more on quilting

Thanks for all the super nice comments and great advice about my quilt yesterday. There is so much to learn about quilting! And so many different opinions on how to do things. I'm already thinking about future projects and how I'll do things the next time. I really really want to do my own design but I don't know if I'm ready for that yet. Also other designs are calling to me. Like a few from the Kaffe Fassett book I have out from the library, Passionate Patchwork. The two patterns I like the best are rice bowls and pastel bubbles.

I think rice bowls would be so cute as a baby quilt. Especially with that cool paperdoll fabric Angie sent me as the backing! But there is another Kaffe Fassett book for me on hold at the library so I'll have to check that out first before proceeding. Funny because I was never really a Kaffe Fassett fan before. I'm seeing all sorts of fabrics and colors differently than I did before. I always looked as fabric as stand alone because that's how I used it. I wanted everything to have it's own unique, cool look. That's why I was so drawn to reproduction & feedsack fabrics. Now I'm appreciating the place of more tonal fabrics that read as solids in quilts and of course just solids like I used in Plain Spoken. By the way, yes to someone who asked if that was a pattern they gave us in FunQuilts class. It will be in their new book that comes out this Spring. And I goofed up the name before, it is called Plain Spoken. Not Plain and Simple. I think the simple part was wishful thinking on my part! The new FunQuilts book is going to be awesome. They kept saying in class, "all this will be in the book". It is going to be so helpful, especially since I was dumb and didn't take any notes.

I unearthed the book where I found Oscar's racetrack quilt pattern - Encyclopedia of Classic Quilt Patterns by Patricia Wilens. I looked through it this morning for inspiration and didn't really see anything else in there I'd want to make. I'd really like to do a more modern, clean interpretation of a classic quilting pattern but nothing was singing to me. (maybe because Oscar decided to get up at 4:45am this morning. the creative juices don't really flow on less than 5 hours of sleep!) Anyway, here's their "Roads" quilt. I didn't do that big border. This book is very found of super wide borders.

Here are a few more answers to questions from yesterday. What pattern to recommend to a beginner? I don't really know because I'm still a beginner. Definitely something not too complicated. Just like knitting, you don't want to start out too difficult and give up. Yes, I used all cotton batting. Although watch out. The first bag of batting I bought at JoAnn's said "cotton batting" in big letters all over it and then in fine print 80% cotton, 20% poly. I ended up buying the cotton batting by the yard at Hancock Fabrics.

And here's the Clover binding tool I was talking about. It's AWESOME! You cut the binding fabric in 2" strips, sew them together at right angles (instead of straight on to reduce stress to the seam) until you have enough to cover the edge of the quilt, then you send it through the Clover gizmo and press. It comes out so perfect! Then you just fold over and press again and voila, binding!

I'm at the quilting stage of the first of many baby quilts I need to make this Spring. I'm wanting to do something more original than the basic stippling pattern I did on Oscar's quilt but I'm stumped. I need to search around online to see if they have samples of patterns anywhere. Also a quick check, Becky? Do you read this? If I don't  hear from her I'll be able to post photos soon.