Christmas finishes

Hey there and Happy Holidays! We are gearing up for Christmas here at my house. That means lots of cooking and lots of Christmas sewing. Let me show you some quick pictures of (SOME) quilts I have finished recently. It has been rainy and dreary around Leavenworth, KS and sometimes the quilts slip out of the studio and go on their way before I have a chance to take pictures of them. 

This first one is a T-shirt quilt I was commissioned to make for a fireman. This was a great client to work with. She sent me design wall pictures of what she had in mind and we collaborated together to come up with a rather unique T-shirt quilt.

I quilted it with flames of course and used Quilters Dream Cotton batting in select loft.

The back is my favorite. It is strip pieced and was really fun to put together.

Next is Lynn's sweet floor quilt. This on was really fun. I love the idea of a giant Dresden Plate

Sorry, these pictures are pretty rotten. I had her hold it up before she left the studio. The lighting is dreadful. The quilt is super cute though!

Next up is Cheryl's wonderful Chevron. I love chevron quilts. I think there are a thousand different ways to quilt them.

For this one I did Echoing lines in the white and bubbles in the colored bits.

I get a bunch of questions on Instagram about how I use my Channel locks to quilt diagonal lines. It is easy! I need to work up a tutorial I suppose. All the bubbles are freehand and were a blast to quilt!

I also finished this adorable wall hanging for Meri. She and her grand daughter worked on it as a block of the month. She said her grand daughter was more excited about it than she was so she wanted to give it to her as a Christmas present. I custom quite it to guide around all the buttons and ribbons.

I finished this Doe fabric by Carolyn Firendlander. I think I am going to give it to my son. It will get it's own post because it is awesome. I used some new super thick cotton batting on it and quilted it freehand to look like topography contour lines.

And I finally slapped a binding on this fabulous quilt. I intended to sell in in my shop, because frankly my house is starting to look like a quilt hoarder lives here. But sadly I can't because it has a big stain on it. I left it folded in a safe place until I had time to bind it, and someone trotted over and bled on it. I have no other information than that. I don't know what led up to the nefarious event, but it was something dastardly I am sure. It will be given to my daughter. She won't care a bit. Maybe I will applique something over the stain? If you look close you can see it over on the left hand side right by the mermaid. I washed this quilt already once. It didn't come out.

xo,
Tia

A T-shirt Quilt

Hey there! I finished another Shirt quilt last week. These are actually pretty fun to make. But I did learn a very important tip after I had finished and given this quilt to the client. In the future I will insist that the people who drop off or send the shirts indicate exactly which portions of the shirt are desired in the quilt. I was positive that the lady said to use all the shirts so I did....but it turns out I had insulted her by adding one of the red shirts. Apparently Dr Schabazz is a con traversal figure. Personally I had no clue who she was except that she has an exciting name. Whoops. It was pretty easy to fix by appliqueing another shirt on top and quilting over it with invisible thread, but boy was I embarrassed!

I hand guided the quilting with wind since the young lady who all the shirts belonged to was a runner. And I think these swirls are the most fun to quilt.

It was sashed with blue and backed with fuchsia, the young lady's favorite colors. So...learn from my folly and if you every make one of these quilts for someone, ASK what shirts they want and mark them with masking tape. My favorite Shirt client did that with her college shirts and her husband did the same with his. It made the process so much more simple.

I have lots of quilts to show off!

Have a happy weekend!

T-shirt quilt

Hey there! Here is a T-shirt quilt I finished for a lady on post. It is all her daughters swim team T-shirts from the last couple years. Australia, Canada and Kansas - that is quite a swimming sprawl. The girl's favorite color is Aqua, so I choose that as the background color. I quilted it to look like water. My favorite part is the big "Ceileigh Loves Swimming" quilted into the center of the quilt. It was very fun to play with the writing feature of my Statler Stitcher. The background ripple quilting was done freehand.

You can see the writing a little better in these two shots.

Funny how this quilt came to be. I was at a Tastefully simple party about a month ago and 2 ladies were chatting about the trouble they were having with getting their T-shirt quilts made. My ears perked up at the word quilt and I joined the conversation. By the end of the week I had bags and bags of T-shirts under my sewing table from ladies all over post. Turns out there is quite a market for T-shirt quilts. Who knew? My goal with T-shirt quilts I make for folks is to take them to the next level. This one is pretty tame, but my next two are much more Modern and personal.

I would be more than happy to make one for you. I charge $10 a square foot for a simple T-shirt quilt (like the one above). That rounds out to be about $20 a T-shirt. That should help you as you look through your dresser or the boxes out in the garage. Send me an email if you would like to discuss T-shirt quilts a bit more. The next 2 are going to be pretty great....and not your normal T-shirt quilt by any means.

Have a great day!

Tia Curtis