Going way back to last Xmas now, I made this as a gift for a friend. Nightmare before Christmas panel lap quilt with Jack Skellington Halloween fabric on the back. Gotta love the fake, printed borders! :D

That's how I Troll

I finally made a quilt for myself! I used a Finntroll band flag as the center panel, and a green nature/leaf batik for the borders and back. Quilted with a large, simple allover design, I then went back and stitched along the outlines of the logo after this picture was taken.
I'll keep it in my car as a lap blanket during our brutal 6-week Texas winter :)

LET YOUR FREAK FLAG FLY!

I love to collect printed banner flags of bands I like (because FABRIC!!), but I don't have room to hang them all up. I had a pile of them just sitting around gathering dust, when it occurred to me: KILLER LAP QUILTS! Just add a border to enlarge it a bit and add some contrast. I was able to piece the batting together from large scraps, and fabric off the bolt was just wide enough for the backing. This first one is of my favorite band, MOONSORROW (Finland).

Not gonna lie, I'm pretty stoked about this idea :) They're quick and easy to make, and are perfect for showing off your amazing musical taste while keeping warm on the couch, in the car or at the multi-day music festival! I will put together a tutorial for the sewing challenged, eventually :)

It's the INSANITY QUILT!!

What do you get when you make a Black Metal "crazy quilt"? A 3rd place ribbon at the AAQG quilt show, apparently :)

This is a 12" square block that combines traditional crazy quilting techniques with metal imagery and a limited black, white and silver palette. I used hand embroidery, embellishment, photo printing, and ribbon embroidery over a foundation-pieced background of black silk, satin and velvet fabrics. Most of the beads and decorations were found on Etsy. The photo is of the Norwegian black metal band Immortal, on printable fabric. I sewed this mostly on my breaks at work, over a few months. I'm really happy with the result, and I guess the judges were too! I don't think I would ever make a full sized one though....that would be INSANITY!

sew sweet!

A while ago, I saw a picture of a sewing-themed cake that was really impressive. That inspired me to start a pinterest board dedicated to them. As cake decorating has become more sophisticated by leaps and bounds recently, hobbies have become a popular theme for birthday cakes, and of course quilting is no exception. Feast your peepers on some delicious eye candy!

After a few slices of this, I know my butt wouldn't be a featherweight!

talk about sweet dreams!

These Hawaiian applique cookies look good enough to eat...

amazing sewing basket.....yes this is a CAKE!

To see lots more like these, visit my Sew Sweet Pinterest board!

I just realized something......

Q-U-I-L-T-I-N-G has the perfect number of letters for a knuckle tattoo!! Any takers? :)

Needle de los Muertos

A while back I found some great Dia de los Muertos fabric online, and HAD to get some even though I didn't have any immediate plans for it. (I'm sure that's never happened to any of you....right??)
Recently I've been doing more embroidery and hand sewing projects, and got sick of digging around for the right size needle. Then it hit me: these Muertos loteria "cards" are a good size to fit on the cover of a needle book!
I whipped out a few by using the escape hatch technique (similar to how I made the band patch xmas ornaments), using some batting scraps and sacred heart fabric for the lining. Then I fused the loteria cards over the turning slit, and sewed the felt pages in down the center. Voila! I think they turned out pretty cool :)
There are a few in my etsy if you need one.

I got class! Also: cat beds

Whew! I haven't posted here in a while because I was busy last month organizing to teach my first class, which I volunteered to have at my guild's workshop weekend. It was about basic design and color principles, and while there wasn't time to do any actual sewing, we did do some sketchbook exercises in addition to my lecture and slide show. I had 5 students, and they all seemed to enjoy the class quite a bit. I hope to be able to refine it and teach more in the future!

Once things calmed down afterwards, I finished up a project I've been working on sporadically for a while: sewing kitty beds to donate to local shelters! This is another great way to use up tiny scraps that aren't good for anything else. I picked up the outer fleece wherever I could find it cheap: the guild free table, the  remnants bin at Jo-anne, etc. Pro tip: you can get a cheap blanket at IKEA with almost 2 yards of fleece for $3! Then I followed this tutorial and made a few beds here and there when I had time. Now I have close to 20! Here's Buddy, my quality control department, putting the latest batch through his rigorous testing standards.

don't throw that away!

I never get rid of any fabric scraps, as it's in my nature to be  cheap  cost-efficient. Odd cutting leftovers can be used to piece a back on smaller quilts. Even tiny bits of an inch or two can be put to good use: ones with nice patterns can be fused to make quilted postcards or mug rugs, like the Asian ones I made below. (fused bindings too!) Less-attractive or damaged scraps, including batting, become stuffing for pet beds I make for charity- more on that later!

This post is linked to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday 

The first ever modern Quiltcon is coming up next week here in Austin, and they are having a link party for those attending to get to know each other a little better! Those with blogs were asked to post five things our readers may not know about us, so here goes:

1) I have been in the animation industry for almost 20 years. I've worked on TV shows, commercials, movies, games, websites, you name it.

2) I have also done tattooing, wood carving, and stained glass.

3) I played the upright bass in a psychobilly band for 10 years. I also played the bagpipes (poorly) in a Scottish marching pipe and drum band.

4) I'm left-handed (but I play the bass right-handed).

5) I was vegetarian for 15 years and vegan for 6....but am now making up for lost time.

and bonus track fun fact:

6) I learned Japanese before I visited Japan in 2002 (but have since forgotten much of it).


hope to see you at Quiltcon!

update: DONE!

....well the top, at least. 14 months of literal blood, sweat and tears later, I finished my block-of-the-month quilt!
I think it was a bit above my skill level, but I powered through it anyway. I learned a few things along the way: paper piecing, set-in circles and curved piecing, Y-seams.

 I also learned I will never spend this long doing someone else's pattern again! It was frustrating to not work on my own designs for so long, but I'm glad I did this because I improved my sewing skills and I have an amazing, show-worthy piece at the end of it.

I think working in animation for so many years has given me some good training for this type of activity: attention to detail, tolerance for repetitive work, patience for long-term projects, the ability to do as many revisions as necessary to make work turn out right.

This behemoth finished out at 88" square with the pieced borders. I may add another small border to the outside so I can do a wider binding with piping. I still need to piece a back together too.

For the first time, I'm going to send something out to be professionally quilted. After investing this much time and money, I don't want to risk messing it up.....so eventually I will be shopping for a good longarmer. If there's someone you recommend, I'm taking suggestions!

Back when I started this project last January, I pictured myself finishing it a year later and being recovered from cancer, divorce and all the other horrible things happening in my life at the time. And while I have made some progress, unfortunately the quilt is farther along.....I guess you can't set deadlines for some things :(

above photo by Claire Jain

Book review: Quilting With Manhole Covers

When I went to Japan 10 years ago, one of the many artistic details that caught my eye was how ornate the sewer covers were. Each city has its own designs reflecting nature, local history and Japanese traditions.

Imagine my delight when I found this book, which holds the distinction of being the only quilting book I bought before I started quilting! Even though it has been out for a while (1999), it offers some unique, untraditional design ideas.

Author Shirley MacGregor presents photos of the covers with the history behind each design, as well as a line art version and photos of quilts inspired by it. There are no complete patterns included, but any quilter with a little experience and imagination should have no shortage of ideas after reading this book. The designs would even look good as digitized embroidery.

This is an unusual, older quilting book that is worth tracking down, even if just for the "eye candy" factor! It's still available on Amazon.

Be a man!

This is a lap-sized quilt I did a while back for a guy friend of mine. He has health issues and lives in another state, so I don't get to see him very often. I found some great fabrics with beer and camo guitars on equilter.com, and couldn't resist making something! Especially since he restores guitars and amplifiers. 

For some reason the repeating print made all photos of the whole quilt appear blurry, even though they weren't, but the close-ups came out ok.

needle artistry

Here's a roundup of quilting and sewing-related tattoos from across the interwebs. I have several tattoos, but none of this nature. I don't have any more planned, but I wouldn't be opposed to it if I could find or come up with a design I had to have. Enjoy!

(above: courtesy of Miss Sews-it-all)

another Metal quilter

San Franciso-based quilter Ben Venom makes spectacular quilts from old heavy metal t-shirts- including the biggest quilt I have ever seen! It measures 13 X 15 FEET and is made from over 125 shirts. His work has appeared in art shows and magazines around the world. You can see more on his site here!

Power quilting!

The animation studio I work for, Powerhouse Animation, has just released POWERLINES, a comic book-style collection of original work by our staff artists. Rather than drawing something, I made a small appliqued quilt using our company logo and colors! The book will premiere at Austin's Wizard Con this weekend with a limited number of signed copies, and will also be available on our website soon. For more details, please see this post about it on our blog.

what I've been up to

So I've been working on this insane block-of-the-month quilt since the beginning of the year...it's not my usual style, but before starting  this I realized I had not done anything very impressive over the previous year....mostly just lap and baby quilts that I made as gifts. When I saw this BOM pattern on the Quilt Show website, I was drawn in by the unusual design and brilliant colors. I decided to make it to level up my quilting skills, and have a show-worthy piece. (I did add my own touch by changing the background to black.)
It's all paper-pieced with a lot of fused applique. I have been learning a lot; mostly that any mistake that requires me to redo something will not happen again :)
I'm currently a month behind on it, but considering I was in cancer treatment till May and I had to get ready for the Austin quilt show last month, I would say I'm not doing too bad!

This is all the blocks through August. Finished quilt will be about 88" square.

VIKING METAL QUILT

this is a small (17 X 20") piece I made last year. it's based on a 30-foot tall sculpture of Viking swords in Stavanger, Norway that comemmorates the battle of Hafrsfjord in the year 872.

The black part is fused applique, and I used the "escape hatch" technique for the self-binding irregular edge. I slit the back to turn it, and covered up the cut with the hanging sleeve :)

In retrospect, the swords look a bit puny....should have cropped in closer. I may revisit this theme again in the future.

THE MOST EPIC AND BRUTAL OF WAR QUILTS

I made this quilt as a gift for another one of my favorite bands, SABATON. They're a metal band from Sweden and their songs are about war and history. I found some really great fabrics for this: a panel with combat silhouettes, bordered with camouflage guitar necks and a backing of camo pinup girls! I gave it to them when they played Emo's in Austin last year. Props to Jude Hubbard for the "bus blankies" idea!

and in related news.....

this bit of awesomeness has been brought to my attention: quilter Chawne of Completely Cauchy has stirred up a bit of controversy herself, with her text-based quilts that incorporate "offensive" words.
As a result, she started the "give a f*ck" project, inviting quilters around the world to submit their own "f*ck" blocks. read more about it here!