...quilts by kate...necktie ™

Pam's Quilt

2012-02-02T05:58:00.001-08:00

Pam's husband left behind some beautiful ties but also some really nice button down shirts. Pam asked if I could put a quilt together incorporating both. Always up for a challenge I of course was happy to oblige.

Here it is after all the squares had been put together:

Here are the first 16 squares all finished.
The white in the background is the muslin
I use to add stability to the fabric.

And here all the squares have been
trimmed down and pieced out on the bed for sewing.

And here the sewing is done and all the squares are together.

I found a great piece of charcoal suiting material for the backing
and to add a little something special I added a few
of the tie labels to each corner.

A close-up of the labels.

There was one tie that didn't quite fit the rest, though.
Pam sent me this really cute Santa tie and because
it was specifically shaped like Santa I couldn't
really bear to cut it up, so I arranged
it onto the back and appliqued it there.

So now the quilt is technically reversible for the holidays.

All quilts by kate are one-of-a-kind originals. See right panel for pricing. A quilt like this would be priced at $600.

Finished January 2012

Scottie's Pillows

2011-11-26T11:53:00.000-08:00

Scottie got in touch with me to see if I could turn her husband's neckties into six pillows to give away for Christmas. The ties arrived on Tuesday of last week and since I was looking at three weeks to finish (I like to allow for a week to send them home) I asked if she minded if I broke out the machine. She was okay with it, so I flew through these pillows!

Scottie grouped the ties so each one
is my design with her eye for color

Once the pillow tops were done,
I had to trim the edges as you can see.

Some of them turned out so beautifully.

Like this one, for instance.
I love that gold tie.

And the martini tie was a lot of fun,
especially paired with the Christmas ties!

Once I was done trimming,
I sewed the sides together and stuffed a pillow into each one.

And here they are on the couch, looking fantastic!

Same pillows, new sides.

Close ups

This was such a fun project to work on. All quilts by kate are one-of-a-kind originals. See right panel for pricing. Pillows like these would be priced at $100 each.

Gordon's Necktie Quilt

2011-07-12T07:37:00.001-07:00

We decided early on to go with a brick pattern since the ties were so disparate in color and style.

The little tags on the ends of each were labeled so that I could determine which strip of bricks came next.

I found actual suiting material to use as the backing. It's a wool-cashmere blench pinstripe in gray. Also, Gordon shares his initials with Geoffrey Beane and although that particular tie wasn't among GB's collection, I had to use it to throw in some personalization. Here is the quilt with the back pinned and ready to finish.

And here it is done.

All quilts by kate are one-of-a-kind originals. See right panel for pricing. A quilt like this would be priced at $600.

Finished July 2011

Crazy Restoration #1

2010-08-23T05:25:00.000-07:00

I just finished working on restoring this beautiful old crazy quilt, by using silk neckties. The quilt was originally made out of silks and velvets but after 100 years, the silks had frayed pretty badly.

For example, here's a piece of silk that I removed because it had frayed to such an extent that there were holes in it.

Underneath, I discovered that this wasn't the first time it had been patched!

You can see the original lining below the red and brown fabrics and it amazes me that it all has lasted this long.

Here's the finished product:

And again, from a different angle:

Hester's Quilt

2009-12-21T17:58:00.000-08:00

Hester got in touch recently to ask if I'd make a quilt for her with her husband's neckties. Of course I said yes.

Cutting up all the ties has taken some time, but it's almost done!

Here's a sample square...

...and here are six squares put together and laid out

After working for much of the winter, the top is finally done:Four squares

On the diagonal

Top to bottom

On an angle

Bottom to top

There were a few scraps left over so I used them to make a pillow as a little bonus:

and here's a close-up of my brand-new awesome labels!

Pillows!

2009-10-21T12:27:00.000-07:00

Recently I made four pillows out of neckties to be auctioned off for charity. Since they sorta-kinda qualify as quilts I'm gonna show 'em off here.

Here's me with three of the four.

The three up close.

The Brown Pillow.

The Orange Pillow.

The Blue Pillow (and my personal favorite).

The Paisley Pillow

Necktie Quilt - Hexagons, er Squares

2008-05-21T18:49:00.001-07:00

The design is done:
Ties still intact, waiting to be taken apart:

Ties that have been taken apart and need to be laundered one more time:

Here are the ties, freshly laundered, ironed, folded and awaiting the cut:

And here's the first diamond, cut:

The concept:

The strips are sewn together, and here it is laid out on the floor:
The reason for the very long delay in posting the pics of the finished product is because I discovered that it's really difficult to sew hexagons pieces together. So, in an effort to speed things up I lopped off all the ends and came up with this:

Since the final piece wasn't very big I used long strips to frame it, and I backed it with a beautiful piece of navy blue velvet:
All quilts by kate are one-of-a-kind originals. See right panel for pricing. A quilt like this would be priced at $600.

Finished November 2010

Necktie Quilt - Squares

2008-05-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

Start with a bag of neckties from Goodwill or similar (in this case, these were generously donated by my good friend Carol):

Design and cut a pattern:

Close up of pattern:

Start cutting the ties up:

Piecing the strips together:

First square sewed:

Six squares sewed:

20 squares sewed:

20 squares with knotting detail:

After trimming the squares so that they were all around the same size, and laying them out and labeling them so that if they get mixed up you'll always know where square A1 or D5 goes, the sewing of the squares in to strips can happen:

Now, each strip can be sewn vertically to the next strip in line. If you want to add spacers as we did when sewing each square together you can.

Here's the finished quilt top. Under it will go batting (100% cotton) and backing.

I'm almost done with the quilting part and then I can start binding the edges. If you look over to the left there are all these little white dots because I pin-basted it instead of basting with thread.

Trixie and Ari help with the binding.

Square close-up.

Finished Necktie Quilt

All quilts by kate are one-of-a-kind originals. A quilt like this would be priced at $650.00.

Done and hung at mom and dad's: