Astrid's Quilt

Astrid asked for a throw quilt for her living room. Astrid wanted creams and colors. She isn't a fan of pink, and preferred strong colors over pastels. She liked the Sunshine Quilt I made for my son, so this is the same Slashed Squares design. The quilt is about 70" square.

Here the quilt is in the shade, on the grass.

A Finish for Astrid

This is a quilt I am making for my friend Astrid. I got it all bound last night, and will try to take some pictures of the quilt in natural light today, and then I'll send the quilt to her. She's quite looking forward to it, as it was 37F (3C) at her house yesterday morning!

I even washed this quilt so it would be crinkly.

Bigger

I paired up about half the pieces for Astrid's quilt, and sewed them up into blocks. Usually I make pairs almost randomly and then match two sets of pairs into a block. This time I only have twelve fabrics, and since each block has 8 pieces, I felt it was important to be more careful in assembling the pieces into blocks so as to achieve a more successful result in the end.
Millie, of course, had to help too.

I make my living as a Geek, and in one of the discussion support groups of which I am a member, one user asked, "Off-Topic, What do you do for fun?" I drew quite a response when I wrote, "I make quilts. You know, I take big pieces of fabric and cut them up into small pieces of fabric and then sew them up into big pieces of fabric again..."

This quilt is certainly an example of that.

Chop, Chop

I sliced up the square-in-square blocks for Astrid's quilt.  Later I will rearrange them, and resew them back into blocks. This will be a Slashed Squares quilt. You can see my tutorial here.

Colorful Slashed Squares

What do you do while waiting three hours for the appliance delivery guys? You sew blocks together, press and trim them to size.
Did I mention they were three hours late on a blisteringly hot day?

Too Hot!

It was so hot yesterday, and I just couldn't summon much energy. So I sat in front of the fan and trimmed the blocks for Astrid's quilt.

Then I pinned the strips to the long sides.I sewed the light blocks together, and pressed them, but it was just too hot to do much else.I've got a new refrigerator coming Wednesday morning, so I've got to get ready for that.

Yuk!

Side Trip to Astrid

Last week, after I bought the fabrics for Astrid's quilt, I washed them all, and as I was ironing them I thought, I might as well cut the pieces. So I did. Here are the creams.... (ignore that spool fabric at the top)And here are the brights...Last night, my son came over after his orchestra practice, and we sat in my air-conditioned bedroom and he played his cello. I got out my lap desk, my portable cutting board and pinned up some of the blocks.
I had to cut one long piece in half, and pin each half to one square.
To my left, the fabrics, already matched, and those that were already pinned.
To my right, my pin tin. This morning, I sewed the blocks I had pinned, and pressed them.
After standing up most of the day working on Julie's quilt, it was nice to relax in air-conditioned comfort and spend time with my son.

Colors for Astrid

My friend Astrid has asked me to make a quilt for her. She asked for cream with colors. She doesn't like pastels, and she's not too fond of pink.

I visited my favorite quilt shop, Quilted Threads, and looked around. I had to know what was available before I could choose. I think I walked around the whole store three times before I selected any fabric.

First I had to decide whether I wanted to use creams or beiges. I hate beige, so that was a pretty easy decision. I needed six, and these are the ones I selected**:

Next I picked the gorgeous green at the bottom (Robert Kaufman Imperial Collection # 9912). It was positively the most gorgeous green I'd ever seen and this picture doesn't do it justice. Then I picked the big bold print (second from the top), which is from the only design studio I can ever correctly identify, Rowan/Westminster.

After that, my choices were fairly limited. Having set myself up with two big bold prints, I couldn't wimp out with more traditional, "safer" choices. And I didn't want to use batiks, even though I knew I would find the colors I wanted. I didn't think the patterns would be big enough to stand up to the others. The "No Pink" limitation knocked out a lot of possible fabrics, too.

I really liked the gold Asian fabric (Treasures of the East, by Hoffman), and the bluish-green-gold I already had, along with Astrid's desire for bright colors, but no pink, really called out for more dramatic choices.

These were rounded out by two from the "gerta collection by marcia derse for mdd studio" (blue green stripe and purple bull-eyes) and a "Dab of Jazz 7925" (the orangey-salmon). Since Astrid has a cool red sofa, I knew the brilliant warm and cool reds of AndaLucia Moorish by Michael Miller would be perfect as the backing.

So what kind of a quilt am I making? I'm using the Slashed Squares design, which I used to make the Sunshine Quilt for my son (aka Mr Karate), as well as this summer version.


**The creams are (from the top)
"Tile Mosaic" from the Lantern Moon collection by Michael Miller
a Jinny Beyer
the gold swirls is from Timeless Treasures (probably a Holiday fabric. I find you can often get good reds and greens from the Holiday section)
Imperial by Hoffman
Metro Mirage by Marcus (dunno more, incomplete selvage on that one)
Rural Jardin Toile by Moda (I think)

thank goodness for selvages, and yes, I have a big bin full of them calling my name....