T-shirt Quilt

Just barely finished in time for the winter holiday, a generous queen-sized quilt.

This quilt was set in columns, rather than rows, which makes the quilt math a little easier.  With t-shirt quilts where the images are of varying sizes this makes for an easier layout since you can match all the widths and simply adjust  the heights and add solid strips between or at the top and bottom as needed. 

Bittersweet Toddler Quilt

Clothing quilts can be difficult - not just the math and cutting from very limited fabric and the knowledge that you are holding someone's memories in your hands . . . okay, that's mostly it.  This latest one has been even more draining, as the little girl whose clothes these were recently moved home to be with her grandmother who is in the final stages of pancreatic cancer.

Fortunately she had a lot of clothes, which made for great design variety.

The great variety involved a great number of needle changes and even more careful fiddling to ensure the fluffy skirts stayed fluffy. 

 Quilting on this is very simple - primarily done in the ditch on the seams - enough to hold it together, but not so much that it detracts from the lovely clothes.

And, little wonder, the Minnie Mouse was my favourite!

Texture!

Once again there's been a pregnancy in my orbit, so of course I had to make another quilt!  This time it's a baby sister for a very rambunctious boy who's room theme was safari animals, so I went with a sort-of-matching theme for her quilt.  Instead of piecing, this time, I used a pre-printed panel and quilted the bejabbers out of it, mostly in the background so the animals stay puffy and cuddly.

I use needled cotton batting, usually Warm & Natural or Fairfield, which can be quilted up to 10" apart.  The animals are done in outline (including the curves of the elephant's headdress, the giraffe's hex-spots, and the zebra's stripes), with heavy stitching in all the background areas. 

The fabric background was pre-printed with the echo-stitching pattern around the background trees, so it was fairly easy to free-motion on the dotted lines, as it were.  The result is a 30"x40" quilt that won't be terribly warm (except maybe under the elephant), but is wonderfully textured.

And as much as I wanted to keep it for myself, it is going off to a good home!

Memento Quilt - finis!

I have fi-nally finished the memento quilt I've been working on and couldn't be happier! The fabrics were a true treasure to work with and have left an amazing quilt top. I always underestimate how long these will take and my husband suggested I quantify it, so maybe next time I won't blithely suggest I can get this done in three months.

Yes, this means you have to stick with me through facts and figures (or, you know, just scroll down to the piccies). Before anything else I had to start with measuring allt he emblems, appliques or focal images on all the garments to find out what the average size was and what sort of block would work best. Fortuantely, there were only two very small images and only two very large ones, and the rest all worked themselves happily at about 4.5" square.

You should be able to see in this image the template plastic, marked with centering lines from each corner, over the image of the house:

Of course, part of what takes so long is my underestimating how long it will take to cut (and fussy cut!) that many 4.5" patches.  42 blocks, plus one for the back means over 300 patches.  Oy.

An additional element of difficulty comes with handling infant and toddler clothes: there's not always that much real estate, fabric-wise.    There's quite a few patches that were cut so close to the edge the seam allowance includes the stitches of cuff or ribbing.

Then, of course, there's the pinning. Miles and miles (and miles) of pinning:

One of the basic things I tell all beginning sewistas is to always pin more than you think you need to.  Because you really need to.

It was absolutely worth it in the end:

Having so many different fabrics makes an all-over stitching pattern preferable, as it unifies the top, across all the various colours and textures.  Rather than a stipple or loop that goes all over everything, we went with a traditional diagonal within each block, excluding any appliques:

The texture on the reverse actually makes me giddy - It's a delight to behold!

Oh, and that big number I know you're waiting for - 14,066 feet of thread.  That's right, between top and bobbin threads that's nearly three 500-yard spools!

Memento patches update

The memento quilt currently in progress is coming along well.  So far I've been to the butterfly jungle:

Found pockets hidden in some very busy flowers:

Discovered a thoughful Pooh bear in a rose garden:

And neatly mapped the miles to go before I sleep:

A Ghastlie quilt

First off, my thanks to everyone who bought tickets for the USKA raffle for my Calico Jack quilt.  The winner was Jason H., who swore up and down he wasn't going to share with his kids (but we all know he will!)  My apologies that I don't have pictures of the drawing, I forgot my camera last weekend.

It was actually a bigger weekend than usual for the denizens of chez tarabu - in addition to the school picnic we had a birthday and a housewarming party to round out the weekend.  The housewarming was for dear friends who just bought their first house - a wicked adorable 1920s house, with hardwood floors, high ceilings, fully tiled shower enclosure and a cross-breeze to make anyone jealous. 

Fortunately for me, parties are gifting events and I got to make them a quilt!  I used three fabrics from Alexander Henry's 'Ghastlie' collection:



In fact, when the fabric first came out a few years ago, I immediately thought of these two and may have rubbed my hands in glee when they announced they were buying a house!  (And, as Lisa Boyer once wrote, you should never give a quilt for anything other than a once-in-a-life event, the stress of topping the birthday quilt each year is just too much!)  It's a skinny twin - measuring just about 54" x 80", and set on the horizontal it should be just right for chilly autumn nights on the sofa.

Monday's Mess

Do you ever have days when you're browsing Flickr or Pinterest and you look at all those well-organized, well-lit studios and feel a little bad about yourself? Maybe you don't have a private room with a custom Koala cabinet system or a walk-in closet for storing all your fabric.

Maybe you work from the dining table or a 2'x3' chipboard student desk that should have hit the scrap yard years ago or the floor, because it's the only flat space around.

I'm lucky enough to have a space to call my own, but it's not big enough for some of my projects which is when I have to take over the prime floor space in front of the fireplace (it's totally a coincidence that this always seems to happen when it snows). I just completed a queen-sized t-shirt quilt top, partially seen here:



And this is what the basement, where I drug out my collapsible cutting table looks like after the carnage is over:

So next time you realize you don't have Eleanor Burns' studio, don't sweat it - plenty of other quilters don't either!

I also learned a very important lesson about using sweatshirt material: Always clean the table between cutting the white sweathsirt fleece and the black ones. Honestly, it looked like Frosty moulted in there!

Around the World and Falling Leaves

I received two new quilt tops to finish over the weekend:

The Falling Leaves measures 76" x 74", a generous throw quilt size.

The Around the World variation measures 76" x 85" and will be ideal for a twin-sized bed.

Sometimes I have the best job ever!

Autumn custom in progress

I'm working on a big-boy character quilt for a lovely couple who's son is outgrowing his infant quilt. They're a devout family and have asked for an emblem on the back of his quilt. Here's the two medallion options, set in a cropped field that represents the full 54" backing (although it's the bottom of my design wall):

And two options for the borders on the top - the first, with two borders of characters and one of green, with the striped binding:

And the second with a 1" inner border of blue and a slightly narrower green border:

work in progress - custom double

I'm working on a fairly awesome heirloom quilt right now. The top was finished a little later than expected and my Spring Greens wedding quilt was in progress so my spring timetable was a little askew. She's nearly finished and it's kinda killing me to keep the final step a surprise. You see, the gift recipient - along with almost every member of her family - have worked on embroidery and pieced patches for her quilt. It's the kind of effort that went into a traditional wedding quilt, except this time it's for a young woman coming into her own. So, at the very least I will show off my safety pins, which is all I can get away with at the moment!

Spring Greens in Progress

Remember that awesome pile of spring blues and greens? They are well on they're way to becoming a double-size quilt for a couple getting married this summer:

Window Box Ladybugs, off to a new home

Cupcake Bento Box

I'm working on a Bento Box quilt for my friend's little girl. I originally thought I was going to make something simple, bold and full of screaming pinks. Then I saw the cupcake fabric and all reason went out the window.

This is one half of the block, well technically one-fourth, however it's going to be two of these and two of the cherries-and-sprinkles* in each block. It did not occur to me when I was clutching the cupcakes and running to the cutting counter that I would have to be very careful of their placement or risk having upside down cupcakes. Unless I want a few of them to be right-side up from every angle, then I'll have to be very careful to evenly space a right-side up cupcake in a pleasing patter of one in four in every direction.

I don't think so.

So this quilt will have a definite right-side up with all cupcakes pointing more or less in the same direction.
*or jimmies if your from that part of the world.

a touch of spring - off to a new home!

These two quilts are for spring babies due at the end of March. I can't tell you wat a pleasure it was to work on these through the bitter grey January and into the windy wicked February. These photos were taken before the labels were applied. The sweet auntie chose two quotes from Winnie the Pooh for the labels on these. For this one: "If ever there's a time we can't be together; keep me in your heart, I'll stay there forever."

And for this one, "Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slowly slipping away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to know."

Quite appropriate, given that from some angles Nikolai's block pattern looks a bit like the spans of a bridge. Although this time they're crossing a field of ladybugs, rather than a river.

monkeys!

One of my favourite pastimes is creating made-to-order quilts. It's kind of like being paid for being an architect. Sure, there are the occasionally enldess hours of producing layout after layout that are rejected, but then there's the grand time when you complete a project and know it's going to make someone very happy. This time, it's Nikolai's monkey quilt. The early layout options are here, and this is the result:

This last photo was taken before the label was added, and with it a wish for young Nikolai to have a happy, tramply life. These monkeys are on their way to being as well traveled as the cartoon cast of Madagascar, in this case starting out with a trip to Russia to find their Nikolai and shepherd him to his new home.

Shop tarabu

Sure, it would be great to be able to find tarabu's creations all in one place, but that's akin to putting all your eggs in one basket or putting your retirement fund in one company's stock. There are plenty of great retail sites that reach different people, and here's where you can find tarabu everywhere:

 Online at my dedicated shop, where you can order your very own Calico Jack, Rainbow Brights or Irish Chain quilts . . .

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at The Woman's Industrial Exchange of Baltimore - which I adore! A historic building that houses a shop, lunch counter, and gorgeous apartments, the WIE provides a secure, well-designed and well-lit shop in downtown Baltimore on North Charles Street, just a few blocks south of Mount Vernon and the Washington Monument. Click the logo above for current shop hours.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-There's Etsy - the name stands for etc. (et cetera) and they are all over the place in what they offer. A one-stop non-juried collection of vintage, used, supplies and arts & crafts

- a place you'll find random tarabu fabric crafts, including fashion accessories and one-off quilts


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And then there's Zazzle - a place for things I don't make, but made with my original photographs, popular quotations (at least, popular with me) and sketches - check out my tchochkes, on Zazzle.

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Custom Orders -
If you would like to inquire about a custom order, please email me at this address: tarabuarts (at) gmail (dot) com

My custom quilt productions start at $0.065 / square inch and go up to $0.17 / square inch depending on the complexity of the pattern. Any pattern with triangles is going to be higher, patters with rectangles are less. This includes all fabrics, up to ten hours of design, colour and layout consultation, 100% cotton batting and backing, machine quilting and hand-finished binding.

I require a 30% non-refundable deposit before beginning and the balance on completion.