October WIP's and Finishes - 15 Custom Quilts

Here is my list of 15 custom quilts that I have been working on everyday since early September.

1. Granny's Rag Quilt:  I made this quilt using the housecoats of a grandmother for her granddaughter.  I thought this was such a sweet, beautiful keepsake but this was a very challenging quilt.  It's an optical illusion really.  It looks easy but it was spatially-a real headache.

2. & 3. Black and White Baby Rag Quilts:  (with red embroidered square).  These were made pretty fast.  I wasn't sure how the red middle square would look but I loved how they turned out.

4.  Black and White Throw-size Rag Quilt:  Even though I've done a dozen of these black and whites, I made this one a little different on the back.  I made black on black and white on white wihich resulted in stripes on the back.

5. 6. & 7.  Three  20-square T-shirt Quilts:  Still in the fusing stage

 

 

8.  Foxes Baby Rag Quilt:   I made this for a very nice young mama in KY.

 I liked the fabrics so much I sent her these too:

9.  The Methodist Cross and Flame Rag Quilt:  I did not want to do another quilt like this because the first was very hard to do but I finally relented.   The hard part is done but it still needs one more row of white and a stained glass fabric border.

10. 11. &      12.  Small, Medium and Large Handkerchief Rag Quilts:  The only one I have finished is the Large Hanky Quilt, the others are works in progress.  I was given 184 gorgeous vintage hankies in beautiful condition to make these quilts.  I fell in love with the first one but I'm really looking forward to the medium hanky quilt.

14.  Polo T-shirt Quilt 30 squares:  What a great idea this t-shirt quilt is!  It's made with all Ralph Lauren Polo shirts and bordered by plain simple navy strips.  This quilt looks very high end classy.  I finished the top so far and I'm thinking about putting a plaid flannel on the back.  (That's a pair of cat eyes in the bottom right.  He's always trying to get into pictures.)

15. Rock and Roll T-shirt Quilt 16 squares:  I will be finishing  the quilting on this one today.  I think the black and white check borders really set these shirts off in a very cool way.

What are you doing this month?

What I did with "Mistakes"

          A while back I made a quilt for a friend's baby.  I knew she liked chevron stripes which is very popular now and I thought it would be cinchy since I had made a Charlie Brown zigzag previously.  I made big mistakes on that quilt which I wrote about here but I wasn't about the throw those "mistakes" away.  I thought someday I will use them so I tucked them away in my fabric storage shelf.

"Mistakes"

        Then the other day I was browsing through Pinterest as I always do (I love Pinterest!) when I saw this quilt.  I fell in love with it and I thought I could use my mistakes to make a similar rag quilt.  And that's just what I did.

Front

Back

           I'm not sure if I'll ever do another heart rag quilt quite like this again.  I encountered major problems.  If I ever do it again I would not use minky so widely although I had to on this one since the "mistakes" had minky in them.  If I did this same look I would use white flannel or cotton instead of the minky.  Another thing I would definitely NOT do is put fleece in the middle.  This rag quilt is very plush but that plushness made it a bear to sew!  I actually broke 5 needles sewing through the layers especially at the points of the heart.  The one thing I would do again is add the binding.  It was the first time I ever added binding to a rag quilt and I wasn't quite sure how to do it.  I had seen others bind their rags so I knew it could be done and I just love how it turned out.

           This quilt was a lot of work but I'm proud that I re-used "mistakes" from another quilt, used up scraps from another quilt and turned out a finished rag quilt that I have fallen in love with!

WIP Update

With only 3 days left to this month I wanted to share the only thing I've finished so far.  Blame busy-ness,  long loved visitors, temperamental sewing machine determined to break, for the delay.

When I posted the WIP for the chevron rag quilt, I only had this sketched diagram of what I thought I wanted.

 

I found out pretty soon that what was in my head did not transfer easily to the cloth.

My intention was to only rag the chevron stripes and leave the rest of the fabric smooth.  I cut out all the triangles, squares and rectangles I needed. and sewed them down the middle.

 Sewed triangles wrong sides together.

Sewed the triangulated squares together.  So far so good...

 

  But then I thought about the point

What would I do with the point when I sewed the rows together?  I could cut it off but that would compromise the look of the chevron stripe.  Then I thought about how the whole thing would look since now the front and the back of the quilt would have ragged edges.  That would not work!  That would be way too much cutting!  How could a baby lay on such a bumpy quilt?  It definitely needed a smooth side.  So I turned to a quilt I made over 2 years ago:

 The Charlie Brown Rag Quilt

This is how I should make the quilt this time.

I deconstructed what I had started and re-sewed everything, putting wrong sides together the usual way.

 

Here is the result of the Chevron Stripe Baby Rag Quilt

Front

Back

I am pleased to say the Mother-to-be was happy.