Made from men’s dress shirts, this is probably the most amount of colors I’ve ever used in a quilt. The back is two yards of Liberty of London, which seems to be my fabric of choice for making baby quilts.

A huge thanks to my dear friend Ayça for being the model behind this quilt. She has the strongest fingers and most quilt holding endurance of anyone I know. We photographed the quilt together around our Brooklyn neighborhood last weekend, cheering up the slushy snow from recent storm Nemo.

I have a love/hate relationship with this two-wheeled beauty – she’s a bit slow, very heavy, and loves to run out of air. Maybe a few of those things could be fixed, and she’d certainly look heavenly with a wicker basket and streamers at the end of those magnificent handles, but while she’s on winter hiatus, let’s just leave her be. She’s resting up for summer, where she will make her way to various Brooklyn beaches, fending off catcalls from hipsters whizzing by on their fixed gears.

Winter hiatus. Or you could call it winter hibernation. It’s the few weeks each year I take vacation from work to stay in the city to explore, rejuvenate, get inspired, and make things. The quilt in the background is my most labor-intensive yet, totaling exactly 2,808 pieces, 13 men’s dress shirts, and almost a hundred hours (so far!). It will be a few months until I finish putting all the layers together, and make important decisions such as, “What should the back look like? What color should the quilting thread be? And the binding…?” After finishing the patchwork last night at 3am, I’m looking forward to taking on some smaller endeavors in the meantime.

My fabrics are a mixture of men’s dress shirts and purchased yardage. I wanted an excuse to start using the 3,287 (maybe a slight exaggeration) decorative stitches that my sewing machine can produce, so I added texture with rows of embroidery. I’m going to create a throw-sized sampler quilt with all six of our combined blocks, so stay tuned.

The photo shoot took place on my mom’s farm in Michigan, where I grew up and spent my early days riding horses and playing in cornfields. The antique stool that holds the pillow was my mom’s from childhood. Look closely and you’ll notice a missing rung. The slightest breeze would throw the stool off-balance, and within seconds of the photo shoot, I was picking the pillow off the soggy ground. Photoshop did a good job cleaning off the mud spots!

The deer silhouette is hand embroidered with a dark gray floss on a cotton quilting fabric. A plaid trim finishes off the pillow. Many thanks to my very talented older brother for being the photographer behind many of these shots – let’s hope he can keep this a secret until the gift is opened tomorrow!

A few hours later the string art ornaments emerged. You might be impressed by my perfect circle cutting skills. Here’s a secret: they’re punched from my 2″ circle cutter, the most random tool that every serious ornament maker should own. The project was a great way to use up old spools of thread in my sewing stash.

Photo credit, ornaments on tree: Evan (thanks!)

So perfectly grandma chic indeed, and as a recent visitor also said, “It reminds me of orange sorbet.” The pillow adds a touch of softness to the starkness of my contemporary furnishings. It measures approximately 19″ x 19″ and is finished with a 1/4″ bias binding. Overlapping panels on the backside are held together with three light wood buttons. Now you’ll have to excuse me, I’m off to my local bodega to pick up some yummy sorbet.

I approach a new quilt design from two angles, and depending upon where inspiration strikes, either approach comes first. One angle is the layout of the patchwork, which begins with a hand sketch and evolves into a digital mockup. The other angle is the color palette, where I cut small swatches of the shirts and arrange them in color palettes. This is where the complexity enters: one shirt only has so much yardage, so if I want a big patch of something like red, I have to collect many shades of reddish shirts and make sure they are a harmonious combination. And color is all relative, so when multiple colors are introduced, I have to make sure the figure-ground relationship is clear.

Today I cut swatches from my inventory of 100 shirts and laid them out to evaluate my craziness collection. After arranging them all by hue, I re-arranged the swatches into mini palettes and photographed them to inspire my next quilt.

The last two quilts I’ve made from men’s dress shirts are here and here. With the holiday season approaching and winter hibernation kicking in, hopefully I’ll have a new quilt to share soon.

This quilt is a wedding gift for one of my close childhood friends who gets married tomorrow. I hope it accompanies her and her husband on a lifetime of love and happiness!

A big shout out to my very tall friend Colin for being the man behind the blanket. It was a windy day on the Hudson River last week, and he managed to hold the quilt gracefully, even making himself eerily invisible in the photographs.