Julie's Quilts

I love hearing from ya'all. Recently, Julie Post sent me a couple of photos of quilts she'd made using the free-pieced letters and kindly gave me permission to share them with you.

Julie made this Scrappy Trips Around the World for her in-laws. It has the names of all the grandkids. Isn't it fabulous? Those stars are a wonderful touch as well.

The next quilt contains the names of the tractors that Julie's family or their friends have owned. The words started out as a border for a different quilt but were too wavy for Julie to use. So she took the borders apart and reworked them to make this fabulous quilt.

Julie says: "I followed your advice of... Add if it's too short and cut it off if too long. There was no plan except to lay out the blocks and start adding things."

Julie did such a great job. Congrats on making these wonderful quilts full of memories.

In other news, Pokey is doing really well. She can jump up on countertops again. We just finished playing fetch - I threw a rolled-up sock and she brought it back. At least for a few times - eventually she just looked at me as if to say "why did you take my toy away?"

Boo

My husband questioned whether the photos I took last week of Pokey on the flag quilt were staged. Nope, that's hardly ever needed. Case in point, on Sunday I pieced a little quilt. 

Got the word done, how much background does it need around it?

Now with the border fabric

This is a good indication that I'm not as worried about Pokey as I was a short time ago. Last week as soon as she gave me the signal for belly I'd have dropped the camera to give her some loving.

Now I'm letting her do the Belly Love Wiggle while I take photos. Not to worry, she gots lots of loving not soon after.

As you can see I was thinking about centering Boo in the middle of the quilt...

In the end I decided I liked the boo off-center. 

I bet you can't tell that I'm having a real longing already for Halloween. There's definitely a reason (okay, more than one) that I love the JaMPatch in Stuart - they love Halloween too and already have some fun fabric rolling in. That's where I got the great spider web fabric. I was thinking about using it for the letters but went with this option instead.

I think I've decided how I'm going to quilt it, but am not sure. There's a big part of me that wants to do spider webs and spiders, but maybe that's too expected. I keep going back and forth on options. Don't think the skeleton chorus line is going to work... I did start quilting the letters in red quilting thread but it wasn't bold enough - I need to use perle.

I've got a new blog for ya'all to check out. Laura's Cloth and Mind. She just free-pieced her very first word and it's fabulous AND she's been making wonky houses that are amazing. She's really gotten into the multi-stories and complicated roofs. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Please give her some encouragement and a welcome to blogland.

That first word that Laura made? It was rattle (plus a surprise) for the Halloween Noises quilt. That's not so much the name of the quilt as the description. I'm already thinking of it as Slither Eek Boo. Anyway, here's what we've got so far. If you don't see your name here send me an email. Any additions, corrections, adjustments?

argh                                   big leaning                                                        Cher

bang                                  BIG                                                                     honeybee
boo                                    maybe big and skinny                                     Patti
boo                                                                                                                Brenda
clank                                                                                                             Sarah
eek                                     wide/narrow maybe getting smaller           Marge
groan                               short and fat                                                    Siobhan
grr                                      tall, skinny, leaning                                        ChrisQuilts
gurgle                                rounded and flat                                              Lynda
hiss                                    snake-like SS                                                    Tracey in CT

hiss                                    fat, uppercase                                                   Natima

hoot                                   rounded                                                             Valerie
howl                                  thin and growing                                              Dionne
moan                                 mix of big and small                                        Beena

mu ha ha ha                                                                                                  Mimi

mwa ha ha ha                                                                                               Kim

rattle        Laura
screeeech                          spiky                                                                  Clare
slither                                low and wide                                                    Lynne
slither                                possibly leaning                                               Rondi
snarl                                   straight up and down                                      ForestJane
slurp                                   rounded and curvy                                           Rachael
squeeeak                                                                                                        Kathy
thump                                wide/narrow letters                                        Cheri
trick or treat                     overlapped                                                        Katie
wooooo                                                                                                          Sharon

I'm not much of a planner when I'm making words. I have a tendency to just chop and go. To see a completely different way to work, check out Lynne's planning for slither. Lynne plots, plans, and does a lot of work with paper. She's on the opposite of the spectrum. Both ways work, you just have to play around until you find what works best for you.

Clare meanwhile has plotted and schemed and hatched an idea making spiky letters for screeech.

If you aren't sure how you'd like to do your word or would like suggestions, just ask. As far as fonts goes, hmmm, looks like we could do with something angular.

We now have a SHRIEK up for grabs if anyone would like to take it. Which is not to say we can't have dupes... Cuz we can, just let me know.

Halloween Noises so Far

Right after I published that last post a thought occurred to me.  You know, this Halloween Noises quilt is going to be a blast to hand quilt. There are so many really cool things I can do with it. If you guys use some solids or mostly solids - and leave the backgrounds large for me to cut down as needed - I'll have some great places for quilting. These are details from my Dear Mummy quilt to give you an idea of what I'm talking about. This quilting wouldn't have worked on top of novelty prints.

The background doesn't have to be light colored - I have a large array of colors to choose from in the perle cotton and embroidery floss. I hope you guys can come up with quilting ideas too, so I don't just do my usual spiderwebs...

This is what I have so far. Let me know changes or additions.

argh big leaning Cher

bang  BIG Honeybee

boo maybe big and skinny Patti

boo Brenda

clank extra angular Carol E.

eek wide/narrow maybe getting smaller Marge

groan short and fat Siobhan

grr tall, skinny, leaning ChrisQuilts

gurgle rounded and flat Lynda

hiss snake-like SS Tracey in CT

howl thin and growing Dionne

moan mix of big and small Beena

screeeech Clare

shriek really tall and skinny Lynne

slither low and wide Lynne

slither possibly leaning Rondi

snarl straight up and down ForestJane

slurp rounded and curvy Rachael

squeeeak Kathy

thump wide/narrow letters Cheri

trick or treat overlapped Katie

wooooo Sharon

The deadline to make the blocks is end of May. In the mail on 1 June, right?

Honeybee, I wasn't sure from your comment (and you're no-reply) if you just wanted to do bang or also wanted grunt rattle and howl. which would be really fun. All depends on how ambitious you're feeling. Send me an email if you want to chat about it, otherwise responding in the comments here works too.

I am so enjoying reading about the thinking that is going into some of these words, forming the letters by how they sound or by what creature it is that makes them. So very cool. Ya'all are wonderful.

I am happy to have more people play along, believe me. It might be one large quilt or a pair, who knows, I don't. It's just fun to play and explore.  It's so marvelous to see ideas that I never would have come up with on my own.

Anyone want to be the evil mastermind plotting to take over the world and do a mwa ha ha ha? Or an alternate spelling thereof. 

If you're new to making the letters please don't think that you have to make it complicated. Those O's don't have to be rounded (unless that's the font you've chosen). And every letter or word, no matter how misshappen you think it might be, can find a home in one of my quilts. Seriously. Maybe not quickly, because I am sloooow, but eventually.

One thing I forgot to mention in the last post is that I rarely use the graph paper to make an exact copy of what I've drawn. In fact, I don't think I've ever done that. But I use it as a guidepost. Cut fabric strips this wide, this bit will need to be at least this much long...

Okay, gotta run. Ya'all take care.

Super Thin Letters

It's been so much fun thinking of fonts. It makes me excited to see all of your plans for making cool words for the Halloween Noises quilt. Awesome. How about end of May for the deadline? Not to worry if you're late - I can ALWAYS find a project for really cool Halloween words.

I decided to show you some options of playing with super skinny letters. I've used them before in my quilt America with Flag. I got it out this morning to take a close up of the letters and voila, instant kitty.

I made those letters with 3/4" strips (finishing at a quarter inch). It's fiddly but comes up with a great result. The background strips were cut 3/4" and 1", except for the background of the M, which was 1.25" wide. These letters finish at 4" high. 

Sometimes it's fun to play with graph paper to work out how you'd make letters. It's quicker than piecing. I thought, what would happen if I made these super skinny letters really tall? How about 9"?

 

That looks cool, but boy it's hard to read. How about another two? First is 6" and the second is 3". Now it's easier to read what it says.

You'll notice I played a bit with the K each time, trying out different options to make things work. Those letters with slants really throw a curveball in when you're trying to make your letters this narrow. There are always ways to make them though.

With those first few I kept the letters all the same height. What about varying them?

How about making the letter fabric super skinny but making the letters themselves wider?

There are all sorts of options and they can look dramatically different.

Was it fun to see these or just not that helpful? If you'd like me to play around with some other types of fonts, just give a holler. But even better, try it yourself first.

I didn't realize I was going to have a pic of Pokey in this post, so I'd included one down here. Just hope you all don't get tired of seeing her.

Pokey is doing great, leaping around and pouncing. Not all the time of course, but often enough to make me happy. I finally figured out how to get the capsules in her. I threw a can of tuna packed in water (not the can, just the tuna and tuna water) into a blender along with some additional water and zuzzed it up. It's a disgusting sludge but miraculously Pokey loves it even with the contents of the capsule stirred in. That is sooo much easier than the wrestling sessions we were having. Just have to keep other cats away, which is a tad bit harder.

Unfortunately my bad knee blew up some last night and is swollen this morning. This is what I get for putting off calling an orthopedist.

Help Wanted: Halloween Noises

I don't know if any of the rest of ya'all have this problem, but sometimes I get stuck. I have this huge mental list of quilts I want to make and quilts I have to make and I just can't make a decision about any of them. I just keep hand quilting. 

Anyway, I've really been enjoying getting the free-pieced name blocks and I really and truly WILL get them together into a quilt. Anyone want to help me with another quilt (or two or three)?

While you think about it, here's a really and truly gratuitous photo of Pokey, just so that I have a picture in this post. This is from a few days ago, you can see her pink belly from where they shaved her for the ultrasound and the shaved bits on her arms where they had the IVs in.

Unfortunately one of the things that they are monitoring in her blood (the BUN) has gotten worse, while everything else has improved. So that means another trip to the vet in just a few weeks. Poor baby. She's doing extremely well though, playing and happy. Well, happy about everything but those pills.

Okay back to my idea for the quilt that I hope some of ya'all will help me with. It will be a fun quilt especially because you guys come up with different ways for doing things than I do, so it won't just be the same-old-same-old letters from me.

For ages now I've wanted to do a font sampler. I found the post I wrote about it way back in 2006. Yes, I'm a slowpoke. My idea is to have a bunch of words that represent noises you might hear at Halloween.  And they'd be written out in different styles.

Some fun words:

argh

arooo (a werewolf has got to sound like something)

a-whooo  (but maybe it's more like this)

boo

cackle

clank

creak

eek 

groan

grrrr

gurgle

howl

hiss

moan

mwa ha ha ha

shriek

slither 

slurp

thump

wooooooo

some font styles:

very tall and skinny

very wide and skinny

letters composed of very narrow AND very wide strips

very short and wide

small

big

leaning

rounded and curvy

extra angular

serif

italics

three-dimensional

This would be a fun chance for you to play with a different style of letters than you usually do AND if you get stuck I'd be happy to give you some ideas of how to proceed. Kind of like a class except that the teacher gets to keep your homework.

For colors I'm thinking: black, orange (okay, that's kind of a given), lime green, purple, yellow and/or white. For the letters and background stick mostly to solids or kinda solidy fabric so that the focus is on the letters and styles, not on busy novelty prints.

Finish each word off as a block. You can frame if it you'd like, but not necessary.

Anyone interested? I sure hope so. Just leave a comment saying what word(s) you'd like to do and in what style. We can definitely have duplicate words and and duplicate styles, but hopefully NOT the same word in the same style. if that made sense. Questions? Just ask. 

Think of another style I haven't included? that would be excellent.

Just to make sure we're clear on this. They have to be free-pieced letters - no applique or anything like that. The words can be in upper- or lower-case or a mix.

oh oh oh, and - as always - if you have any letters that didn't work I'd love to have them. Yes, I know, that's another quilt I still have to get together...

Don't you think this will be a fun teaching example? I always find Halloween is a great holiday to work with because you just can't take it too seriously. My fingers are crossed some of ya'all will play with me.