Kayak Quilt

This was a special commission for a dad as a Father’s Day present/late anniversary gift. The couple met while kayaking, and she wanted to give him something special in honor of that first meeting.

Funny enough, there isn’t a whole lot of kayak in this kayak quilt. I found a picture of a canoe going down river, and I really liked the first person perspective. And they met in the spring, so I decided to use greens to make the hill foliage instead of autumn colors.

The water was a neat task, and I knew I wanted to make it unique and have a cohesive-yet-scrappy effect. Using two different shades of navy blue and adding in lighter accent blues, I was going for a watery movement effect, and I gave it an overall unity with a horizontal quilting pattern.

The hills are an element I am particularly proud of. I mused a while over how to approach them. In the end, much like the water, I just dug in and started cutting and let them lead me where they may. When it came to quilting them, I decided to do a different quilting style depending on which shade of green I was on. I even tried to create an evergreen effect for the darker greens.

The kayak element at first was nothing but a red triangle, and I added an inner line and black strap to help create the look found with most kayaks.

Overall, I am very proud of this one, and I know it’s going to a home where it will be loved. This client and I have worked together on commissions before, and she is fantastic at getting me to try new styles!

The completed work!
The unfinished top - known in the quilting world as a “flimsy.”

Auburn T-shirt Quilts

This was a Father’s Day commission. I’ve never really been into sports unless I was actually on the team, so I had no qualms about making an Auburn quilt or two. I’ll admit it was a good thing I didn’t care or have any loyalty to another team because I was up to my elbows in orange and blue for a long time. Right after this commission I had an order for a Detroit Tigers quilt, so MORE orange and blue.

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Detroit Tigers quilt with alternating frames style

It was fun, though, because these quilts had a lot of “trash talk” shirts, and I chuckled at more than one of them.

I also had some baby clothes to try and work in - a couple of hats and a bib along with a pair of shorts and a couple of baby shirts. I was able to do it with the help of fusible interfacing and invisible thread.

One of the trash-talk shirts and above it is a baby hat.

One of the quilt was my standard size and sashing look. The first row, second from the bottom, was a handkerchief, and I used the back of one of the other shirts and made it into a block.

The other one took a little more thought because it was what I refer to as “jigsaw”. I spend a lot of time working on my graphic paper pad for the jigsaw style because everything has to fit together just right.

The backing for the jigsaw quilt was fun because we decided to split the back between orange and blue. I kept my usual method of fold-over binding, so the binding is also duel-colored! I also did my usual loops and swirls quilting pattern.

Related blogs and posts:

Auburn University Healing Quilts Initiative

Auburn University Quilts of Gees Bend

 

 

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