Random Quilts

Hi everyone! This is a warm and cozy flannel quilt for a blustery winter night!
I used easy and random Log Cabin blocks, quite large.

I made it a few years ago for my son....

I saved all the bits of flannels from his pj's and boxers and shirts for years, since he was tiny.

I chose a Log Cabin block...

Fussy cut the red Snowmen for the centers....

The Log Cabin layout is a big star...and the stars in the border are his date of birth. Rnadomly tucked in too are labels from fav clothes and embroidered uniform names, saved and imtegrated into the strips.

His name is pieced on the bottom (but he asked me not to show that....lol!)...

It is machine quilteded with a meandering star pattern and has a flannel batik backing; my only regret is that I had the quilter machine sew on the red binding...and she curved the corners! Ick. I am going to fix that someday! The yellow stars are machine appliqued too---I wanted it to be very utilitarian, no: Oh be careful! I handsewed that! etc.

He doesn't use it much, it's not his "style"---just for friends when he has guests sleeping over...but every time he goes skiing he brings a patch for me to sew on the back! So it has become a memory quilt, of sorts, beyond the fond mom memories of tiny Christmas flannel pyjamas and itty bitty flannel shirts!

That may mean he likes it? I made something similar for my daughter---hers is a heart...but it is temporarily among the missing, so no pix right now.

Have a cozy weekend!

love

        lizzy

gone to the beach....

So, okay...It's March again. sigh......

March. Not my fav.....
 Except for the "winter is lousy" bit [I adore winter!] I think Dorothy P. said it well:

Summer makes me drowsy
Autumn makes me sing.
Winter's pretty lousy.
But I hate spring!

                                                           Dorothy Parker

And yet....

The page above is from my ongoing Nature Journal. The current book is in its sixth or seventh year.

And here's an art journal....

Yeah, I'm a bit of a beach/nature nerd, I admit it. As you all know, beachcombing is a big part of my days, years round. It's great excercise, right? No treasure to be found on a Stairmaster thingy at a gym, is there? And I just love a treasure hunt! See:

This is what the native Americans used for money...

Wampum...softly rounded polished bits of clamshell, still found on the beach.....

                            

And you all know about me and seaglass and seashells... 

These are some of my collecting boxes for very special finds...

an Altoids tin, with pretty scrap....

and tiny containers inside....each little box marks a special day or trip, or summer's finds...

A tiny glass and aluminum box of oystercatchers' hatched eggs....below:

A small pocket box, ugly but useful, it stays in my beach bag or cargo pants pockets...

Here are some of my art journal pages....You maybe can see how these subconsciously translate into my quilts, like on the previous post?

                

My mom went through a French stage, got me making the captions in French, oooh la la and lah-di-dah!

My smallest collage book....just 4 inches square.

Wonder what March will bring me... last year, a table?

not really, I resisted!



This year---the sailboat? A blue glass float.....

               

love

        lizzy  

gone to the beach...

Log Cabins and Shipwrecks

I love random quilt blocks....Recently I re-found  this clipping in my mess of paperwork, saved from a whole year ago...

[no copyright infringement intended, etc. From Quilt Sampler, Spring 10]

I thought it would be a fun change of pace after carefully sewing my HQ doll quilt....
I gathered my own palette:

I love the colors Jean Wells used

but I could never use them in my home or sell them...so I went with blues....

But I'm not sure these work. They need narrower strips, more solids (don't have!), more contrast....more---ooomphf?
                     

These are 5", smaller than they look in the pix, so here's w/ my scissors for scale:

I originally planned to widely scatter the blocks on a white ground, with maybe even some very small blocks, 2" & 3"; bright turq machine quilting in a seashore/ seashells pattern for texture.But again...better on dusty aqua?

                            

I also clipped out this ad, thinking this might be a fun use of the blocks, tweaked somehow.....
                                    
As the author says, small blocks are a good way to audition fabrics and ideas...I don't think these blocks made the team, do you?

 But it's good to change gears, do something unstructured, I told myself. So instead of cleaning the closet where I store my book collection---I went to the beach!

As for Shipwrecks! Bummer, my camera's USB cord broke and none of the dozen or so in the house fit! :-( So I 'll show you the cute but sad sailboat that washed ashore yesterday---someday.)

love

               lizzy

"gone to the beach"