And the Play Continues

The 2024 Quilters Playcation Adventure Sew Along has wrapped up but I’m still playing!

I hunted through my stash for a suitable backing for the quilt, but I rarely buy multiple yards of fabric. There were a couple good choices but both were only 2 yards and I needed 3 or more.

I decided to make some 15 inch improv blocks to created a panel so that I could use what I had. There needed to be some curves in one of the blocks, as they are one of Cheryl Arkison’s favorite things! Once I had a pair of curved blocks, I found I had 2 left over curved sections. (These blocks are made by layering 2 squares together, right sides up, and cutting a curved section out of one corner. The corner section on the bottom layer can be used as a template for another to cut another block). So my “discard” corners became the basis of the next set…and it just kept going until I finally said enough!

I had 3 green squares on my table from the quilt fabric. I realized that if I sewed one pair together and stacked the 3 on top, I’d have the beginning of a tree. I kept adding strips until I had the height I wanted and then cut added a trunk and added background triangles to each side of the green stack, making a tree shape.

The final block is a repeat of Block 21, which I particularly liked. The center of the block is a piece of background fabric, perfect for the quilt label.

I sewed a panel of these three blocks with adding strips of a airy green and white leafy fabric left over from another quilt. The completed back consists of one 2 yard length of fabric, and two pieced narrow panels of second fabric flanking the panel of improv blocks. It didn’t just make do, it makes the back as much fun as the quilt.

Quilter Playcation Adventure Sew Along 2024, Rainbow Edition top

50+ weeks, 49 improvisational blocks designed by Cheryl Arkison. Every Tuesday Cheryl would appear on Instagram at 2PM Mountain time, give us a new free block design and show us how to sew it together. Sometimes she had one done and other times she was partly designing (or maybe she prefer to say playing on the spot).

Cheryl made a black and white version from fabric she’d designed years ago and a pastel rainbow edition.

I decided to try using a “rainbow” of analogous colors with occasion pops of a brighter color. I stuck with that color scheme for the 14 weeks of winter and early spring, but as the weather got warmer, so did my blocks!

Every few weeks I’d try to cool down a block or two and then the brights would be right back!

I’m really happy with the way these 49 blocks have come together. Cheryl alternated blocks with a background fabric with blocks of just the colored fabrics. Not having a good sense of where we were being taken, I let my initial blocks be the size they wanted to be. So that meant some additions and occasionally rotating a block when it came time to assemble the blocks. The last 14 blocks are all 9.25 inches finished and the top rows are 8.5 in height and vary in width.

The finished quilt top is currently 64 inches square. Still mulling about the back, but thrilled to have the top done before the end of the year!

Working with Cheryl Arkison every week this year has been so much fun. She had me groaning a few times, but the blocks always got made on time. And I have to say, her scrap bin was always way more interesting than mine, even though we were working on the same project. Still wondering how that was possible!

Happy New Year everyone!

Book Review: All the Beauty in the World

It’s been a long time since I’ve done a book review on my blog. Is it because more of the quilting world is online and not in print? Or because my bookcase with craft books is packed as tight as possible? It’s a good question! But here is a book I want to tell you about.

All the Beauty in the World was written by Patrick Bringley and published by Simon and Shuster Paperbacks in 2023. It’s about Patrick’s time as a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. When his older brother died of cancer in his 20s, Patrick needed to get away from his office job at the New Yorker to find some head space to grieve. He found a job as a guard at the Met. He was there 10 years….and ti worked.

When I picked this book up in a bookstore, I was worried it might be focused on his loss. But that’s not the case. It’s about so much more. Patrick found himself surrounded by beauty with lots of time to reflect on the art and on life. And he made friends with the folks with varied ages and multiple ethnic backgrounds who work at the Met as a museum guards and who shared their wisdom with him.

So does this book have anything to do with quilting? It does! While he was working at the museum, there was a show of quilts from Gee’s Bend. I loved reading his take on these quilts. and more amazing, how he compares the process the women followed sewing these quilts to the process of Michelangelo painting a fresco. So great.

Not only did Patrick find the quiet and beauty he needed to grieve, his book brings a similar peace and quiet to the reader. And the line drawings by Maya McMahon of the art work at the Met are so beautiful.

I have a small collection of books that I keep to read and re-read over and over again. They are mostly biographies. This book is definitely getting added to that collection of special books.

Pick up a copy! See what Patrick says about quilters, and about life.

Two Identical Nine Patch Base Blocks with One Variation

Last week I talked about choosing colors that I wanted to work with at this time of year. Pink ais the tint of red. Although they derive from the same primary color, red, it’s a bit unusual to see them together. I like how happy they are. And it is fun to work with them.

I’ve managed to make a bit of progress on my project this week.

I have the components all cut and initial piecing done and am just starting to assemble the blocks. So far I have 2 completed blocks!

The red block is called “Waterwheel” and the pink block is called “Four Patch Chain”. They are the same basic nine patch block with four patches in each corner. The only difference is the half square triangle blocks in the red Waterwheel block. Putting a red square next to the red triangle in the half square triangle gives the block motion. that’s what makes it look like a water wheel.

The colored squares in the four patch blocks of the waterwheel will all be different. I like to think of them as splashes of water as the waterwheel spins.

I don’t think I’ve ever made a quilt before where the alternate block (the pink chain) was the same basic block as the feature block.

It’s all rather satisfying. And exciting.

New Project/Thinking about Color

What’s this?

I wasn’t expecting to make another quilt this year. But I fell in love with a traditional block that I was working with for another project.

I pulled a white on white out of my stash and a medium blue and light blue which was slightly on the grey side. They were okay together, and I left them out to look at them for three days.

I kept thinking “Yes, they are fine together.” Rapidly followed by “I don’t want to work with them.” This is the season of shadows and low sun angles here in New England. I just couldn’t get excited sewing a blue quilt. It would have been fine on the other side of the winter solstice!

In my stash search I found a lot of light pink fabric. I was about to rob yard of red fabric from a set for a three yard quilt. But when I went to get the red, the set was nowhere to be found! (I’m sure I set it aside to sell at our guild’s upcoming spring show).

Looking in my bin of solids, I realized I probably had enough other reds to make the small quilt I was planning. I thought I might have to use an assortment of reds but there was just enough on one piece to work.

Pink, red and white, with splashes of other colors. Definitely happy and cheerful collection of fabrics! Now I’m excited.

Color matters!

"Piece of Cake" 2024 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt Completed

It took me a long time to get around to quilting this top which I finished in June. It sat around all summer, waiting! Seems appropriate to have finished now because this quilt feels very autumnal.

The pattern is called “Piece of Cake”, Karen Montgomery’s 2024 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt. My Brown Bag came from O’Sewpersonal in O’Fallon, Missouri. I exchanged two fabrics in my bag for 2 alternates in the same fabric line, Kim Diehl’s “Quiet Grace” line printed by Henry Glass & Co., Inc.

The colors in the fabrics are outside of my comfort zone. I tend toward bright primary colors or pastels. So I didn’t love with this quilt while I was working on it. It was only today, when I hung the finished quilt on the clothes line that realized that it really is a beautiful quilt.

I mostly used straight line quilting but there are free-motion quilted daisy-like flowers in the rust colored blocks and tiny clusters of berries in the setting border blocks which echo the berries in the black fabric.

The quilt is turned on it’s side in the photo above so that it didn’t drag in the dusty ground. Here is a photo of the quilt rotated.

Image rotated to show the quilt as it’s intended to be shown.

And finally a couple of pictures of my assistant, who has taken an active part in the assembly of this quilt. Click to see him earlier in the process. Seems like he thinks he’s the subject of my photograph and then turns around and realizes that maybe he isn’t the star this time!

Double Irish Chain Quilt "Elusive Foxes"

Here is my lap size Double Irish Chain quilt I’ve named “Elusive Foxes” because the foxes in the fabric appear and disappear at random. I cut the fox fabric in strips and didn’t fussy cut the foxes to have them centered in the pieces.

This is a small quilt l because I just wanted to trying making a Double Irish Chain. It was only intended to be an exercise in quilting, but it’s turned out to be a sweet little quilt.

To really see the striking chaining design, this quilt is best viewed from a distance.

I quilted the open space in the blocks with a single flower. You can’t see the quilted flowers because the fabric is so busy. But I know they are there!

Here is close-up of a quilted flower and the back of the quilt showing the fox fabric.

5 1/2 Inch Tiny Baby Waldorf Type Doll

A young friend of my asked for a tiny Waldorf type doll. I haven’t made any dolls for a couple years and was actually thinking about making a twelve to thirteen inch doll just for the fun of doing it. Tiny dolls are a real challenge, just because they are so small. I had designed a pattern a few years ago, so it was just a matter of gathering up some scrap doll cloth and knuckling down to work.

I did solve one of my long-standing issues making doll bodies. Because the doll is tiny, I decreased the length of the zig-zag stitch I use to sew the doll skin. In the past I’ve never liked how the stitches showed when I stuffed the doll with wool roving. I stuffed this baby tighter than I usually do, and the stitches did exactly what they are supposed to do—held tight and stayed out of sight! One problem solved for any future doll I make!

Being so small, I wasn’t able to do my typical eye shape. While I’m not super thrilled with these eyes, that’s who she decided to be! I would make her legs a tad longer if I ever make another tiny baby doll. Not sure that I ever will!

Here is a gallery of the doll and her clothes. (The backdrop for these photos are blocks from my version of Cheryl Arkison’s Quilters Playcation Adventure Sew Along 2024—Rainbow edition).

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Here’s link to photos of the tiny Waldorf type doll that I made in 2020. The clothes have definitely improved since then! It’s really hard to sew clothing this small! I had to go back and re-sew several seams because they fabric didn’t catch well in the stitching.

"Peek-a-Boo Cats" with a Road Map Baby Quilt

This was a fun quilt to make. The block is called “Children’s Delight” from the Electric Quilt 8 Block Library. By itself, the block look like it is really asymmetric but dropped in the quilt it is a grid…except that the right side of the quilt doesn’t have any sashing.

The cats in this quilt are two different sizes. I could have fussy cut the larger cat so that there would have been one in each block, but I rather like them appearing and disappearing across the quilt.

I designed the quilt to be the exact size as this great road map panel which I had in my stash.

Road Map panel with 2 Matchbook vehicles, a red car and a tractor pulling an open cart, from my toy chest.

I had to be very careful when I sandwiched this quilt because the top and bottom were exactly the same size. The batting was larger, so I had to check and recheck to make sure the pieced top and the panel were accurately aligned. I thought I had done a pretty good job but didn’t really know until I trimmed the quilt before binding it. It turned out to be very slightly off. Not up to NASA standards, but something I was easily able to remedy with my rotary cutter!

To go with this quilt, I found two little wooden unpainted cars with tops that are also hand grips, perfect for a toddler. They are too large for the panel’s roadway, but the right size for a little tyke. The tiny cars can come later, once he’s older.

Courthouse Steps Block

This is the 8th block in the Washington Whirlwind quilt along hosted by Barbara Brackman and available on her Civil War Quilts blog.

This block this month is actually named White House Steps but it is a a traditional Courthouse Steps block, a log cabin variation.

The other blocks I’ve sewn for this quilt are red white and blue and orange and lavender. I wanted a block with a different set of colors to help tie the 2 color sets together. You wouldn’t think that red, blue, orange, lavender, green, yellow and blue would ever play well together. But they these are all 1930’s reproductions, and because of that, they will. I think the designers of the original feed sack fabrics, intentionally picked colors that blended well. Intentional or not, it happens that they always seem to coordinate very well.

One more block for this quilt, as I’ve chosen to use the on-point 9 block layout. More on that soon!

Double Irish Chain Quilt Top with Elusive Foxes

I needed to cut a some extra strips to finish my double Irish chain quilt and finally found the time to get that done. It enjoyed assembling this quilt top, but I must say, I didn’t realize how awesome the dark green double chain is until I hung it up and stepped back to take this photo.

I think that the 4 tiny tossed green floral prints in the alternate blocks might detract from the overall look of the quilt. I can see how stunning a double Irish chain could be with just a solid color and with white alternate blocks. I can see blue and white, green and white, or red and white.

I made this quilt just for fun, with fabrics I had, just to try making a double Irish chain. So accomplishedmy goal. I learned I could strip piece sections of the blocks and and if the back ground were a single fabric, then the entire block could be strip pieced. I would recommend cutting the fabric strips to half width of fabric (approximately 21 inches) as the shorter strips are easier to handle. That’s what I did when I sewed the strip sets for this quilt.

The backing is going to be the fox fabric, so this is going to be lots of fun when it is finished.

Apple Doll Quilt

Here’s the completed Apple Doll Quilt. It’s too small for an IKEA doll bed or to be used as a quilt for some of the popular 18 inch dolls. But it’s perfect for a small Waldorf doll or a Hazel Village doll or animal.

It’s the new Limited Edition visiting Hazel Village animal, Clara Otter, who is relaxing under this little quilt. Her bed is a cardboard flat that originally was used to protect a case of canned dog food from dents during shipping. Not only is it comfy, but it’s perfect for Clara as the Hazel Village animals like to create things they need from other available items.

I designed the tiny tossed apple print fabric which was printed at Spoonflower.com a long time ago. The fabric isn’t currently available for purchase.

Notice: This blog is not monetized: I do not use affiliate links. When there are links in a post, they are to give credit to another creative person, because I like or have used a product, or to help the reader easily find supplies for a project.

Doll Quilt in Progress: From Trash to Treasure

I’ve been quilting for HOW long?? And still I made an avoidable error. I recently purchased a pattern. When I read the instructions for cutting the fabric and looked at the instructions I knew that there was serious error for cutting part of the pattern. I should have drawn the block in EQ8 and checked it, which is what I did…eventually…but instead I just went head and cut out the fabric as directed.

I thought I could wing it, or change some other parts of the pattern and make it work. I re-cut a lot of the pieces, but no. The half square triangles (HSTs) were never going to work.

I could have just tossed the lot, but years ago I designed the apple fabric and had it printed at Spoonflower. No way I was tossing it!

It didn’t take me long to figure it that the orphan patches would make a sweet doll quilt. I laid the HSTs out in lots of different patterns but finally decided I liked a simplest layout. I got it all sewed together and looked at it for a few days. Nice, but it could be better.

I couldn’t be believe I was doing this for a doll quilt, but I took off the borders to added an inner red strip. I made raised flange from a 1 1/8 inch strip of red fabric. I folded the strip in half the long way and pressed. Then I sewed it to the pieced blocks using a very scant 1/4 inch seam. And finally reattached the apple border using a full 1/4 inch seam.

Doll quilt sandwiched, basted and ready to quilt

I do like version #2 better, though there was really nothing wrong with version #1! It’s all sandwiched, using up a remnant of cotton quilt batting, and is ready to quilt.

The puppy had surgery two days ago, so this will have to wait. The pup is sore, but doing well, but I’ll doing quiet tasks to be near her until she’s feeling better.

Once the it’s quilted, I’m planning on adding red binding. A doll somewhere is going to be toasty wrapped in her quilt, maybe dreaming of making an apple pie for her little person!

What I learned sewing the "Whirling Star" Block

The July block in the Civil War Quilts Sew Along 2024 is the “Whirling Star” block from BlockBase+. It is #3295 and attributed to Nancy Cabot. You can get the pattern from the preceding link if you don’t own a copy of BlockBase+.

The block above isn’t perfect, and I know why, as well how I could have made a pristine block. Here’s the scoop. This is a block that needs to be cut using templates. Not my favorite, but doable. I printed off the copy from the Civil Wars Quilts website at 100% and checked the one inch square box on the pattern to see if it was true. It wasn’t. I needed to put the printed sheet in my copier/printer and increase the pattern to 112%. (If you print a copy, check it. Yours might be just fine).

So far, so good. I pulled a cereal box out of the recycling bin to make templates. But then figured that since I was just sewing a single block, cutting the printer paper pattern would be fine. And it was. (If I were going to make multiple blocks, I would have cut them from plastic for quilt templates—readily available from multiple sources online).

How does this block get assembled? Here are the components of the central section of the block:

The center of the block needs to be “sliced” in half. There is a smaller triangle template and a wider one. Sew a pair of the the smaller and wider triangle together. PRESS. (This was my first oops. It was a really hot day, I was sewing upstairs using my Bernina which gives me the most accurate in 1/4 inch seams. The iron was downstairs. I figured I’d just finger press the pieces. NOT a good choice. Each of the seams in this block need to be pressed with a iron. Really!)

Sew 2 sets of triangles together to created half the central octagon. PRESS all the seams in the same direction, as shown in my photo above. This is critical to creating a block that is as flat as possible—not easy as 8 points come together in the center of the block.

Sew the two half octagons together. Then add the small half square triangle to create a square block. Awesome. The hardest part is all done.

Sew together the trio of small triangles that will attach to the central square. Press all these seams in ONE direction, doesn’t matter which way, just be consistent.

Pin the outer triangle sections to the inner square. Check to make sure you have the narrow triangle in the outer section match to the narrow triangle in the central square. It helps to use a dress makers pin to do that. Attach the two pieces, pinning along the 1/4 inch seam (not across it as you would to sew it). Open the block to check for alignment and adjust the two pieces as needed.

That’s it. You should have 1/4 of the background beyond each of the eight points in this block. That allows you to sew this block to another block or sashing without loosing the sharp points.

My center isn’t perfect and the seam allowance beyond the points is better in some places than others. It’s all in the careful pressing…or in my case, the lack of it.

Nevertheless, it was a fun block to make and I learned a lot in the process!

Double Irish Chain Quilt with Elusive Foxes, Work in Progress

My 6 month Black Labrador old puppy is keeping me very busy but I did get a window of quiet this week to start assembling my Double Irish Chain Quilt. The foxes in the fabrics are tossed, so they aren’t all going to be upright in the quilt. It’s just fun to see how many of the foxes end up in boxes and whether they are on their way in, way out or upside down!

Here’s the pooch, thinking about whether to swim to get the stick I tossed in the river! She’s new to swimming so her decision was to keep all her paws on the riverbed and give the stick a miss. All good!

Double Irish Chain Project

I’ve had some kelly green fabrics in my stash for years and pulled them out a few months ago. I’ve never made a double Irish chain quilt, so decided this might be the perfect project for these fabrics. I had a green that reads solid and another green on white in 4 designs that is a good background fabric. But I needed one more fabric. My stash doesn’t have a lot of yard plus cuts, so I had to get imaginative. Finally I pulled out a fabric with foxes on it that I decided would be a fun contrasting fabric (the yellow in the diagram above).

Here are the fabrics for this quilt.

It will be interesting to see how many of the little foxes appear in intact in the 2 inch pieces (the yellow squares above) in this quilt!

Halfway Through the 2024 Rainbow Quilters Playcation Adventure Sew Along

Wow. We’re halfway though the 2024 Rainbow Edition of Cheryl Arkison’s Quilters Playcation Adventure Sew Along. I started with a very muted palate but had a stack of warmer fabrics. Those started to enter play as winter turned to spring. Here are the blocks so far. I think the scrappy blocks are my favorites, but they are all fun.

Peg Doll Crèche

Our Church School is having a week long summer day camp again this year, with the theme of Christmas in June. I’m volunteering with the craft projects. We are planning to have the children make several crèches over the course of the week.

One of them is this peg doll crèche. This is my mock up. These are the standard size Boy pegs, Angel pegs and Girl Pegs and I had a baby size peg in my stash. We have enough pegs for each child to have a Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, 3 Wise Men and a couple shepherds. I think we actually will have enough peg dolls for the children to add other village figures, like the crèches in Italy and France, were you have to hunt among the villagers to find to Holy Family. So much fun!

The kids will be given baby pegs in a tiny wooden bowl which I found at the Etsy shop, BlessingsFromHeaven7. Here is the sweet Baby Jesus in a bowl. (I only used peg dolls from my own stash for my crèche to make sure there were ample figures for the campers).

If you want more information on how I make my peg dolls, you can look at my tutorial on making Pea Sprout Peg Dolls or my tutorial on making Leaf Peg Dolls. Peg dolls are really are fun to make and not difficult!

"Piece of Cake" 2024 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt Top

Assembled! Here is my version of Karen Montgomery’s 2024 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt she has named “Piece of Cake.” I wasn’t so sure about the colors while I was sewing it, but now I think this is one stunning quilt.

Back in February, when my bag of mystery fabrics arrived, I pulled out two reds which I didn’t particularly like. You can read more about that in my post from February 22, 2024. At the time I knew I’d swapped in fabrics of similar values to those I’d decided not to use, but I really had no idea what they would look in the finished quilt top. Whew. It worked out!

Like many of the other mystery quilt participants, I also decided to use a print fabric in the 4 patches flanking the center of the quilt. Karen has them as background fabric, with the intention that they could be used to do a fancy quilting design in that negative space. With all the dark fabrics in this quilt, I felt that having 4 cream patches wasn’t the best option for my quilt. I did lay it out with the background patches, but I felt it was just too white.

This quilt is assembled on the diagonal. The steps in Karen Montgomery’s mystery quilt are always very easy. But the assembly, despite all her excellent instructions, is always mind boggling. It’s the point where I’m so glad I didn’t decide to make more than one version because the piecing steps are so easy! But when I’m done, I’m so glad I made at least one!

"Cake Stand" Block

Karen Montgomery revealed the 2024 Brown Bag Mystery Quilt pattern a few weeks ago. She called the quilt “Piece of Cake” and at the reveal explained why: The main block in the quilt is called “Cake Stand.”

The steps in Karen’s mystery quilts are always deceptively easy. The challenge comes with the assembly. This one isn’t too hard if you carefully follow her excellent “exploded” diagram. But it takes lots of checking and rechecking to avoid flipping blocks.

I’m slowly putting the quilt together, but with two adult dogs and a puppy with chronic diarrhea, I’m only managing a couple rows a day. The other day this is how I was informed that it was supper time and that sewing time for the day was over!! Quitting is all you can do when your design “wall” is blocked!