Checkboard

Checkerboard

60” x 60”

This, by far, was not the oldest UFO in the quilt closet, but it is getting up there. Finished the quilt top in 2014, but I’m guessing it was started a year or two before that. Now, however, it is done! Taking advantage of the girls being home more and a clean floor I got a couple of quilts basted and this was one of them. I won’t lie, I picked it because I knew it would be an easy finish. Nothing wrong with that.

The pattern is from my book Sunday Morning Quilts, co-authored with Amanda Jean Nyberg. It’s actually one of the patterns Amanda Jean wrote. We both had grand plans of making all of each other’s patterns. Obviously, that did not come to pass. But I did make this one, and now I finished it.

Some of the fabrics in this quilt are old! That purple floral? From my 3rd quilt ever, sewn in 1999. That purple with the little white dots? Something vintage I was gifted. The grey with the dots? That was background on Nap Like an Egyptian, also from Sunday Morning Quilts. This is the true joy of scrap quilts, or scrappy ones even, giving more life to fabric that’s already lived! It’s like the fabric had a near death experience and now it is back and living better than ever.

The quilting was simple. With 2’ squares this simple diagonal was easy, fast, and gives the best scrunchiness to the quilt. I actually quilted most of it while watching a few episodes of Mad Men and Brooklyn 99, our recent pandemic viewing. Thread used was an Aurifil 50W, colour 5006.

For years I hoarded this backing fabric. Not exactly sure where or when I bought it, but I bought it specifically for this quilt. Many times I’ve had to stop myself from using it on something else though. It comes from an old collection designed by Jessica Levitt. As you can see, it is just perfect for this quilt.

While I’ve been working my way through stash and supplies as I work my way through UFOs, I did have to go shopping for the binding. When I was ready for it I decided it had to be this exact shade of magenta, found on that backing fabric, and I had nothing remotely close in my stash. So I made an appointment and masked up to shop one of my local stores, Out of Hand. Dierdre, the owner, was there and found this perfect fabric within minutes. I may have shopped a little more, but I did indeed walk out with her choice. As you can see, I did the binding a bit different than normal for me. It was attached by machine to the back and brought around to the front. Then I stitched it down with a big, obvious, running stitch in an 8W thread. Conveniently, I had the matching thread in Valdani. I thought I had a turquoise colour, which would have popped nicely but no. For the record, this kind of binding goes quickly! Thanks for Shannon Fraser for reminding me about this technique.

While this finishing kick is great, it does result in more quilts leaving the sewing room for the outside world. Truth be told, my husband would like some more outside the house too. Bah! You can never have too many quilts.

Wish Upon a Star

Wish Upon a Star

48” x 48”

For a little baby boy, born to parents raised across the country , a quilt to make all the wishes. Or, just to spit up, poop, and play on. And hopefully keep you warm. Heading your way soon.

This quilt is a slight adaptation of a pattern by Kristyne Czepuryk in her recent book, Perfectly Pretty Patchwork. The only change I made was to skip the outside round of stars, thus reducing the overall size of the quilt. It was a definite change in making for me - using templates and all that precision piecing! Changing things up can be good though! Keeps you on your toes.

Most of Kristyne’s work is soft, pastel, and oh so pretty. It’s gorgeous stuff but not necessarily what I am drawn to for my own quilts. Not wanting to go shopping I decided to see what I could do with what was on hand. I’d been saving this Carolyn Friedlander print for a totally different project. It had been sitting long enough, however, and deserved to see some glory. The rest of the colours came from an Ikat butterfly print by Tula Pink. You can see it there in that corner star, and again on the back (below). The nice thing about this pattern is that I could dig through my stash and scrap bins to cut the diamonds for the stars. It meant a lot of variety; scrappy all the way. The prints used are a combination of old and newer, modern and boring, bright and simple. All together I think they balance nicely and create so much visual interest.

To quilt it I simply did an edge to edge wave, varying the thickness of the lines as I went. It was nice to have the change in texture from the points on the pattern. With a pattern like this I think you can really emphasize all those points with ditch or echo quilting, or you can contrast it. Bonus: contrasting it is easier. My thread choice was a dark turquoise Aurifil in my stash. It doesn’t stand out too much anywhere but doesn’t quite blend in. I rather love it.

Binding was an unexpected choice. I didn’t have enough of any green or yellow that worked to make it around all 4 sides. I debated using the same dominant blue print. Grey seems boring too. Then I spied this other Tula Pink in the stash. It’s a really cool pixelated print of tigers. (Both the binding and the inspiration/backing fabric are from her Eden line.) Cut for binding it looks totally different! I rather like the change and I think it frames the quilt nicely.

Again, because I couldn’t pop out to the store and wanting a backing done when I wanted it done I got creative with my stash. There wasn’t enough of the butterfly print to make it so I added these big blue dots (a leftover piece of Lotta Jansdotter fabric from our collaborative Lilla quilt) as a frame. This might be one of my favourite quilt backs ever.

Thank you for pushing me out of my box a little here Kristyne! I won’t lie, I’m a little sad to send this one out the door but a certain baby boy will surely appreciate it.

Morning Make - April 2020

Did you know that if you make one 12.5” square quilt block each day that you will have a quilt top at the end of the month? A lovely, cuddly size, perfect for couch snuggles. Also, perfect for mental health in the making of and finished product!

For Morning Make in the month of April I made one X Plus block each morning. It was actually quite nice to not have to think about anything but fabric selection. That’s one of the best parts, anyway! From start to finish - from picking fabrics to a sewn block - it took me about 30 minutes.

Let me tell you, I absolutely loved having a complete block at the end of each session. To have something tangible, something that marked the passage of the days, and something that gave me nothing but joy was EXACTLY what I needed this month. It’s probably what all of us needed this month! Covid Isolation is HARD, but we are doing all we can to keep our community safe and that means staying home. And for me, having this 30 minutes to sew before dealing with schooling and meltdowns (all of us) and keeping our business going was lifesaving.

Now when you make these blocks you cut off some decent sized triangles to be thrown in the scrap pile. Rather than be indiscriminate with these scraps I sewed the offcuts together as they came from the block. I was left with a pile of half square triangles. After doing some math and some sketching I decided to turn these HSTs into Sawtooth Stars. From 30 X Plus blocks I could make 30 Stars.

Two quilts for the price of one!

All the fabrics for these quilts came from my stash. Yes, I have a very, very deep stash. Quarantine is a great time to be able to shop from your stash, let me tell you. About halfway through I was worried I wouldn’t have enough light and low volume fabrics to get through but I dug through all the bins and was able to come up with some really great fabric combinations. Some fabrics are brighter than others, some even get a little bossy. I only chose fabric one block at a time and didn’t think about whether they would go together at all. Because my overall feel was low volume it comes together. Besides, the most successful of these X Plus quilts are scrappy and full of unexpected fabric delights!

Now if I did this for Morning Make every month I would have a great collection of quilt tops. Just the tops though because nothing would get quilted! Of course, that kind of thing has never stopped me before! And right now I am totally wishing I had access to a long arm because I would love to get these quilted right now. As it stands, I have 2 basted tops waited for their turn under the needle. I also think part of that may just be me wanting the change after nearly 8 weeks of social distancing. Let me go play in the quilt store! So I wish, but I am still happy to do my part and stay home (and shop online for curbside pick up).

My plan for May was to embrace Me Made May and tackle some clothing projects I’ve had on the list. But this happened toward the and of April. It seems 2/3 children are suddenly wanting to sew with the machine. While I am lucky enough to have a dedicated sewing room, it is not big enough to be set up for that many people with different sewing needs.

For those wondering, the X Plus blocks can be found as a free pattern all over the place. I believe the original block comes from the 1930s but it really peaked in popularity a few years back when we were all on Flickr. I used the 12.5” measurements in my Creative Live class on working with low volume fabrics. Indeed, I had 10 blocks leftover from samples from filming that I intended to use in this quilt, then decided to let April 2019 stand on its own. If anything needs to be defined it is these times.

Modern Mills and Stars from Perfectly Pretty Patchwork

Back when we could hang out with other people I had a lovely breakfast with Kristyne Czepuryk. We are lucky enough to live in the same city and get to hang out when our schedules allow. She shared a copy of her latest book with me. It is pretty and perfect and so bang on for her style, I love it. And right now, a lovely distraction from the real world. She asked me to make something from the book and share it as part of her book tour.

I chose the Mills and Stars pattern, one that has always appealed to me yet I’ve never made a single block. Because it is me, I changed up the colours quite a bit from Kristyne’s typical pastel palette. It works with the patterns in the book because they are classic, traditional patterns that be played with.

Mills and Stars can also be known by Hummingbird as well as Periwinkle. In fact, I remember Kristyne telling me the story of the block at that breakfast but it has slipped away from my brain.

I won’t lie, this quilt was a lot of work, especially for me. I am decidedly not a template person. Yet there I was cutting out hundreds of pieces for 73 blocks, each with 12 pieces of fabric in them. (I watched/listened to Fleabag, Dr. Thorne, and Austenland while I worked on it. Whatever it takes!) In the end, however, it was welcome work. A respite from the world to just get lost in someone else’s decision making. Once all the cutting is done it just becomes assembly line production. I always forget how fast the sewing goes when you’ve cut everything in advance. I did eventually finish.

The final quilt is a slight adaptation from the original pattern. I made it one row of stars all the way around smaller. My intention is to gift this as a baby quilt so I didn’t need it to be 60” square. I also used a single piece of the background around the center section, rather than what the pattern called for. Just to show off that cool Carolyn Friedlander fabric.

So often we think things aren’t ‘for us’. I won’t lie, the book is delightful and pretty, but it isn’t something I am instinctively drawn to. More often than not, however, it is about seeing shapes or projects beyond the fabric. Kind of like viewing a house you want to buy and ignoring the colour on the walls. I’m not a basic beige person in my house, but someone else may love it. I’d rather have lime green and that can turn off a whole new crowd of people. I think we all need to look at shapes and patterns more than fabric and colour when we see a book or a new quilt. That’s why I was drawn to this pattern myself. It was the mix of block sizes and the graphic nature of the block itself that grabbed me. I just had to add my own spin on it.

The books is full of classic designs and some really cool projects. For each block design there is a quilt pattern as well as a small project. And who is to say you can’t mix and match one block with another project? The instructions are attentive to detail, templates are included in a tear out sheet, and the photography is well, pretty. Kristyne has made a lovely book.