More Handkerchief Quilts

         Since my last post about my first Handkerchief Rag quilt in  Feb. 2012,  I've made three others and one pillow.  Each on is similar but each is one of a kind.

 I find my hankies at estate sales, garage sales, flea markets or some times people will give them to me.  I also supplement with brand new cutter hankies from ebay but I prefer the hunt to find the most beautiful ones.

I'm getting ready to make a new one with hankies on the top fluffy side, white flannel in the middle and a very soft vintage denim sheet that I found at a yard sale on the bottom.  I will most likely post for sale in my etsy shop ZeedleBeez unless I fall in love with it and keep it for myself.  : )

Handkerchief Rag Quilt - My favorite

I fall in love with all of my rag quilts for some reason but here is my all time favorite (so far).

 

 I was so inspired by SprinkleBabyVintage vintage handkerchief quilt that I wanted to try one as a rag quilt. Here is the result.

This handkerchief rag quilt is made with 25 pretty vintage-style hankies, white flannel and snow white, warm fleece on the back. It has been clipped on all the seams except I left the finished scalloped edges of the hankies around the perimeter intact and just clipped the underside flannel and fleece. I have already washed and dried this pretty quilt once to begin the ragging process. It will get softer with every wash.

The thing I like the best is the watercolor quality of the clipped seams.

The quilt measures approx. 49" x 49"



This quilt sold in 2011 but I have been gathering more hankies and I have about 21.  When I reach 30 I will make another.

Map of the world-The USA

I'm always looking for new inspirations for my rag quilts and I definitely found it 
in the etsy shop mybeardedpigeon .  Her map of the world pillows are just so beautiful, the colors so vibrant!  When I found the USA Map Panel at my local fabric store, I just had to try a rag quilt with it.  I did not want to destroy the continuity of the map itself so I opted for sewing 9" seams down the map to mimic the 9" squares I usually do.  Then I wanted to highlight the vivid primary colors in the quilt so I found cottons and flannels  to match the colors in the quilt.    I bordered  the map with the colored squares. 

I used bright green minky on the back of the map, which kind of gave it a Lego look.  I gave this quilt to my friend who just began teaching 1st grade.  I imagine she may use it in her reading center.  Hopefully her students will absorb the geography as they cuddle on the USA.

White Wedding Rag Quilt

 

It was supposed to have been an eggplant purple quilt.  I had plenty of time to make it before my friend, Sam's wedding.  Of course, I fretted over the colors and took endless pictures of purple combinations but nothing seemed right.

It was one week before the wedding and my daughter, Summer, suggested a white wedding quilt, something special using all white fabrics.  She said that she wished she had gotten one for her wedding.  That really appealed to me as I had been wanting to make an all white quilt for some time.

As I was thinking/planning the quilt I got the idea to throw some purple in as a feature somehow.  I didn't want big purple squares  with the white so I thought a stripe of purple would be nice.  I wanted it around the edge but not on the outermost edge.

I drew it out on graph paper and then set about  cutting and sewing.  It was easy to do the mid-section since it was all whites and the four corners were white.  To get the stripe I had to cut and sew together a strip of purple to the white fabrics I had selected.  Each 9" square was always 3/4 white and 1/4 purple but the positioning of the purple was key to the stripe.

When I had it all sewn together I was very happy with the look of the stripe on the smooth side. I was still worried the fluffy side would have a more disjointed look but by the time I had it all cut, I couldn't be happier.

I got the White Wedding quilt for Sam finished about 20 minutes before leaving for her wedding.  I hope she likes it.  If you'd like your own white wedding rag quilt with your own stripe of color just go to ZeedleBeez

Good Grief! Complicated simple rag quilt

My family and I were at a local restaurant recently and the topic of conversation turned to my rag quilting.  I was beginning to try some different things and my children were offering up their ideas of what I should do next.  I had just completed a recycled/upcycled blue jean baby quilt and I was ready for my next challenge.



 My son, Tyler, suggested I make the American flag rag quilt which I filed away for a summertime project.  My daughter, Hayley, suggested I try a simple design, like what's on Charlie Brown's shirt.  That captured my imagination and I couldn't think of anything else.  All three of us took turns sketching it out on napkins:

       Finally, I had my pattern.  It looked simple enough.  Yellow for the top and black for the zigzag.  I chose a buttercup yellow cotton and unfortunately I didn't buy enough.  Of course they were out of buttercup at my local fabric store and also at the three others that I went to.  The 4th luckily had the dye lot of buttercup that matched mine so I was able to finish the quilt.

       I layered yellow fleece on the inside to make it thick and warm.  That's where the second complication set in.  I didn't want yellow to show in the black zigzag so I cut black fleece and positioned it next to the yellow in two triangles.  Then on the advice of my son, I used black thread on all the black squares and yellow thread on all the yellow squares.  I stitched the traditional X through all the squares even the two rows of half black, half yellow.  It took a long time to get it just right.  There was one spot that no matter how many times I took out the stitches and re-sewed I still got a bit of black thread showing on the one side of the yellow.

       Now it was ready to be cut.  I was so hoping that it would turn out the way I had envisioned. Here is a view of the quilt before it was cut:

And here is the fluffy side:

I think it turned out beautifully.  I heard that a choir director in CA received this quilt as a gift from cast members who had all signed the quilt.  They presented it to him after the final performance of You're a Good Man Charlie Brown.

16 square feet

This summer instead of planting just tomatoes in my barrel containers I wanted to try something new and big.  My husband and I got a kit at Home Depot and we put together two garden boxes.  We stacked them on top of each other and filled them with dirt.  It sat that way for a long while because I was determined to try the square foot gardening that I had read about.  I picked up some small lengths of wood and made a grid like Mel Bartholomew writes about in his book All New Square Foot Gardening.

5/15/10

  I wanted to try some new veggies, some carrots and beans and peppers so that's what I planned along with wildflower seeds from my daughter's wedding (she gave away as favors), a sunflower plant I got at Trader Joes ( the card said I could transplant it), lettuce, two different kinds and some cucumbers.

6/13/10

6/30/10

Some of the seeds germinated quickly but as you can see some of the squares were empty. It was all very exciting - the miracle of birthing vegetables.

7/9/10

We soon began snipping lettuce leaves and gathering beans to eat.  I love that my kids would go out and pick the beans right off the vine and eat them.  The carrot stems were getting so long but they still hadn't grown an eatable carrot.  No peppers at all yet.

7/24/10

Cosmos wildflowers are getting really big.  Getting lots of beans but no carrots or peppers yet.  I noticed a baby cucumber.  That was exciting!!  The sunflower didn't make it.  I don't know why but it made me sad. 

By this time I still had an empty barrel contain next to the sq.ft. garden.  I threw some squash seeds into it.  In less that 2 weeks I had squash blossoms!

Yesterday I harvested this:

8/13/10

I'm a gardener.

To Hayley

Here's how it happened.  We were at my oldest daughter's apt. and she was showing us everything etsy.  (I had an etsy shop with my cousin already called Marci's Garden http://www.etsy.com/shop/Marcisgarden.  We sell handmade bags which take the place of plastic grocery and trash bags.)  This time though, daughter Summer inspired both me and youngest daughter Hayley.  By the time we got home, Hayley and I were full on crafters ready to open our own shop on etsy.

The reason for this blog is to say "How cool is it that my splendid, beautiful, creative daughter wants to share this endeavor with me?!"

Let me tell you about youngest daughter Hayley.  She is amazingly talented.  She took the photo of me on this blog.  I think I look beautifully cute.  She is interested in photography and has already sold some of her photos.  She takes clothes out of the give away pile and she remakes them into unique, fashionable, wearable items. She took a formal type dress with a sheer fabric overlay and she made a tank top out of it.  No one ever wore that formal dress but the tank top will be worn all summer.   Yesterday she took a very nice dress out of my closet which I haven't worn in years but I keep it just in case.  She remade it into an adorable new sundress by shortening it and removing the sleeves. (It's okay because we wear the same size.)  I let her try pretty much whatever she's thinking without throwing in my opinion that it probably won't work because if she tries it, it usually does work and works well!

Hayley also sews and crochets without patterns.  I taught her how to crochet and soon after she was making these adorable caps with no pattern. 


She bought a pair of slipper souls that you needed to add the stocking part.  I really wanted to say "you need a pattern to do that!"  She didn't.  She made the slippers by crocheting a stripy boot like upper part.

She is amazing, she is talented and she's only 18.  I feel honored to be working with her and I look forward to seeing more of her creativity.  You can see it too in our etsy shop http://www.etsy.com/shop/ZeedleBeez

I love you  Hayley!!!