Decorated for Christmas

Got this one finished in time for the holidays, yay!  Again using a pattern found in Pam and Nicky Lintotts' Jelly Roll Quilts, I made up this version of Both Sides of the Pond in some green and red batiks with a liberal dose of Kona white.

Serious hat tip to Lori Kennedy of The Inbox Jaunt for her really cool christmas doodles from a couple years ago.

And with the addition of some grinchy flannel for the back (which you can just see peeking out the corner in the picture below...

...the house is now decorated for christmas!

It's For Fun

...so I can scribble quilt it if I wanna.  A good photo of this top is in this post from a few months back.

Maybe the stitching will show up more on the plain muslin back.  I love having lots of different textures in a quilt, and the open area of the ring below right next to the garden row quiting inside it makes a lovely feel when you run your fingers over it.

Heh.  Teething rings.  No, I am not expecting.  Absolutely not.  But my dogs do have chew toys that remind me of baby teethers of old.

The only problem with this much detail in a quilt is that it takes some while to finish.  Between this and my hunter's star piecing, I feel stalled.  The upcoming winter weather will probably give me plenty of opportunity to get at least one of these projects wrapped up.  I hope.

Bloggers Quilt Festival (Autumn 2014)

Welcome to my stop on the autumn 2014 Blogger's Quilt Festival.  Almost two years in the making for this quilt and I wasn't sure it would be finished in time for this festival either!  Modern Autumn started with a picture of a fabric collection on the Keepsake Quilting website two autumns passed.

The colors were so enchanting I pulled the closest things I could find in my own stash and started thinking about leaves changing colors.  Not long after the block pattern came to my attention on another website.

After the body of the quilt top was assembled it hung forlorn and abandoned in the studio for a year while I slooooooowly got the 336  1-1/2" HSTs squared up for the border.

The wind and leaves were super fun to quilt, but now I wish I'd used a little copper thread on the leaves.  Just a few days on Terpsichore, a bit of hand sewing for the binding, and voila!  

Super cozy and ready for use on a cool autumn morning with a cup of coffee and a good book.

Technical specs:  90" x 90" all cotton fabrics, warm and natural batting, A&E threads.

Thanks for stopping by, I read and respond to every comment.  Enjoy the rest of the Festival!

Summer Retreat Quilt

A few times a year I meet some quilting friends at Le Retreat House in Gainesville and we all spend the weekend chatting and sewing.  It is relaxing and cathartic.  This summer I put together this top from two moda charm packs but I still haven't quilted it...

and my friend miz D made this one for her sister.  It actually took her several different retreats to piece it, but she got the binding on it this summer.

I didn't get pictures of any of the other quilts in progress, but we have another retreat coming up soon.

I also got the binding on this quilt which was very simple to make (from the pattern "Square Deal" found in Amy Smart's Fabulously Fast Quilts) and easy to quilt and it struck me funny to add a little text in the middle (visible on the back more than the front).

Bloggers Quilt Festival May 2014

Double photobomb!

Here's my entry for the May 2014 round of the Bloggers Quilt Festival.  This quilt was made for my aunts to celebrate their marriage last July.  Quilting took far too long and it didn't get finished until just last month.

The greens were supposed to be sage, but they just aren't.  I tried to tone them down a bit by using grey/green and grey/blue threads.

The pattern is just a traditional Carpenter's Wheel block made large enough to be a quilt.

I was especially pleased with the Invisafil thread in the outer border.  Nice subtle texture and unlike many of the thin and shiny threads, didn't break all the time.  The rest of the quilting was done in various shades of green and plain white A&E tex 40 quilting cotton.

The snails and pebbles background fill worked well, but from time to time it got boring so I threw in a few easter eggs.

From any distance at all the quilting is almost invisible on the front.  But if you get up close...

...the details come out.

Using a little bit of green thread on the back gave it some character.

The center medallion got a monogram, well-wishes, and a traditional curved crosshatch background fill.  You should see the three foot long MDF curve template I made out in the shop.  Thumping it around on the quilt for about six hours while I worked around the intials was a hoot, I assure you.

If I had more time I would probably have embellished these letters more.

Scraps from the green batiks joined end to end made the binding.

Thanks for stopping by, feel free to say howdy in the comments.  I reply to all of them.  Enjoy the rest of the festival!

Frittering Away the Time

My granddaughter and at least four of my children and their partners will be here for christmas.   First time in maybe ten years that this many of my kids could all be together at once.  Once they grow up it really gets hard to schedule holidays.

So Christmas is about thirteen days away and I have absolutely nothing better to do than quilt, right?  This adorable little panel and a charm pack of the related fabrics went together with some navy i had in the stash to make a top that I'll quilt up and throw on a piece of furniture in the livingroom to cosy up the space during our celebrations.

Beats scrubbing floors and ordering spare parts for the old crib I need to get set up!

It's Orthogonal to be Square

but it takes forever!

Fortunately I have one more day this weekend!

The Only Problem...

 

...with designing lots of HSTs into a quilt is that Someone Has to Sew Them! There are at least 260 HSTs and about 40 QSTs in my Americana quilt.  Squaring up is next.  Guess what my next complainy post is going to be about?  :)

Pulling Some Fabrics

My sleeves are rolled up and I am ready to start churning out these quilts.  I've had a look at my stash and a look at the list of quilts.  This morning I'll be pulling fabrics for half a dozen quilts just to get ready.

First the Americana quilt I think.

 

I think that will work out pretty well. I'm trying for an antique look to the quilt and so will be using neutrals instead of whites.  IF YOU WANT TO PLAY ALONG choose 8 to 10 each of red, white and blue prints in a variety of saturations, but only one hue.  As long as you have about a 6" strip worth of fabric, it will be useable.  There won't be any hard and fast rule about which blue to use for which block for instance, so just aim for hauling out about 2 yards total on each color.


Next I want to select fabrics for the Easy Color Strip quilt.

My brights stash isn't beefy. This was hard work for me!  IF YOU WANT TO PLAY ALONG choose a light, medium, and dark fabric from each of the following colors:  magenta, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet and a black and a white.  I'm using kona black and kona white.  As long as you have at least 7" strips of your colors you'll have enough.  Remember too that if you want to use a random color scheme, or if you'd like to use a monochromatic scheme (or an all 40's feedsacks theme or whatever) all you have to do is substitute the 24 fabrics of your choice in place of the rainbow I've selected.

Onward... to Bland quilt!

Wow. It sure seems faster in a blogpost than it does in person. I agonized over this selection for quite some while. The only way I know to do this is pull a bunch of things from your stash that you KNOW are neutrals. Then start adding colorful things to the group that you suspect might be neutrals. Step back once in a while and look at them all together. Yank out the ones that really stand out.  I had one fabric in there for a while that ended up looking like bright teal when i stepped back.  0.o  IF YOU WANT TO PLAY ALONG choose as many neutrals as you can find in your stash.  If it is at least 3" x 4" you'll be able to use it.  Shoot for collecting at least ten fabrics and at least 6 yards for a queen sized quilt.

I'm all tired now, so the last quilt I want to choose fabrics for today is my TATW.  mmmmmm!  Blacks.

Clearly not everyone will want to make this quilt in blacks. Regardless of what the color is you choose, if you choose12 to 15 colors you'll do fine.  The only tricky part for me was getting the gradations right in all those black and white fabrics.  Sometimes when you stand too close you end up getting some of them in the wrong place.  IF YOU WANT TO PLAY ALONG choose at least 12 fabrics for your gradation.  For the fabrics that appear in the darkest band on my quilt you will need at least five 4 1/2" strips of each color.  For the fabrics on the corners you will only need about 16" x 4 1/2".  Guesstimate for the ones in between for now.

Ok.  It will take me a day or so to work up all the cutting requirements for these four quilts.  I'll show pictures of my kitted up quilts with links to cutting charts on the next post.  Good luck!

24 Quilts

Welcome back! My summer has had very little to do with quilting so my blog has been really boring. Thank you all for checking back in from time to time anyway. Please spread the word that we're up and running again.

I'm starting a new series of posts. I have chosen 24 quilts from my eq6 stash of quilts - these are quilts I've seen elsewhere and ginned up my own version, or things I've just dreamed up myself, or things friends have suggested. All of them have gone into the "really want to make this one" stack. While paging through these quilts (there are really more than 300 quilts in the stack) I realized that if I was going to get any of them made I would need to start immediately. So I whittled the stack down to just 24 MUST MAKE quilts. Today I will post only the eq6 pictures of each quilt with a brief description where appropriate. Over the course of the next year I will step through the entire quilting process from fabric selection to piecing to quilting and binding for each quilt. Each time a new quilt is introduced I will make the pattern available online for anyone who wants to quilt along with me or just use it later, and I'll make fabric choices and yardage requirements available too.

I've never made an americana quilt before. Gotta do it sometime.

The block above is called simple spider web. I really like the secondary patterns that result from colorplay. This one might get tweaked a little before I start building.

My buddy Babs started the quilt above. This is her fault. :D

I can't for the life of me remember where I first saw this one. Maybe at a quilt show? It'll have a black background on one side and white on the other, but the color strips will be the same on each side.

The quilt above is made up of blocks modified from trading cards I first saw on Mary's blog a few years ago. Here's her post and here's my original block design.

Yes! Trip around the world! My very first gift quilt was a TATW that I made from real scraps (and believe me, it looked REAL scrappy!). This time it will be in my favorite colors, black and grey.

I've been considering neutrals alot lately. What makes a color neutral? Gonna spend a lot of time contemplating that very idea when I choose fabrics for this one.

Chinese butterfly prints have always really grabbed my attention. This quilt will mostly be an excuse for elaborate "scribble" quilting.

This quilt will be made from scraps and leftovers of these fabrics, which makes it a leftovers leftover quilt. Maybe I should call it my leftoverture.

My own designs on hex blocks above. The real quilt will probably be made in two families of coordinating fabrics rather than this hodge-podge of random brights.

Both above and below are my own cube designs.

Yup, classic double wedding ring, gotta make it in black and grey!

Going to use up some scraps on this one. The eq6 version isn't as cool as the real one will be. More on the story when I get to it. But if you plan to do this one with me, start saving your dryer sheets now. :)

Above in miniature and colors, below in a larger format. I have loved the circle of geese idea since I first saw it.

Saw this one in a fairly recent magazine and of COURSE I can't remember which one now. If any of you recognize it, let me know so I can credit the 'zine. EDIT: found it! January/February Fons and Porter's Love of Quilting Magazine. It was on the cover. The picture above however, is my own eq6 adaptation.

Not even sure why I want to make the quilt above. This is the only one that might get cut from the list.

Who hasn't wanted to make a New York Beauty? This one will be in batiks.

The basic idea here came straight off someone else's blog. She's a fellow long armer I think and this pattern was from a customer's quilt. I'd like to credit it if I can find the post.

This is a variation on a single wedding ring quilt. I'm going for a spinning centers look and think I'll need to do a little bit of playing around with this to achieve the dizzying effect I want.

This block has been around for a while. It first caught my eye at the Dallas Quilt Show a few years back. I'm still collecting red and white fabrics for it as red has never been my strong suit in the stash. Good thing it's pretty low on the list. I have found out that this pattern is published in a book called Livin' Large by Heather Mulder Peterson. You can purchase it HERE, but I just eyeballed the pattern at the show and sketched it when I got home, so who knows whether my construction technique matches hers.

This one is my own version of a pattern I saw on a blog - everyone's work was just at the block or top stage in the post's pictures. Anyone remember where it was? The one I liked best from the post was in browns.

Colorful corn and beans blocks. :) I want to go with scrappy neutrals in the background, but the contrast on them is pretty high in eq6. I'll be trying for a more uniform range in the actual quilt.

Ok, there it is. A pretty darned ambitious list, but I believe it's doable. My goal is to get them all done in twelve months, but if it takes a little longer than that I'm not going to kick myself over it. The real point is that life is short. Make quilts while you can!