Winter 2008 Quilting

The long and snowy midwest winter offered an excellent reason to stay inside and quilt. I was lucky in that my (amazing--thank you former pdx roommates) antique sewing machine desk with its 1911 telegram inside and sewing machine sat in the sunroom so I could look at the piles of snow while working. I challenged myself to try new designs and, for the first time ever, make a "true" quilt with a quilt top, batting, and a fabric backing.


I gave the quilt on the left to the new son of a colleague. I had made pinwheels before, but opted to play with crazy pinwheels. I really like the look of the pinwheels, though if I were making the quilt again, I would stick piecing it together with the pinwheels all of one color, like the blue and orange ones, rather than the mixed red-and-purple ones. Also, while the purple matches the purple bugs in the background fabric well, it's not as bright as the other colors and I probably would choose a different fabric. I made the binding from scrappy strips of the pinwheel fabric.

I made the quilt on the right for Shefa, whose sister received this quilt two-and-a-half years ago. My scrap bag contained several small pieces of fabric that I wanted to use and I designed this "windows" quilt around those fabrics, supplementing with more fabric from my stash. I love the array of colors unified by squares, and this competes with Eytan's quilt as my favorite baby quilt design (though I probably won't make more like it for a while since I like trying new patterns).