Hexagon Log Cabin Quilt

I have two new quilts to share with you this week.

Every summer the Proper Bostonian Quilters guild has a Summer Challenge. (Lest our hand be idle in the summer months when we don't have meetings)!  This summer the challenge was hexagons.

English Paper piecing immediately comes to mind when hexagons are mentioned. But there are other ways to create hexagons, including using strips of 60 degree triangles.

I, however, trod completely off any beaten path by deciding to make a Hexagon Log Cabin quilt!

I had a stack of laser pre-cut hexagons in my stash.  I decided to get out my bag of remnant fabric strings and use them to make log cabin blocks using the hexagon pre-cuts as the enter patch. 

I quickly understood why houses typically are constructed with 4 sides.  It took SO much longer to add strips of fabric to 6 sides of each block!  My fabric strings were a variety of widths of the quilt has a modern improv character, which I really like.  I had some handmade EPP hexagon blocks which I appliqued on the center of some of the log cabin blocks. So this quilt has a little bit of everything!

I quilted it it using free-form organic curves which follow the lines in the blocks. It looks great on the front of the quilt, but rather a mysterious mess on the back!

Back of the Hexagon Log Cabin Quilt

This was an interesting exercise.  Even though I really like this quilt which has so much amazing visual motion, I can't imagine I'll ever make another one!

Black Lab Puppies Mono Print Projects

I am having so much fun with my new Black Lab Puppies Mono Print fabrics available from my Shop at Spoonflower.com.

Above is a toddler's fleece hoodie.  The pattern, Yia-Yia's Snuggle Hoodie, is from the book, Little One Yard Wonders.  It was really easy to sew up!  It's perfect for the cool Fall days which will be here soon!

I also made a little "Hugging Pillow" to give the the older sister of the baby boy who is getting my Busy Beach Town Quilt. It my Black Labs printed on Minky on one side and cotton fabric from the "Uppercase" line from Windham fabrics on the back.

Spoonflower.com wisely requires makers to order test prints of new designs. (I've caught some errors in the printed fabric that I never saw on my computer screen).  The most economical way to get a test sample is to order an 8 inch square swatch, seen on the far left below.  It's a fun challenge to find ways to use the swatches. This little 8 inch square pillow is a great size for a 2 year old to hug and carry around!

Our church organist and his wife, a soloist in the choir, are also expecting a baby.  The church ladies had a baby shower for them last weekend.  I made a little taggie, a mini security blanket, for them.  It is 10 inches square, with Minky on the front and 100% organic cotton sateen on the back.  Both are fabrics are available from my Spoonflower shop.  (I sewed around the edges of the ribbon tags. I worry about little fingers getting trapped in open loops and having circulation cut off). 

And finally, I've added another Black Lab puppy to the fabric collection.  This puppy is a bit older than the paired puppies and so a big larger.  She is wearing a bandana with the cherries print on the right with the darker blue background. This pattern is "Farmers_Market_Cherries", also available in my shop at Spoonflower.com.

Black Lab Puppies Mono Print Fabric

This summer I learned how to make Andy Warhol Inspired Mono Prints on Creativebug.com. They are easy and so much fun!

I used two of my mono prints to make this Black Lab Puppies Mono Print fabric at Spoonflower.com.  It's available in an assortment of pastels, perfect for making items for a baby.

The colors are especially vivid printed on the minky fabric that Spoonflower offers.  It's so soft! I turned the design 90 degrees in both pink and aqua options, just so it can be used to make little blankets or other home dec projects.  A yard of the minky is 54 wide x 36 inches.

Printed on Spoonflower's minky fabric (Pink background)

The pair of lab puppties can be fussy cut into 5 inch wide x 4 inch high patches if you want to use it for a quilting project.

I'm really looking forward to sewing with this fabric!  Especially since the prints are from photos of one of my dogs!
 

Indigo Quilt: Part 3. Completed!

My Indigo Color quilt is done!  The South African Shweshwe fabrics featured in the quilt are made with indigo dyes. I added some Kona® cottons and one other dark blue fabric. 

Just as I did with the pincushion I made with these fabric, I flipped one of the pieces in this quilt to show a portion of the da Gama Three Cats (Trade Mark) logo which is printed on the back of this company's fabrics. The cats can be seen in the second from bottom row, the 3rd block from the left! 

Here's the back of the quilt, with my Labrador mix, Hazel, who came with me on the photo shoot!

Hazel with a view of the back of the Indigo Color Quilt

And a photo of the entire quilt. I love it! There is so much motion in the shweshwe fabrics! I designed the pattern I used for this quilt.

Indigo Color Quilt

If you interested in learning more about Shweshwe fabrics, click the link at the top of this post which will connect you to da Gama Textiles in South African which makes this fabric.  There is also information in my March 14, 2016 post.

The View from the Hammock

Happy Labor Day!  It's still not to late to enjoy a last little bit of Summer!

One of the best things I made this summer was a hammock!  I've always wanted one but never could justify the cost!  I was so excited when I found a hammock tutorial on the website of Modern Textiles, the quilt shop in Fargo, North Dakota, which I mentioned in a previous post.

The hammock is made using home dec weight fabrics.  The outer red fabric I used is canvas weight, decorated with Setters! I bought it to make slipcovers--it wasn't flexible enough for that, but is perfect for the hammock. The inner fabric is leftover from curtains I made.  This hammock would also be a great way to up-cycle draperies that you no longer use but that are still in good condition.

The hammock only requires straight seams and can be stitched up in an hour or two. Very easy!

I've hung it on two posts on my deck.  That's probably not a sturdy enough anchor if you expect kids to use it, but it works for me.   The tutorial has links with suggestions on how to hang a hammock which is great!

Here's Hazel next to my hammock.  She's never tried to use it, but Tipper has!  (An activity which I've discouraged)!

It's really comfy, especially if I take a throw pillow out when I play to read a book! You should make one!

Random Letter Quilt: 8 More Letters in my Half Square Triangle Font

Eight more letters of my Half Square Triangle (HST) Font are done!  I have 18 completed letters now.

This is so much fun I decided to do all 26 letters in the alphabet. That will make a 30 block quilt with 4 blocks of negative space that will be filled with blocks of the Uppercase fabric.

Click over to Janine Vangool's Uppercase Fabric page and see all the fun projects that were created to promote this line which was printed by Windham Fabrics. The Uppercase!! page has swatches so you can see the entire fabric line.

All the pieced letters of my HST font should be completed by my next post!  And I have a couple of other fun projects I can't wait to share!  

Happy September!

Random Letter Quilt: First 10 letters

I'm making progress on my "Random Letter Quilt" using Windham Fabrics' Uppercase fabric collection, designed by Janine Vangool, publisher/editor/designer of Uppercase magazine, for the body of the letters. 

I designed the blocks. I call it my Half Square Triangle font! Each block is a bit like assembling a jig saw puzzle:  challenging but great fun!

More to follow, eventually!

Inspiration from the book, "By the Bundle" by Emma Jean Jansen

As soon as I saw Uppercase, a fabric collection by Windham Fabrics, I knew I wanted to make a quilt using it.  I didn't really want the Fat Quarter bundle of the entire Uppercase collection, so was thrilled when I found a 'short stack' of 18 FQs put together by the shop Modern Textiles in Fargo, North Dakota.*

Now the question was, what to make with this selection of tiny print fabrics?

Emma Jean Jansen's new 2016 book By the Bundle has been getting great reviews on social media so I decided to get a copy for myself.  Lucky Spool LLC has published yet another winning quilt book!  I really enjoyed reading the book and looking at Emma Jean's quilts.  Her photos were taken outdoors and have amazing Australian landscapes as backgrounds.

There are several quilts I really like.  "Star Burst", "Half Moons" and "Nellie Gray" are all quilts I would enjoy making myself. But it was "The Hi Quilt" which provided the inspiration a quilt using the Uppercase fabric. 

Emma Jean says "The Hi Quilt" was designed as a simple geometric pattern. It was her daughter who saw the letters H and I in the design! 

I thought about making "The Hi Quilt" pattern.  It would look fabulous with the Uppercase fabrics. But then I decided it would be fun to design my own letters. 

Using squares and half square triangles, I drew out blocks for the entire alphabet.  That was a challenge!  Most are of the letter blocks look great, but a few are a bit odd!  I think I am going to pick my favorites and not use the entire alphabet. This will be a random letter sampler quilt.  Each letter block is unique so this quilt isn't going to be done any time soon.  

I can't wait to really get going on this project!  Here is my first block. Letter R!

*Historical aside:  I went to college in Fargo-Moorhead--that's where I learned to quilt!  Too bad Modern Textiles wasn't there when I was in college!  This store has a lovely assortment of fabrics and shopping in their on-line store made me feel like I'd gone back to the Upper Midwest for a visit!  There was even a hand-written note in the box when it arrived!  Really nice!

Busy Beach Town Quilt Completed

All done!  The "Busy Beach Town" quilt is finished!  I used a blue/green/lavender variegated thread for a free motion loops-and-stars quilting pattern.  And I incorporated a couple scraps from the quilt into the solid grey binding.

It's a two sided quilt.  Here's the back--a licensed fabric panel (C) 2015 Hasbro (TM) for Quilting Treasures ® 

Back of the quilt

The front of this quilt will be good for floor time when the baby is an infant, and play time when he's old enough to have a garage full of toy cars and trucks!  Fun times!

Busy Beach Town Quilt Top

This is my "Busy Beach Town" baby quilt top, ready to be quilted.  It's small, a good size for using for floor time for a baby or for a toddler to drag around.

The Four Square patches create red chains in one direction, a safety green in the other. There are also 2 blue chains that blend in with the bigger blocks and aren't really evident.

It is a busy beach town!  Child's delight--rail crossings, construction trucks, fire engines, ambulances, Dalmations!  Maybe NOT an adult's idea of quiet vacation, but if you look carefully, you'll see some river rafting and a coupe sailboats in the large blue blocks, and of course the lighthouses!  So a little something to make everyone happy on an August afternoon in a beach town!

Busy Beach Town Quilt: Planning

I saw one of my neighbors while walking the dogs this past week. They are expecting a baby this fall and I asked when the new little one is due--soon!  I thought I had til October!  Time to make to baby quilt!

I know the baby is a boy so I was planning a Fireman Quilt. But when I looked through my stash of novelty fabrics I realized the blue background of the lighthouse fabric was a great match for the blue in the emergency vehicle fabric.  And I liked the tossed trucks in blue and green.  It is August--I must be thinking about vacations! At any rate, the quilt morphed into a Busy Beach Town quilt! 

With four patch blocks making a simple chain and larger blocks with the feature fabrics, this is going to be a fun, and fast, quilt to make!

Indigo Quilt: Part Two

The Indigo Quilt top, featuring 3 Cats shweshwe indigo fabrics, came together beautifully.  I didn't have enough shweshwe for the entire quilt so used a bit of dark indigo blue colored cotton fabric from Connecting Threads from my stash. The light center fabric the Kona® cotton solid "Snow' and the light "Bluebell" and medium blue "Denim"* are also Kona® cotton solids. (Note how those 2 colors of solid blue appear to be different depending on the fabric around them. It looks like there are more than 2 blues but it really is just 2 shades)!

When I drew this pattern, I had the center row of each block all facing east-west.  But when I put it up on the design wall, I found that turning the square blocks so that the center section runs north-south was much more interesting. Added bonus:  When assembling the quilt, I didn't have to match those center sections!

Just as I did with the pincushion in my previous post, I turned one small square block over to show the 3 Cats from the printed label!  It's fun and it identifies the fabrics as authentic Da Gama Textiles for anyone looking at this quilt in the future.

*Note:  I attempted to match the 2 blue Kona® fabrics I used with the Kona® color chart with actual swatches of fabric.  I think picked the correct names but am not a 100% sure.  I do wish Robert Kaufman Fabrics would print the name and/or number of the color on the selvage of their Kona® solid fabrics! It would so helpful!

Indigo Quilt: Part One

The indigo quilt that I discussed in my post on July 11 is cut out and ready to sew! 

The featured indigo fabrics are Shweshwe from South Africa.  Every bit of this fabric is precious--I only had 4 fat quarters and one half yard.  I needed to cut it carefully!

I ended up with a couple strips too narrow for this project and a few scraps.  It was too late in the day to start a big sewing project but not too late to use some of those scraps for a 4 inch square pincushion!

The fabric's logo is 3 cats, printed on the back of the fabric.  I found one cat's face on a scrap. I sewed it into the pincushion's top, wrong side out!  Can you see the kitten peaking through the pieces?

MQ 9 Tranquility Mystery Quilt "Apple Maze" Completed

It's a great day!! My largest, and last, UFO is done!!  Pieced Fall 2013, it was one of the Quilters Club of America's numbered Mystery Quilts, MQ9.  It's official name is "Tranquility" but with all this red, mine isn't tranquil!  I'm calling mine Apple Maze. 

It's big--the first quilt I've made that has a great hang over on each side of a queen size bed. It's long too. The photo above just shows a portion of the quilt.

Here's a detail of a couple of the pieced and appliqued apples in the borders on each side of the quilt. I think these apples are my favorite part of this quilt, though I really like apple quilting too!

I'm SO happy it's finally done!!

Pincushions

I've been enjoying watching the Crazy Mom Quilts pincushion challenge-- #thepincushionproject on Instagram.  Every day in July, Emma Jean Nyberg set herself a goal to make one pincushion. (If you aren't on Instagram, click the link to see a recent post on her blog with photos of some of her pincushions). 

So, when I needed a birthday present for a Red Sox baseball fan, I decided that a pincushion was the perfect little gift!  I made her pincushion using the quilt block named The Economy Block.  It's a square in a square in a square.  The center block is an old licensed Red Sox (TM) fabric from my stash and the other fabrics have baseball themes too.

I had so much fun making that pincushion that I made 2 more!  One to keep for myself and one for an up-coming pin cushion swap!

UFO: Tranquility (MQ9 Quilters Club of America Mystery Quilt)

My oldest UFO (unfinished quilt) is finally out of its bag and well on the way to being completed!  The quilt, a mystery quilt hosted by The Quilters Club of America, is MQ9 "Tranquility". I pieced it in the fall of 2013 so that really a UFO!

I had a lovely day yesterday at Bits 'n Pieces Quilt Shop in Pelham, NH, renting one of their HandiQuilter long arm quilting machines. Above you can see a detail of the beautiful computerized apple quilting designed I chose for this apple themed quilt.

I still need to quilt the borders which have some applique and then add a binding. But now, after 3 years, it's well on it's way to being a completed quilt! 

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.

Monchromatic Quilt in the Planning Process

I've long thought it would be fun to make a monochromatic quilt--all the blocks in the same hue.  Blue would be the obvious choice...they make such pretty quilts.

But when I saw all these purple hue fabrics at JP Knit & Stitch, I picked up a small collection of fabrics! Purple (and some cream)! I don't even really like purple!! So this is a good stretch for me. The added cream probably means this is not a true monochromatic quilt, so I may choose not to use the floral on the far right above. 

I decided to do play on on the design in Rashida Coleman-Hale's Fall 2015 Cotton and Steel "Macrame", by RJR Fabrics.  I love the scattered bright magenta, teal and gold colored "beads" scattered through her design.

I have a preliminary diagram of a quilt which I think I like.  This should be interesting!

Showcase: 1970s Calico Cathedral Windows Quilt

In this post I want to share the Cathedral Windows quilt that Kathy K., one of my college roommates, made for me.  It's an amazing quilt!  It is now a treasury of late 1960s and early 1970s calico fabrics (and a few other non-calico printed cottons from the same era).  Most of the fabrics were Kathy's, probably from her family too since they sewed and quilted, but some are my quilting fabrics or from clothes I made for myself.

The background fabric, if I remember correctly, is kettle cloth.  It is a fabric that has a linen-like texture, neutral and a bit nubby. It was a contemporary fabric, often used for home dec or clothing, and no longer manufactured.  It has a lovely hand but it made a very heavy quilt. (Note the sag on the clothes line in the photo below!)

Cathedral Windows Quilt early 1970s (approx 1972-1975) Made by Kathy Kuklish, New Effington, SD. 46.5 x 58.5 inches, 332 windows!

The quilt has 332 blocks, all sewn by hand.  Truly a masterpiece and a labor of love!

Here's another close up.  The detail photo below has scraps of fabric from a comforter I made for my brother and his wife as a wedding present, fabric from the dress I made and wore to the christening of my first Godchild, and a scrap of fabric for a fall quilt I planned to make but never did!

Too heavy to use as a lap quilt, I occasionally hang this quilt up on a wall mounted quilt rack so I can enjoy it. This quilt deserves to be in a museum.

But not yet!

Indigo Quilt Planning

I've been thinking about making a quilt with indigo fabrics for months. I just drew a possible pattern on graph paper and I'm really liking the design.

This is a project that will need lots of cutting space and a design wall. So for now, it will stay on paper. But it's ready to go when things settle down with my house work!