This organizing thing really does pay off. You have to look closely to distinguish between the baseball print and the pieced blocks, but I couldn't resist. If you recall, I posted a version of this quilt using teddy bear fabric in addition to the more subtle version that appeared in McCall's Quick Quilts.

This quilt was made for a very special newborn whose nursery was decorated in a baseball theme. His father is an avid Cubs fan, so the quilt was perfectly suited for the little slugger. The red and black fabric I used for the inner border and binding picked up on the color of the stitches on the baseballs. But it's possible that the black and white pieced blocks didn't offer the best balance with the large-scale baseball print.

I even went the extra step and made a really appropriate label for the quilt.

First, no worries, I'm still alive. I realize it's been almost three weeks since I blogged. I really don't know where the time went, but it's been a very busy time in my life. Nothing specific, just much going on---mind, body, and spirit. Meanwhile, I made some projects last week and I have to tell you, it was pure bliss (with a bit of occasional cursing). I'll share them in the coming days, starting with this post.

I used to work on a magazine called Make It Mine, and a wonderful and creative woman, Andrea Loss from Milwaukee, shared this project in the first issue. Andrea did a lot of work with her local high school, helping them with plays, which meant she ended up with lots of theater t-shirts. And she found a way to turn two t-shirts into a very cute tote. For the step-by-step shots for the magazine, we used t-shirts from one of my favorite places--Camp Shaw-waw-nas-see. It was a 4-H camp when I was a kid; it's a non-profit camp now.


The last few years have been tough for fundraising for a camp (and for similar non-profits), given the economic conditions of the country. So the board at Camp Shaw decided that a more personal fundraiser was in order. The First Ever Have a Heart, Send a Kid to Camp! Camp Shaw fundraiser was held Feb. 13 in Kankakee, Illinois. I was delighted and honored when my sister Deb (Board Treasurer) asked me if I would donate some handmade items to the silent auction. We started talking, and we decided that a tote bag made out of Camp Shaw t-shirts would be perfect. She had secured two large adult t-shirts (white and orange) and two medium child-size tee's in pink and aqua. So I followed our directions and turned the orange and white shirts into a tote (shown here--click on the photo to see it larger).

Tomorrow, I'll show you what I did with the pink shirt. And Friday, the aqua shirt.

And yes, for the record, all three of them did get bids, so I feel good about that! And I got a few things at the silent auction as well and got to catch up with some old friends, so it was a great event!

We quilters can be a persnickety bunch. (Notice, I said WE.) We can tend to get a little judgmental and opinionated when it comes to the details. Is the binding cut from quality fabric or is it the packaged bias binding from a chain store? Is the binding applied in the single fold or French fold method? How did they sew that second side--top-stitched on the machine or hand-stitched? How precise are the points?

So to come clean, I thought I'd share one of my very early quilts. It was created for a McCall's Needlework special issue in 1993--it was called McCall's Quick Quilts. (Learn more about special issues in this post.) I designed this quilt in two versions--this was considered a three-color version (red, blue, and multicolored--the golden color didn't count) and a five-color version (pastels, if I remember correctly). I went looking for the issue, thinking it would clear up my memory and I can't find it! ... Wait, found it on ebay. Bought it. Meanwhile, I'm sharing a photo of the cover with you, thanks to the ebay store I bought it from.


Again, thanks to the store on ebay, I'm able to share an image of the five-color version from the pages of the magazine. It was pretty too, but I have to tell you, I absolutely loved the background fabric we used in this three-color quilt. To this day, that multicolored foliage is one of my favorites. The colors aren't the colors I'd pick now, but I love the way it worked. I got so attached to this fabric that I can tell you where I bought it--a quilt shop in Washington, Illinois. Google tells me that the quilt shop off the square in Washington is Peddler's Way. I can't tell you if that was the shop, but it was right off the square. Of course, they wouldn't have the fabric anymore since I bought it in 1992, so don't call them for it. But I'm sure they have other fabulous fabrics.

So now for the mistakes I made on this quilt. I gave you a closeup shot of the binding--yes, it was bias binding and not made from the quilt fabric. If I remember correctly, that's because I ran out of the fabrics used. But what possessed me to attach it using a multi-stitch zig-zag is beyond me! I think I wanted to get it finished and get it on the wall in my home. And probably I didn't know better. But for those of you who look at your first quilts and think "what was I thinking?" I figured knowing you're not alone would help!

As I mentioned before, I worked at McCall's Needlework and McCall's Quilting in the early '90s. Before McCall's Quilting was launched in 1993, McCall's Needlework often created extra newsstand-only issues, called special issues or one-shots, in addition to the six regular issues a year. Sometimes they were holiday or seasonally themed and other times they focused on a technique. While I worked there, we did several Christmas specials and a few quilting specials. In fact, the whole reason I learned to quilt was because of one of those special issues--McCall's Country Quilting, copyright 1991.

For 17 of the projects in that special issue, we rented antique quilts from an store that specialized in such things. Then we wrote instructions so that people could recreate them. Remember, this was the early '90s, when rotary cutting and quick piecing were still in their infancy. And I knew nothing about quilting. Our editor had the solution--he was friends with Liz Porter of Fons and Porter and she came to the office for a three-day seminar on all things quilting. Not only did I learn a lot about quilting, but I also learned a skill that's been invaluable--the ability to reverse-engineer a quilt. Since we were working with antique quilts, we had to chart and measure and dissect each quilt and how it was constructed (or how it would be, using modern techniques) without doing one bit of damage to them. So now, I can look at a picture of a quilt or an actual quilt, chart it out, write instructions, and figure out how much fabric is needed. It's a great skill to have for designing my own quilts, and it's come in handy at other times in my life.

For instance, a customer came into the quilt shop one day with a family heirloom quilt. She'd received it from a family member, but felt a little guilty that she got it instead of some other family members. So she wanted to create similar quilts for them. After some quick math, I drafted a pattern for her and figured yardage and together, we picked out fabrics for her to get started. I remember it having some great colors in it and a black polka-dot on a white background, but that's all I remember. I didn't ever get to see the finished quilts, but I hope her family members appreciated the work she did.

So my engineering friends from college might be able to reverse-engineer equipment, but I can reverse-engineer a quilt.

The top quilt was a remake of the quilt beneath it, made in Rogers, Arkansas in the summer of 1996. The quilt was rejected for publication because fabrics in the black-and-ivory quilt were too distinctive for publication. Turns out that if you use distinctive fabrics, you'd better be working with the fabric company and designing with it before it's available to the public. Why?, you ask. Well, there are a lot of people who want to make the project just like the picture. With the time it takes to produce a magazine (several months at best), by the time you buy fabric at the store, make the project, submit it to a magazine and have it accepted, send it in, and actually see it in print, that fabric's not in the stores anymore. So I submitted it with the offer to remake it in less distinctive fabrics.

The submission got accepted by Beth Hayes, the editor of McCall's Quilting Quick Quilts, in 1998. The quilt was published in the July 1999 issue of the magazine and it was renamed "Sea Breeze" which seemed a perfectly appropriate name, given that it was created in a beach house on the east coast of Florida.
Funny story about Beth Hayes. She and I worked together for maybe a week when I used to work for McCall's Needlework and she came on board at McCall's Quilting back in June of 1995. Before McCall's Quilting and McCall's Quilting Quick Quilts (now McCall's Quick Quilts) were launched as magazines you could subscribe to, each title was done more than once as a special issue by McCall's Needlework (and Crafts). I was actually involved in helping to produce McCall's Quilting in its first two years as a bimonthly magazine. And about the time I left the company that produced those magazines, Beth came on board. I think she was at my farewell luncheon which may also have been her welcome luncheon. So when I started to consider designing quilts as a freelancer, I turned to her and her magazines first, both due to the fact that I knew her and the fact that I have always felt a certain bond with the titles.