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I'm working on finishing a new pdf pattern/tutorialfor my Etsy shop. This one is going to be for a basic baby quilt with a Minky back and will include basic tutorials on choosing fabrics, patchwork piecing, machine quilting, adding a Minky back and making and sewing binding. I'm hoping to have it done within the next week or so.
I finished Olivia's quilt top (and it really isn't as messy as it looks in this photo). I had ordered some pink Essex cotton/linen for the sashing but, unfortunately, it was not the same color as the pink I already had and didn't match at all. I ended up using white Kona cotton and, while I like the white, I don't like the weight of the Kona cotton for sashing at all. It's just too floppy. I thought about ripping it all out and replacing it with white linen, but I decided to give it a chance. I hope it looks better after quilting!
I really do like most of the squares though. I used four "main" prints, each paired with a solid, and the rest are just pieces from my stash. I need to order more fabric for the back and, once I receive it and finish, I'll post photos of the finished product.
On Monday and Tuesday nights, I finished almost all of the blocks for Olivia's quilt but, when I got home from my latest surgery follow-up visit today, I decided I didn't like the silks I had chosen and proceeded to replace them all with cottons. I was sad to lose the luster of the silk, but it was just way to bright with the softer colors in the prints.
Of course, replacing the silk with cotton meant de- and then re-constructing all of the finished blocks, so my afternoon was spent picking out seams and painstakingly re-piecing blocks.
The finished blocks look SO MUCH better with the cotton though, so it was totally worth it. The blocks are 16" square, so there are only 12 total for this lap quilt. Right now, I have nine done and I'm hoping to finish the rest tonight and tomorrow night.
Although it seems incredibly early, I've decided I need to start working on Christmas projects. Above are photos of the fabric swatches I put together for three quilts I'm making. This weekend I pre-washed and rotary cut the fabric for all three.
For my best friend's daughter, Olivia, I'm making a lap quilt in pinks and reds with dupioni silk accents. Dupioni silk shrinks a lot when it's washed and also loses a lot of it's sheen but, even after washing, it's still shinier and more vibrant than cotton. I think it will look great in this quilt!
For my niece, Lily, I'm making a bed quilt featuring Heather Ross' Mendocino (the one with the mermaids). It has a complementary color scheme of aquas and teals paired with ochres, oranges and burnt sienna. The sashing will be aqua Essex cotton/linen blend.
I'm also making a bed quilt for my nephew, Elliot. His quilt will feature Alexander Henry's 2D Zoo and Lime Essex cotton/linen blend. All of the fabrics are various greens and blues.
Fun fact about these three quilts: Each one includes a different color of Amy Butler's Wallflower print from the Lotus line. (Olivia's in pink, Lily's in mustard and Elliot's in green.)
I'll post more about these as I work on them.
ETA: The different colors of Essex cotton/linen are available at J Caroline Creative and Purlsoho.com.
My selvedge quilt project is off to a slow start. Here are two nine-inch blocks, each using 19 pieces of selvedge.
I've seen several approaches to sewing down the selvedge strips. I opted to layer them, like shingles on pieces of linen/cotton blend. (The weave is a little looser than all cotton and I thought it might be more forgiving for doing the precision stitching along the edges of the selvedge strips.)
In the course of making these squares, I've noticed that almost all of my fabric is from two or three manufacturers -- I think I could probably make an entire selvedge quilt just using Alexander Henry selvedge! Before I do any more squares, I need to sort my selvedge by manufacturer, so I can parcel it out evenly among the squares!
Has everyone seen all the fun projects made with selvedge that have been showing up around blogland? Jodie's projects, especially her selvedge dress are really impressive. I just love the look of the words and the little test dots all together!
So, I went through a bunch of my fabric and cut this giant pile of selvedge strips. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet, but I'm excited about the possibilities.
In the meantime, I also finished this little zig-zag top. I'm kind of meh on it, now that it's finished, so I'm not in any great hurry to quilt and bind it. I do love the zig-zag pattern though and this was really just a test run on that pattern. I'll be adapting it to a Twin version for the bedding I'm making my nephew, Elliot. (Though his will be made with entirely different fabric.)
Some of you asked about my design wall. I made if from a piece of drywall, wrapped in low-loft batting and it's worked really well for me. I also want to thank you all for your well-wishes for my recovery!
That's what I had for dinner. The pain medicine I'm taking for my leg has completely taken away my appetite, but I have to eat something, so I had saltines and lemonade. When I wasn't enjoying a well-balanced meal, I was starting a new quilt.
I've seen a lot of great zig-zag quilts around lately and decided I wanted to try it out. I'm sort of using the directions from A Quilt Is Nice, which were based on the directions from The Purl Bee. I'm using vintage sheets and one stripe of natural linen.
At this point, I've got the 120 - 5" squares sewn together, cut and pressed into 120 squares made of two pieced triangles. The next step is to sew the squares together. I'm sorry about the bad lighting. I'll post better photos once I'm further along (and when it's daytime).
The Paintbox Quilt is now finished too!
This quilt is made with 64 - 6.5" blocks in 32 color combinations (8 by 8 blocks with 1.5" sashing). Each combination is a Kona cotton solid and a monochromatic quilting print. One of the blocks in each combination is made with a printed center and outer ring and the other is made with a solid center and outer ring.
I had a hard time deciding how to lay out the blocks for the quilt. In the end, I placed the two black and two chocolate brown squares (the darkest ones) at each of the corners. Then, I placed the other squares so they were, roughly, going from warm in the upper left corner to cool in the lower right.
I alternated the orientation of the squares so the "pulled" corners were going in opposite directions.
On the back, I made a pieced panel with a little rectangle of each of the Kona cottons. I put them in rainbow order and then arranged the pieces in a 4 x 8 formation, zig-zagging the color order back and forth through each row. I'm surprisingly happy with how that color arrangement worked out, actually.
The letters on the back are just simple Kona cotton appliques, made using this technique. I just printed out really big letters from Microsoft Word to make the patterns. (If you do this, I recommend formatting your text for outline, so you don't waste a lot of printer ink.)
The washed and quilted linen is so incredibly soft, which makes this a very comfy quilt too!
I originally had a black and white binding on this quilt, but it was a little "too much" so I ended up going with this gold and white stripe from Kaufman's Pimatex Basics, which I really like.
I've just written up a quick tutorial for the blocks, which is here. If you're interested in doing something like this, I recommend ordering your Kona cottons from either Fabric Depot or Fabric Shack. (Fabric Depot takes 30% off all online orders and Fabric Shack has Kona cotton at $4.00/yard to begin with.) Both carry all or most of the Kona cotton line.
I think this quilt pattern would be interesting in a more limited color palette. You can also see here where Jennifer is making a similar quilt with all patterned fabrics, which looks really cool.
I couldn't resist adding this last photo of Maeby helping me with the binding. You can see from the photos above that George-Michael helped me photograph, but Maeby was an integral part of the construction process.
Here is a quick tutorial on how to make the blocks I used for this quilt. My quilt used 64 blocks -- 32 sets of two. Each block is 6.5" once sewn (7" before). For each set of two, you'll need approximately 9" x 15" of a solid fabric and a coordinating print. (I used Kona cotton for my solids.) Besides standard rotary-cutting tools, no special tools are needed. All seams are standard quarter inch.
Stack your fabrics on top of one another for cutting. Start by cutting a 3" x 9" strip. Then cut that strip into one 3" square, one 1.5" x 3" strip and one 2" x 3" strip. From the remaining fabric, cut three 2" strips and three 1.5" strips. Remember, you're cutting through both layers, so you should end up with one solid and one print piece for each cut.
Start with the pieces you cut from the 3" strip, pairing the smaller printed strips with the solid square and the smaller solid strips with the printed square.
Sew the strips to opposite sides of the squares as shown, pressing seams open. At this point, it doesn't matter to which side you sew the narrow (1.5") strip and which side you sew the wide (2") strip.
Next, take one of the coordinating narrow 9" strips and one of the wide strips. Trim each to slightly longer than the longest side of your block so far and sew one to each long side. At this point, it still doesn't matter to which side you sew the narrow strip and white side you sew the wide strip.
Press seams open. Next, take your ruler and rotary cutter and trim all four sides of your block so that the narrow strips measure 1" from the center block and the wide strips measure 1.5" from the center block.
Repeat the last few steps on your second block.
Now, you're going to add a second set of strips to your block, but this time it will be important to pay attention to which sides are being paired with narrow and wide strips. Start the same way, by taking one narrow and one wide strip, trimming each to be slightly longer than your current block.
Now, sew a strip onto two opposite sides of your block, making sure that a) you're starting with the same sides you first sewed the 3" strips to (as in a log cabin or square-in-square block) and b) that the wide strip is sewn to the side that will put it next to a narrow strip and the narrow strip is sewn to the side that will put it next to a wide strip. Repeat this process on the other two sides of the block, again making sure to match a narrow strip with a wide strip and a wide strip with a narrow strip.
Again, take your ruler and rotary cutter and trim all four sides of your block so that the narrow strips measure 1" wide and the wide strips measure 1.5" wide.
That's all there is to it! Repeat the last few steps on your companion block to make a complete set.
If you'd like to show off your blocks, please join my Flickr pool.
Click on any of these photos for a larger, clearer version.
Thank you so much for all of your get-well comments on my last post. I can sort of walk around now and can even bend my knee (big development!) so I've spent the last few hours "up" and am looking to even do some sewing tonight.
It was beautiful here today, so I was able to get some nice photos of the freshly-finished Rick-Rack Quilt. In case you don't remember, this is the one I wrote about here. The quilt top has twenty blocks made with vintage sheets and tablecloths, new polka dot fabric, white linen sashing and red and white striped seersucker binding.
The back is made with strips of delft Kona cotton and a delft and white print from Fabric Depot, the name and manufacturer or which I can't remember. I spent at least two hours wandering around Fabric Depot before I chose this print but, in the end, I'm quite happy with it.
Because I did the free-motion quilting everywhere but around the rick-rack, there are some lumpy rough-square-shaped bumps on the back, but they were minimized a little when I washed and dried the quilt.
Even though this quilt isn't really my style (as my sister Sarah would say, it's kind of "old-timey") I was very happy with the vintage sheet, rick-rack and polka dot combos -- so much so that I took a photo of each individual block. If you want to check them out, they're all on Flickr.
So, now it's done and will soon be off to live with old-timey quilt enthusiast, Sarah
