Quilt Top for Scarlett

 

This quilt top is basically a large carpenter's wheel block (32") with a border (4"), but the fabric placement in the outer wheel part is designed to look like flowers.  After it was mostly sewn together, I thought it would have looked good (maybe better) if I had added a half-sqaure triangle of green at the base of each flower to continue the green square and add a green base to the flower.  But I didn't want to take out the necessary seams for that.  If I make one again with this design, I might try it that way.  

The print fabric is from the Muse line of fabric from 3 Sisters by Moda.  The green is Art Gallery Fresh Sage, and the background is Kona Snow.  The binding will be the same scarlet color as the centers of the flowers and the backing fabric will be another Muse print. 

Cascades of Glory top

 

I designed this quilt years ago but just recently bought fabric to make it.  It is a variation on the "Cascades" quilt that I made years ago, using a jelly roll and a charm pack.  This quilt is smaller and uses yardage instead of precuts.  This is the second quilt that I'm making for my quilt guild's Quilts of Honor project.  The top measures 56-1/2 x 72-1/2 inches.

Quilt of Honor #1

 

This quilt top is made from a version of a block that I got from a  Missouri Star tutorial.  The tutorial is for the 3 Dudes jelly roll block.   The block in the tutorial uses a different number of 2-1/2 inch strips per block than mine, but it uses the same technique. 

I made the first block for this quilt back in 2014 from scraps that I had in my stash.  I bought some more fabric at the quilt shop (the receipt was still in the box with the fabric, that's why I know when it was.) to make a quilt out of it, but I never got around to making it.  I guess that I wasn't planning to put a border on it originally, because I didn't buy fabric for that at the time, so I had to buy some at the quilt shop this week.  The blue of the border fabric is a little darker than most of the blues, in the quilt, but since it is a scrappy quilt, I think it works fine.

I hadn't originally planned to put the white sashing strips between the blocks, either.  But when I laid the blocks together side-by-side, I thought that it looked too dark.  I like how the extra white brightens it up. 

I won't be quilting this one myself.  My quilt guild honors local veterans with Quilts of Honor every November, and I made this top for that purpose.  One of our members has a computerized long arm machine, and she bought a special 250th Anniversary (America turns 250 years old this year) quilting design pattern to use on all the Quilts of Honor this year.  I'm happy to let her quilt it, honestly. 

The top measures 51 inches by 65 inches. 

Scrap buster raffle block

 

 

Another new thing with my quilt guild, now that I've started back going, is that they do a quilt block raffle every other month.  My understanding is that every block you make counts as a chance for winning all the blocks (sometimes half the blocks if there are a lot?).  Everyone uses that same pattern, but the fabrics are all individual and therefore different.  

I made this block for next month's raffle.  It is made from left over Kansas Troubles fabrics that I had in my stash.  I tried to focus mostly on red fabrics for the darker patches, and yellowed creams for the lighter patches to make a cohesive looking block.  The block measures 16-1/2 inches square.

The problem is that I really like the block, so I'm not sure I want to enter it in the raffle.  Maybe I want to keep it and make more blocks to go with it.  I could make a really pretty quilt for the back of my loveseat.  Maybe I want to make a block with totally different fabrics, that I don't like as well, to enter in the raffle.  I guess I need to decide.

Frog Block Quilt Top

 

I finished this quilt top yesterday.  The frog block in the center is an orphan block that I've had up on a design board for literally years.  I had originally planned to make 4 of the frog blocks for a baby quilt, but I decided against that idea.  I've been planning this quilt for a while now, but I've just finally gotten around to it.  The frog block is 15 inches, and I added a 1-1/2 inch border around it to make an 18 inch square for the center.  The surrounding fabrics are mostly blues and greens with both frog and bug fabrics, too.  Those are 6 inch squares.  The inner border is 1-1/2 inches and the outer border is 6 inches.  The quilt will finish at 45 inches by 57 inches.

This month I started back going to quilt guild and found out that my guild now supports Quilts Beyond Borders, a charity providing quilts to children in under-served areas of the world.  I had always planned to give this quilt to charity in some fashion, so now I have a good outlet for that.

All Aboard quilt

 

This is a twin sized quilt for my oldest grandson, Gus.  He's about to graduate from his toddler bed to a twin bed.  He LOVES trains, so his mama asked that I make him a train quilt for his new bed.  It will also be the biggest part of his Christmas present this year.

The quilt top is made from the All Aboard pattern by It's Sew Emma, but it doesn't use the featured fabric.  I assume that's not available anymore anyway.  The quilt top measures 71.5" x 91.5".

Disclaimer:  This post is being backdated to the date I finished the quilt top.  I was having computer issues and didn't get things posted in a reasonable time frame, but I wanted the quilt to show up in the right time frame when I look back at the year.

He Still Loves Me Jelly Roll Race quilt top

 

 

I started this quilt top on Wednesday and finished it today.  If you've ever made a jelly roll race quilt, you know that it involves sewing very long seams once you get the strips sewn end to end. It's not my favorite thing to do, so I was only sewing one long seam per day.  I sewed the last two seams today, but they were the shortest ones. These really aren't my favorite types of quilts to sew, and I don't love the way they look either.  

I bought this jelly roll (one of my first actually) and some coordinating fabric over 10 years ago, planning to make a jelly roll race out of it. I actually bought 2 jelly rolls at the same time and made a jelly roll race out of the other one, but in doing so found out that I didn't like doing it.  

However, I decided that I wanted this style of quilt to practice long-arm quilting on, so I went ahead and pieced this one just for that purpose.  It has the added bonus of using one of my unused pre-cuts, so that means it satisfies one of my goals for the year, too.

Running total of goals accomplished:

    Finish UFOs = 4 of 4 (completed)
    Use pre-cuts = 3 of 3 (completed)
    Do window paintings = 0 of 2
    Do non-window painting = 1 of 1 (completed)
    Sew sets of coasters = 5 of 5 (completed)
    Sew small bags = 0 of 2
    Sew tote bags= 1 of 2

Sports Star Baby Quilt

 

 

My daughter-in-law's sister is expecting her first baby a couple of months from now, so I decided to make a quilt for them.  They are having a little boy, and I was told they are going with a sports theme. 

I looked through my stash and found the blue sports-themed fabric.  It was left over from a soccer quilt I made several years ago (It was the backing fabric).  I found the background fabric at Hobby Lobby.  

I modified my Charm Square Star pattern so that the center and star points would be solid pieces instead of patchwork.  I wanted the footballs, etc. to be as intact as possible.  

The next step is to get the backing fabric pieced, so that I can get it into the quilting frame and get it quilted.  I'm planning to quilt it in an all-over stars and loops (or meanders?) pattern.

The top measures 40-1/2 inches square.

NASCAR quilt top

 

This quilt top is one of my UFOs that I wanted to finish this year.  As it turns out, it wasn't actually a completed quilt top.  The borders still needed to be cut and added.  

It had been so long since I last worked on this quilt, that I had forgotten exactly what the plan had been.  There was far more of the Jeff Gordon fabric than the Dale Earnhardt fabric, and I needed to use the fabric for both the borders and the backing.  Since the panels alternated between the two, I decided to have both represented in the borders and the backing.  I didn't take a picture of it, but the backing is pieced with large cuts of the two different fabric - 18 x width of fabric for the Gordon fabric and 18 x 20-ish for the Earnhardt fabric.  For some reason that I totally don't remember, I had cut off about 3 inches all along one selvage edge of the Earnhardt fabric.

Having the side borders cut wider than the top and bottom was intentional, because the quilt seemed a little oddly narrow.  I decided to cut the border based on the grid-work in the fabric, so the sides are twice as wide as the top and bottom.  It might would have looked a little better if I had made them a little closer together in size, but it's fine.  It's not like it's going to be displayed on a wall or anything.  Anyway, the quilt top ended up measuring 54 x 64.

An Experiment

 

 

I watched a YouTube video a few weeks ago where a woman sewed her scraps together to make scrap fabric.  I didn't want to make a bolt of scrap fabric like she did, but it inspired me to make a free-form scrap quilt.  

I used several of my orphan blocks and scraps out of several boxes, bags, and bins (but nowhere close to all my scraps) to make blocks that were roughly 13 - 14 inches square.  I didn't worry at all about color, though I did think some about light and dark when sewing together half-square triangles.  Occasionally I did make the scraps into recognizable blocks, but mostly I just sewed pieces together based solely on size and shape.  It was a little difficult for me at first, but it really was liberating to just sew and not worry about if it was "right" or not.  I also used up odds and ends of thread that I had around.  It was an anything goes kind of project.

Once I had made 20 blocks, I used scrap batting pieces, and some miscellaneous fabric from my stash as backing, and quilted the blocks.  I wanted to practice some free-motion quilting, but I was always worried about messing up a completed quilt top, so again, this was a liberating experience.  I didn't have to worry about getting things perfect.  I could just practice and have fun.

When the quilting was all done, I trimmed the quilted blocks down to 12-1/2 inches square.  Pictured above are the quilt blocks laid out in the general configuration for the quilt.  They won't necessarily stay in those exact places in the finished quilt. 

I plan to use a quilt-as-you-go method that I learned in quilt guild to put the blocks together.  I will use narrow strips (1-1/8 inches) on top to join the blocks.  This will make the blocks butt up against each other and not make a thick seam like if you sewed them directly together with all the layers already quilted together.  Then I'll use a 2 inch strip, folded in half, to cover the gap on the back.  That is another technique I've been wanting to try and this seemed like a good opportunity.  

All around this has been about learning, experimenting, and having fun sewing.  I'm glad that I did it.  I'm looking forward to seeing how it all comes out in the end.

Celtic Knot Quilt

 

I started on this quilt top yesterday, and I finished it today.  This is a design that I've been wanting to try for some time now, and I finally got up the nerve to start it.  When they were younger, a couple of my kids used to like to draw Celtic Knots on graph paper.  I thought it would be neat to try to translate that design to fabric.  I've seen Celtic Knot designs that were appliqued using bias strips, but I've never seen one that was pieced, like this one.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  It measures 44-1/2 inches square.

Snowman Snowflake

 

I've had a mini charm pack (2-1/2 inch squares) of Snowman Gathering fabric ever since sometime in 2013.  My original intention for it was to make a purse out of it, but then I mostly stopped carrying a purse, so I decided against it.  I had made a sofa-sized quilt out of that same fabric line and I use it on the back of my couch in January, so I decided to use the mini charm pack to make a small quilt for the back of the chair.  The idea for the design was to be something like a snowflake.  I'm not sure that it reads very snowflake but then again the fabric doesn't read very snowman either.

The quilt top is 24-1/2 inches square.  I'm thinking that I will free-motion quilt it, possibly with a light blue thread.  Not sure if I'll just meander quilt it or try to do something snowflake-like.  We'll see how brave I feel.

Shadow Box quilt

 

This quilt top uses half square triangles to create the shadow box effect.  The top measures 41 x 50 inches. I had originally planned to make this quilt using the yellow and gray fabric shown and a Winnie the Pooh charm pack, but decided against the charm pack idea.  I felt like it would work better using the same fabric for all of the squares instead of fabrics with varying values.  I think maybe it does, but the yellow and gray are still too stark for a baby quilt.  Maybe it will be okay for a kid that is a little older.  The yellow and gray do create something of an optical illusion in the quilt that a kid might enjoy.

I'm really not sure how to quilt it.  I don't want to distract from the shadow box effect, but I feel like I will have to do more than just quilt in the ditch on this one.  It will probably end up with at least diagonal lines - maybe a crosshatch.  I don't know.  I'm not thrilled with this one anyway, so I really should just finish it up and move on.

Another Bear in the Mountains Baby Quilt

 

This is the finished quilt top for my newest grandchild-to-be.  It's a little boy due the beginning of March.  They decided on a mountains and bears theme for the nursery this time, so I thought this would be a good pattern to pull out and use.

A New Quilt for Gus

 This quilt is made from my Four Corners pattern, and it's for my one-year-old grandson.  When his parents were trying to decide on a theme for the nursery they had several that they liked and had trouble choosing.  So I decided to make him a quilt that incorporates all the ideas they mentioned - pirates, ocean, space, and dinosaurs.  While the little monsters aren't necessarily aliens, I thought they seemed kinda space themed.  Also the fabric for the backing has bear astronauts, so I think space is sufficiently covered. 

I think that I have everything I need to finish this one up, so the next thing on my agenda is to quilt this one.  The problem is deciding how to approach the quilting.  I don't know if I want to do diagonal lines, concentric squares, or something else.

As a side note, I'm not 100% sold on this quilt pattern.  I feel like maybe it has a little too much background fabric, but I'm not sure.  I always intended it to have something of a modernist look to it, but it might need a little tweaking.  I'm thinking about it.

A New Quilt for Lilah

 

After making the quilt top for Maddy, featured in the previous post, I decided to make a few changes.  I constructed the hearts for the heart row just a little differently this time in order to have fewer seams.  I also decided that I wanted the border to be wider.  It may not be obvious between the two pictures, but this border is cut an inch wider than the other one.  I considered going even bigger, but decided that was too much.  I also had a floral fabric picked out for the border, but I decided that it was too busy.  I like the way that the monochromatic fabric in the border calms the quilt down a little bit.  With all those jellyroll strips it is a bit of a busy pattern to begin with, so a calming border seemed like a good idea.

I've written up the directions for this quilt, and updated it as I've made changes.  Once these two are quilted I may make the pattern available in my Etsy shop.  That's down the road still at this point. I've also been thinking about making this pattern with yardage for a less scrappy look, and also modifying it with different blocks in what is now the heart row.  So many fun ideas...

Update: The pattern is now available at my Etsy shop as "Love Struck."

A New Quilt for Maddy

 

Back in January of 2018 I had the idea for this quilt.  It was an alternate take on the larger Heart Strings quilt that I had patterned.  I've been thinking about it off-and-on since then, but could never find exactly the "right" fabric for it.  I finally decided that perfect had become the enemy of good, and so I just chose some fabric that I liked.  It is made with half a jellyroll of Chickadee fabric from Create Joy Project.  The border is from a different fabric line by Create Joy Project, but I forget which one.  I really like the watercolor florals that this designer uses in her fabric lines.

This quilt is for one of my granddaughters for Christmas.  I'm planning to make quilts for all three grandchildren this year.  The other two quilt tops will be posted shortly.  The other granddaughter is getting a quilt in this same pattern and the other half of the same jellyroll.  The grandson is getting something completely different.

Brioche and Baguettes quilt top

This quilt came from a pattern that I saw in a Connecting Threads catalogue years ago called Brioche and Baguettes.  I don't know if the pattern is still available anywhere or not.  The original pattern used half yards and fat quarters for the print fabric, but I did mine with all fat quarters.  The top is 57 x 75 inches. 

Mine is made from Frolic! fabric from Moda by Me and My Sister Designs.  So far I've made two different quilt tops from the fat quarter bundle that bought and I still have fat quarters left.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the rest of them.  However, I think I will buy some yardage for the back and binding, and NOT try to use the remaining fat quarters for that.

I finished this quilt top yesterday (actually yesterday), so I'm finally caught up on my blogging.  Yay!

Half-square Triangle quilt

I bought the fabric to make this half-square triangle quilt back in 2014.  The quilt shoppe had gotten in some charm packs of "Fancy" (by Lily Ashbury for Moda fabrics) and I bought one.  She was anticipating getting some yardage that never came, so I ordered some yardage of the blue bandana-looking fabric for the border and some polka-dot fabric ("My Sunshine" by Zoe Pearn for Riley Blake fabric) to be the background fabric from Missouri Star Quilt Company.  I knew exactly what I wanted to make, but for some reason I would never get around to making it, but now I have.  I actually finished the top on April 13, but I just haven't been inspired to set down and document things. 

I had originally planned to quilt this myself and use the polka dot fabric that is used in the half-square triangles as the backing fabric.  I'm not 100% sure that I'm still going to go that route.  If I have it long-arm quilted I'll definitely need more fabric.  I might need more either way.  I think it is pretty touch-and-go in that area.  Once the quilt shoppe is open for in-person shopping I may have to see if they have something that will work for alternate backing. But for now I'm happy that it is a completed quilt top instead of a box full of fabric.

The pattern is available here for free.  Enjoy.

Four Corners Quilt top

I made this quilt top about a week and a half ago, but I'm just getting around to posting a picture of it.  It is a pattern that I designed a few years ago, but never got around to making.  I had written out directions for it and bought fabric, but I just hadn't sat down and sewed it together yet.  But now I have.

I didn't really care much for the way I had written the directions, and there were only a couple of illustrations, so the directions will need some work before they get published (if they ever do).  But I like how the top turned out.  It is made with Frolic! fabric from Me and My Sister by Moda.  The line is a couple years old now, so it's probably not readily available anymore.  But it uses 4 fat quarters for the four corners and one yard for the background fabric.  The finished quilt will be 40 inches square.  That seems like a nice sized baby quilt.