Washington Whirlwind Quilt Completed

The Washington Whirlwind Quilt Along was the second, year-long, quilt project I participated in during 2024. These blockd where chosen to illustrate the years that Abraham Lincoln and his family were in the White House. There were 12 blocks in all. There was an option to sew 9 or 12 blocks. I decided to make 9. There are actually only 8 different blocks in my quilt. My 9th one was just too light and too lavender to sit well in the quilt!

I used my stash of 1930’s reproduction flour sack prints in this quilt. The theory is that all the 1930s colors play well together. So I just randomly pulled fabrics I liked each month. In the end I decided that maybe that theory wasn’t exactly accurate! In hindsight, I wish I had paid a bit more attention to coordinating the colors I choice.

This is a bright and lively quilt. I don’t need another sampler quilt, so this will be donated to the guild’s collection of charity quilts, to be given to a new mother and her baby. I think it will make a great tummy time quilt!

My Design Your Own Quilt Sampler Quilt Completed

This is the finished sampler quilt with all the sample blocks I made for our guild’s Design Your Own Quilt project. To read more about the blocks, click on my post from April 27, 2023.

The background fabric for this quilt is a low volume grey on white print which is reminiscent of a topographic map. I struggled with how to quilt this quilt for a long time. I finally settled on a free-motion stipple pattern. I almost never use stippling as an all-over quilting pattern. I think there is usually something that can be done that is more interesting.

I did think about quilting each of the blocks differently. But the designs and the scale of the patches in each block are so different, I thought that wasn’t a good choice. I ended up with the stipple because in a way it echoed the design in background fabric. I think it was the right choice.

And I love the striped binding. I think it really helps to connect all the blocks. Making all the blocks for this quilt was a really fun project.

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.

Australian Aboriginal Sampler Quilt Completed

My 2022 twenty week long Monday Block Project is all done! In January I set myself the task of sewing a weekly quilt block that incorporated at least one Australian Aboriginal Print fabric. It turned out that Tula Pink’s Dragon’s Breath* and Unicorn Poop solids* coordinated beautifully with the Australian Aboriginal Print fabrics. Who would have expected that?? I also added some batiks and other fabrics from my stash.

I chose blocks that incorporated crosses (or plus signs if you prefer that nomenclature) and blocks that seemed to rotate or spin in some way. Many of the blocks came from the Electric Quilt 8 (EQ8) Block Library. I needed to put all the blocks into the Block Worktable of EQ8 to draw redraw them to be 12.5 inches square.

I really enjoyed both redrawing/resizing the blocks and sewing them each Monday for the first 20 weeks of 2022. I might have kept going, but I didn’t want this quilt to be huge.

The completed tops sat around all summer while I pondered how to quilt it. I finally settled on straight line quilting the blocks and doing free-motion quilting inside the blocks. I used one of my favorite free-motion quilting patterns—a loopy daisy. You’ll find them in many of my quilts. But it seemed particularly appropriate in this quilt because so many of the Aboriginal designs incorporate flowers and other plants.

There is some circular quilting in a few of the blocks, some arcs, and one block which has 2 segmented quarters of a sun with rays. Here are four of the block enlarged.

Here’s a closeup of the segmented sun. It’s hiding in the block’s design, but you should see it if you look hard!

Quarter sun with rays. (Up close, not the best free-motion quilting. Looks like I just wasn’t sewing at a consistent speed).

I am super please with everything about this Monday block project!

*These two Tula Pink solid collections are getting difficult to find so I didn’t add links. However, you can find her True Color Solids which will be similar.

My Monday Block Project Using Australian Aboriginal Prints is Complete

Wow! My Monday Block Project just flew by! All 20 of the blocks I chose to make incorporating Australian Aboriginal prints are now done! I still don’t know how I am going to put them together in a quilt yet, or what sort of fabric I’ll use. Finding a fabric that coordinates with all these blocks is going to be a challenge!

But in the meantime, here are all 20 blocks. They are not in chronological order, except for the first two and last two! I tried to get a good mix of blocks with a cross and blocks that have a “spinning” element.

This one of the most color-dense quilts I’ve ever made. There are no white patches…the really light patches are either pale yellow, pale peach, or very pale green.

So, NOW what am I going to do with my Mondays??

My Monday Block Project

I’ve morphed the way I think about the Australian Aboriginal fabric sampler quilt I started in January: it’s now my Monday Block Project. Each block features at least one Aboriginal fabric, but is complemented by solids or other prints which I had in my stash.

Here is the gallery of all the blocks so far. I know I am going to make at least 12 blocks, but may continue if I have enough fabric and am still having fun!

Sampler Quilt using Australian Aboriginal Prints

On January 6, I did a post with a block using Australian Aboriginal fabric. I was going to participate in our guild’s Quilt-in-a-Box project, but have subsequently decided to make my own sampler quilt using these special fabrics, plus some solids and other complimentary fabrics.

Here is block #2. The Aboriginal print is the center square. I love all the colors and the overlapping circles. The fabric is named “Women’s Body Dreaming” and was designed by Cindy Wallace for M & S Textiles Australia.

I can’t decide if this is going to be Monday Block Project, with my making a new block each week, or whether I will just add blocks more randomly. We’ll see what happens!

Book Review: "The Quilt Block Cookbook"

Here is another beautiful book from Lucky Spool Media, LLC.   The Quilt Block Cookbook by Amy Gibson, was published at the beginning of July this year. (It apparently has sold out at the publisher, but can still be found on Amazon)!

This is a book of 12 inch quilt block designs.  There are 40 complex blocks and an additional 10 simpler "staple blocks" which can be used for alternate blocks between the more detailed blocks.  An assortment of the 40 blocks can be used to make a traditional Sampler Quilt, but Amy has also made several Modern quilts which just use a a few of the blocks.  There was an "Ah-Ha!" moment when I turned the page and saw her "Bouce" quilt. It has just 6 of the quilt blocks and it is really striking!

While she uses the computer quilt program Electric Quilt 7 to design her quilts, Amy suggests some great ways to test out a quilt's lay out if you don't own a quilt design program but do have a camera or a scanner. Brilliant, and fun too!

Each of the blocks in the book has its own photo.  All the block photos are the same size which is great if you want to use Amy's options to lay out a quilt.  Under the photo of each block are fabric requirements and basic construction information.  In the back of a book there is "Unit Piecing Guide" with diagrams and detailed information about how to make the separate units in the blocks.

This is one of those books I know I will keep coming back to for ideas!

The Instagram hashtag for sharing blocks or projects is #TheQuiltBlockCookbook if you want to post your blocks or see what other folks have been making.

Quilting the Vintage Quilt Revival Sampler Quilt

During the winter of 2014 I participated in a the Vintage Quilt Revival Block Along making all the quilt blocks in the book, Vintage Quilt Revival.  

Piecing the 22 blocks in the quilt was a great adventure.  Some of the blocks were fairly easy while others were complex and challenging. I learned some new piecing techniques and really improved my foundation piecing skills.  It was great to be working with a group of people--it kept me working steadily. 

I finished up the blocks during March 2014. Here's a my blog post about the completed blocks.  So that was 16 months ago!  Where's the quilt?

It turned out that quilting this sampler quilt was more challenging than piecing the blocks!  I didn't start the quilting until this past winter.  I decided to quilt the white negative space in each block first.  It is the one unifying element in all the blocks.   

With flowers in the focus fabrics in the quilt, I chose to quilt flowers into the white spaces. There are lots of stylized roses, a chrysanthemum, generic flowers and some leaf patterns.  All that detailed quilting took a lot of time.  One day, when my bobbin ran out of thread I put it away-- two and a half blocks from finishing the floral quilting. 

I also had no idea how I was going to finish quilting these blocks.  Because it is a sampler quilt, no two blocks are the same.  Each block needed to have a unique quilting design.  It felt daunting, so I left the quilt and worked on other projects.

Then I found the resource I needed to get me back to the sewing machine: Angela Waters book, Shape by Shape Free-Motion Quilting with Angela Walters.  Angela suggests designs to fill in squares, circles, triangles and diamonds. I got some great ideas from the blocks in the book. Angela's quilting designs typically are much more dense than my quilting style so I none of my blocks look like hers.  But seeing what she did was really helpful.

These photos are three of my completed blocks.  The quilt should be done soon!  Finally!!