Couch, Bed & Table Quilts

I make "normal" quilts (insofar as any of my quilts are "normal") for special people in my life and because I like to push ideas around that have nothing to do with words.  Here are some of my favorites.

Sunshine Quilt, 2009
My son, a Third degree Black Belt in Karate, asked me to make him a yellow quilt for his car. I thought it was an usual request, but his explanation made it impossible to resist.  He wanted a quilt of Sunshine so if he brought a girl to watch the fireworks, he'd have a nice quilt for them to lie upon.  After I started buying fabrics, he complained about the birds, butterflies and flowers in the prints. I ignored him. When it was finished he commented, "You left the birds in there. And the flowers, and the butterflies. You didn't listen to a thing I said, did you?" I shook my head.  "Good thing."  The quilt, I am proud to say, has never lived in his car, and occupies a prime spot on his and his wife's bed. I don't think it's ever been to the fireworks, either.

Laughing Out Loud, 2009
This quilt is a riff on Gwen Marston and Freddy Moran's quilt Reading in Bed from their first collaboration book. I enjoyed breaking all kinds of rules when I made this, but the quilt ended up surprising me by looking like a jewel box, so I called it Laughing Out Loud because it was making fun of me.


Aiko Quilt, 2009
I don't know why I feel the need to make baby quilts predominantly white.  This was for my godson, who, his mother reports, falls asleep as soon as the quilt covers him.


Red Sticks, 2012

I love red, so I enjoyed playing with lots of them to make this quilt. It lives on the back of my charcoal gray couch in my living room. All the fabrics here came from my stash.


 Spools, 2013
When I visited my son and then girlfriend in 2013, they had just bought a beautiful sage green loveseat. But then they adopted two cats, a gray tabby cat and a ginger boy. I knew the loveseat would get covered with cat hair, so I made this quilt to help protect the couch, and to keep my lovebirds warm on cool southern California nights.

  Rainbow Baby
Another mostly white quilt for a baby.

Sunburst Rainbow, 2013
I love playing with bright colors. This quilt was inspired by a quilt with a block that had a strip inserted down the middle. I took that idea, made blocks of different sizes, and played around with the layout until this eye-catching design emerged.


Sliced, 2013
I made this quilt for one of my "fairly oddkids". The quilt was from a book about monochromatic quilts, but obviously I wasn't going to let that stop me from making this quilt colorful. I seem to be drawn to quilts that ask me to make a block and then cut it apart, and resew it in a unique way.

 MHT2MEM, 2014
This quilt was originally intended to reduce my growing collection of scraps. It just goes to show you that magic happens when you least expect it. I gave the quilt to my friend Julie Sefton, who lives in Tennessee, which is referenced in the title. MHT is the three letter abbreviation for the Manchester NH airport, and MEM is the abbreviation for the Memphis TN airport. Since the quilt started in Manchester, where I lived, and ended up in Memphis, where Julie lives, the title reflects the journey, Manchester to Memphis. (MHT2MEM)


 Fall House Top, 2014-15
I inherited my grandmother's mahogany dining room table. With the flaps up and the extensions in, the table is almost eight feet long, and it's perfect for large gatherings. Finding a tablecloth that size is hard. Since I often host Thanksgiving dinners, I made a quilt to be used as a table cover for the big feast. All the fabrics for this quilt came from my stash.

Picnic Table, 2014
I really love Sujata Shah's take on using gentle curves in pieced blocks. I made this Rail Fence quilt using her technique and love the verve and vitality it gives. This quilt is used as a table cover in winter, so it made sense to photograph it on newly fallen snow.



Lightning in the Night Sky, 2015

I promised my nephew I'd make him a quilt when he graduated from high school. I told him he could pick the colors. I was not at all surprised when he picked purple and orange. I knew that if I was going to make a quilt using those colors, the design had to have a lot of kick to it. He was over the moon about it, and sleeps in it every night, "wrapped like a burrito." If there's a better "thank you" for a quilt, I've never heard it.


Blue Deco, 2015

If the quilt MHT2MEM taught me how much fabric I really had in my stash, it also taught me that I had a lot of potential quilts hiding in there. Blue Deco is another table cover (this one for summer) made completely from fabrics in my stash.


Petals, 2015


I made this quilt almost on autopilot, which is to say I didn't give it a whole lot of intense thought. I was trying to use up some teals from the stash, and when they fell next to some grays, I thought, "that looks nice. I'll do that." The quilt prompted a family argument about who was going to get it (my son won), and everybody who saw it in person wanted it.

3 comments:

Quiltdivajulie said...

LOVE this page and the way it showcases your "normal" quilts.

Katie S. said...

I love all these quilts and especially the way to hat so many have a functional use--besides beauty and inspiration I need to use my quilts for more than wall hangings to keep up the desire to keep making them. And you've given several books worth of fertile inspiration here. Thanks so much for doing the work to put this page together with the stories for each quilt for others to enjoy and get ideas from! Katie S.

Dar said...

Thanks for the wonderful quilt show. I love almost all of your "normal" stash quilts and love that they reflect your personality. I may have to steal some of these ideas for my overflowing stash/scrap collection.