Quilting Beginners

I have had a few questions on How I Made Hebrew Letters For The Twins Quilts. This is not a demonstration, since I have already put the letters together. However, I will briefly describe how I did it.

I started with the book Word Play Quilts, which gives wonderful instructions on how to use lettering in a quilt and how to put the letters together. It is a freehand technique which was fairly easy to use. Looking at the instructions, I think that it could also be adapted to paper piecing. But I can’t tell, since I only just learned how to paper piece. I did these letters without a paper background and only stitched fabric to fabric. However, the sequencing of putting the pieces together appears to be similar.

I used the Letter Charts in the back of the book, to use as models for how to assemble the Hebrew letters. Yes, they are English letters, but I picked the English letter that most looks like the Hebrew letter I wanted to draft.  Then I used those sequencing instructions as a model for the sequencing of putting the pieces of the Hebrew letter together. And, yes, I had to turn the templates upside down or sideways to get an approximation of the Hebrew letter. I may ahve been able to find Hebrew templates, but this is what I did. Of course in the process of putting my Hebrew letters together, my rotary blade and cutting mat were my best friends.

I suppose that if you wanted to paper piece the letters, you could draft your own pattern for Hebrew letters and use the same method I used to sequence the stitching together of the letter pieces. In the end, the letters turned out just fine even though they are not the beautiful calligraphic Hebrew letters you see in documents.

In a nut shell, this is the technique I used to make Hebrew letters for My Quilts. I am sure there are other ways, but this is what I did.

No, I haven’t stopped quilting.  I promise you that I have not abandoned this quilting beginners site. We have been doing and number of home projects, including painting, which have necessitated my putting my quilting supplies and equipment away for awhile. I have not been working on the twins quilts for awhile after I had to put my quilting supplies away. I have also been doing a lot of gardening, which is my other love.

One of my summer gardening project has actually been sewing related, so I’ll show that to you. My deck gets very hot in the summer, so I had wanted to put up some kind of the screen to block the sun. What I did, was take some ripstop nylon and fashion panels which I attached to a trellis. This makes a really nice shade screen for our deck. You can take a look at some of the pictures. We’re really enjoying actually being able to use our deck this summer which we have never really been able to do before.

Pretty soon I’m going to get back to completing the twins’ quilts and some of my other projects. Just know, that when the sun shines, I have divided attractions with my garden. I’ll try to do a little more quilting now that the painters are gone.

I haven’t posted for awhile, but I have been involved with getting ready for passover  Passover and working on a gardening website which is another passion of mine. I haven’t done too much work on the Twins Quilts either, because I have been so busy.  However, I can say that I finished most of the back of one of the quilts and got a good start on the other one.   I’ll show some some pictures here real soon.

I wanted to talk about a website that I found which is absolutely fascinating.  The website Wayne Kollinger’s Sketchbook by Wayne Kollinger and and the book, Designing Quilts Is Easy, also by Wayne Kollinger, are about easy quilt design.  Mr. Kollinger designs by asking the question “What If I change one element or another in the quilt pattern.”  For him, the main questions to ask in designing quilts are not whether the pattern satisfies some design principles or another, but whether you “like what you see”, “what will you get if you change this element or that element in the quilt pattern or block pattern” and then experiment, and then ask “why do you like it”.  This is all coming from someone who has no previous design experience, but learned by doing and then used his imagination.

I have found his website fascinating because he share some of his designs and explores the possibilities of what happens when he changes certain elements in a quilt pattern, and then he shows us the results.  He plays with color and shows the variations possible within the same design.

I have returned time and time again to see what he has that is new in his website.  Currently, he is exploring an alphabet and giving the dimensions for cutting.  I keep thinking what it would be like for me to explore similarly with quilt designs.  At the present, I have not yet learned to do some of the things that would be needed use some of those designs, but I can hope.

I recently purchased his book, and even though I may not be ready to make quilts with some of the ideas there, it is not unreasonable for me to try the ones I am ready for and to push the boundaries using my own imagination.  But I have to finish the Twins Quilts first.

I have been searching the web again, and have located another bunch of free quilt patterns. Wow, I am really finding quite an assortment of free patterns. I am always amazed at how much is available on the internet at little or no cost.

http://daystyledesigns.com/365project4.htm quilt patterns
http://www.thequiltercommunity.com/Wccbcdb2806f56.htm quilt patterns
http://www.this-n-thatfabrics.com/free_pattern.htm quilt patterns
http://www.unitednotions.com/un_main.nsf/free_patterns quilt patterns
http://www.victorianaquiltdesigns.com/VictorianaQuilters/Library/QuiltingDesigns/Quiltingdesigns.htm quilt patterns
http://www.byannie.com/free_patterns.html quilt patterns
http://www.needlepointers.com/ShowArticles.aspx?NavID=396 quilt patterns
http://www.thriftyideastoday.com/2010/09/patterns-for-scrap-quilts.html quilt patterns
http://www.easyquilting.info/quilt-patterns/ quilt patterns
http://www.stitchinheaven.com/stitchin_heaven_pages/freepatterns.asp#&springclipped quilt patterns
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/struss/bom/ebom.htm quilting patterns
http://www.fiber-images.com/Free_Things/Projects_Patterns/free_patterns_quilting.html quilt patterns

I do hope that you will enjoy them.

Oh my G-d, I just found an antique quilt top in my linens. Somehow I knew that I had this quilt top, but I have lost track of it and haven’t seen it in years. My housemate had told me that I had it, but I couldn’t even remember what it looked like. I finally found it yesterday when cleaning out some old linens to give away to Goodwill.  I’m just glad this gem didn’t get into the give-away pile.

I do not know who made this quilt top, but I had at least three people in my family who quilted.  It had to have been one of them. The fabrics appear quite old possibly 30s or 40s vintage and rather frail. The quilt was hand stitched and some of the seams are coming apart and some of the pieces are even frayed. This is going to take some work to put it back together again and get it quilt.

This morning I went down to our local quilt shop to find out if this was even doable. To my delight I found that it was. I had anticipated that I may have to use muslin as the backing for the quilt top. I found that this is one option, but I also learned that I could use a muslin backing on individual pieces while stitching them back together.

Another unexpected option, was to scan the frayed quilt piece on to some special fabric often used for pictures in quilting and use the scanned piece as a replacement for the frayed piece. An additional option was to research whether there are reproduction fabrics that would match the fabric used in my quilt if that piece could no longer be used.

None of this is anything I can do now because I’m still working on the twins quilts, and still need to put together a lap quilt that I started before I started the twins quilt tops. But at least now I know that restoring this quilt top and then quilting it is something that is within the realm of possibility. This makes me very excited. I could then have one more quilt from one of my two aunts that quilted or from my grandmother for that matter. I plan to work on this after I finish my other projects. To be continued…

Even More Quilt Pattern Resources

Well, here I am again with some more free quilt patterns that I have collected. I wanted to post something since I havent worked on the twins quilts at all this week.(crazy week)  Setting them up in Google docs has been great. It is so easy and I can alphabetize them and tell whether I have posted them here or not rather easily because the program sorts. Today I downloaded Open Office Suite, which is free and is on my desktop. I may experiment with their database to see if it works as well. At any rate I am glad that I am able to get some more quilt pattern resources to post as I am able. Have fun finding something to quilt.

http://www.jinnybeyer.com/quilting-with-jinny/free-patterns.cfm
http://carterquilter.wordpress.com/
http://northcott.com
http://andoverfabrics.com/FreeQuiltPatterns.php
http://quiltinglibraryworldwide.blogspot.com/p/free-patterns.html
http://www.henryglassfabrics.com/
http://www.thecalicocottagequiltshop.com/content/Free_Pattern_Links/1008
http://www.classiccottons.com/free-quilt-patterns.aspx
http://www.this-n-thatfabrics.com/free_pattern.htm
http://www.rjrfabrics.com/patterns/all_patterns.cfm

Sorry for being so absent, but my hard drive died and I have spent two weeks getting it up and running again. This doesn’t mean that I have been idle. I have gotten a lot done with the twins quilts and took a class on attaching binding using the Martelli zip binding system and machine stitching it in place in addition to my computer renovations.

Having finished one of the quilt fronts and laying out the blocks for the second of the twins quilts, I have moved on to working on the back. My daughter in law finally gave me the real measurements of the matresses, so I knew I needed to use ten of the blocks on the back of the quilt. After playing around with those quilt blocks, I finally came upon a layout I liked.

Then on the working on the rest. I have lots of fabric scraps. At first I thought of using only the finished quilt blocks and a few of the very large scraps, then I decided that the smaller scraps will look nice laid out subway tile style. So, off I went. I have most of the scraps laid out so that I like them. Im starting to put them together for the back of the quilt. Essentially, I am making double quilts. Pics later. Camera out too. What is the tech world coming to. Maybe when I get the new IPad I can get something done and uploaded all in one.

More on the zip binding binding attachment also later. It was pretty cool.

Well I’m very happy to say that I’ve been working very hard on the twins quilts. I finished all the quilt blocks and squared off all of the quilt blocks for both quilts. And this morning I arranged the blocks for one of the twins quilts and sewed them together. Im very happy with the results. The only thing that I do not have done is make a border.

One Twins Quilt Top Finished – Minus The Border

Two days ago I finally got the mattress measurement from my daughter-in-law, and I was able to determine what the finished quilt sizes should be. I learned that I made way too many quilt blocks, and I need to take off a row of blocks on the side and bottom of the quilt. This leaves me ten very nice large blocks to do something else with. I will now need to make a small border for their quilts instead of another row of large blocks.

I don’t know what I’m going to do with  quilt blocks yet. However, I could use them for the backs of the quilts, make pajama pillows, valances for curtains, or a table runner. Right now I’m leaning towards using them for the backs of the quilt and make pajama pillows.  I will ask my daughter-in-law if she has any preferences.

I posted a picture of the quilt top I finished. Next I will work on the other twins quilt top.

Here are a few more free quilt patterns that I have found.  Im getting quite an assortment of quilt pattern resources.  I am now able to tell whether I posted something before as I did put them into a database on Google docs (free, of course) that I am able to sort.  Sorting the database lets me know whether I have posted something before.  I found one website that has multiple discrete pages of free quilt patterns, so this is at least one that I am posting separately.  Have fun with a few more quilt pattern resources.

http://alexandersonquilts.com/blockparty/ block patterns
http://www.amybutlerdesign.com/products/free_patterns.php quilt patterns
http://www.allcrafts.net/quilting.htm
http://www.quiltinaday.com/freepattern/
http://www.freequilt.com/index.html
http://www.freespiritfabric.com/core-pages/patterns.php
http://www.fonsandporter.com/aspx/FonsandPorter/fp/onlineextras/freedesigndownloads/default.aspx
http://www.freequiltpatterns.info/free-quilt-patterns-directory.htm
http://www.thequiltercommunity.com/Wccbcdb2806f56.htm
http://www.fatquartershop.com/Free-Quilt-Patterns/Free-Quilt-Patterns-Henry-Glass-Fabrics.asp?Store_id=499&T=1

I would also like to put a call out that if someone sees something not listed, let me know and I will list it next time I post some free quilt patterns….At least as long as I am finding more.

I finally completed all of the quilt blocks for the second twins quilt. Everything is done except for squaring up all of the quilt blocks on both quilts. Then I can go ahead and lay them out and decide how I want to assemble them. The quilt pattern is “Turning Twenty Again”, which uses somewhat randomly placed squares and rectangles in random colors of the fabric selected for the quilts. I have also compleated the Hebrew letter quilt blocks for David’s name.

Here are a few pictures of the quilt blocks. The first one shows the quilt blocks randomly laid out on the bed in much the same way they would appear in the finished quilt. The quilt blocks are brightly colored–perfect for 6 year old boys who like cars.

Quilt Blocks Randomly Laid Out

The next pictures are the Hebrew letter quilt blocks with David’s.

Hebrew Letter Quilt Blocks For David

Hebrew Letter Quilt Blocks For David 2

The individual quilt blocks for Davids name.

Hebrew Letter Quilt Block – Dalet (D)

Hebrew Letter Quilt Block – Vav (V)

Hebrew Letter Quilt Block – Dalet (D)-2

My next step is to quilt square up the quilt blocks on both twins quilts and assemble them. Then I plan to use the leftover scraps to make the bacts of the quilts.
I hope you enjoy them. All comments are welcome.  I have been having fun with this project.