Scrappy Trip Baby Quilt

Yes, I succumbed to the peer pressure on instagram and jumped right into the Scrappy Trip craze.  How could I not?  What a sweet quilt to make and then to get to instantly share your progress in the instagram group was so fun.  

34" x 44"

I had won a jelly roll of Fig Tree California Girl by Moda a while ago and this project was a perfect reason to finally break it out.  I still have some strips left over to make a little pillow or a mini-quilt later.  

 Hand quilted with Perle cotton #12 in inter lapping circles.  

I think I've seen this called an orange peel pattern.

Just had to add a gratuitous shot of the assistant :)

I have to say that I've been a little lax with the progress pictures for the blog with the almost instant gratification of posting to instagram.  I'm quickly hooked and love to peruse other quilters feeds for ideas and inspiration.  I'm BaileyGirl_5  if anyone wants to follow me (please ... PLEASE! I have the least amount of followers of anyone I know).  Sometimes getting some feedback is the perfect thing to keep me motivated. 

I just found out that my son's friend is going to be the father of a baby girl in just a few weeks (surprise!) so I think this quilt will find a nice little spot to call home very soon.  

The non-lame (?) football quilt

I'm not a fan of sewing with novelty prints but this Christmas I was really stumped for gift ideas for my oldest son.  Getting gifts for your kids gets harder and harder as they get older.   The fun shopping trips down the toy aisles turn into confusing and expensive trips down the electronic aisles and the hunting aisles and the car part aisles and sports aisles, etc.  I want to give the boys gifts they'll use and appreciate, but also ones I can afford, and that's where it gets tricky. 

 ::  56" x 73" ::  hand quilted in grid pattern with perle cotton #8 :: 

Then I had an epiphany!  When the boys were little I made each of them a quilt (story here) and Russell's was made with Buffalo Bills fabric.   During the teenage years it got left somewhere and lost and he has missed it ever since. For a surprise I thought I'd recreate it with an updated twist.  My first idea was to make it a little more funky but the helmet fabric and the colors really didn't spark any creative juices.  I finally told myself that he'd appreciate the original patchwork look the best and I think that was true, not just a cop-out.  I pieced a back and added some embroidered embellishments to make it more personal. 

Unfortunately time got away from me this December (doesn't it always) and on the big day he open a box with a fully pin basted quilt and a roll of binding.  Hand quilting commenced almost immediately. Let me tell you something ... that novelty sports fabric is almost as thick as canvas and the perle cotton was a heavier gauge than my usual so my fingers were S.O.R.E. when I was finally finished.  I've never been so glad to be done with a project in my life.  It was worth it in the end because he loves it and I know it reminds him of his favorite quilt and all the memories that went with it.  

Modern Quilting 1970s Style

I found this quilting book, the Mountain Artisans Quilting Book by Alfred Allan Lewis, from 1973 at the library book sale a few weeks ago and I'm totally obsessed with it!    

"The Mountain Artisans Quilting Book is the best book on the contemporary adaptation of the old craft of quilting.  It tells the story of the famous West Virginia cooperative started by a group of idealistic young women and how their efforts to market the products of a centuries-old craft overcame seeming insurmountable obstacles to achieve national recognition." 

THESE women were the original modern quilters!  In fact, the words modern and contemporary are used continuously throughout this book, almost as much as it is on the internet today.  It's like a little slice of the groovy 1970s right from their perspective. 

The clothes made from quilts are what really got me hooked though.

I noticed one thing that these models have in common is that they are all tall and rail thin, two qualities I have in the exact opposite. I would look more like a rumpled quilt someone discarded on a floor, but still ... the idea intrigues me. 

Clothing for a horse ? I think this is my favorite quilt project!

A lot of the book is kitschy and outdated but one quote still rings true today. 

What more can any hobbyist want?  Here is a craft that is at once inexpensive, productive of immediate results, self-contained, portable, solitary, and social. 

Well, the inexpensive part was obviously before they invented designer fabrics. 

Don't you just want to time travel back to the 1970s now?  I love these intrepid young quilters and their take on the revival of quilting.