House portrait done and ready to ship

I finished the house portrait for my sister. It’s painted and stitched on one of our dad’s vellums. 

The photos are not great. I’m getting reflections when taking the photos. 

Now onto the recycle project  

Thanks for reading.

Chris

House portrait started

 I’m making a portrait of my sister’s house for her birthday later this month. I got an image of her house from Google Maps. I added her cat and dog. They are not longer alive, but I felt like I needed to add something to the portrait. 

So far I’ve traced out the image on one of our dad’s drafting vellums and I’ve started to color it in. I’ve also played with how to address the bricks. Siding is so much easier.

This is what I have so far as well as a photo of her house.

I’ve done 2 other house portraits on our dad’s drafting vellums. One for our daughter and one for my other sisters.

Once I finish coloring it in I will machine stitch on a pellon stabilizer and do some hand stitching.

Thanks for reading..

Chris

Start on the Amsterdam canal houses

This was a quilt that I designed years ago and finally decided to start making it. This image is from working on the sketch in Electric Quilt and trying out fabrics for a nighttime scene.

I decided to stretch the houses a bit more vertically because every time I get the sketch printed the houses look fat and squat instead of tall and thin. Here's the sketch on my design wall.

I checked on the vanishing point to make sure things look good before starting the quilt.

This is what I have so far.....one house!  I did start the next house, but not much done on it so far. One house looks so strange by itself.

Linking to Nina-Marie.  http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading.  I have been missing my dad this week. He gave great hugs. I really miss that.

Chris

The house quilt has come back

My dad died a few weeks ago after falling back in early December and then getting the flu and pneumonia. He was 92 and in poor health for a long time. So we have been cleaning out the house and I have taken back all of the quilts I made my mom including the house quilt that I made for her 80th birthday. It will get hung on the wall in my sewing room.

I spent several months making this quilt. Seems so strange to get it back.

I also got back this miniature double wedding ring quilt that I made for their 50th wedding anniversary.












I will have to take some photos of a large bear that I made my mom. You will be impressed!

Thanks for reading.
Chris

House quilt finished

I finally decided after a lot of debate to rip out the hand quilting and machine quilt my house quilt. Hand quilting was not as easy to rip out as I thought it would be. Plus it killed me to rip it out because I made such nice stitches! I estimate that I had about 1/5 of the quilt done, but the hand quilting was "killing" me. My entire body hurt while doing it. The quilt is about 70 by 70. I decided I was never going to finish the hand quilting.  I finished machine quilting it before Christmas and got the binding finished last week. It was washed yesterday. Now I have to sew on some sleeves for hanging.

Our cat Chowder always had to check out newly finished quilts!

Linking to Nina Marie. http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Thanks for reading. 

Chris

Sunlight in the forest and other things

121 blocks sewn together. The blocks are 2 1/2 inches and the overall size is 27.5 inches at this point.

Of course now I have to figure out how to quilt it....just the usual dilemma. I could just quilt in the ditch and call it a day. Or do I do that and some  hand stitching with pearl cotton? Or do more quilting than just the ditch?  Or do crosshatching like I did in "Midwinter's Night."  Or how about diagonal lines running from the upper left corner where the sunlight is coming into the forest of trees? Boy how I wish you could see how these things would look ahead of time to help make the decision.

I am still slowing hand quilting my house quilt. The cat quilted for this house is easy to see. Today I thought I lost one of my cat templates. So I cut another one and then found the missing one.....figures!!!!

Another project will soon be in the works. My daughter wants me to make her roman shades for her 3 windows in her condo. This is the fabric she picked from fabric.com. I think I have how to make these figured out, but I guess we will see when I try to make them! I have made curtains, but never a roman shade. Should be interesting....








Linking to Nina-Marie.

Thanks for reading. If you have any ideas for quilting "Sunlight in the forest" please let me know.
Chris

How's the quilting going? SLOWLY...VERY SLOWLY

I think I forgot how slowly hand quilting goes. I think I have about 2 houses out of 25 done!  I find my vision is not as good as it used to be. Also my wrist hurts a bit after quilting. So both of those are slowing me down. I do like the Dream poly batting though.

I decided to do very simple 1/4 inch outline quilting so that the quilted cats would not get lost. Of course I have second guessed this as I usually second guess everything I do.

There is a quilted cat on the roof of this house. Of course you are asking what cat????

I had to take the photo with a macro setting and without the flash so the cat would be visible in the photo. I am going to quilt a cat for every house, but think for most of them I will quilt them on the darker fabric so they are more visible. Right now I have 3 different cat silhouettes, but might need to draw a few more.







Thanks for reading.

Chris

It's all coming together....

The house quilt is thread basted and ready for hand quilting. Boy that was some job. It took two days of working on it for many, many hours Sometimes I think I over baste, but I will be carrying this around for a while so I don't want it to shift too much.

Moral: I will never complain about pin basting for machine quilting ever again.

My fabrics arrived from Spoonflower. The one in the middle is my fabric for my Van Gogh inspired piece. Now I can get started on it. The one on the left is created from an abstract design I came up with last year in EB's abstract class. The one on the right is fabric I created with my ipad. I had it printed before, but this time added the white word designs. I have made a quilt from this fabric before.

Design created in EB's class using blue/green/gray squares.

Quilt made from the fabric created on my ipad.
This quilt is only 15 in by 15 in.

















Linking to Nina-Marie.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Now the fun part

I hate basting a quilt whether it is for machine or hand quilting, but I decided to tackle basting the house quilt this morning.

I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the Dream Poly batting. I remember what poly batting used to be like. This looks and feels like cotton. Seems to be a very nice batting. Will let you know how I like it for hand quilting.

Here is the backing and batting clamped to my cutting table.

I decided to trim the threads on the back of the top  before putting it on top of the batting. This turned out to be a monumental task. I flipped it over and noticed that you really can't see the threads from the front so I aborted this idea.

Here is the top clamped to the table and ready for basting. Things look pretty square. I think it will take several days for me to baste it. Have to give the back and neck breaks periodically.










Meanwhile I am waiting for my fabric for my Van Gogh quilt to be printed by Spoonflower. Once that comes in about 2 weeks I can get going on that quilt. I am thinking of sketching out the power plant so I am ready to work on it when the fabric arrives. Note: As soon as I published this I got a message from Spoonflower that my fabric has been printed and shipped! Should have it in a week.

I am also signed up for EB's new abstract class that starts this Friday at Academy of Quilting.  So it looks like I will be busy.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Gigantic bag to carry my quilt

The last time I hand quilted a large quilt I carried it around in a gigantic plastic bag. I wanted something a bit nicer this time. I decided to use up a few of the blocks from a quilt that I was working on last year. Check out this link to the quilt.

I decided that I did not like it well enough to make a king sized quilt and pay to have it quilted. It looks much better in the photo than it did in person.

So the bag is about 36 inches wide by 24 inches tall. I was not very neat when I was quilting it since I just wanted to get it done. About half way I was sorry that I was not doing a better job, but it looks good enough. That certainly is a surprising statement coming from me the person obsessed with perfection.

• I sewed the blocks together and then quilted it to warm and natural batting. I had to clean out my bobbin area after that! 
• Then added the straps that I made really substantial with decor bond. 
• After sewing the outside of the bag together I lined it with the turquoise fabric. 

I might sew a snap on the center of the bag so it can snap shut. I will make that decision once I see what it is like with the quilt in it. Right now the bag is floppy, but I suspect that it won't be once the quilt is inside.

In case you missed my last blog the quilt that I will be hand quilting is the house quilt. It is 72 inches by 72 inches. Right now I am waiting for more muslin for the backing. I had bought 9 yards of the muslin, but it was not enough for the front and the backing. The houses really used up more than I thought they would.

In case you are wondering what the quilt is behind the door in the first photo above it is a dinosaur quilt I made my daughter back in 1994. It was hand quilted.

Here is the label on the back of the quilt.














Linking to Nina-Marie a day early because we are heading to NJ today.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Quilt top done!

The house top is too big to hang on my design wall so had to take a photo of it on the floor.

The borders were the exact lengths they should have been from the EQ design of the quilt. I guess that means I was fairly accurate in my cutting and sewing.

This is going to take a while to hand quilt because it is pretty big at 72 in by 72 in.

It is not as big as the queen size double wedding ring that I hand quilted years ago. I think it was almost king size. That was my last major hand quilted piece. This quilt won viewer's choice at a quitl show!  I am looking forward to hand quilting again.















We had a great time at the NYC St Patrick's day parade last Thursday. My husband's bagpipe band was in the parade. The families of the band members marched behind the band down 5th avenue. The weather was perfect and we met up with our daughter and boyfriend at the end of the parade. They came in from Boston for the parade. We were able to hang out with them for a band tailgate at the end of the parade.

Looks like we were having a good time!


Thanks for reading.

Chris

New look for the blog

For some reason yesterday I decided to change the look of my blog. Sometimes you just need a change! What do you think?

My houses are ready to sew together. In fact I have sewn one row together already and it measures 60 1/2 inches like it is supposed to! Love when that happens. Although you do get to see all your "imperfections" when you sew a patchwork block to a patchwork block.

I did switch 2 of the blocks since my last post.

I have also sewn the 88 half square triangle blocks I need in the border. Just need to trim these up and press them. It is amazing how fast the number of pieced blocks add in a border!








Thanks for reading.

Chris

Houses are made

Boy it was a struggle to get motivated to finish the last row of this quilt. I was pretty tired of sewing house blocks together.

I have to let this arrangement sit for a day to see if this is how I am going to sew them together. 

Our kitty taking a nap on his red blanky. He looks so sweet when he is sleeping. Not so sweet when he is crying and running around the house at 5 am.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

Only 10 to go

The house production is going faster than I thought it would.

I think this quilt is going to look really striking on the wall where I am going to hang it. It is going to end up being about 70 in by 70 in by the time I add the borders. I will get to view this quilt each time I come into the house from the garage.



I decided to buy Dream poly batting for this quilt since I am going to hand quilt it and I wanted something easy to needle as well as light weight to carry around with me. I am looking forward to the hand quilting. I have always enjoyed hand quilting and miss it with all the machine quilting that I do these days. I guess it will be time to think about how to quilt it. The roof is a large area so I will need some kind of design for it as well as the triangle gable shape....maybe something Celtic?  I might even quilt a cat or two in the windows of the houses.

Any ideas for how to quilt it?

Thanks for reading. Linking to Nina-Marie.

Chris

Grandma’s House for Blogger's Quilt Festival—Spring 2009

There is an online quilt festival going on. In order to participate you have to post the story of your favorite quilt. I know that I have posted about this quilt before on my blog, but since this is one of my favorite quilts I would love to talk about it again!

I made this quilt of my parent’s house for my Mom's 80th birthday which we celebrated last August. I did not think it would take too long, but it pretty much took the entire summer and was more difficult than I thought it would be. These are some pictures of the finished quilt.

When my Mom received the quilt she was really surprised. I think this photo is my favorite photo of the quilt. When people at the party saw the quilt they thought it was a painting. When I told them it was a quilt they looked at me with a puzzled look on their faces. I guess most people don't think of quilts beyond traditional patchwork quilts.

This quilt looked so much different when I first started making it. This is a photo of what it looked like not far into the process. At this point I was almost going to pack it in an get her something else for a gift since it did not look too good at the beginning. So I guess this shows that you have to keep going when making a quilt like this.

So you might ask if the quilt looks anything like the house. Here is a photo of the house so you judge how well I did. I decided to make a spring scene and my Dad sent me photos of the tree in front of the house in the spring. I sent photos back and forth to my Dad to get his feedback. He designed the house so I did not want to mess up. I loved his comment to me, "Don't be so hard on yourself." I should take that advise more often.

And yes, that is a cat in the window on the quilt. The cat is no longer around, but used to sit in the window all the time and make my Mom crazy.

Making a Quilt of My Parent’s House

This a photo of my Mom when she opened the quilt of my parent’s house that I made for her 80th birthday last August. It is my favorite photo of the quilt. A lot of people at the party thought that it was a painting rather than a quilt. I spent most of last summer working on this quilt. I thought that I would give you an idea of how I made this quilt.

I started out with a photo of the house. It was actually a fairly out of date photo, but it was all I had to work with when I started the project. The photo shows the house in the winter. This is how I got started.

1. I printed out the photo of the house as large as I could make it on an 8 1/2 in by 11 in sheet of paper.
2. I placed a sheet of transparency film over the photo and traced the image with a permanent marker. I used one of my pigma pens because it has such a thin tip. I wasn’t too careful when tracing things that were straight lines since I planned on measuring them and using my rotary cutter to cut these pieces out. That would include things that must be straight like windows, doors, etc.
3. I then put a plain white sheet of paper behind the transparency image and scanned it into my computer so I could print it out.
4. I took this scanned and printed image to Staples to have them make an enlargement for me. I think I had it enlarged 250%. (or maybe it was 200%). Once I had it enlarged I had a pattern to make the quilt. Unfortunately I did not save the copy made at Staples so I cannot show you that.
5. I used a large sheet of tracing paper and put that over my Staples print and traced the 250% enlarged house with a pencil and ruler. I use tracing paper since I can use a dark marker to trace the lines of pieces I want to create using fusible web. The trouble with that is that you must reverse these when you trace the pieces onto fusible web. The tracing paper allows me to do that. I just flip the tracing paper over for my pattern pieces.

   The pattern for the house traced onto tracing paper. You can see that it has been folded up in my closet since I finished the quilt last August. The parts of the house I did not go over with a dark marker, I used my ruler and rotary cutter to create those straight pieces.This is the reverse side of the tracing paper pattern that I used to create my fusible web pieces.
6. I used Steam a Seam 2 Lite for the fusible since I needed the pieces to stay in place as I created the house. I am not thrilled with this fusible for any other reason. It is too heavy and it gummed up my needle when I stitched through it. But it was great for keeping all the small pieces in place.

I asked my Dad if he thought that my Mother preferred a winter or summer scene and he thought that summer would be better. I had him send me more photos of the house since all I had was a winter photo.

Here is a series of photos showing the progress of the quilt from beginning to end.

Here is the house at the very beginning of the process. Doesn’t look like too much at this point. I was almost ready to pack it in and buy her a gift for her birthday. I carried on due to encouragement from my daughter. The house is in Pittsburgh, PA and it hardly is ever sunny which is why the sky is so gray.

Here I am creating the trees behind the house. I just randomly cut pieces of about 3 or 4 different fabrics to create the leaves on the trees. My husband was really impressed with the trees because he thought they looked very realistic.

We had a big debate about what color of green to use for the grass in the front lawn. I had a darker green and a lighter green. We ended up using the lighter green.

This is the house with the darker front lawn. I was also doing a funky thing with the front walkway that I changed my mind about.

This is the house with the fabric I finally used for the front lawn and the corrected front walkway.

I also had some problems coming up with a good fabric for the flowering tree on the left side of the house. The tree was white, but I had a hard time coming up with something. I had pink and I had blue, but the tree was white!

Here is the tree as blue. This is the fabric that I wanted to use, but my Dad emphasized that the tree was white! So no creative license for the tree!

I also tried pink-white, but again the tree is only white!

So I had to come up with white!

So here is the finished top with the border added. Now onto the quilting! My machine was acting up so doing much free motion quilting or thread painting was pretty much ruled out. Since I am new to free motion, I thought it was me. I ended up taking my machine in for service after this quilt. What a difference!

Here are two photos of the final quilt.

I think the quilt came out great and my Mom was really surprised. My Dad designed this house so I wanted to make sure it really looked like their house.

Yes that is a cat in the window. That cat is no longer alive, but use to make my Mom crazy because she always sat in the front window. I printed the cat and the house number on Printed Treasures.

I will be teaching a free class on making a quilt of your house on the Learning FA group in May of this year. If this is something you always wanted to do why don’t you join us there?

Chris