Quilts with African fabric

This winter, I was driven to make quilts out of African fabrics. I really wanted to re-invision traditional patterns. I had a lot of African fabric laying around from my dancing days (sigh). I was fascinated to see how my old stand-bys like the eight pointed star, chinese coins, and flying geese would look. The results have been mixed, I'm still experimenting.

Eight Pointed Star Quilt with African Fabric

African Chinese Coins Quilt with Indigo

Flying Geese Quilt with African Fabric

Log Cabin Quilt with African Fabric

One Square Quilt with African Fabric

Blue Jeans Pocket Quilts

The inspiration to make quilts out of jeans pockets came from this quilt by an African American quilter in Michigan. fell instantly in love with it. It is the inspiration for my first my jeans pocket quilt, which doesn't have the same funk. I think this quilter doesn't measure or use a rotarty cutter so that her strips conform to the natural shapes of the material. In the other quilts I explore more traditional patterns using jeans pockets as the nucleus.

Jeans Pocket Eight Pointed Star quilt

log cabin quilt with jeans pockets

Liberated Star Quilt

I'm pretty excited about these quilts because they are a beautiful, organic, asymmetrical spin on an eight pointed star pattern, which is one of my favorites. More and more I am turning away from following quilting patterns, and using strict geometric shapes. I am increasingly inspired by the Quilts of Gee's Bend and quilts like Sherri Lynn Wood's Color Study and Passage Quilts I am called more towards making quilts that are more spontaneous and improvisational, where both the form and color flow from my imagination.

Braiding and Quilting

 I just taught myself to cornrow. I'm very proud of myself. It's a very belated right of passage. I've wanted to learn forever. I grew up in a family with all boys and I never learned. I felt like I missed my window of opportunity. But as a teacher I have to believe that anyone can learn anything (right?). So I bought a (very scary) mannequin head and watched some youtube videos (neither of these worked by the way). Why am I posting this on a quilt blog you may be asking yourself. Braiding reminds me a lot of quilting because they are both repetitive in nature and sometimes it's more important to maintain a pattern than to necessarily be precise. And they are also both labors of love. I've began envisioning a quilt with a cornrow pattern...

Recycled Sweater Quilt

This winter I became obsessed with making a recycled sweater quilt. It was like the story Stone Soup in that I wanted to make the quilt based on the few sweaters I started out with. Then I had to go out thrifting repeatedly in order to finish the quilt. This quilt was very quick and easy, is tied and it's very heavy and warm. It has flannel backing. If you are interested there are several good tutorials online including this one called resweater.

Ayan's Quilt

Ayan's quilt is based on a half square log cabin pattern. It is based upon a quilt from The Quilts of Gee's Bend book. It is made from her father's dress shirts (most of which he gave up willingly). I have mixed feelings about how muted the colors are and I'd like to try it again with darker colors but this one is special because the fabric was her father's.

Ubiquitous baby on a quilt photo.

"Lemon Grass Quilt" with Amy Butler Fabric

I've been wanting to do something lighter and more mod. My attraction to African and Batik fabrics leaves many of my quilts very color dense. This quilt is an attempt to expand. (it comes from Quilts Baby by Linda Kopp)

Simplex Star Quilt with Batiks