Braided Rug Quilt Block Alternative - Colour Focused Scraps

So I think I started a new quilt. I didn’t mean to, honest! It was just an experiment that I fell in love with!

There I was, teaching a Scraptastic class with a guild out of the Whistler Valley. We got to the part where we play with strips. At this moment I always give students a choice on what technique they want to explore. The Braided Rug blocks won out that day. While demonstrating the technique I decided to explore a square block. A change from my original. One pile of pink scraps and some sewing later, an idea was born.

It’s a been a few weeks and that idea has already evolved. I thought rows of blocks first, then placed four together like this. Okay, that works. let’s try another colour and maybe do a round robin, like the original again. I really liked that shape formed by the four together though so placed another colour that way. Yup, that’s the winner! I’ve already picked my next colour - green, for hope - and will make another set of 4. I’m thinking, only thinking, of making 9 sets of 4 blocks. We’ll see how the motivation lasts. That being said, moving to the new studio uncovered A LOT more scraps than I thought I had so there is no shortage of fabric options!

Just playing around with potential colours. This is a more random colour scheme, maybe I will edit it down, maybe not? For now, one block at a time.

Desktop Inspired Quilt Top

From this…

To this…

Back in 2018 I had the opportunity to go to Montreal to teach at Courtepointe Quebec, a lovely quilt show held in the suburbs of Montreal. I had to lean on my very shallow memory of high school French as my driver and many students didn’t speak English at all. We were in an old school with no air conditioning in a heat wave. Despite all that, we had a fabulous time! One day, on a break with some students, we discovered the art installation made from old desks. We were talking about being inspired by the world around us, including these desks. I remember coming home and experimenting just to see if I could make a block that referenced those desks. A little improv curve action made it happen. I made a few then folded them up and put them in the closet.

Now, as I am in the process of cleaning, sorting, and getting ready to move my sewing room, these old projects are seeing some light of day. That, and I updated my list of Quilts Under Construction after these recent finishes. I wanted to work on something “new” but not really start something new. A dive into the vaults served that purpose.

I didn’t like the blocks just plain. Right idea, ineffective design. Going back to the original inspiration I decided to try setting them so they popped off the background. Honestly, I have no idea why I chose the pinks/reds, but I think they work. I did not have enough of any one colour, so used 3 different ones. Their placement is random, but all being so close in value they read well together.

For me, this is a small quilt. It finishes a bit over 40” x 50”. So, really, just a baby quilt. But I didn’t have any more of that dominant alphabet print to make more blocks. Plus, this size keeps it as a quick finish. I have no idea when I will touch this quilt again, but for now the memories can live more strongly than my French skills!

Theodora - A Modern Tree of Life Quilt

Theodora

50” x 50”

It wasn’t her greatest desire, moving West. She had a comfortable life in a respectable home. Growing up in town, in a house her father purchased, not built, meant that Theordora had no notion of what it might really be like to move to the Wild West. But she was in love and her husband wanted to go. At least she wouldn’t have to be a farmer. That’s what she told herself, at least. Her husband was a gentleman and would be working for the government. In the city, not the farm. That notion was small comfort when she arrived in Calgary. It was still rather wild for her tastes. They found a small house, she joined the church, and soon made friends with the other women brought by their husbands. It was one of these friends that introduced her to quilting. Needlework, she knew, but quilting was a new skill and a handy one when the long winter nights settled in. She could piece her little triangles while her husband read and it almost made it worthwhile, the homesickness.

Theodora is a modern interpretation of a Tree of Life quilt I found in the Heritage Park quilt collection. I’m making up the story here, but the original quilt inspired both it and the quilt here. A few years ago I was asked to teach at Heritage Park’s Festival of Quilts. My idea was to look at quilts in their own collection and create a modern version of it for student’s to play with.

I took the original quilt, wrote a modern pattern that uses only half square triangles and squares for simple patchwork construction, then had some fun playing. This is one version I made, drawing from the original colours but scaling up the size of the block.

Theodora takes blocks I made as samples for that class 3 years ago - made into a finished quilt top earlier this year - and finishes it up. My daughter’s pentathlon coach and his wife are expecting their first baby. With a woodland themed nursery and a love of Heritage Park this seemed like the perfect gift for them.

To tone down the greens of the front I added a contrasting backing with fabrics hiding in my stash. They provide a bright contrast in colour, making this truly a double sided quilt. I love doing that, especially for baby quilts, so there are more options for use. Continuing the woodland theme I quilted it with a woodgrain free motion pattern on a rented long arm machine. While I often recommend olive green as a magical blending colour for quilting, this time it was perfectly on the nose.

To make the binding I hunted through my stash for the perfect green. Normally I like a contrasting binding but that didn’t seem like the right move here. With so many greens - shades, tints, low volumes, perfect hues, limes, emeralds - in the quilt itself, any green can indeed be perfect. The perfect green ended up being the only green I had enough of in my stash. So I am calling it perfect. I did a common 2.5” inch double fold binding, hand stitched on the back.

And I can’t let you go without a bonus treat from the photo shoot. To capture this quilt I stole away to the area just outside Heritage Park. There is a little wooded area next to a wetland. It’s at a confluence of a parking lot and a couple of busy roads, next to the main reservoir for the city. It may look like I am in the middle of the forest, but I am actually in the middle of the city. And just as I was hanging up the quilt on a line strung between two trees a friendly visitor joined me. She was calm with me being in her space so I thanked her, took my pictures quickly and left in the opposite direction to avoid bothering her further.

Yes, You Can Change Your Mind While Making a Quilt

Did you know that you are absolutely allowed, even encouraged, to change your mind while making a quilt? Far too often folks think that because they started down a certain path in the quilt making process they are not allowed to veer from it. This isn’t school and standardized testing. Or, as my husband likes to say when the children complain about him changing his mind: I’m an adult and I can do whatever the eff I want!

Definitely applicable to quilting.

These blocks started as class samples. I use them in my Scraptastic class as one option for when you are playing with scrap strips. I make one in a class, put it with the others and move on with life. I had zero plans for the blocks, they served as a teaching tool.

Last month I was teaching a virtual workshop with the Thompkins County Quilters’ Guild out of New York. I had a pile of these blocks on my cutting table and starting arranging them to show possibilities. Quite quickly I was struck by a certain layout of 8 blocks. I don’t think I even had 8 blocks at the time, but I could see potential.

After the class, I finished up those 8 blocks and quickly sewed them together. Smitten, I decided to make more blocks. A lot more blocks. My initial plan was that top picture there. Every 8 blocks sewn together with them all assembled in an alternating layout. In my mind it was perfect.

Not so much on the design wall. My seemingly brilliant idea looked a hot mess.

When I am lecturing and teaching about using scraps one of my big messages is about finding order. When people complain that scrap quilts look messy it is often because they do, because they are lacking order. You can find that order with colour selection, playing with value, or through shape. My blocks are multicoloured, improvised, and made without regard to the value placement of the fabrics. That meant that shape matters the most.

Now my initial blocks - an improv variation on the Prairie Braid - are all trimmed to the same size. That helps. I thought the block layout made with 8 blocks would be totally fine in repeat. As you can see in that top photo, I was wrong. Even with the repetition of the original block shape/size and the repetition of making the larger square block, it still looks messy.

Here’s the thing, nothing was sewn together or set in stone. Even if it was, I would have taken it apart. If it’s not working, it’s not working. If you subbed salt for sugar in your cake would you still eat it? If you installed a bathtub too small for the space you framed, would you just live with it? No matter what, you aren’t tied to finish something that isn’t working.

So I tried something different. I played around and realized the second layout was much stronger, way less messy. Better yet, it used the exact same amount of blocks that I had planned to make!

That is, until I changed my mind again.