Falling Leaves

Was it an excuse to buy tons of colorful batiks? Maybe.
Was it an opportunity to experiment with colors? Sure.
Is it time to finish her high school graduation quilt? Definitely!

Follow along as we piece it together

The journey begins at the Evergreen Quilt Guild Annual Book Sale. I picked up a copy of Fons and Porter's Our Best Seasonal Quilts. The bunny quilt is really cute, the bee and flower garden quilt is on my someday list, but the Impressions of Fall wall hanging leaped off the page and directly into my imagination.

(Image coming as soon as it's quilted!)

Could we use this design, but make it into a queen sized quilt? L took on the task. She used her graphic design software to increase the block size, add more leaves twirl them into place and finally printed up a both colored and an unfilled patterns. Next step was to take out our stashed batiks.

The quilt has three main types of blocks: square, half-triangle square and stem block -- and a few more complex blocks where two colors of leaves overlap. [Add half-triangle square tutorial] The empty two spaces will be two colors leaf edges. Once arranged, I would carefully sew that section of quilt top into strips. It didn't take long to discover that this is not the perfect pattern for a person who can't easily determine rotations.

In addition to traditionally pieced, the points on the large leaves was paper pieces. You can see the three blocks at the point of this red leaf. Confession time...not all of these turned out quite so well. I published one that matched lines fairly well. Some were a bit less than perfect. We reminded ourselves that leaves so have serrations.

What colors shall we use for these leaves? We scattered fabrics across S's living room. The kitty was so excited but not a ton of help. We folded and arranged fabric piles into leaves. So we'd remember our design, we colored and labeled the pattern and the fabrics. Time to sew! The picture to the right shows a bit of quilt that hadn't been planned yet. I sent out this photo the the S's for input.

Eventually all 30 strips of 26 blocks were pieced together and the strips sewn into the inner quilt top.

The quilt was a bit small so we wanted the border to increase size as well as complement the pattern. For the inner border, we choose a narrow strip of gold print. We finished it with a leafy, 4 1/2" wide outer border

Oops!

I don't understand how we could have missed this mistake. While ironing the inner border, it leaped out at me. I sent out an emergency messages to the three S's, "Fix or leave?" The vote came back quickly:

✓ "I vote fix."
✓ "Fix it. That's terrible."
✓ "I think that might drive you bonkers if you leave it."

Four "rip it out and fix it" (that was my vote, too); zero "pretend you didn't notice." I fixed it. The fabric's pattern isn't all pointing the same direction now but that it definitely not such a blatant error.

The next stop is Trains in Tacoma where we'll put it on the long arm and do some quilting. We plan to use a washable wool batt. Watch for an update with our finished quilt. I'd estimate we'll schedule before mid April. How do you think we should quilt it?

Order Up! Fireflies with a Side of Scrap

My First Panel Quilt

In 2011, we hit the East Tennesee Quilt Shop Hop. As long as we were in the general area, I stopped by to visit a dear friend in Kentucky. It was June and the fireflies came out as the sun went down. I'd never been in the South during the summer and that particular insect isn't common in Washington state. One of the girls, in a very polite southern way, gently made fun of me and then caught a blinking, glowing bug for me to hold.

Fast forward to the 2014 Western Washington Quilt Shop Hop. Although not a theme fabric, I spotted a baby quilt made with a panel from Wee Wander fabric collection. The pattern is available as a free download from Sarah Jane Studios. It reminded me of our pleasant time hanging out in the holler and I was wishing I had a baby who needed a special quilt.

What a coincidence! My friend from Kentucky announced a few weeks later that she was expecting her first grandbaby. As soon as I knew if we were creating a baby boy or baby girl gift, we got right on it.

We invite you to follow along:

We started with this panel -- the one I fell in love with when I saw it at The Quilting Loft in Ballard. I didn't buy it then because, well you quilters know how a stash can accumulate... When I wanted to get it, it was gone. Although this fabric line had completely sold out in the greater Seattle area, we found it online. Whew!

I've already added a pink feathered border. Now it's time to come up with matching fabrics to complete the scrappy borders and the friendship blocks. Wish us luck!

In a scrap quilt, half the fun might be looking through those hoarded and already-cut-to-size squares for the perfect color path. This year, the process was even more interesting because we had a small and enthusiastic helper. These are his choices from the bin. I may have added and subtracted a few blocks of my own.

Next came sewing the half-triangle squares for the friendship blocks.Since the squares needed to be 2 1/2", I started with slightly larger than 3" squares, marked the diagonals and sewed a scant 1/4" seam each side of the mark. I cut on the mark and pressed each set open. Finally I trimmed each square to size. Quite the scrap pile for such a small pile of finished pieces, isn't it?

Because this precious grandbaby is a girl (and yes, I sometimes fall victim to gender stereotyping), we choose to use more pink and coral and less blue and green. A little arranging, a bit of sewing, a touch of the iron and we have a finished block. This batch of friendship squares is enough to make more than one firefly quilt. Wonder if another baby might need one...

Arranging and piecing the border

And finally, a look at the quilting. This was S's first time on the long arm. With a bit of encouragement and lots of shared laughter, I think she did a great job.

Mailed off to Miss Sweetness the first part of January accompanied by Eric Carle's "The Very Lonely Firefly."

Amanda's Quilt -- A Beatiful and Simple Way to Use Up Those Scraps

Combine a snazzy border technique, some creative applique and oodles of already cut block and you can have a lovely quilt almost like this.

S has been making quilts for each person in her husband's family. This jewel is for a sister. She loves blues and deep, rich colors so we began by choosing a color pallet and then hitting the 3 1/2" square stash.

We started with a 16 x 16 block center. It was edged with a white and dark brown sawtooth strip. Each of the four corners start with 14 block and 2 triangles decreasing one block on each side per row. It is also edged with the sawtooth strip on its long side. S created the quilt's showpiece by designing a flowing, flowering vine that twists on and off the work. It even incorporates an initial.

Getting there. How about adding a bit more length and choosing borders?

To make the quilt a little longer, we added a strip of matching fabric. A small, dark colored border popped the center a bright outer border finished the quilt top. Since the back featured an oriental print (see below), we decided to also use one for the border and the length extention.

Things had gone alone quite smoothly, to this point but we were soon to face quite the challenge. S had planned to gift it at Christmas. We had an appointment to use the long arm the December 19th. Plenty of time! Or so a person would think. Something bad happened the evening before to the bobbin assembly and the other machine was taken. I took the offer of a later date and the suggestion that we prepare the binding in advance.

R and I returned on Christmas Eve and got busy. She quilted this one first, using a ferny leaves and flowers pattern. We thought it needed some curves to balance the square blocks.

The minute it came off the long arm, I sewed the binding in place and sat down to hand stitch the second side down while R and S quilted two other quilts, the firefly baby quilt and a Halloween lap quilt.

It was ready by morning. Merry Christmas, A!

Hands and More Hands

Your little boy is now 6'6" and his hands can palm a basketball. Remember back when those tiny hands were dwarfed by yours? This quilt remembers as well.

Almost done -- just needs the binding stitched down

A friend had a stack of 49-8" hand blocks from an online mommies' club. She asked if I could make them into a quilt.

"What size?"
"Not too big."

It could have been 7 x 7, but square quilts and rectangular beds aren't always a great fit. If I made it 6 x 8, I've have to leave a block out so opted to add some filler blocks. The filler blocks and the mommies' group blocks were arranged 7 x 8 grid, stripped with a dark blue batik.

Then I visited. My friend pointed to a blank spot on the wall as the future home for the quilt. It didn't take much spatial ability to see that my definition of not too big and that spot on the wall were dramatically different. Even a 7 x 7 grid pieced directly together would overwhelm the area.

So I thought a while, took the first quilt apart, bagged the squares and thought some more...and more. About 12 year later (yes, that little guy from the mommy group is off to college), I had a brain storm. How about a 5 x 5 reversible wall hanging. I could do that. Here's how it looks:

Quilt front (and fuzzy dotted jammie pants)

Quilt back

Yo, Beach Babe!

A surprise quilt for a surprise baby!

The nursery is done in a Hawaiian beach (think Lilo and Stitch) theme so we made this quilt to match. The baby's name has been blurred to protect the her privacy.

Putting It All Together

We started with this sketch, done by one of the S's who also helped create the artwork in the nursery. Once we had an idea, we hit the fabric stash and pulled out colors that would complement the walls. We needed blues for the ocean, greens for the trees and bushes, something bright for a surboard, a few brilliant colors for the tropical flowers, white for the fluffy clouds and a shiny yellow for the sun.

Challenge accepted!

The ocean looks lovely doesn't it? We paper pieced the sea together in a fit of insanity. Do not do this the way we did! It was a bad plan. The curves were too long and too tight for the fabric to lay smoothly. I'd suggest needle turn or your favorite applique instead.

The sand was created using a stack and whack technique from Browsing the Web, found in "New Cuts for New Quilts," by Karla Alexander. After the blocks were stitched into a long strip, we top stitched the ocean to the sand and hid the seam with blanket stitching. If you look closely you can see blanket stitching on some of the waves.

Another lesson learned this quilt. Letter are difficult. I'd tried to applique cut out letters in italicized cursive writing -- also a bad plan. We ended up embroidering it in bullion knot which turned out great.

The flowers were a lot easier than they look.

R quilted to match the area. The trees are filled with a meander. The ocean has waves and the sky looks as if someone drew in the wind. She left the tree stems and flowers empty for extra dimension but quilting in close to them.

Those extra inches of palm fronds? We'll get a look at them later.

Here's a close up of the sky and trees. You can almost see the wind lifting the branches.

You can see the blanket stitch holding them down. We chose a variegated green floss and used two strands.

Remember the dangling palm fronts. Look below. We continued them onto the back.

All in all we're very happy with the way this little quilt turned out.

Everything Little Boy Quilt

Frogs, water, kites, fish...everything little boy. This quilt has them all set in a snowball pattern and surrounded by tiny, bright squares.

Here are a couple individual blocks. You can see my quilting. I did it on my sewing machine and think it turned out pretty good.

Curvaceous Cabins - Bendable Quilts

A few years ago I attended a Peggy Barkleys workshop, Curvaceous Cabins. It was based on her book, Bendable Quilts. Workshop allow you to learn new techniques while chatting and laughing with friends. Certainly that's a win/win situation. This one was more -- I came home with a fail-proof technique to use up those leftover 1/4 yards and less hunks.

First step was to pick out a light and dark color pallet. The blocks began as typical log cabins, but were trimmed asymetrically after each round. Sounds a bit absurd but results in a sliced block with no overlapping seams. I laid my cutting guide over a block so you could see how some strips are 1" and others are 1 1/2".



I ended up with six dark blocks and six light ones. Now for the fun! Stack a dark block on a light one and free hand cut from diagonally from corner to corner. I tried to miss the center blocks to reduce bulk when I sewed the pieces back together. Now I have 12 blocks to arrange into a lap quilt. We put together 4 layouts and invite you to help me decide which to use (or suggest one of your own).