diamond jack: the grand finale

my sister had her baby last week, and i hopped a plane to texas to see my new nephew over the long president's day weekend. i gave him all the things i've been making over the past few months, and i'm positive he was impressed, mistakes and all!

here's his namesake quilt.

i quilted with bright red thread in long diagonal lines.

and the back. 

as you may (or may not!) have noticed, i haven't been as webily active as i was a couple of months ago. i've found it pretty hard to balance work, dinner, friends, projects, traveling, family...life! i mean, it's an effort to put time into everything as it is, toss in a 40+ hour quilting project and blogging about it, and i'm toast.

but i'm trying to get better. and being part of a community helps motivate me, so thanks to all of you out there who prove to be constant sources of encouragement and inspiration.

Bridget Riley Squared

i made my first quilt square ever. it's for the NY Metro Mod Quilt Guild meeting tomorrow morning, which will be another premiere.

the february challenge was to make a quarter circle, 8.5" square, incorporating prints and solids. any color, size and number of arcs. 

inspiration for my square came from a giant bridget riley print i have hanging in my apartment. riley experimented with lines and color and became well-known for her graphic work as part of the op art movement in the 60's. i find her art to be the perfect quilting muse. 

here's my quilt square:

here's my riley print:

and here's to a good meeting tomorrow morning! 

diamond jack: part two

i did it! i finished quilt top number two - diamond quilt top number one.

i sewed the diamonds end to end to create long diagonal strips.

then i connected them. sounds simple enough, but it really was quite a challenge for me. i've never tried to match corners up, and let me tell you... it didn't come naturally.

slowly it came together, and flaws and all, i think it's perfect.

quilting soon!

diamond jack: part one

my sister's baby shower is coming up and in an effort to settle on the perfect quilt, i've been wading through endless blogs and flickr accounts and magazines, waiting for something to jump out and inspire me.

then i found jess at urban patchwork's diamond quilt and knew that was the direction i should take.

cue hours of measuring, cutting, er- mis-cutting, re-cutting, arranging, changing, pondering, walking away, returning, blood, sweat and tears (well, no tears yet, but i haven't even started sewing) and here's a look at what i've come up with:

here's how i got there:
cutting about million strips of fabric. 4 inches didn't create a balanced diamond, so i went back and re-cut them all to 3 inch pieces. much better.

working with what seemed like a million strips of fabric gave me - surprise!  - a billion diamonds.

i began laying them out on the floor in a random pattern.

and ended up with this:

something about the scattered-ness and the color combinations and the disorder of the first attempt didn't work for me. i started removing fabrics and trying to create a more balanced feel to the quilt top.

i thought adding more white could give the bold colors and design a little room to breathe.

i feel so accomplished and i haven't touched the sewing machine yet! i have come to terms with the thought that this might be the best the quilt top ever looks. i don't really even know how to begin to approach the sewing - i imagine it will be quite a challenge - but i'm up for it and will post the result - whatever it may be - as soon as it's ready.

wish me luck!
-kim

sewing 101: receiving blanket tutorial

in anticipation of the birth of my first nephew, i'm on a mission to make a bunch of useful stuff for my sister. it also gave me an excuse to buy a few yards of that robert kaufman dr. seuss fabric i've been eyeing for the last few months!

i thought i'd start by making a quilt, but when i began looking at all the fabrics and trying to decide my plan of attack, i knew that if i cut up the print with all the little colorful characters scattered about i'd probably end up with alot of severed arms, legs and heads. not exactly the look i'm going for.

so i decided that a great accompaniment to any quilt is a receiving blanket. and that's what i did. i kept it simple with the seuss fabric top and a soft cotton knit on the back. top it off with some bright red stitching and there you have it!

it's a very simple, functional, quick and easy project, and a great one for beginning sewers, or crafters on the go. i am happy to share my full, free tutorial here. good luck, and happy sewing!

give away!

hello readers! i have a giveaway to offer today that'll give you a $25 gift certificate that can be used for anything on one of CSN's over 200 online stores. from modern dining room furniture and well-designed storage ideas to that herman miller desk that would fit perfectly in your studio - oh wait, that's me and i don't have a studio.

leave me a comment just to say hi, or tell me about the most important piece of furniture (drafting table? sewing desk? sofa?!) in your craft making process. i'll choose a winner next week.

good luck,
kim
triangle shirt

****AND THE RANDOMLY GENERATED WINNER IS****
commenter number 4: ASHLEY
thanks to all who participated and shared your favorite hobby helpers. what great responses!

everybody has a first: the grand finale

so here it is, my first quilt!

i didn't have a chance to get a really great photo of it since, in my usual style, i finished the binding at the last second and had to rush off to the airport to catch my flight back to NYC. anyway, i'm pretty happy with it.

here's the front.

and the back.

and the binding.

i've never really been one to make new year's resolutions, but because of this quilt, and how it made me feel to see it to completion and give it to someone i care about, i'm going to make one for 2011.

i hope this blog and the production of many more exciting projects will be the result of my goal to spend more time working on a part of myself that i've avoided - for one reason or another - committing to. my creative side.

happy 2011!

everybody has a first: the binding

using Elizabeth from Oh, Frannsson!'s tutorial, i made and attached my own binding to finish my first quilt. i decided on a grey cotton with little white dots and circles to add a complimentary pattern to the modern quilt top. i didn't use the cotton boll fabric that i'd originally planned on since i thought it was a little too country for the contemporary-ness of the finished product.

here goes!

sewing the strips together.

after ironing the long band of fabric in half.

pinning it onto the quilt, and sewing.

after machine-attaching one side, i rolled the quilt up, stuck it in my suitcase, and hand finished the other side at my parent's house in texas.

pictures of the completed quilt coming soon.

p.s. i hope you all had a wonderful holiday!

everybody has a first: part two

i've made lots of progress on my first quilt over the past couple of weeks.
i sewed all the quilt top strips together to form one big cohesive piece.

then the ironing began. it took quite a bit longer than i imagined it would.

i made the quilt back out of muslin and two big scraps of fabric i had left over from my work on the top. i placed them in an opposite direction from the strips on the front of the quilt to keep it interesting.
then... quilt sandwich time!

after the sandwich was pinned, i began quilting. in all my quilt-making research, i've read lots about people who wear gloves, and how to move the fabric through the machine, dropping the feed dogs, freehand patterns, etc. i decided for my first try, i'd keep it simple. i opted to stitch in the ditch-or maybe around the ditch would be a more accurate description. i kept my feed dogs in action, and was surprised at how much effort it actually took to pull the quilt through the machine. what a work out!

taa-daaaah

trimming.

and here's the final product without binding.

i'm so happy with how it's turned out. i am going to give it to my mom for christmas, and HAVE to finish it tomorrow night as i leave town for her place on friday. wish me luck, and i'll post the completed version very soon.

placemats

i've been thinking about what to make my boyfriend's mom for christmas, and upon seeing alissa's placemats on one of my favorite blogs, handmade by alissa, i knew they'd be the golden ticket. since there were a few days between her posting of the images of the finished products, and her posting of the actual pattern, i tried my hand at improvising. let me tell you... it was a disaster.

it is going to take some time for me to wrap my brain around cutting and piecing and cutting through that to add more material, and cutting it in a different direction to watch it grow by another stripe. when i tried it myself, it didn't dawn on me to work this way. instead, i measured the size of each block or strip, cut them out, and put them together like a puzzle. know what i mean? i didn't realize till the end that i'd totally forgotten about seam allowances!

anyway, i gave up on my version, and once alissa posted the pattern, i went for it!

i used a nice brown linen for the main fabric, and kept it simple with muslin and a camel cotton. i decided neutral was the way to go.

this was really my first time quilting! not perfect, but i like the handmade-ness of the semi-crooked lines.

trimming the finished product.

i found these little personalized tags at the fabric store, although i'd like to design my own tag at some point, it worked in a pinch.

somehow i ended up with 4 right-striped placemats, and 2 left-sided mirror images. i'll bet it has something to do with a manufacturer malfunction, i'm just not quite sure how i managed that!

i haven't jumped into making the binding yet, but i'm thinking about using the bright flower burst material to add some color and contrast. i also don't want the placemats to end up looking too 70's brown. what do you think?

i'm putting the binding off at the moment because i'm trying to finish up the quilt i started a week or so ago. it has to be ready to go on thursday, and i'm about to start quilting it now. more pictures soon.

to wash or not to wash?

most of the quilting tutorials i read tell me to pre-wash my fabrics. i've also seen a few that don't. those are the ones i listen to.

the bottom line for me is this: it is a logistical nightmare to wash my own dirty laundry, much less the 10 yards of new fabric i've accumulated.

i live in a small NYC apartment and don't have a washing machine. here's my once-every-few-weeks routine: hauling a usually 30 lb. bag of to-be-cleaned up and down four, that's right, four flights of stairs, carrying it santa-style a block and a half to the washateria, in the freezing cold, fighting for machines, spending what always seems like an eternity in laundry-limbo, folding, and repeat.

so, my question to you is: how necessary is it to pre-wash quilting pieces? are certain fabrics more susceptible to shrinkage and bleeding than others? what are your experiences with washing/not washing?

any advice on this matter would be much appreciated. i'm just trying to help myself avoid having to learn the hard way, which is my usual method of transportation.

digital clock building - 200 water street

this is my favorite building facade in nyc. it's at 200 water street, and apparently it is a clock, but i've never seen it tell the correct time. i was absolutely shocked the first time i saw it looming discreetly as i walked to the south street seaport, its numbers flickering and immediately drawing me in. it makes me infinitely happy that little - er - big treasures like this exist in the world.

here's my snapshot:

here's an evening photo i found on the nyclovesnyc blog:

along with the image, this information about the building is noted:

The 45-by-50-foot digital clock was created by artist Rudolph de Harak. While the numbers may appear to adorn the exterior of 135 John Street, the display clock actually belongs to the adjacent 200 Water Street, a 32-story building designed by the architecture firm of Emory Roth & Sons and completed in 1971. The device consists of 72 square sections, each containing a number from 00 to 59. Once lit to display the accurate time hour, minute, and second, the clock has lost time over the years but remains a Lower Manhattan landmark. 

i also read somewhere that it was the largest digital clock in the world for quite some time. the history of the entire development, which is interesting, to say the least, can be read here. let me just mention, the original design included an entrance through a large, corrugated steel neon-lit tunnel. very futuristic.

what are your favorite landmarks in your city?