Two little quilts

I recently finished two small quilts, both made from patterns from Elizabeth Hartman's blog Ohfransson.com. Hers is one of my favorite blogs. It's full of ideas and free patterns and tutorials for her designs, most of which are bright, modern quilts.

This is a baby quilt made with her modified foundation piecing technique for this spider-web design. I wanted to try it, and I used scraps in blue, white, and green. Frankly, the technique is a bit labor-intensive. I'm not sure I would make this design with this technique again, but I made enough blocks for this baby quilt - it's only 36x45 inches finished.

This is another of her designs that she calls Crazy Nine Patch. (The back of the quilt is above - it shows the individual block better) It's fun to make - you layer 9 different fabrics, make a cut through all of them, shuffle the order of one stack of pieces, then sew two different pieces together. Then you keep doing that, till each block has one patch of each of the 9 fabrics. I put mine together in her lattice arrangement, and had three extra blocks for the back of the quilt.

This quilt started out as a baby quilt when Emily was pregnant, with a group of the gold, gray, and white prints. Then we found out that Russ would be a boy (!) and I thought that some of the yellow prints were too girly. I needed more fabrics and added the greenish gold to the mix and then decided to use the gray solid (rather than white) to keep the whole thing softer-looking. I hand-quilted it with gold perle cotton and big stitches. I really like it - now I wish I had made it bigger! It's 40 x 56 inches.

College Dorm Room Bunk Bed Hangy Thingies

When I was in Cleveland, Kathy and I made this for Cary's bunk bed in her dorm room. Her bed is up so high, there's no dresser or nightstand or anything to set things on. So if she's reading in bed, there's nowhere to put a book, unless she climbs down. She didn't like my idea of making a basket-and-pulley contraption like in Rear Window.

So Kathy went online and found some instructions and patterns for these. Using them as a guideline, we made up this pattern on our own. The background is corduroy; the pockets are made from an old pair of jeans of Kathy's, and the pocket lining is a really pretty polka-dot. We used all of Kathy's fabric and supplies (just Velcro, thread, and iron-on interfacing to give it strength) so it didn't cost anything.

Cary loved it.

So I went home and made another one for her roommate, Claire.

I had trouble wrapping my head around how to make a lined pocket with a little band across the top, so I cheated a little bit and did some hand-sewing. But it looks fine. The background fabric is black with gray treble clefs, which I thought was perfect for a music student.

I told Cary we could start a small business making these and selling them to dorm students who are trapped in high bunk beds in dorms. :)

Kathy's Wedding Ring quilt

I was going through my pictures from our recent trip to Ohio and found this one. It's from a meeting of Kathy's quilt guild (I forget the name!). They met the first night I was at Kathy's so I got to go along with her. And I got to be the photographer!

Kathy is hiding behind this quilt, holding it up! It's another in her Double Wedding Ring series. She made one for Emily and Brian when they got married, one for Rob and Sarah for Sarah's shower, and then this one for a quilt show that her guild is doing. Each one is in a different color scheme and they are all beautiful!