Quilt Brag

Earlier this year I paid off my car. I then promptly celebrated by asking for less hours at work. Since then I've been working an average of three days a week. I keep myself busy the rest of the time with in home crafts such as quilting, drawing, refinishing furniture, and occasionally cleaning and cooking.

I would love to give tutorials on my projects (since that is the kind of blog I like to read) but it never occurred to me to take process pictures. I'll try to remember in the future, but for now I'll just give the finished project picture and anything else useful I can find.

I've been quilting since I was eleven. Mom taught me how to tie quilts before that. but the first hand stitched quilt I ever worked on was a wedding quilt for a close family friend. It took us a long time to finish even though it was in the Living room and a disruption to family space. I think we gave it to our friend for her second anniversary (not the last time that would happen with family wedding quilts).

I learned to sew on a machine in seventh grade home economics class. Mom had tried to teach me earlier but our personality conflicts had ended that experiment. Mom became my sewing tutor instead and has been my encyclopedia ever since.

I designed my first quilt at seventeen out of denim. It was a square patch tied quilt and weighed so much I couldn't use it and eventually gave it away as a picnic quilt.

I've made a bazillion quilts since then (actual number) I've given away many of them and don't have pictures of the majority. I learn as I go and I usually design them myself, which is the fun part for me, but it means  I have to learn a lot of things the hard way. I don't actually know how to read an official quilt pattern. I'm very visual and I design my own on grid paper or on the computer.

Okay, I've been going on way too long.

This is an original wall hanging design of intertwining snakes incorporating triangles, an in places asymmetrical diamonds(kite shapes) to save time.

Two Snakes.

The finished size is 24 x 30 in. 

Here are close-ups of the snake heads

I can't find a name for this quilt pattern, I think of it as a pinwheel but that name is already in use for another design. It's basically an octagon inside a square and the octagon has been equally divided into triangles. So you have eight 4 1/8 x 4 1/8 x 3 1/4 in. Isosceles triangles and four 2 5/8 x 2 5/8 x 3 5/8 in.  right angle triangles per square. (measurements include a 1/4 in. seam allowance) Each side of each finished square measures 6 1/4 in. there are twenty squares in the design. 

I guess I could call it the Stop Sign. The fun of designing Two Snakes was to see how many fabric squares of different combinations of value (light, medium, and dark) I could put in my wall hanging and still have a cohesive overall design. The original pattern was done in pencil with ink added for the dark areas. I then used  the two red, two yellow, and two green fabrics from my stash and grosgrain ribbon for the snake tongues.

Next time: Grosgrain ribbon + buttons+ a little fabric= summer grass and bugs.