My Design Your Own Quilt Sampler Quilt Top...in Progress

I think I might have mentioned that I am running a “Design Your Own Quilt” project for the quilt guild I belong to. I came up with the idea for this project…it’s the Mystery Quilt with NO mystery! And the Block of the Month with no waiting…I distributed half of the blocks at the first meeting and the rest at the following meeting. It hopefully has something for everyone.

The quilters can choose to make a whole quilt from a single block, use two or more blocks, make a quilt using one or more block with a chaining alternate block, take a block apart and make it improv, make a sampler quilt using all the blocks, or make whatever else they want to do. It can be any size from a table runner to a king size quilt. It really is a design your own quilt using a set of 11 blocks with one which can be made 2 ways, giving a total of 12 blocks.

10 of these blocks are from The Early Women Masters website, and they are royalty free. The site just has the blocks designs. I used Electric Quilt 8 to make instructions for each block.

The improv log cabin block, second row center, is courtesy of Cheryl Arkison and was one of the blocks in her 2022 Quilters Adventure Playcation Sew Along. She generously gave her permission for our guild to use this block.

The Road to Oklahoma block, bottom row center, is from the Electric Quilt 8 Block Library and is the alternate block I chose to offer.

This quilt top is almost finished, but not quite. I’m planning on adding some borders, but the finished quilt isn’t due until sometime in the fall, so I still have lots of time get it done.

"Off Course": The "Regatta" Mystery Quilt Takes a Different Tack

The sails in my guild quilt project caught a different breeze and I deliberately veered off in a different direction from the pattern, “Regatta”, a Mystery Quilt Pattern by Merry Meyhem in several steps. “Off Course” by choice!

I’d been sailing against the wind from the beginning due to having a directional fabric as one of the light blue backgrounds. It has seagulls flying in it and the way I cut them, the seagulls would have been flying vertically had I followed the pattern. I flipped the direction the half square triangle sails were facing which solved that problem. It did complicate sewing the blocks together because the blocks in each strips were the mirror image of the pattern.

I”d also taken a guess about the border on the final layout when I was purchasing my fabric. I took a risk and purchased the royal blue instead of sticking with the light blues in the quilt’s background. So I knew from the start that my border was going to be different. It’s actually completely different from the borders in the pattern.

My border, with boats sailing across it, made my finished quilt is a bit smaller than the quilt in the pattern. And I needed it to be smaller. I had one piece of batting left from a roll, and it was just big enough for the quilt I made, which saved me from needing to by a new batting.

Here’s the back. This is “Sea Breeze” from Hoffman Fabrics “Shoreline Stories” collection. The fabric is a standard 42-44” width so I used the left over light blues from the quilt’s background to just squeak out a back that was wide enough.

Back of “Off Course”

I love this quilt. But if you are looking for a sneak peak to see what the finished “Regatta” Mystery Quilt looks like, this is NOT it! I used most of the pattern’s instructions, but the actual finished mystery quilt is a definitely a different day at the yacht club!

I think a certain Springer Spaniel is chuckling about all of this!

To see more about this Mystery Quilt which has been a project our quilt guild has been working on all year, check out my February 11, 2021 post. If you are working on this mystery quilt, or are interested in purchasing it, I hope you have fun making it. It’s not difficult at all…if your follow Merry Mayhem’s direction and don’t veer off course like I did. ( Don’t by fabrics with a directional prints for your background! Half square triangles just don’t play well with directional fabrics).

"My Village" Quilt-in-a-Box Completed Quilt

Finally my Quilt-in-Box guild project quilt is complete! Our guild started this project in 2019 but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the blocks weren’t all done until last fall. There is information about this project in my posts from November 5, 2020 and November 12, 2020.

This quilt has both free-motion quilting and straight line quilting. Some blocks have both, while others just have one type of quilting. Here are some of the blocks to show the details.

There is a fair breeze in the ship’s sails and rolling waves in the water. I added portholes too.

The house in the center of this log cabin block is in a leafy neighborhood and there are puffy fair weather clouds overhead. The foxes are napping in the nearby wood and the otters are playing in the eddies in the stream.

There are fires lit in both hearths in this home. The roof has scalloped shingles on the roof and rough-hewn timber cladding. I added a 6 panel window to the door to make sure there is lots of light inside!

There is straight line grid work in the Whimsical Whirlwind block with free-motion quilting in the negative space.

The quilt backing is a French fabric with a design which is in keeping with all the tiny woodland animals in the fabrics of this quilt.

I designed the fabric with the little houses which is in many of the blocks. It is called “Little Houses” available at Spoonflower.com. Here are the links to “Little Houses” with the white background and and blue background.

This was a great quilt guild project, one which I’d be happy to do again! Many thanks to all the members who made blocks for my quilt!

Quilt-in-a-Box Completed Quilt Top

Back in November I told you about our guild’s 2019-2020 Quilt-in-a-Box project. Here, finally, is the quilt top with all the blocks that quilt members made with the fabrics in my box.

I pulled the yellow leaf print from my stash. It had been there for years—clearly just waiting for this project. The yellow really is cheerful and somehow ties it together perfectly.

I have some solid bright yellow fabric which I might use for the backing. But I’m still thinking about that.

I’m so pleased with how this quilt turned out!

Our guild still isn’t meeting due to the pandemic, but were are starting a mystery quilt. Stay tuned. I think there I might be seeing some sails on the horizon!

Quilt-in-a-Box Blocks I Made for The Guild Member Boxes

Last fall, our quilt guild, Proper Bostonian Quilters, started a Quilt-in-a-Box project. Each member was given a pink plastic project box and asked to place enough fabric in the box to make 9 blocks. Everyone participating chose one block to make all year. Each month the box was passed to the next name on a box and you made your block with the fabrics in that box. Then you passed it to the person on the list at the next month’s meeting. The goal was to have 9 blocks done by April so that the folks could make a quilt top by the last meeting in June. But then COVID-19 arrived, one block before the box round was completed. So the boxes stopped their rotation.

Finally, at the very end of September, we did a final swap for the final block outside in a member’s driveway.

The block I put in my box of fabric is called “Propeller” and it is the block show at the top of this post. Here are some of the other “Propeller” blocks I made using the fabrics chosen by other members for their own boxes. There is quite a diversity of fabrics in each person’s box.

I’ll show you the completed blocks in my box when I get them back. I can’t wait to see what folks did with my set of fabrics!

This is a really fun guild project, it just takes a bit of organization on the front end and the commitment of members to bring the box and their completed block to each meeting.