Juicy Bits

207: we *heart* teachers

If you have school-age children, you know that teacher appreciation week just went by.  I'm class mom for Aurora's second grade class this year and we just love her teacher.  Really we've been so lucky to have great teachers for both kids so far.  And we do truly appreciate them.  

This year Aurora's teacher is pregnant and due this summer.  When her class decided to throw a baby shower for her, I knew I wanted to make her a baby quilt.

I always think to myself how easy it will be.  I'll keep it simple.  Yeah, right.  Inevitably, I get carried away.  This is the pretty quilt I came up with:

 

Actually, it's not super-complicated or anything.  I've been doing a ton of half square triangles lately.  And all I had to go on were that she likes bright colors, her favorite color is turquoise, and she's having a girl.  But I did add some time-consuming details, that, I hope, made it really special for her.  

I had each of the kids in her class write their name.  Then I traced them and stitched them (by machine) into rectangles around the border.  I wanted their personalities to be there in some small way (without becoming too childish or overwhemling), so it's neat to have the names in their own handwriting.

I also couldn't stick to simple straight-line quilting (yes, there's a pattern developing here) so I came up with a flower motif for in each star.

As you can see, she really loved it and I know she can treasure it and know that she's made a difference to every child in her class.

JT

206: cantilevers

I've got exciting news.  For the first time, I'm going to have a quilt in a show.  And it's a big one!  At Quilt Festival in Houston this fall, there will be an exhibit of The Modern Quilt Guild Showcase 2012 and one of my quilts was selected!

As you can imagine, I'm pretty psyched about this.  Only 33 quilts were selected.

I made this quilt, titled Cantilevers, specifically to enter in the show.  I think it's only quilt I've sewn that's entirely solids (well, there's a little bit of print on the back...shhhh... I didn't take any pictures of that yet).  It was inspired by a building I saw driving home from a Philly MQG meeting.  The building itself didn't have cantilevers but it had three offset windows that just got my mind rolling.

I think I'm most proud of the quilting.  I did it all myself on my regular home machine.  Thanx to Angela, I've really had the machine quilting bug lately.  I'd love to buy a longarm, but I'm restraining myself for now.  I practiced with a lot of doodling before starting on the actual quilt.

Anyway, there has been plenty of discussion online about what exactly is "modern quilting".  I don't feel much need to add to it except to say that I definitely consider myself a modern quilter.  I'll direct you to the Modern Quilt Guild's site to see what they have to say about the matter.  But, no one gets to define you, so if you are or you want to be a modern quilter, then you are.

I've founded a local branch of the guild this year, the Central Jersey Modern Quilt Guild.  If you're local, we want you to join us!  We've been having a ton of fun so far...

So far, 2012 has allowed for more quilting for me than last year which is making me happy.  I began and completed my first quilt in the first week of January.  Hopefully I'll share that one soon.  I'm trying to decide if I want to write up a pattern for it.  And, since then, I've completed 2 others (including this one) and started 2 more.  Yay for quilting!

JT