June 5, 2009

Welcome to Big City Quilts

Welcome to my Blog! I am Johnny Barfuss - owner of Big City Quilts! I am a quilter and crafter and love to play with fabric! Check back for fun quilts and projects that you can do on your own!

I'll start my blog by telling you why I love to quilt! I just made a quilt for a lady to use as an end of year Teacher Gift for the end of the year. The mom passed out a fabric square to each student and a sharpie - and they had 30 minutes to draw or write something that the teacher would remember them by - or something they liked about the teacher... I then framed each square using a simple log cabin and did it in some really fun Black, White and Red fabrics - which were her favorite colors. I quilted it doing a really simple graphic pattern in each block but left the student's squares untouched. I felt like this left thier work exactly as they did it. I really like scrappy bindings - so i used scraps leftover from the squares to do the binding. There was 31 squares from the students - so, I printed one more square that said "we love you Miss Davis" and the grade, school and year... and then i wanted it to be square, so i made 4 more squares using my Cricut machine to cut fabric. I cut out the words: "live, love, laugh and learn" out of black fabric and then put it on a white square so it matched the quilt exactly! If you haven't used the Cricut to cut fabric or you want a fast and easy way to make applique - check out the Cricut machine at www.cricut.com. I've made several projects to make fast appliques!!!

Well - the one thing i LOVE about making quilts is the reaction people give when they receive such a wonderful gift. I went to the school this morning as the students gave it to the teacher. The parent started choking up just telling the teacher how much they liked having her as a teacher and how much she was going to miss her... so the teacher started choking up... well - when she opened it - there were full on tears!!! She kept saying: "it matches my decor exactly - how did you guys know?"

That's why I LOVE to quilt! A gift that is so thoughtful and will truly be treasured for a lifetime!!

Let me know if I can make one for you!