Projects by the yard

And now for something completely different. It turns out that having an offline hobby has been quite useful on a boat, where connectivity is not guaranteed. So without futher ado, here is a photo essay of how I've been filling my time while Sean is fixing the black tank, chart plotter, BBQ grill, and stuffing box.

Baby quilt for a dear friend's great grandchild. I just finished this today. The last step of making a quilt is sewing on the binding, or outer edge. This is best done by hand, and is a great thing to do while trawlering slowly across a shallow Bahamian bank. My eyeballs are getting old enough that I need to do my hand sewing during day light hours.

New cockpit chair covers. Not a quilting project, but I think they turned out pretty spiffy.

Sewing machine cover. I tend to buy bird-themed fabric whenever I see it, so I used some of my bird stash. The sewing machine sits under the furthest forward portlight, and tends to get a bit of salty spray on it. Best to keep it covered, I think.

Wall hanging for salon. At this stage the background had been quilted, but not the bird panels. And of course, the binding hadn't been sewn on.

Wall hanging for guest stateroom (to cover ugly holes from previous TV installation). Look! Bird fabric. What a surprise. This is the top half; the bottom features two blue jays. I have about eight more panels of this fabric, with chickdees, finches, cardinals, etc. There is an enormous range of quality when it comes to quilting fabric content and design. I'm always looking for bird designs that are realistic (not cartoony), crisply printed, have a soft feel and aren't in bizarre colors. Not always easy to find.

Lightweight bedspread for master stateroom. This isn't quilted, but is just two layers of cotton for hot weather. The fabric is twelve squares of furoshiki, which is used in Japan to wrap gifts instead of paper. Each panel shows a black and white tuxedo cat in an outdoor setting at different times of the year/day. I like to think of them as depictions of our sweet George in cat heaven.

A gift lap quilt. The recipient is an occasional blog reader, so I won't say anything more at this point.

Hexagonal table topper for cockpit. The el cheapo table and chairs that we purchased at Home Depot back in 2013 are holding up well: the wood is sturdy and the brass hardware is not corroding. However, the "teak" finish seems to be just brown paint, and is fading and flaking, so covering it up a bit has helped. I actually prefer the back of this little quilt, and often use it upside down. The backing fabric has wrens flying through fields of chrysanthemums.

Gift lap quilt for a sick friend in Japan. There are some gorgeous blue fabrics in this, featuring butterflies, leaves, and metallic accents. It's such a pleasure to sew with quality materials.

Gift lap quilt for dear friends in California. They have very pampered, beloved cats who have claimed the quilt as their own. I love the colors and groovy patterns on this quilt, but the darn thing fought me every inch of the way because  I made a poor choice on the backing fabric. There was a lot of cursing and hurling of sewing tools during the making of this one!

Christmas table topper, featuring birds in wreaths: partridge, cardinal, jay. I really like the non-traditional turquoise in this one. The backing fabric is rainbow cats by Laurel Burch! So fun.

Gift table topper for another dear friend, made with wine themed fabric.

Christmas wall hanging, a gift for my Mom. She drapes it over the back of her love seat for a perfect fit. The bows on the packages are made from satin ribbon, so it's three dimensional.

A little Christmas themed thingy. About the size of a placemat. This small project was used to practice free motion quilting, the swirly stitching pattern on the gray background which is made by pushing the fabric manually rather than letting the sewing machine move in straight lines. There are five more coordinating panels of this fabric, so I'll probably make more next Christmas. 

Rough piecing for Christmas tree wall hanging. This was also finished using free motion quilting, but I never took a photo of the completed project.

Table topper for salon dining table. Made from beautiful hexagons of Japanese themed fabric that were a birthday gift from Stephanie and her Mom Sandy. The dark blue fabric around the outer border features dragons. For a change of pace, the back of this two-sided piece is bright, lurid, modern fabric in a wonky non-symmetic design. 

Rough piecing of pillow covers for master stateroom. Again, I never took final photos, but we use these on the bed every day. They coordinate surprisingly well with the "George in Heaven" bedspread!

Table topper for pilot house table. The soft wood of this table was getting scratched by my computer, so it needed a cover. I just love the blue fabric with the little birds on it. The back of this piece is a different bird fabric, in bright primary colors, and I flip it back and forth as the mood strikes.

"Rally Flag" lap quilt that I made for Sean. The lighter colored flags at the top are made from fabric that has pink, green and blue scooters on it. Making this little quilt is when I discovered that my husband loves bright colors. Who knew?

Rough piecing for antimacassar for Sean's leather chair.

TV cover, with octagonal medallions of Japanese fabric.

Falling leaves table topper for salon dining table and/or salon wall hanging.

Tessellating tails cat wall hanging in UCLA colors for our niece. There are four cats, but the contrast isn't great on the bottom cat. Now her sister is heading off to college, and has asked me to make pillow covers for her new dorm bedding, so that's my next project.

I also have several other gifts in progress that I'm keeping a secret for now. Since we will be having guests aboard Vector in about a week, I need to start cleaning up my sewing stuff and getting the guest room back into shape for their visit. Quilting generates an amazing amount of "spoo:" threads, batting fuzz, tiny fabric scraps, and lint. Time to break out the vacuum cleaner and get all that out of the carpet!

Quilting update

It's been a while since I posted my first quilting project, and I've been working steadily on several others. If you're here for technical boat details, you may skip this entry.



This quilt was finished quite a while ago, but I couldn't blog about it because it was a gift for my Mom's birthday. Now that she has it in her hands, I can share the details. I called it "Floral Gallery" and it is made primarily of fabric from the Indigo Nature line by Daphne B. Each picture frame block is quilted differently in straight line patterns such as cross hatching, zig zags, plaids, and concentric rectangles. That was a lot of work and I probably won't do it again for a while, but the little frames seemed well suited for the effort. As a bonus, this fabric is particularly soft to the hand, so I hope my Mom finds it particularly snuggly.

Sean is modeling the quilt in what we affectionately call the "Kilroy pose." Quilting blogs are full of photos of quilters' husbands' feet and knuckles. Few capture such a charming glower, though.

This one is called "Bright Remainder" and is also lap blanket size. The pattern is a Disappearing Nine Patch, which looks much more complicated than it actually is. It's pieced from batiks in saturated colors, solid yellow, and a subtle dark blue tone-on-tone background called River Mist that I really like. Modern quilting often uses solid colors for the negative space, but I like fabrics that read as solid but are really a more interesting texture when you look up close.

This photo shows it before I added an outer border of navy blue with a dense metallic gold swirly print. I've since quilted it in a sort of plaid pattern, easy straight lines that intersect on all the small yellow squares. All that's left is to pick a binding fabric and attach it. Binding can be sewn on completely by machine, but I like how clean a hand-finished binding looks both front and back. Hand sewing is a great activity for at-sea days, too.

The photo also shows the sewing machine set up in the salon. We've since moved it down into the VIP stateroom, where I'm experimenting with a folding table setup. It's nice to get the fabric mess out of the living space, but I have not dialed in the right combination of table and chair downstairs yet. More on that, and fabric storage, in a future post.

I was motivated to piece this Christmas lap quilt while we were waiting out the tropical storm conditions in Portsmouth. It's called "Arthur's Holiday." I purchased the pre-cut fabric squares as a kit from The Quilt Place in Rockledge, FL. The store had put together fabrics from many different manufacturers and lines, all in shades of blue and cream. There are stars, trees, ornaments, angels, snowflakes, and other festive and wintry motifs. The quilt is still waiting for another contrasting border, backing and finishing. It really got me in the Christmas fabric groove. I've since ordered more sparkly metallic fun stuff in more traditional reds and greens, and I'm looking forward to more holiday projects.

These two little stars were made for the Astronomical Quilts Block Challenge. NASA Astronaut Karen Nyberg is a quilter and hand-sewed a small quilt block in zero G while serving on the International Space Station. I chose a yellow fabric with a concentric circle print that looks a bit like either the solar system or the Bohr atom, and a deep blue fabric with subtle black swirls on it that represents Dark Matter. If my block is chosen, it will be part of a quilt that will be displayed in Houston next year. Even if it isn't selected, though, this was a fun project and the first time I tried a pattern with triangles and matching points. It was a great learning exercise, which is why there are two blocks. Turns out it isn't all that easy to re-size a block, and I screwed up both the math and the construction, resulting in a block too small to be submitted. Don't worry, though: the little brother block on the left has found a new home in another quilt. That one is also a gift, so I'll reveal it after the giftee has seen it.

Finally, a little wall hanging called "The Persistence of Light." The prismatic rainbows are super bright batiks, set in a background of solid muted blues. The quilting all emanates from a single point on the left hand side. I designed it to be vertical, but have since decided I like it horizontal, with the lighter blue on top. 

My first quilt

"Jungle Path" design by Jessica of SewCrafty Jess, made using a fabric line called Bartholo-Meow's Reef. Featuring sea creatures, nautical icons and a cat in a dive helmet.

I've titled it "Dive Plan" and it is a baby gift for my cousin Nathaniel and his lovely wife, Greer. I don't think they read the blog, so it should be a surprise.