WIP Wednesday 10/30/2013

Menswear, Gleen's Wear (it rhymes)

For retiring co-worker Gleen (sounds like Glen) V. 

Squares are cut from Gleen's shirts, background is chambray (shirtweight denim). 

Original design. 54" x 72". 

Completed 10/29/2013

Fellow co-worker Becky R. talked Gleen into donating a bunch of his shirts to a clothes closet, or so he thought. Little did he know that I would use some of the shirts in his quilt.

Gray fabric on right is chambray. Black and white print on left is what I purchased before I had Gleen's shirts. My original design had those two fabrics for the top.

Decided to use a few of Gleen's shirts and save the black/white print for another project.

These shirts were not used in the project. Becky will give them to her pastor, who wears about the same size shirts as Gleen.

Part of one of the shirts

Ironed, ready to cut strips

Cut six inch wide strip

Saved the buttons, some of the labels, and a pocket from the shirts.

Safety pinned loose buttons to the placket to keep all of the buttons from each shirt together.

Five piles of six inch squares

Squares laid out on the design wall, using Organized Chaos method

Squares sewn together in sections. Background - large panels of fabric - added to design wall.

Quilt top sewn together

Chose not to do a border. Wanted a clean look on the edges, to reflect Gleen's quiet, reserved personality.

Gleen's fellow accounting staff gave me a list of his interests. I printed a few onto June Tailor Sew-In Printer Fabric: Bruce Lee and a poem from the original Willy Wonka movie. Also printed was a photo of the accounting staff.

Trimmed poem, added borders to top and bottom to bring it to the correct height.

Did the same with the Bruce Lee photo.

Three photos and spacers laid out

Photos sewn together. Section was incorporated into a long strip and pieced into the back of the quilt.

I tie most of my larger quilts. Usually the quilt has lots of pieced areas, which help me figure out where to place knots. However, on this quilt there were large expanses of unpieced background fabric. To create a grid, I laid two pieces of masking tape across the width of the quilt, marking the centers of the squares.

Next I used clips to mark the rows along the vertical sides of the quilt.

Using the clips and seams of the pieced squares, I laid the masking tape strips across the width of the quilt.

Knots tied between the marks. As each row was finished, I moved the top masking tape strip below the one on the bottom, lining up the marks.

The system worked well to keep the knots spaced evenly.

Once more, the finished quilt

Close-up

Back of the quilt

My next quilt is for Cecilia, yet another retiring co-worker. (There is quite a long list for the coming year.) My idea was blues, especially aqua, which she seems to wear often. I happened to have a tissue box in a soft blue, reflecting Cecilia's quiet, gentle nature. I could base the quilt on the colors of the box. I showed the box to co-worker and partner in crime Veronica, who liked the idea. 

A short time later, Veronica did some spying and found out that Cecilia's favorite color is green. Okay. Within a couple of days, I learned that another co-worker/co-conspirator, Margarita, had a tissue box with exactly the right colors. Even though the box was mostly full, Margarita cut a piece of the box for me to use as inspiration.

A small piece of Margarita's tissue box

Last weekend I traveled to Sacramento for my monthly Sacramento Modern Quilt Guild meeting. After the meeting, I drove to the Citrus Heights area, where Hancock Fabrics, Beverly's and Jo-Ann's are all on the same street.

Found this fabric at Beverly's. It reflects the colors and curved shapes on the tissue box pretty well.

The scale of the print is pretty big. It wouldn't do the fabric justice to cut it into small pieces. So at this point, I'm planning to use the fabric as a wide border. The background will probably be white, with medium-sized squares of various green fabrics.

Debbie

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