pillows, pillows, pillows

New to the brand*eye shop: pillows! This first collection is made with a vintage yellow fabric which has a great texture to it. A couple of them have been embellished with doilies to make them one of a kind. They are handmade for brand*eye by a lovely lady who lives in Ambler, PA. I met her about 12 years ago when she did the alterations to my wedding dress. Wow, I am getting old.

beach quilt

 

 

I just finished a quilt as a wedding gift for my friends. It was actually many months after their wedding, but who's counting.

 

I went with a super simple design and used mostly linen.

 



I found this fabric for binding at a shop in Mt. Airy, Handcraft Workshop. It's a great shop and I didn't even realize it was there until I just so happened to find it on yelp.

 Linen is a real bitch to work with, but it looks so great once it's quilted. It has the best texture.

Cosmic O'Keeffe Quilt

Based on my high school friend's love of all things science and cosmic, I made this quilt for his baby girl. It may be a bit intense for a newborn, but they love color, right?

I was searching online for a fabric with pictures of the universe and found this great seller on etsy, stellar fabric. They have fabric of photos taken from the Hubble Telescope. I used the Orion Nebula for the front, mixed in with various other fabrics including two vintage tea towels of flowers.

Here are some photos of the process of making this quilt:

 I only used a small bit of each of the tea towels, so you will certainly see this fabric in some other future quilts.

 The Orion Nebula fabric was used for the back.

 Piecing the front:

 Sandwiching the layers:

 Quilting:

 And the finished product. Here is the back.

 And the front:

 I finally bought some tags to use for my quilts.

This was a really fun quilt to make, especially since I also love the cosmos and am fascinated by the universe. By the way, have you watched the remake of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey? It is quite possibly the best show on TV. I love it.

 

baby quilt

Over the past few months I have slowly gotten back into quilting, which has been a great feeling. I only make them for gifts, so brand*eye is not back to "business," but I am back to quilting!

Here is one that I made for my cousins baby, while it was in-process. Quilt-top.

 And sewing the binding.

 And here is the finished product.

 Quilt-back.

quiltcon in austin

several weeks ago i had the pleasure to attend the first quiltcon in austin, texas. i was so happy when i heard about it, because i am usually one to find out about things too late and miss out. and it sounded right up my alley and was also in a city that i have really wanted to visit. austin did not disappoint! i talked dave into going, but only if we could get other friends to go so we did!

austin if packed with food trucks and i think we eat at them most of the time. it's great to be able to get really good food, for really cheap from a truck!

 the cowboy boot selection did not disappoint and i wish i would have bought a pair, but they were $$$.

on friday i took a improvisational piecing class with denyse schmidt and it was awesome! she is the person who got me interested in quilting. i saw her quilts on a blog years ago and thought, i want to do that! in the class you have to blindly pull fabric out of bags and sew it together. it's actually thrilling not knowing what fabric you will be forced to use and made for some very cool color combinations that i would have never dreamed up on  my own.

this was my little work station. i made that sewing kit right  before i left and intended to blog about, but never did. story of my life :-)

for the last portion of the class we had to incorporate some of our own fabric into the random fabric that we pulled out of bags. this is how my quilt blocks came out. i want to make something with them soon!

and i totally lucked out after being a dummy and leaving my blocks in the class. i remember gathering  all my blocks, but somehow forgot them. i realized it when i met my friends at a bar later and went to pull them out to show them and they were not in my bag! luckily they were in the lost n found the next morning. THANK YOU to whoever found them and turned them in!

they had a quilt show as well. there were so many amazing quilts. i wish i had all the info on these, but here are some of my faves. 

i really need to hand quilt something one of these days. i just don't have the patience for it. 

i also took a class with lotta jansdotter on printing. we made some print blocks and printed on paper and fabric. 

 

we walked and walked into many bars to find this particular food truck. i forget what it was though, dave was in charge of the food search. the food truck scene is so awesome there. most of the bars have one and you can order food from them. i also noticed that most bars also have a "yard," which rules. 

my travel mates in quite possibly the best picture ever. 

as soon as we left we knew we will definitely be going back to austin again sometime. and next time we will wait in that stupid long line at franklins to get some of their great bbq.

baby quilts

so this year just about everyone seems to be having a baby! i made two baby quilts, one for my cousin and one for dave's cousin.

 how cute is this animal scientist print?

and i have 3 more to make! oh and BOTH of my sewing machines are broken. the viking wasn't working right so i used my old kenmore to finish this baby quilt and then moz decided to run through the dining room where i had it set up and pulled the cords and it fell to the floor. it weighs a TON, so luckily it didn't land on him.