mug mats: the perfect quick quilt

Mug mats are useful. Of course. This is how to market them. But bottom line: Mug mats are small quilts, a joy for the quilter. In the old days, when I made quilts, I loved designing a block, cutting it, sewing it, and then I had to force myself to finish a big quilt of block after block. The colors, shapes and combinations of patterns are what interested me then, and still do.

The perfect answer to this craving to design something new: mug mats. Make one, it's done. Now on to the next!

The floral white and black in the center is the same as in Genevieve's quilt,
from a thrift store skirt.

This mat has upholstery fabric (charcoal gray with vines
and beige linen moiré, both given by my sister Nancy),
and new buttery and gray dot fabrics I bought

I really love combining fabrics from different sources. This one has fabric: from my 1970s-80s stash; an old farm skirt; gifts from friends and family; and a couple of new ones I bought.

Ninety-eight percent of my fabric stash is patterns and prints. I am very drawn to minimal quilts, believe it or not, but when it comes to designing, I keep going to prints. My next challenge to myself is to design minimal quilt mats, more like the beige and charcoal gray one above.

Let's see how I do. :-)

UPDATE:

I made two minimal abstract mats today, so let's call this rising to the challenge. :)

This linen is heavy. It was a dream to sew, until I got to the binding.
I won't ever bind with such heavy fabric again if I can help it.
Still, I LOVE this linen and will make many more things with it.
My sister Nancy gave it to me.

The back of the linen mat is a fabric long in my stash,
but I cannot remember for the life of me where it came from.
Nancy, no doubt.

Nancy gave me this dotted upholstery fabric, and also the red cotton,
which looks like batik. The dotted fabric looks much richer in person.
I was stymied about how to quilt it,
because I didn't want to detract from the simplicity of the design.
In the end I kept it simple with four squares.

Nancy gave me this linen toile, just delicious.
I paired it with the dots, which she gave together,
and they are perfect paired, even if one is on the front
and one is on the back.
I love Chinoiserie.

Genevieve's baby quilt

I want to document for myself (and you) the baby quilt for Genevieve — my great-niece by marriage — before sending it off in the mail to Colorado.

Genevieve's nursery is lime green and purple. I wanted those colors as highlights, with gray and white as neutrals.

Inspiration for the design came from Josef Albers' "Homage to the Square." (nice instructional video about his color theory here)

This is the closest to true colors I've been able to photograph.
The purple usually appears too blue.
The quilt measures 38" x 48"

The "back." As I posted previously, I incorporated
vintage fabric pieces from the stash of Genevieve's
great grandma Helen and partially sewn
together by her. I finished the center block
with her fabrics and one of my own
(hot pink paisley).
The rest of the front and back
are fabrics I bought, with the exception
of the white and green leaves and birds
in the upper right of the back.

All the fabrics besides the pieced block of vintage fabrics I purchased, except the white and green leaves with birds in the upper right corner of the "back." That fabric was given to me by my fabric philanthropist, my sister nancy.

I really don't know which is front
and which is back at this point. :)
I would design the focal block differently now.
I would not use the black and white floral border
from a thrift store skirt,
inside the lime green frame.
Rather, I would use a darker, less busy fabric,
so the focal block would pop.

I stitched straight lines going in both directions every 1 1/4".

I just love all these old fabrics!

I send this quilt to Genevieve ("Evie" — long E), with a little salt and pepper, dancing and music,  stitches from great grandma, and a heart full of love.

Genevieve's pieced block finished

Here once again is the old pieced piece,
which Genevieve's great grandmother may have sewn
along with scraps from her stash,
before I finished the block, below.

Here is the finished block after I added the green print
in the bottom left corner, the salt and pepper print,
the black musician and dancer print (top),
and blue & white gingham (upper left),
all from Genevieve's Great Grandma Helen's stash.
I also added hot pink paisley
from my own fabric stash to the upper right side.
How great is it to see improv quilting from the '40s or '50s?

Then I added white and black floral fabric from a thrift store skirt,
and a lime green border. For the purpose of the photo,
I laid it on a lively Michael Miller print named "Courtney,"
which I will be incorporating into the back of the quilt,
along with this pieced block.

Here is the front again (with the spinning wheel cutting off the lower left corner.)
I don't know what the spot of light in the lime green is, just in the photo,
as it's not in the fabric. I'm guessing it's a reflection from the mirror behind it.

Genevieve's "mischievous squares" quilt top

Genevieve's nursery is purple and lime green,
so I designed what I call "mischievous squares"
with lime green, purple and neutral grays.
A little mischief is good, right?

Genevieve was born August 15, latest great grandchild of my parents in-law (granddaughter of my husband's sister). I suppose I should have started a quilt long before she was born, but that didn't happen. :) I'm pretty sure Genevieve's mom and grandmom don't follow Birds of the Air Quilts, so I'm not ruining the surprise.

Now I am rallying all my design acumen (ha) for the back. Genevieve's other great grandma, now deceased, had a fabric stash that Genevieve's mommy inherited and loaned to my daughter Lesley to make her a bag from whatever she liked. Well, years after Lesley made the bag, she still had the stash, so I called upon her to find it in a box (they moved this summer) so I could incorporate some of it into the quilt back. There is this wonderful hand-pieced piece in the pile of fabrics. I can't be sure Genevieve's great grandma pieced it, but let's say she did.

Pieced piece by Genevieve's great grandma (?);
I've pinned three pieces to the pieced piece:
the black on the left, the salt & pepper, and the green and brown squares,
all from the stash, already cut. Talk about improv piecing!
I'm guessing this would have been sewn in the 1940s or 50s.
Click to see the fabrics better.

My plan is to sew additional fabric from the stash around the edges to form a rectangle, then piece it into a simple quilt back with large blocks of fabrics that coordinate with the front. I see the pieced piece as a precious "bloom" similar to the floral fabric on the quilt front. So I'll frame it similarly, but not necessarily create a set of mischievous squares. Still thinking!

summer rose placemats & "flying north" quilt

a quick pair of placemats for practice

It's been five weeks since last post. Our granddaughter Olive was born (beautiful!!), and life got very busy with family and work. I've had just a couple of home days for quilting.

My current big project (below) is taking forever because I am quilting every 3/8". Why did I think this was a good idea?

Here is the whole quilt top before starting to quilt:

The right side is tan moiré, slightly darker
than the left side of muslin.
I call this "Flying North."

I am actually enjoying the improvisational quilting. It is meditative, and I just have to forget about how much is left to do, which is about half the quilt (45" x 65" or so).

But I longed to design and finish something. So I made a set of four coasters for Lesley for her birthday next week. I didn't get photos. Today, I wanted to finish something again, so after adding a few patterns of quilting on "Flying North" I pieced and quilted a pair of placemats.

the floral fabric was a 50's tablecloth of my mom's;
I had tried to incorporate it in the last project,
which was quite a fail, though I will make it into
a picnic blanket

I learned a few things making these placemats, and so I'll probably keep them for us. I did better with the top stitching along the edge with the walking foot than the regular foot, and I need to be more precise making a straight edge. I like improvisational piecing, but I'd like the edges straighter. They are also too small for regular dinner plates. I will love using them though, they are so cheerful! I used this same aqua in Lesley's coasters, with deep blood red and green, and I'm beginning to think aqua is just the color to pull others together.

The Brother PQ1500 sewing machine is still great, though I had MAJOR issues with tension last time I  free motion quilted. I kept getting bunched up thread underneath. After reading a suggestion online to change thread, I did, and it totally solved it! From now on, only Coats & Clark Dual Duty thread for me. Maybe I should call "Flying North" "War & Piece" instead. ;-)

"Rose and her sisters"

I finished the first quilt for my etsy shop (not launched yet), which I call "Rose and her sisters." I feel excited about my goal for the shop: to create homemade modern improv quilts from 100% repurposed fabrics and fabric scraps.

This quilt really expresses my aesthetic. It has an old world feel, with deep, rich tones and lots of close quilting. It has the colors and feel of a tapestry. The toile linen in the two panels of "Rose and her sisters" was leftover from a chair recovering project. More about the quilting in a minute. The brown mini-floral is from my fabric stash and must be thirty years old. The large cabbage rose print is from a Ralph Lauren dust ruffle my sister Nancy gave me long ago. I never used it as a dust ruffle. It is a beautiful soft cotton with the sheen of chintz.

This could also be "Ruth and her sisters" since I have three sisters.

I sewed straight line quilting on all the panels and strips except for the two toile panels with ladies, which I free motion quilted. The sisters remind me of characters in a George Eliot novel, maybe that's because I'm reading Middlemarch now.

I can picture Miss Brook sitting in Mr. Brook's library reading with this quilt on her lap. All my quilts will probably be this size: 65" x 43 1/2" or so, perfect for laps, naps, thrown on a bed, sofa, or porch swing.

I only learned about improv quilts recently, since getting back into quilting. Back in the 1980s I only pieced traditional quilts (log cabins, lone stars, traditional blocks). When I started following Pinterest quilt boards recently, I discovered the exciting world of improv piecing. (My Pinterest quilts board is here with inspiration galore.) No measuring or straight lines. Just cut and create as you go. This is so satisfying for me and feels just right. You can see the wonkiness of the four brown bars in the full top below, like tree trunks or fence posts in the ladies' rose garden.

Cutting up the fabric into strips this way deconstructs the elegance of Ralph Lauren's world and puts it back together with an embrace of folk art, of women who for centuries have used what they had to create beauty for themselves and their family. She may think the sumptuous life of toile ladies is gorgeous, but she will probably never attain it. She'll piece together what she can.

The back of the quilt is pieced with more scraps, mostly from my 1980s stash. The rose print on the top right was another gift from Nancy, an upholstery linen. The deep red and the olive green were scraps from Henry's quilt and my granddaughter's quilt (due to be born Thursday!).

You know how they say you should follow your passion and see if you can find someone to pay you for it? Well, that's what I'm about these days. It will be thrilling when someone decides they need to own this quilt.

For the binding I chose the same olive green I used for my granddaughter's quilt. I wanted a bright contrast.

Now a bit about the quilting. I stitched straight lines on the strips and panels, except for the linen toile. I alternated horizontal lines with vertical from panel to panel for interest. Because the fabric is flowery, I wanted straight lines as a balance. The great news is that the walking foot worked very well on my old Singer! I still didn't get it to fit just right (it knocked a little), but it breezed over the layers without a pucker! The back of the quilt testifies to this (above).

About three quarters through the quilting I decided to invest in a new quilting sewing machine, the first new sewing machine I've ever owned. It is a Brother PQ1500S. The "new product shock" was incredible, and wonderful. On the old Singer, I had to crank the wheel with my right hand to start every new row of stitching. If you imagine this with every turn of the quilt, back and forth, back and forth, over the whole top, I was an aching mess. With the new machine, I only have to touch the pedal with my toe! What a breeze. I guess I've been living in the dark ages, happily. So I finished the straight rows of quilting, and I saved the two toile panels for last.

Though I'd tried free motion quilting on the bottom half of James's quilt on the old Singer with decent results, I knew I could not progress in FMQ with the old machine. You really need to lower your feed dogs (though a few quilters don't), and I could not figure out how to lower mine. I found instructions online for an old Singer, but it wasn't the same model as mine. This contributed to the decision to buy a new machine, one that had all the settings, feet and possibilities I was looking for.

After some practice, I tackled the free motion quilting on the ladies. I was terrified. But the control I felt with the new machine was much greater than on James's quilt, and I am happy with the result of the echo stitching.

For me, the best part of creating a quilt is designing it. I have the next two in my head and will post about the process. After the deep old world hues of this quilt, and after such a very brutal winter, I am ready for a spring quilt next, which I'm calling either "jelly beans" or "crocus and jonquils." After that, a black and white one from Goodwill skirts.