Handmade custom heirloom quilts and explorations into quilting history
A colleague challenged me to make him a “dirt-bike themed quilt”, so I raced to the internet to research dirt-bike and racing photos. Then it hit me: since he and I are Facebook friends, I had access to pictures of him on his bike. The result is this Dirt-bike Photo Quilt featuring pictures of my friend that I grabbed from his Facebook page.
This True to Atlanta Quilt is a celebration of Atlanta, Georgia and some of its iconic landmarks and businesses. Made from sixteen authentic t-shirts, this quilt offers a glimpse into the diversity and industry that is ATL.
This Nottingham Forest Baby Quilt was made to welcome a new Nottingham Forest football fan into the world. I used hexagons to create a football print, and quilted using a football themed stitching. As a finishing touch, the border of this quilt is made from a real Nottingham Forest jersey. As we say: Come On You Reds!
One of my class mates asked me to make a quilt that she could put across her lap when she attended church service. I created this Take Me to Church Quilt with colors and patterns that reflect the style and traditions of the Southern church.
This Eight Point Star Wallhanging mixes African print themes with a quilting pattern that feels like Urbano Carioca music. The inner border is made from traditional mudcloth and the binding is made from a classic bandana print. Mudcloth and bandanas have a long history, so I thought it would be fitting to combine the past and present in this project.
This Winnie-the-Pooh Baby Quilt went to some friends in Canada to celebrate their new baby. It gets very cold where they live so I wanted to send some warm colors that were also soft and playful. This quilt uses a mosaic pattern of triangles and squares with a Winnie pattern fabric in the center of each block. The binding was made from a batik fabric I got from a local quilt show.
This bold and quirky Pete the Cat baby quilt features James Dean’s Pete the Cat in yellow and blue triangles. The block pattern for this quilt is called ‘flying geese’. Flying Geese is one of my favorite patterns because there are so many ways to layout the shapes.
To mark the 50th anniversary of Scooby Doo and because I’ve always loved the show, I created this Scooby Doo quilt. I used an up-cycled a Scooby t-shirt and added some Scooby themed fabric to make this quilt fun and playful. This quilt is stitched together using glow in the dark thread for a extra bit of spookiness.
One of my dear friends is the pastor of Greater Zion Baptist Church of Jefferson, Pa, and I made him this Hallelujah! Quilt to commemorate his service and our friendship. I mixed some faith affirming t-shirts with African wax print fabric, and I had fun with a few quilting patterns to make this gift.
