in the ditch between each coloured panel.

The quilt is not as big as MLD’s which would easily do for a double bed but having run out of room in the car when we brought TLM home I think restraining the size of it is a good idea. What it lacks in size it makes up for in brightness.