Daddy's Boxers Quilt

I love my husband's underwear.  He wears super cute, colorful boxers.  Love love love.

A few years ago, some of his boxers got old and ripped.  He asked me if I wanted them for some craft project.  Yes, I did.

I began envisioning a quilt called Daddy's Boxers Quilt.  I could picture our daughter bringing the quilt with her to college.  But, first I had to make it.

I test-sewed through many designs before I landed on the one that I wanted to execute.  I knew I wanted to incorporate a star motif somehow.  I tried some English paper piecing, but the rigidity of the paper piecing didn't work with the well worn fabrics.

Eventually, I came up with a crazy quilt design with a few stars thrown in.

The back of the quilt has a few more stars that didn't fit with the theme of the front, and it has a fabric that was passed down to me - probably from my great Aunt Ruth.

As for the quilting, I mainly did zig zags on the crazy quilt part with some decorative stitches.  On the orange accents, I did a swirly free motion design.  And, on the stars, I stitched in the ditch, and then echoed that to emphasize the star shape.  

My daughter, Star, loves it.   She loves snuggling under it, touching the fabrics and tracing her finger over my quilted designs.  I still can picture her bringing it to college with her in about 14 years. 

Preschool Quilt

My daughter is starting at a new preschool on Monday.  The head teacher told us that we need to bring a blanket for our daughter to have during nap times.  I'm guessing that most parents pick a blanket that they already have at home, or went out and bought a blanket just for school.  Some days, I wish I was that kind of parent.

I made a modern quilt - building on my recent quilting success.   The front has 2 strips - a scrappy paper pieced hexagon strip and a scrappy pink strip.  The back is a flannel star pattern.  Have I mentioned that my daughter's name is Star?

The Top

A Peak at the Back

Close up of the scrappy hexis

The Binding

Kitty Pillow

I blogged earlier about a quilt I recently finished.  I think the only fabric that I bought to make this quilt is the light pink that pops up throughout the quilt. Other than that, I used scraps that I already had in my collection from years of sewing and not-sewing.

Quilt makers know that when you make a quilt, you end up with scraps.

So, the scraps that I used to make this quilt created even smaller scraps.  What to do with all the scraps?  Some of them are usable; I'll talk about those in a future post.  There are also a bunch of un-usable scraps - threads and tiny little fabric pieces.

But, I felt like they would be good for something.  So, with Star "helping", we decided to sew a pillow for a kitty.  Star loves kitty cats.  The big front and back pieces came from my "stash" of large sized fabrics, and the stuffing is all these tiny unusable scraps, threads, and torn pieces of Star's old clothes.

Once the pillow was done, but still in the house, she would look at the pillow, snuggle on the pillow and think about the kitties who would sleep on the pillow.  She decided that 2 cats would share it - one of whom would be named Raincoat.  

This weekend, we brought the kitty pillow to the East Bay SPCA.  Star was so happy to meet the kitties who might sleep on the pillow.  Because of the SPCA's policies, the kitties couldn't get the pillow until after they washed it.  It's a good and logical rule, but it was sad to not get a picture of the kitties enjoying the pillow.  We asked, and there were no kitties named Raincoat.

Adventures in Quilting

I didn't grow up in a crafty family.  But, somehow, I got a crafty gene, and as soon as I learned to crochet while living on a Kibbutz in Israel in 1993, crafting became a big part of my life.  I took my first knitting class when I got back to California from Israel when I was about 22 years old, and knitting became an obsession.  Since my knitting phase, my passions within crafting have moved around quite a bit.  I got into spinning yarn and weaving for a while.  I was passionate about mosaics while I was pregnant.  Now, I seem to be (temporarily?) settled on sewing and jewelry making. 

Around 15 years ago, a mother daughter quilting group was announced at my parents' synagogue.  My parents and I were living in different San Francisco neighborhoods.  The flyer said that "quilting is a metaphor."  We never figured out what quilting was a metaphor for, but we joined the group. 

We got a supply list and my mom and I went to a quilt store to buy needles, thread, chalk and fabric.  I can't remember how many weeks the group met for.  We learned how to hand piece and hand quilt a table runner.  The colors we chose were burgundy, black and gold.  Our family used that table runner for a few Thanksgivings.  I'm not sure where it is anymore.

The front

Crafting with my mom didn't persist, but my own passion for crafting did.  I recently returned to quilting (after a 15 year hiatus) and made a Twin Size quilt.  I joined a block of the month group in January of 2012 (thanks, craftsy!), and I stuck with it.  Honestly, there were some months that I didn't think I would.  Quilting seemed so much more exact than knitting, sewing garments or sewing bags.  In quilting, an 1/8 of an inch in one block can multiply to disastrous results!

The scrappy binding which I LOVE

My finished quilt is totally flawed.  Experienced quilters would notice, but would be too kind to point out, all the places where my seems don't match up and where my quilting stitches are uneven.  But, I love it and I'm proud.