crafty, gifty projects, done!

this past weekend, i was able to give some surprise crafty gifts to some friends and now i can blog about them finally!  if you follow my flickr account, you may have already seen this quilt (i couldn’t wait!  i was so excited!)  this is the front:

and this is the back:

i’m thinking of calling it “paper boxes”, but since i’ve already taken it to i’s new home without any sort of identification label (bad, naughty quilter!) i suppose the name is inconsequential.

the pattern was inspired by several different denyse schmidt designs and also the color scheme of my friend’s living room.  this was my first time trying spray basting and although i thought it worked very well, i hadn’t realized that it would use almost an entire can of basting spray.  maybe i sprayed too heavily?  or maybe this is par for the course?  i’ll just have to decide if it’s worth the $15 a can (minus the obligatory 40% off coupon from joann’s) each time i do a quilt.  this was also my first foray into free-motion quilting and … it was definitely a learning experience!  i didn’t do the traditional wandering free-motion, i decided to interpret “free” as “do whatever motion you want!” and i chose this squares-on-a-line pattern.  i liked the way it echoed the piecing.  i don’t have a darning foot yet, so i was quilting with no foot and with the feed dogs lowered.  my top thread kept breaking (at least once every line or more).  i tried changing the needle (an 80/12–maybe i needed a 90/14?) but nothing seemed to help except for slowing way down when i was moving backwards (pulling the fabric towards me).  the stitches are crazy uneven, but i like to think that that sort of fits the wonky nature of the quilt itself.

i also used threads that would match the backgrounds, so the top and bottom threads are different.  after the thread started breaking, i went online to search for tips and found the suggestion to use the same color of thread on top and bottom to make mess-ups less visible (when the thread gets all balled up) but… too late!  oh well.  i’m really rather happy with the way it turned out and am now planning on investing in a darning foot for my machine and try lots more different free motion quilting techniques.  maybe next time i’ll even do some curves!

the second project was this fun needlepoint pillow.  if you’d like to re-create the asterisk part, i’ve included a free .pdf of the pattern (an original i created) in the “free patterns” section of my blog (see links in the bar at the top of the page).

this design was loosely inspired by some paintings (or were they collage?) that i saw last year in detroit when visiting a friend.  mr. happy stuff thought it looked like either some sort of rah-rah university colors (red and white) paraphenalia or christmas-y–like a snowflake.  so i’m sending it home with someone who doesn’t live in a red and white university town and who can look beyond the red and green to see also the blue and orange and yellow in the pillow design and see it for its true, fun little asterisk self.