My Latest Design in Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks, Vol. 7

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Susan E. Geddes

Welcome to Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks Blog Tour. Quiltmaker invites staff from sister publications to design for their issues and I am happy to be a part of Volume 7. Please leave a comment below for a chance to win a free copy of the magazine! Keep an eye on the Quilty Pleasures blog all week for your chance to win big.

QMMS 130033 cover 125 My Latest Design in Quiltmakers 100 Blocks, Vol. 7

Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks, Volume 7

I am the art director for Quilters Newsletter and this is the sixth issue I have submitted a block for. Some of you might remember me as the designer of the Egg Trilogy, a trilogy that grew to five designs instead of three. Well, as I promised, the chicks are hatched and on their own, and I have turned to a different theme.

My current block is called Melania, a mix of patchwork and appliqué. It is #631 in Volume 7. Melania is a Polish version of Mildred, my mother’s name. She loved roses and the color pink and the block carries that theme throughout. And since it is Mother’s Day next weekend, what could be better?

As you make this block, use different fabrics in the opposing corners. When you put your blocks together, a four-patch pattern will emerge.

QMMS 130033 GEDDES 300x300 My Latest Design in Quiltmakers 100 Blocks, Vol. 7

Melania

Posted in Susan E. Geddes | Tagged , , , | 239 Comments

Susan’s Best Weekend Quilt

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Susan E. Geddes

Staff challenges happen around here and the next thing you know you have a new project. When Mary Kate challenged us all to make a quilt from the Best Weekend Quilts 2013 issue, I claimed Oh Happy Day, shown below. I was pretty sure I could finish the top in the weekend or the equivalent amount of time spread out over a couple weeks.

oh HAPPY blog 199x300 Susans Best Weekend QuiltIt is an 11″ block with only five pieces. The original designer, Jen Daly of Grantham, New Hampshire, used one fabric line, the California Girl collection by Fig Tree & Co. for Moda. I kept the original size, but decided to scrap it up. My first thought was to use stripes of every color and scale for the sides of the blocks and a large-scale print in the center. After putting some scraps together, it became apparent I needed more structure. So I used gray tones in geometric patterns to substitute for the stripes.  The large center patch is a good place to use large prints.

The photo below shows you a technique I use to test fabric choices. Before you cut anything, fold your fabrics into the approximate patch shapes, then take a picture. You can tell quickly from your photo whether your fabric choices are working or not.

audition 253x300 Susans Best Weekend QuiltAnd voila, check out my version of Oh Happy Day! I call it Oh Natural! because the large-scale prints all have a nature theme to them; flowers, leaves, branches, grapes. I still have lots of prints to use and might make this a larger quilt in the future. But for now I like it just fine. And I was able to finish the top in about 16 hours.

Oh Nature web 245x300 Susans Best Weekend Quilt

Oh Natural! by Susan Geddes, based on Oh Happy Day! from Best Weekend Quilts 2013 (click image to enlarge)

Be sure to check this blog in a few weeks when we’ll be showing you more photos of the patterns included in Best Weekend Quilts along with fabric giveaways to give you what you need to make the best use of your weekend, however long it may be!

Posted in Susan E. Geddes | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Lori’s Best Weekend Quilt

Posted on April 29, 2013 by Lori Baker

I am continuing the Best Weekend Quilts 2013 blogging fun by telling you about my weekend quilt based on a pattern from the special issue available at your local quilt shops or at QuiltandSewShop.com.

Oh Sew Blue Loris Best Weekend Quilt

Oh Sew Blue by Chris Hoover

I decided to begin with the pattern for Oh Sew Blue found on page 41 of the issue. The pattern in the magazine is a fun throw with 12 blocks. Mine will be a graduation present for my granddaughter. Don’t worry, she doesn’t read my blog and she isn’t on Facebook so I’m not spoiling the surprise when I tell you about her quilt. When I asked about color choices, she said her favorite colors were black and yellow but if I made it, anything would be wonderful. So of course her quilt is going to be black and yellow. I found lots of choices for both yellow and black fabrics but I wanted a yellow-and-black fabric to pull it all together. Mary Kate and I found the perfect fabric: Straw Daisy from Michael Miller Fabrics.

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Fabric choices

 

I make my grandchildren a queen-size quilt for graduation so the first thing was to enlarge the quilt. I decided to enlarge this one by simply making more blocks. Instead of the 12 blocks, I needed to make 49 blocks. The name seems obvious. It will be Oh Sew Yellow.

Early in the week, I took the fabrics home and laid them all together in my living room, where I could glance at them every time I walked by. When I am mixing a lot of fabric together, I preview them in that way; laying them out to see if any of my fabric choices don’t seem to go. I did pull out one yellow fabric and I decided on which of the several black/gray choices I’d use. These are the ones I did not use.

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I'll save these for another day.

Now I want to tell you a little about my strategy to maximize my time on the weekend. First, I told Bake, my long-suffering husband, I would be staying at the apartment. The six hours of drive time for the round trip to my real home is too much time to waste on a sewing weekend. I also told him he was welcome to come to the apartment for the weekend but I would be ignoring him. I think I said it a little nicer than that but the message was he’d be on his own.

Friday night after work, I got my groceries for the week and put them away. I cleaned the apartment so I wouldn’t be distracted by cleaning chores. I cooked a big batch of soup so I’d not have to stop to prepare food. Then I was ready to begin.

I borrowed the Alto’s QuiltCut2 fabric cutting system from the office because it works wonderfully for cutting multiple layers of fabric as long as the blade on the rotary cutter is nice and sharp. I cut eight layers at once which means my cutting time was decreased by about 75%.

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Ready to cut strips

I was done cutting at 9:59 p.m. Friday and I stacked the cut pieces in five stacks to make mixing them up as I sewed easier.

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I put the clock in this photo so you can see when I finished cutting.

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early, excited about my plans for the day. Here is more of my strategy, I don’t turn on the computer so I’m not distracted by email or Facebook or Pinterest. I turn on the TV but I choose something I don’t have to watch closely: HGTV, the Food Network or the Hallmark Channel (I watch it so much almost everything is a rerun to me).

I sewed the blocks in sets of six and put them on my design wall as I finished them. Here is what it looked like at 2:00 in the afternoon.

5 Loris Best Weekend Quilt

It's looking good!

At 2:30, the drama began. My machine quit working. Completely quit working. When I pressed the foot control, nothing happened. I panicked. First, I called Bake. He said he would bring me one of my other machines but he really didn’t want to. I can’t blame him. It’s a long drive and I’d ignore him after I thanked him for bringing the machine.

Next, I sent a text to our oldest son to see if there was a machine at his house I could use. He replied telling me there was a machine but it had bobbin issues. I tried to take the foot control apart, thinking it was probably just a loose or frayed wire. I couldn’t figure out how to get it apart.

I called the only sewing store close enough to get to before it closed to see if they had a foot control. No, they didn’t. So I sent another text to my oldest son and said I was coming to get the machine. Bobbin troubles could be something I can fix. But just before I left the apartment, I reattached the foot control to my machine. Lo and behold, it was working again! Evidently when I was wiggling it around trying to get into the insides, I got lucky and the wire went back where it belongs. All of that took just over an hour but I was back in business.

I finished assembling the quilt top before I went to bed.

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The completed quilt top

Sunday morning I sewed together all the 2½” scraps into long strips. I started with quite a pile of them. I thought they’d make the back more interesting.

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This is the beginning of the back of the quilt.

I ended up with three strips long enough for the back of the quilt. I had intended to then go to the fabric store and buy yardage to finish the back of the quilt.

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Scraps to use on the back of the quilt

However, I decided to switch gears because I really, really didn’t want to have another UFO so I stopped working on my weekend quilt to finish quilting the red mystery quilt. I thought I could get it done in just a couple of hours. FOUR hours later, it was finished, but by then the fabric store was closed so I couldn’t get the fabric for the back of Oh Sew Yellow. So I shopped my stash for other black and yellow fabrics to make the back. I finished piecing the back and went to bed and heaved a big sigh of relief. My weekend quilt project went really well even with the glitches.

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The back of Oh Sew Yellow

Monday morning, I brought the top and the back of Oh Sew Yellow to work. Susan suggested we have a basting party. I can tell you that was music to my ears. If I pin baste a queen-size quilt at my apartment, I have to do it on the floor. I simply don’t have a surface anywhere close to big enough. It takes me three to four hours. Our team effort had the quilt basted in just under an hour.

This weekend, I went to my real home. We have a new puppy I wanted to meet and I had to be sure Coco was a quilting dog. And sure enough, she likes quilts.

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Coco is inspecting the basted quilt.

 

 

 

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Quilting detail

I’m doing a simple loop-de-loop free-motion quilting pattern on Oh Sew Yellow and have spent 3 hours on it so far. I’m about one-third of the way done. As always, I’ll keep you posted and show you photos when I’m finished. Graduation is May 26, so it won’t be long. I’m truly enjoying working on this quilt.

 

To keep up with the day-to-day happenings in our world, check us out online and on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

Happy quilting!

 

 

Posted in Lori Baker, Staff Quilts, Tools, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Gigi’s Best Weekend Quilt

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Gigi Khalsa

I definitely look forward to my weekends, not only because it’s a chance to catch up on everything that I let slide during the week, but also because it’s so great to have two whole days in a row to do whatever I like (along with the things I have to do, of course). When Mary Kate proposed the idea of staff making a quilt from the Best Weekend issue, I was totally on board because I like making quilts though I’ve never made one in a weekend. I didn’t know how far along I’d get, but I was interested to find out.

A little background – I am married, no children, and one of the things my husband and I like to do on the weekends is go bargain hunting. In fact, the main way that I have built my fabric stash is by buying remnant pieces of fabric on deep discount. It is rather rare for me to have more than a yard of any one fabric. I’ll buy yardage if I need it for a specific project, or if I love the fabric so, so much, but mostly I like to see what variety I can find in the remnant bin and figure out how I can use it.

So imagine how excited I was to find several lengths of quilting cotton at a local thrift store recently. Seriously, I found about four different pieces of fabric, some more beautiful than others, but I paid an average of $2 per yard. Yeah. Some of the pieces are really pretty and I’m still thinking about how I want to use them. However, I bought one piece of fabric that I wasn’t crazy about, but I couldn’t pass up the deal. 3 yards for $6. Come on!

fabric Gigis Best Weekend Quilt

I cannot pass up a bargain

This isn’t something I would see in a fabric store and fall in love with. It’s a very busy, kind of kitschy print, with large areas of light and dark and doesn’t especially lend itself to patchwork because the scale of the print is so big. But the fact that I don’t consider it especially precious made it easy for me to decide to cut it up and experiment. And that is what I did.

GARDEN 259x300 Gigis Best Weekend Quilt

Garden Pathways by ZJ Humbach

The pattern from Best Weekend Quilts that I chose to interpret is Garden Pathways by ZJ Humbach. I had worked on writing the pattern, and as I was doing so, it seemed like so much fun to make! I like how all the patches make it look complex and time consuming, but the strip piecing really makes everything simple and quick. I have never made an Irish chain of any sort, and this seemed like the perfect introductory project.

Garden Pathways uses only three fabrics – a focal floral print, a micro-dot print and a solid saffron colored fabric. I decided to use my new funky print in place of the floral. Since I don’t have enough of any other fabrics to stand in for the dots and saffron solid, I decided on a scrappy approach. Instead of the saffron solid, I gathered dark fabrics and for the micro-dot, I substituted a bunch of light fabrics, all of them chosen to coordinate with my print. Also, since the focal print is so big, I decided to double the size of the blocks. The pattern calls for blocks that finish at 7 1/2″, mine finish at 15″. I didn’t decide on this combination because I thought it would look amazing, but because I wanted to know how it would turn out. I would never know if I didn’t try it, right?

fabricnstrips Gigis Best Weekend Quilt

Bargain print with various coordinating lights and darks

Now, I didn’t do anything on this project before last weekend, except select my fabrics. The above photo was taken on Saturday, after I had pressed the fabrics and cut strips, right before I started cutting the big print. I really wanted to know how much I could get done just on the weekend. So on Saturday I was able to cut all my strips, sew all the strip sets together, press and cross-cut 1 set of blocks. On Sunday, I pressed and cut the rest of the strip units for the checkerboards blocks and spent some time deciding on color placement. I put all the strip segments up on my design wall and was satisfied with my layout by early Sunday afternoon, so I had plenty of time to do some grocery shopping, laundry, sweeping, cleaning and general tidying, like I always have to do on the weekend.

quilt Gigis Best Weekend Quilt

All the strip units on the design wall

I was pretty pleased with my progress, and I thought it came together really quickly, even though I didn’t work on it every minute of the weekend. I was motivated by how much I had accomplished to work on sewing my blocks together during the evenings this week, and I have just 4 more blocks to finish tonight! So this coming Saturday, I’ll follow the classic instructions and join my blocks into rows, then join the rows. I think I want to add a border, and I’ve got an idea for that which I think I can finish on Saturday, too. If I can work out a pieced back without toooo many pieces, I could be in really good shape to finish this thing very soon!

It is not really a beautiful quilt top, but I like it. Everyone is drooling over low-volume quilts these days, and this is decidedly nothing of the sort. I was worried as I was working on it that I was wasting my time, making something that is kind of ugly, but it’s grown on me. I like how the craggy trees make it look kind of spooky, and the unpredictable movement of light and dark adds an unusual element that is almost challenging to the viewer. It makes me think of looking through a leaded glass window in some grand old manor at the hunting party prancing through the grounds, distorted by the panes of glass. So I am going to go ahead and see if I can complete it soon. It’s come together faster than any quilt I’ve made before, so I’ve already accomplished my goal!

I would highly recommend this pattern to anyone. It is easy to follow, fun to sew, and really gives a sense of satisfaction to make it so quickly. When I was sewing my blocks together, the seams nesting into one another (most of them) like destiny, it was a lot of fun and I felt very productive. If you make it with fabrics that you absolutely love, then yours will come out way better than mine. I’ll remember that for next time icon smile Gigis Best Weekend Quilt .

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone! Make sure to check out our Best Weekend Quilts issue, and make a weekend quilt of your own!

 

Posted in Gigi, Staff Quilts | Tagged , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Kath’s Best Weekend Quilt

Posted on April 25, 2013 by Kath Wagar Wright

When we were challenged to choose one of the Best Weekend Quilts 2013 to make, I was immediately drawn to Triangles & Diamonds by Ramona Sorenson. I had created a digital sample of a scrappy alternate colorway for Ramona’s quilt that emphasized the triangles rather than the diamonds, and I was interested in seeing how varying the color and fabric placement across the top would work. I worked with the same number of patches and rows but scaled down the finished size since I wanted to work very scrappy and all of my fabrics would be cut from fat quarters or smaller swatches.

Tri original Kaths Best Weekend Quilt

Triangles & Diamonds designed and made by Ramona Sorenson

Like many of you, my weekend usually consists of laundry, grocery shopping, a walk or two with my dog Gracie, browsing at the local thrift shop or library, phone visits with mom, time with Dan and maybe three or four hours of sewing or playing with fabric. So the 15 hours or so that I spent so far on my Best Weekend quilt were spread over a couple of weekends.

I started by cutting from 10 to 15 triangle A patches from bands of each of my fabrics, and saved some time and fabric by cutting the B/Br patches from each straight end of the bands.

Tri 1 Kaths Best Weekend QuiltTri 5 Kaths Best Weekend Quilt

 

 

 

You might think that it would be easy working with a one patch pattern, but since I wanted the final effect of the darks and lights and the color placement to be completely random,  I worked for hours arranging and rearranging patches and colors to find that perfect placement.

Tri 7 Kaths Best Weekend Quilt

 

Sunday evening I sewed all of the rows together and placed them back on the design wall to work out the placement of the end B and Br patches. I’m already looking forward to next weekend when I may find the time to finish the top and add the borders.

Discover your next weekend quilt project in  Best Weekend Quilts by Quilters Newsletter available now on the newsstand or at www.Quilt and Sew Shop.com.

Posted in Inspiration, Kathryn Wright, Staff Quilts, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Mary Kate’s Best Weekend Quilt

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Mary Kate Karr-Petras

BWQ cover for web 235x300 Mary Kates Best Weekend QuiltA couple of months ago, as we were wrapping up production on Best Weekend Quilts 2013 — the latest special publication from Quilters Newsletter on sale now in quilt shops, newsstands, bookstores and online – I had a bright idea: I want to try to make one of these quilts in a weekend.

Before I go much further, let me explain a little about my life. I have a full-time office (not work-from-home) job with Quilters Newsletter; I have a husband, a preschooler and a toddler; and I have a house that seems to be in a constant state of clutter. Because I work out of the house five days a week, I try to devote as many of my lucid hours on weekends to spending time with my daughters and husband. Somewhere in there I try to clean the house to maintain at least a borderline level of cleanliness, and I’ve learned that if I don’t put some time into meal planning and grocery shopping by Sunday afternoon we’re going to be playing catch-as-catch-can all week long.

So my version of a weekend — by which I mean free time during which I can mostly do what I want — amounts to maybe six hours between Friday night and Sunday night, and that’s only if I don’t veg out in front of “Saturday Night Live.” Is that enough time for me to finish a quilt top? I wanted to find out.

QNMS 130036 ROCCO PAMS 5386 681x1024 Mary Kates Best Weekend Quilt

Floating X by Pam Rocco in Best Weekend Quilts 2013 from Quilters Newsletter

I was intrigued by Pam Rocco’s improvisationally pieced Floating X, never having made a wonky or improvisational quilt before. Because I spent so much time working on that pattern, I had a feel for how the quilt went together and felt I could make my own version from fabrics in my stash.

Floating X contains nine blocks and measures 43″ x 63″. I  wanted to make a large throw with narrower borders, so I decided on bigger blocks and more of them — 20, to be exact.

I pulled fabric from my stash I’ve accumulated from QN fabric grabs or that I purchased, including:

  • Echo and Bella prints by Lotta Jansdotter (Windham)
  • Morning Glory from Lotus by Amy Butler (Rowan)
  • Pearl Bracelet by Lizzy House (Andover)
  • Wave, Kimono and Lace prints by Ty Pennington Impressions (Westminster)
  • Zebra from Flower Power by Jennifer Paganelli (FreeSpirit)
  • Kumquat (it’s actually closer to Amber) and Aqua Kona Cotton Solids (Robert Kaufman)

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My original plan was to use blue fabrics from my stash for the background and shadows — you can see where I tested them on one block in the picture above.

weekend quilt 004 1024x627 Mary Kates Best Weekend Quilt

But now I’m rethinking that plan. That blue is just… too much. It takes away from the blocks. So I’m on hold with sewing until I figure out what background color will work best.

Was I able to complete this quilt top in my six-hour weekend? No. However, I did manage to pull, press, cut and piece my 20 blocks within about six hours. If I’d followed Pam’s layout of nine blocks and nice, wide borders, I’m pretty confident I could have finished my top in a weekend, or maybe a weekend and one week night. Not too shabby, in my book. Not too shabby at all.

Be sure to check back in with us over the next week to see the Best Weekend Quilt patterns that other QN team members took on. I’ve seen a few of them and they are beautiful and inspiring — I know you’ll think so, too!

And also be sure to check this blog in a few weeks when we’ll be showing you more photos of the patterns included in Best Weekend Quilts along with fabric giveaways to give you what you need to make the best use of your weekend, however long it may be!

Posted in Mary Kate Karr-Petras, Staff Quilts | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

The Colors of Spring?

Posted on April 23, 2013 by Kath Wagar Wright

I shot this photo of a pair of robins from the stairwell of our apartment building a month ago today. The contrast of bright orange puffed-up robin bellies against the dark brown branches and the whites of the falling snow struck me as an unusual natural color combination and made me smile with thoughts of spring.

robins The Colors of Spring?Though I’m drawn to the colors of light peach, salmon and coral, bright orange doesn’t usually make its way into my quilts, and if I use dark brown at all it’s as a small accent. But, I had just gotten some small fabric scraps and swatches from Northcott’s Down Under line and the colorway I chose had cute Australian animals and bold graphics in bright orange, dark brown, lime green and teal. I added additional dotted and solid fabrics including some green/golds that seemed to fit the overall palette and that would yield enough blocks to make a baby quilt that I had in mind.

 

squares The Colors of Spring?I’ve seldom cut out all the pieces of a quilt before sewing since many of the repeat block quilts that I’ve made were foundation-pieced. But that snowy weekend, I decided to start with small square-in-a-square blocks and cut out as many pieces as I could from each piece of fabric. Then I started arranging and rearranging patches and blocks on my design wall and I discovered that I like working that way. Since that weekend, I’ve continued to add and rearrange blocks with thoughts of spring, while nature continues to tease us with yet another last spring snow.

You’ll find more color combinations and inspiration in the April/May 2013 issue of Quilters Newsletter.

Posted in Inspiration, Kathryn Wright | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Earth Day and organic fabric giveaway

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Mary Kate Karr-Petras

[Please note: this giveaway has ended. Congratulations to our five winners: Julie, Richard, Karen, Stephanie and Naomi! Thanks to all who entered!]

Today is Earth Day, a wonderful excuse to talk about one of the articles in the April/May 2013 issue of Quilters Newsletter. “Nurturing Sustainability: The Growth of Organic Cotton Fabric” focuses on just a couple facets of organic cotton fabric produced for quilters and home sewists: how organic fabric is labeled and certified; and how much it costs at the retail level and why.

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"Nurturing Sustainability" article in the April/May 2013 issue of Quilters Newsletter

The issues surrounding organic anything are numerous and complex; a comprehensive look at just organic quilting fabric could easily take three or four times as many pages as our article. For that reason, we chose to focus on a couple of topics we felt were of primary concern to most consumers: How do I know what fabric is organic, and how much is this going to cost? The good news regarding the second question is that the prices for organic fabric are coming down even as the variety of collections is going up. Trust me when I say that the owners of newer organic-only companies we spoke to — Birch, Cloud9, Daisy Janie and Monaluna — are committed to providing beautiful, affordable fabric in keeping with their commitment to environmental preservation and social justice. Jan DiCintio of Daisy Janie echoed the sentiments of many producers of organic cotton fabric when she said, “I don’t want buyers to miss out on choosing organics just because of the price.”

In addition to the article in the magazine we also have a web extra article thanks to these friendly, passionate and insightful owners who gave us more than we could fit into four print pages. Click here to download a pdf full of more information about organic cotton fabric production, who’s buying it and where the market for it is headed. (Don’t forget we also have digital editions available of QN — click here for more about the digital version of the April/May 2013 issue.)

Today, in honor of Earth Day, we are giving away five fat quarter bundles of organic cotton fabric courtesy of some of the companies interviewed for the article. Personally, I would be more than happy to have any of these collections in my personal stash!

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Havana from Monaluna, red colorway

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Havana from Monaluna, blue colorway

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New Leaf from Daisy Janie

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Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus from Cloud9 Fabrics

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In the Forest from Cloud9 Fabrics

For a chance to win one of the fat quarter bundles pictured above, leave a comment below before 11:59 pm Mountain time on Sunday, April 28. If you care to, tell us about your experience with organic fabric. Five winners drawn at random will each win one fat quarter bundle; you may tell us which collection(s) you prefer but we can’t guarantee we’ll be able to match preferences. One comment per person, please. Open to those who haven’t won something from Quilters Newsletter in the last 90 days.

And don’t forget to follow us on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter to stay up-to-date with our giveaways and other social media goodness!

Posted in Mary Kate Karr-Petras | Tagged , , , , , , , | 310 Comments

It’s finished!

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Lori Baker
red quilt 1 768x1024 Its finished!

The Red Quilt

Finally, finally, I finished the red quilt. It was the mystery quilt Connecting Threads had on their site in March. I told you about it on March 18th and again on March 25th. I’ve mentioned it since then, promising photos when I finished. Here are the promised photos.

I used four spools of red thread for the quilting and started on a fifth spool. I need to remember to have way more thread than I think I’ll need when I start. The spools were all from my collection of thread, all slightly different shades of red but close enough to the same that it is barely noticeable. If the red quilt was going to be a show quilt, entered for judging somewhere, I would have purchased more thread so it was all the same. But this quilt is a utility quilt, meant to be put on someone’s bed and used so the slight variation doesn’t bother me. I have this philosophy. If I make a mistake or do something a bit outside the “rules”, I simply don’t point it out and most of the world doesn’t notice. So other than to you, my blogging friends, I’ll not say anything about the different shades of red thread.

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Double hearts close-up

I really like to free-motion quilt. Most of the time after a few minutes doing a pattern, I find I can quilt without really thinking about what I’m doing. It becomes a mindless, relaxing thing I can do for long periods of time at a stretch. These double hearts were not like that. I found that I had to keep thinking about where I’d go next. It never did become automatic or relaxing. I think that is why it took me so very long to finish this quilt. I’m not as thrilled with the quilting as I usually am. It’s okay, it will hold the layers together, there are no puckers or pleats but I’m not in love with it. I’m delighted to be done but I won’t do the double hearts again.

red quilt in Jsbg 1024x768 Its finished!

Quilting at my real home

Here’s another thing I wanted to show you. I have multiple machines. I like to multi-task. So quite often, while I am sewing on one machine at my real home where I have plenty of space, I have another machine embroidering. That’s what is going on in this photo. I was free-motion quilting on the red quilt and at the same time, I was embroidering leaves for another quilt. I find it’s easier if I am embroidering a design with a single color of thread. In this case, it is leaves outlined in green satin stitches. I embroidered two hoops of the leaves that day while I was quilting on the red quilt. A word of caution though, I am very careful that the bulk of the quilt doesn’t get in the way of the hoop and interfere with the movement of the hoop.

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Red quilt back

 

This is the back of the red quilt. The quilting shows up a lot better on the back and I love the modern improvisational look. I don’t have the label on the quilt yet because it doesn’t have a name. I’ve just called it “the red quilt”. Do you have any suggestions?

Be sure to watch the QN blog beginning on Wednesday to see the stories of the quilters on the QN team who are working on weekend quilts from Best Weekend Quilts 2013 which goes on sale tomorrow, April 23rd. I’ll tell you all about my weekend quilt next Monday.

If you want to see what else is going on in our world, check us out online and on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

Posted in Lori Baker, Staff Quilts | Tagged , , , , | 35 Comments

The Crazy Quilt of Life

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Gigi Khalsa

Clearly I’m not the only one who is fascinated by history, especially as far as quilts are concerned. Susan just wrote about a historical novel that I am putting on my reading list. Whether fact or fiction, there is just something about getting insight into the past and the way people used to live, and quilts are a sort of physical representation of that concept.

I’ve mentioned how lucky I am to receive lots of quilting books to look over for review. For someone who loves to read as much as I do, it’s a really fun part of the job. One book that was sent to me, just a few days ago in fact, is one of the most interesting books, especially for history lovers of many types – American history, western expansion history, quilt history, women’s history and so on. It’s the diary of a real woman named Eliza (Lida) Ann Beaty, who was born in 1881 and traveled west as a young girl with her family to Kansas in a covered wagon to settle. It’s called The Crazy Quilt of Life by Lida Beaty-Jackson (Inspiring Voices, 2012).

400000000000000897660 s4 The Crazy Quilt of Life

Now, like I said, I just got this a few days ago, and I would have finished it by now if it were up to me, but there is work to be done. I might have to borrow it one weekend so I can read the whole thing, but what I’ve seen so far is fascinating. It seems to be written in retrospect, that is, Lida wrote it later in life as she was recalling her memories of an earlier age. Nonetheless, the vivid details she remembers include the people and places of her youth, their life on their fledgling farm, the way she felt about everything around here and all those funny things that one notices as a child without really knowing why. She is a warm and engaging storyteller.

I haven’t even gotten to the quilt mentioned in the title, but already I recommend this book, based on the way I’ve been drawn in. If any of this sounds at all interesting, you should definitely check out this book! I’m sure you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.

Anyway, Happy Friday! Stay tuned next week as the staff will begin blogging about our weekend quilt experience, and keep an eye out for our Best Weekend Quilts 2013 issue, which will be on sale very soon. And follow us on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter for all the latest news!

 

 

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