2014: A Quilt Retrospective, Part 1

I love this time of the year. It's a time of endings and new beginnings; a time to reflect on all that you've accomplished and the things you hope to start. It's a time to complete old lists and set new goals.

This particular new year marks the completion of my first calendar year as a quilter. Over the past few days I've been looking back over my social media pages and reflecting on what I managed to create in 2014. I thought I had done a really great job of keeping a mental running tally of my work (I thought I had made 18 quilts) but in reality I was WAY off. I made 28 quilts in 2014; 14 mini quilts and 14 usable quilts. I managed to get at least one picture of each quilt. I'll be sharing those and a little blurb about each quilt over the next two blog posts. I hope you'll enjoy looking back with me.


#1 Green Jay 

This marked my first step in what I like to call fabric architecture. My oldest daughter loves to bird watch. We spend hours looking through birding books and walking the parks to see what we can see. We still haven't seen a green jay in the wild, but we'll always have this one on our walls.

#2 Girl Star and #3 Boy Squared

These two quilts were made for my brother and sister-in-law's gender reveal party.

We found out that Norah Jane would join us mid-summer! Mom and Dad both love the quilt and our little girl looks so beautiful snuggled up in it. The boy quilt was then personalized and given to a co-worker for her new son.

#4 Sailboat Quilt 

 This quilt is the first that I designed myself. I don't think I could have made it any more difficult for myself. That quilt block IS NOT paper pieced. It took forever and the finished quilt top was seriously wonky, but it turned out super cute and the sweet little one it belongs to loves it as is.

Just in case you're wondering, that pattern got tossed and will not be revisited. :)

#5 Hunter's Star

This quilt started in an effort to try to love my job again. In January my ER moved into a new building. We more than doubled our capacity and to walk from one end to the other is to walk the length of a football field. We had to create and recreate new process in order to function in our giant new space. On top of that we had a critical increase in census and a major turnover in staff. I was very unhappy at work and contemplated quitting almost daily. After being in our new building for almost 3 months, we started making preparations for ED Doctor's Day. I decided I would make a quilt that would be given away to one of our ED physicians as a Thank You for all the work they do. I hated almost everything about this quilt. I hated the fabric (it was given to me), I hated the pattern (in reality it was too advanced for me at the time), I hated how time consuming it was. It was a perfect match to my unhappiness at work. Then, one day it was finally finished. Dr. Chase received the quilt in the drawing and was very appreciative. He shared some memories of his mother and grandmother quilting with me and I could see that my efforts had touched him. And just like that, my feelings about the quilt changed. My feelings about work took a little more time and effort, but I'm not near as unhappy as I was in March.

#6 Flower Baby Quilt

This was a quick baby quilt for a coworker. I used a panel and some of the line coordinates and used free motion quilting to make the designs really pop. I loved these bright colors. This quilt was started and finished in under two days.

#7 Little Apples Baby Quilt

I had several charm packs of Aneela Hoey's Little Apples and made this large baby quilt for a coworker. This is the quilt where I fell in love with simple doodle quilting. 

#8 Honor the Texas Flag

I made this mini quilt for a fellow member of the #hive7eleven of the #moderninstabee2014 group on Instagram. She is a native Texan living in Florida who loves quilting. When the idea for this mini came to me, I knew immediately that I would send it to her. I'm proud to say that she loves it!

#9 Abby and Boyfriend's Wedding Quilt

When Ro was little we found the world's best babysitter. Miss Abby was a TCU student who worked in the church nursery and dated an awesome man that Ro called Boyfriend. Miss Abby became our as needed nanny after EB was born. Now Miss Abby is all grown up with a real life job and doesn't babysit anymore. However, she and Boyfriend remain close to the girls (they arrange play dates with them, so cute). Abby asked the girls to be the flower girls in her wedding and they were both thrilled (she even made their dresses!!). In a nod to her fun modern style and TCU purple, I made her this quilt as a wedding gift:

#10 Edit mini

This was also made for a bee mate who happens to be an editor. I used the scraps from Abby and Boyfriend's wedding quilt and improv pieced this together. This was my first attempt at echo quilting.

#11 EB's Quilt

 This quilt was a "make it up as you go along" design for my youngest daughter's bed. I love the juxtaposition of bright, modern fabrics with a traditional design. I also did some more free motion doodle quilting. I loved watching EB discover all the flowers and butterflies in the quilting and point them out to Daddy.

#12 Barthomeow's Baby Quilt

This quilt was made for a college fraternity friend for his first son. I used a free Fat Quarter Shop pattern and quilted varying sizes of simple waves across it.

#13 Sabrina's Advice mini

This mini quilt was made for my very first swap, Round 2 of the Schnitzel and Boo mini quilt swap. I'm sad to say I never heard from my partner but I had a great outpouring of support for my work on Instagram. I love the movie Sabrina and she says "Paris is always a good idea". I took that idea and created this mini.

The base is all low-volume squares with random line quilting. I used raw-edge applique for the fleur-de-lis, Eiffel Tower, and bunting, then free motion quilted the words and bunting cord.

#14 Scrap Mini Mini

This tiny mini started as an exercise to see what I could create with the scraps on the table in one evening. It's improv pieced and the very first thing I ever matchstick quilted.

That's it for Part 1 of my Quilt Retrospective. I'm enjoying looking back at my work from this year and remember why and how they were made. I hope to get Part 2 completed tonight and posted no later than tomorrow. I hope to see you soon!

Rae :)