Crinkle-icious Spare Change!

Happy Friday everyone!

It's a finish with one big project and a start with another one. I hit one major goal of mine this week: I finished a "big girl" quilt! That is, I made an closer to full-sized quilt! It's about 50x65 inches and I couldn't be happier with it! It's a version of a stacked coins design that I saw on Cluck Cluck Sew's website and adapted from her baby-sized quilt. I loved the white space she put between her "coins," different from a lot of the stacked coins quilts I had seen elsewhere. I made this with fewer than 12 fat quarters, 3 different tones of red, aqua, orange, and green. I used those same fabrics in my binding. For the backing I used my current favorite Denyse Schmidt's Flea Market Fancy Polka Dots & Flowers in turquoise (which I also used as one of the coin fabrics on front). For the quilting I got my very first try at real machine quilting on a Gammill longarm machine, thanks to Ella. It is far far far from professional, but so much better than the FMQ'ing I would do on my little Brother! Thanks so much Ella for that trade! ;-)

My most recent quilts (besides this one) were baby quilts I made as gifts, and I so loved the crinkly goodness as they came out of the dryer that I just wanted to cuddle up with them myself! I vowed that the next quilt I made was going to be for myself! I hope that doesn't sound to selfish, but as someone who has been knitting for 15 years and who has only made one sweater and one pair of socks for herself (and countless socks and sweaters and goodies for others), I take it as a sign of progress that I wanted to make something for myself for a change!! I have an antique bowtie quilt from Ohio (1904 or so) that I used to cuddle up with, but now I have only on display because it's become a bit fragile, and we have a beautiful quilt Karen's mom made for us, but I wanted a quilt that came from my own hands as well. So now we do! Yay!! Cuddling in my crinkle-icious Spare Change quilt full steam ahead!

The next project on the block (so to speak!) is a quilt for my mama. I've been holding on to fabric from old Lilly Pulitzer golf skirts of hers for ages and ages, and I'm finally ready to do something with them. For those of you who may not be familiar with Lilly Pulitzer, she's a prominent fashion designer whose vibrant floral prints have been popular since the '50s. As the story goes, she originally ran a juice stand in Palm Beach, FL and began designing bright, colorful dresses that would cover the stains from the juice! And boy did her crazy fabrics ever do the trick! Her clothes became emblematic of the preppy generation, but when being preppy went out in the '80s, so did her clothes, and I must confess I gave my mother endless grief when she continued to wear her golf skirts!!

This is one of her current summer classic fabrics:

Fun, isn't it?! And this is actually one of the more subdued prints. I can't really begin to describe what she had going on in the '70s!

In the '90s, however, Lilly Pulitzer made a comeback and I hung my head in shame when my mother proved me wrong as her golf skirts stood the test of time and became vintage Lilly Pulitzer--worth more than even the pricey new lines of fabric that Lilly Pulitzer began to release in the 1990s and 21st century. Who would have guessed?!

Nevertheless, as my mom gave up her golf game, she relinquished her precious Lilly Pulitzer golf skirts to me, hoping that I, with my crafty ways, might do something to commemorate them. So that is my current project! In addition to the great golf skirts my mother passed along to me, I also scored a fabulous Lilly Pulitzer cocktail dress--usually about $250, but I found it at DI (the local thrift store) for only $10!!!!!! Can you believe it! It didn't fit me, or else I would be wearing it around town, so instead I  took it apart at the seams and will be integrating it into the quilt. Nice score, huh?! I've become a DI junkie, I have to admit! The Lilly Pulitzer prints are impossible to miss, so I pretty much recognized it from across the room!

This is one of the blocks from one of the two skirts:

Yes, it's a purple and green tiger! Typical Lilly Pulitzer! No, it's not going to be an ordinary quilt! But it's an homage to my mother, and her love for Lilly Pulitzer . . .  and her golf skirts! What I haven't mentioned is that my mother is an extraordinary golfer. She would be the last one to admit it, but she has a great swing and low handicap and a true love for the game. I've wanted to make this quilt for a long time as a way to honor all of that.