Anger forced me into action

This week, my best friend shared a story about a one-month-old shaken baby. Dad admitted to shaking little Matthew, and was arrested. When my friend went to visit Matthew in the hospital, she found him all alone and screaming uncontrollably. There was no family to be found. She later learned that mom has been spending a lot of time visiting Dad in jail.

The level of anger that coursed through my veins was incredible. I was angry that anyone would do this to a defenseless child. I was angry that there are people who desperately want a child and can’t have one, but then there are people that have children and abuse them. Mostly, I was angry because there was nothing tangible I could do for little Matthew to make his situation better.

So I prayed for him.

And then I started to quilt.
And in doing so remembered why I call my quilt business “Covered in Love Quilts”.



It's made from my stash. All Kona cotton. Just a blue rectangle with a red border. It’s not my most creative work, but it’s probably one of my most heartfelt.

Matthew is supposed to be discharged to his mother pretty soon. My plan is to finish this over the holiday weekend. Hopefully, this will get to him and bring his little infant soul some comfort.

Happy New Year!

This year, I am resolved to quilt more and blog more. Last year, I stopped sewing after I finished the AKA quilts and didn’t do much until late Fall. I was disappointed that the business didn’t take off after that order and was slightly disillusioned. But now I’m back with a fresh outlook and a new resolve. Almost every one of the quilts I’ve made have been gifts (I’ve only sold two.), so this year, I want to truly get the business off the ground (thus I must quilt more).

I am also resolved to make myself a quilt. At the end of last year, I started working on a string quilt for myself. I always wanted a scrappy crazy looking quilt, and I think this will satisfy that desire. I love the fact that I don’t have to be exact with this project. I also love working with scraps. It might be my new thing for 2012.

22 more blocks to go! That's Matilda, up top, trying to look uninterested in the camera.

I will be putting this project aside soon because I have a few projects with deadlines. Stay tuned for my sister’s wedding quilt, my best friend’s birthday quilt, my mother’s angel quilt, and my stepmom’s family tree quilt. (all gifts…hmmm...)

I WILL sell a quilt this year. I WILL sell a quilt this year. I will, I will I will!!!

AKA quilt - Borders pt. 2

It has been a crazy week. Work has depressed my spirit a lot, and when I come home from work, I don't have the creative juices to work on any of my projects. But this weekend, I decided that maybe finishing the AKA quilt top would inject a little excitement in my otherwise sad and angry week.


Option three is the one I decided to go with. Charmain liked it the best and since this quilt is for her, I went with it. Here is a reminder of option three.





I decided that I was going to try to do mitered borders on this quilt. I've never done that before. Usually, I just let the two ends meet naturally and let that be that. Look closely at the polka dot material. The piece on the left meets the piece on the right and there is a straight seam.




It worked well on that quilt. Since this one has three borders, I thought a mitered corner might look better. In a mitered corner, the seam is diagonal and brings the fabrics to a point.



The pink border is the only one that is not mitered. See the seam near the bottom right hand corner of the picture? I learned that I like the look of mitered corners much better, but they are a little more work. For this quilt, I think it was worth it.

Here it is! The finished quilt top! I spread it out on my guest bed so that you could get a better look. It's a full sized mattress. It's a little bigger than I had pictured in my mind, but I really like the size. Glad I didn't go with the dimensions in my original sketch. I had the center rectangle at almost two yards. This thing would've been huge!!!!

Right now, I'm figuring out how much fabric I'll need for the back of the quilt. Stay tuned!

AKA quilt in process - The borders, part 1

Here are the main fabrics for the borders of my AKA quilt. The solids are Kona cottons in petal and chartreuse. The pink and green fabric is designed by Heather Bailey and is part of her "Nicey Jane" collection. It is called "Pocketbook". The colors are a perfect match for the sorority's colors. I was so excited when it arrived in the mail from Above All Fabrics.

I've been wrestling with how large this quilt is going to be. I'm glad I went with my gut. The center rectangle is about 36 by 45 inches. The first border is pink and is about five inches wide. Here it is after the first border was added. I spread it out on my guest bed which is a full mattress.

Here's the beginning of "1908", the year the sorority was founded. I like the way the green pops against the pale pink.

But I'm a little disappointed that the pink outlining is barely noticeable. But what was I to expect when I put pink on pink, right? lol

Now, I am trying to decide about the rest of the borders. Here are my three ideas.

Option 1 has just a green border followed by the pink and green fabric.

Option 2 adds a skinny cream border between the pink and the green fabrics.

Option 3 has a skinny white fabric between the green and the pink and green fabric.

Which is your favorite option? Let me hear from you in the comments section!

AKA quilt in process

I have never made a quilt that did not have an intended recipient. So far, every quilt I have made has been a gift. Here is the latest addition to that list.

I've been referring to it as "the AKA quilt", but when it is posted in my soon-to-be-launched shop, it will be called "Greek Love". This quilt started out as a simple sketch inspired by my friend, Charmain. Charmain is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and as a result, most everything I give her is pink and green (the sorority's colors). I decided that she needed an "official" AKA quilt, if for no other reason than to allow me to put the pink and green color combo to rest when it comes to her quilts.

Here is the initial sketch.



In working on a few other quilts with appliqued letters, I learned that I hate doing zig-zag stitches around curves. I just haven't been able to figure out how to consistently be neat and accurate. This new knowledge threw a monkey wrench into my quilt design. So I decided I would embroider the letters instead.

Here is the first letter. It took about an hour.


Outlining it took about 30 minutes.

I wasn't thinking about the intense labor and time it would take to complete this quilt when I decided to use embroidery and I'm glad I didn't. I might not have done it if I had! There are 19 characters on this quilt. At about 90 minutes per character, it took me almost 28 hours just to do the embroidery. Thank goodness the quilt pattern is simple!

Here are photos of the main body of the quilt before the borders are added.

Tomorrow's posting will be about adding the borders. Stay tuned!

If you are interested in a similar quilt with your organization's name on it, please email me at iamcoveredinlove@gmail.com. I'd love to make something for you!

Twitter Trials and Tribulations

I was not an immediate fan of email. It started to hit big while I was in college and I remember thinking, “This only works if the other person has an email address too. Why wouldn’t I just send a letter? Everyone I know has a mailing address.” Now everyone I know has email and can check it from their phones. Who woulda thunk it?

I have long been resistant to social media. Facebook took off while I was in law school and I remember thinking, “That seems like a colossal waste of time! Why bother?” Five years later, I feel disconnected from the world if I’m not checking in on Facebook at least twice a day.

Twitter does not connect with me at all. Why would anyone have a need to broadcast their life events to the entire world? At least with Facebook, I can control who sees the post about what I had for lunch. I really don’t get it. Why do I care what some celebrity is doing on the set of their new music video?

Lately, my friend, Deb, has been trying to make me understand why Twitter is important. Based on her explanation, I now see Twitter as a huge electronic cocktail party where folks come to meet, mix, and mingle with other folks that share their interests. (I'm not a big fan of cocktail parties in real life.) I now see how it can be useful in broadening one’s circle, or spreading one’s message, or building one’s business. With the latter in mind, I surrendered to Deb and Twitter. I asked Deb to do what needed to be done so that CIL (Covered in Love) could have a Twitter presence. She did and we were up and running, or so we thought.

When I searched for myself, it said no one with my name existed on the site. Huh?! I just got confirmation that the account was confirmed. Why can't I be found? Ok, maybe I need to actually send out a tweet before anyone can find me. So I sent out my first tweet yesterday. But that didn’t help my name to be found when searched. Ugh!!! I tried to open a new account, but it wouldn’t let me have more than one account associated with my email address. Now what was I supposed to do? The whole purpose in having the Twitter presence is so that people can find me and hear what I have to say about quilting. Finally, I found that you can follow me on Twitter by going towww.twitter.com/imcoveredinlove. That will have to do for now until I figure out how to make myself appear in search results.

Now that you’ve heard about my Twitter trials and tribulations, I hope you’ll follow me so that my leap into the Twitter age will not have been in vain.

Welcome!

Welcome to the Covered in Love blog! This has been a labor of love for quite some time, and I’m excited to share it with you. This isn’t a blog about the how-to of quilting; rather, it’s a blog where you will read about me, my dog, Matilda, my quilts, and some of my personal experiences all wrapped up into one.

So how did this all start? Well, I’ve always wanted to learn how to quilt, and I had this idea to bring my children home in quilts that I created. At 37 years old, there was still no child to for me to bring home from the hospital. I decided that I couldn't continue to put my life on hold for a family that may never happen. I knew how to work a sewing machine and how to sew a seam and decided that was enough knowledge to be able to figure out how to make a quilt. In the process, I found something for which I have an inexplicable knack and an incredible passion.

The quilts that I make are deeply personal. The quilt patterns are my own, for the most part. They all have been gifts to family and friends so I’ve had a connection to each person I’ve given one to, and each one has been made at my dining room table. For me, the whole idea of quilts is they are something to be passed down to your children and grandchildren. I like creating something that will be cherished for a long time.

Quite simply, I make quilts that look great on couches and on beds in modern homes, feel inviting and comfy, and are meant to make you feel snuggly warm - kinda like you would feel if you could be covered in love.