Everybody's Talking

November 22, 2024 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

(Alternate title: does everyone really need their own podcast?)

Everybody’s Talking, 50”x54”, finished 2024

A depiction of the mixed blessings of living in this internet age. Sugary sweet colors give way to overwhelm when every face I scroll past is telling me what I should be doing with my life, my health, my money, my relationships. That’s not to mention every celebrity and even lots of friends recording podcasts and here’s me for some reason feeling pressure to listen to them all. I love the fun of the internet and I subscribe to the Patreon of my favorite podcast, so I’m not against these things. But it also feels suffocating and no one is coming to help me regulate my consumption. That’s all on me, baby. Exhausting.

In the words of Bo Burnham, “Here’s a question for you guys. Is it necessary that every single person on this planet expresses every single opinion that they have on every single thing that occurs all at the same time?”

Mini for Holly

April 09, 2022 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

This is a gift for my friend who helped me find something I couldn’t find on the internet.

When I made this star quilt for my in-laws for Christmas, I was using a favorite bundle that had been on my shelf for ages. I knew the name of the bundle and the designer who had grouped the colors but couldn’t find a list of the Kona colors in the bundle anywhere! I needed to replenish some but didn’t know what they were. My friend Holly came through with her search skills. I made this for her to say thanks. I used scraps from the star quilt that she helped make possible.

Mini quilt for Holly, 18”x16”

Mini quilt for Holly, 2021. Measures 18”x16

Dual Enrollment

April 08, 2022 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

This represents the last burst of a super productive period before I started my OT program. I had patchwork from workshops with Tara Faughnan in 2017 and Season Evans in 2018 that had been sitting around for a couple of years while I debated how to finish them as individual projects. Eventually I decided they could play together, so I combined them and built onto the composition and this quilt came into its final form.

I called it Dual Enrollment because it combines patchwork from two different classes, and also because it was made during a period when life was very heavy with demands from both school and parenthood.

Sarah Evans quilted a simple grid for me, and I added a grid of handquilting. During the first semester of my OT program at UIC, almost all of our classes were virtual, because of COVID, so I did a lot of the handquilting during zoom lectures.

Dual Enrollment, 61”x84”, completed September 2021

Two Mini Quilts

May 24, 2019 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

This quilt was made for a swap between my guild and the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild. My partner didn’t give me any requests, just told me to make whatever my heart desired. So I used scraps from a previous project (my Good Bones mini quilts from my drawing final) and the design was loosely inspired by the Arne Quilt by Rossie Crafts. I did my own quilting on this one and was pretty happy with the outcome.

And another mini for a swap. This time it was a swap within my own guild. Again, my partner left it pretty wide open in terms of what she likes, so I tried to make something that reflects what I see in her: bright, vibrant, energetic. I had fun improving my way through this mini. My partner liked it and it turned out to be a parting gift, as she soon after moved from Chicago to Milwaukee.

A quilt for the Taylors

December 05, 2016 by Laura Hartrich in quilts

I needed to make a gift for our good friends. They were expecting their second baby. But I hadn't made a quilt for their first baby, so the second baby couldn't get his own, right? That's my logic, anyway. So I thought a family quilt would be more appropriate. I made a large throw size quilt (75"x65"), big enough for Kristin and her little boys to snuggle with right now, but sorry, Colin and Taylor boys in the future, it's definitely going to be too short for you. Without really planning it, this quilt became a sampler for the classes I took at QuiltCon 2015. I learned to make the circles and pebbles in a class with Rossie Hutchinson. I also chopped up the doodle I made in Sherri Lynn Wood 's class and incorporated that into the patchwork. The construction of the top was improvisational and ruler-free. I thought much too long and hard about what to do with these blocks from my QuiltCon classes. In the end I threw them haphazardly on my design wall and loved this simple layout. I quilted this on my Juki 2010Q and it's far from perfect but I love it. I did echoes in a few spots and then straight lines or grids on the rest. I'm proud of this one. Everything came together beautifully.

My "doodle" from Sherri Lynn Wood's class

{This actually turned out to be a trade, since Kristin Taylor is a talented artist. A quilt for an awesome portrait of my family. Thing is, I totally would have given this to them anyway. Suckers! JK, I love those guys.}

I did a huge log cabin block for the back of the quilt.