Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

January 8, 2016January 8, 2016 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

The winner of our giveaway is Quilter in Motion, aka Marsha. And no, she doesn’t get a chicken dinner–I just like saying that. Thank you so much for all your birthday memories–I loved reading them! I have a couple of favorites, and have read many of them to my husband, who also picked a few of his favs. You are all the best.

You’ve all been busy out there in Quilterland, contacting felted wool/wool felt suppliers and I have a few more pieces of information for you, as you collect and gather.

First up is a note from Stephanie, saying she contacted Errin Rissberger at QuiltingAcres on ETSY, and bought this fine array of colors of felted wool, all for about $69.50:

Stephen had shopped around at some other sites and found this one to be most reasonable. Erin has those bundles up there, ready to go, if you want one too.

Brenda contacted Donna, of Prairie Woolens, and she wrote that she does: “create custom kits for pretty much any pattern whether it’s something we carry or not and there are no requirements. I checked out the picture and I would say it would likely be the hand-dyed colors [of wool]. The 100% wool felt and the felted wool are similar in thickness so I think you could use them together in the same project. I’ve mixed felt and wool together in the same project and it works wonderfully. Hopefully this helps but if you have any questions, please let me know.”

This screenshot is Primitive Gatherings’ offering. I was down in there shop this past week, and they stock felted wools, but no wool felt. They are beautiful, though. You can purchase them on their website, too.

Whether or not you’ve already purchased your wool, you can bet that halfway through the project, you’ll be wanting a different color, so either head over there now, or save this for later. I so appreciate those who have written in to pass on information for others to benefit from.

The next post on this will be in a couple of weeks, just after the beginning of the February. On February 1st, we have the reveals for our art quilt group, Four-in-Art, a collaborative group of quilters who wanted to try something different. We post four times a year (hence the name) and work in the chosen themes. This year’s theme is Color, and February’s challenge is Microscopic.

Before that, I’ll be going to Road to California, where I’ll have two quilts hanging in the show–if you are going, please DM me on IG and find me–I’ll be the girl with the goofy smile standing in front of one of these quilts. I generally ~~post a lot on~~ flood Instagram with quilt photos from the show, so you can find me there: occasionalpiecequilt (the button is on the right, if that’s easier).

Okay, Marsha, I’ll be in touch with you to get your snail mail address and get your magazine off to you!

200 Quilts · Quilts

Two Finishes: Baskets and a Halloween Quilt for 2016

December 2, 2015December 1, 2015 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

NOTE: Please forgive the blog gremlins who used to work here. To quote Monty Python, they have been sacked.Quilt Number 154
Spooky Action at a Distance

Construction began October 2015 • Finished November 2015

I began saving Polaroid blocks for this quilt two years ago, and purchased the fabric about the same time. I thought it was time to push it over to the “done” side of the ledger, given my last post. Label’s not yet finished–coming soon. The title is taken from one of Einstein’s scoffing statements over the idea that that one particle can have an effect on another particle which might be some distance away. He thought is was not possible. Modern physics has proved him wrong, and scads of poems have been written about this, so I thought, why not a quilt title for a spooky quilt?

Howard Levy’s poem, of the same name, notes that those who snuggle under quilts can experience this effect:

It is this way: men and women
spin. Hundreds of miles apart, thousands
of miles, the speed of light, it will make no difference….

And Einstein, could he admit
that love would be fast enough,
that this “spooky action at a distance”
is not necessarily paradox,
that these two influence simply in their being,
taken in to each other and separate,
separate and taken in.

Quilt Number 155
I carried quilt and basket through whispering grass

Made the first basket in May 2015 • Finished November 2015

This was a fun quilt to make, a really great one to do with large scraps. I have a tutorial •here• for cutting up the baskets quickly, and the how-to for the handle is *here.* Just go go go, trying not to think about it too much, and have fun while you cut and sew. The title is taken from “The Picnic,” a poem by Maylee Bossy, about an outing after her husband has passed away. My husband is still very much here, but the poem involved a quilt and a basket — how could I pass it up?

So I guess that deadline thing is working for me, right? A Halloween quilt finished in November? A Spring quilt finished in autumn? Let’s just say we’re EARLY, and leave it at that.

200 Quilts · Quilts

Flying Through a Rainbow Mini Quilt

November 5, 2015May 18, 2023 Elizabeth E.1 Comment

Flying Through a Rainbow
Quilt #152

You’ve seen this one before, but I wanted to give you the directions on how I put it together. I made this for the Schnitzel and Boo Mini Quilt Swap, the final small quilt of my four mini swaps. I know that people traditionally go over the top for this swap, but when I glimpsed into my partner’s life, I realized that she did a variety of activities and wanted to honor that by using the Flying Geese block going in multiple directions, but with a twist: I used two half-square triangles to make the block so I could work in a bunch of neutral light fabrics behind, including a fun fabric that was a bowling score sheet (one of her hobbies–she doesn’t read my blog, so I’m safe to tell).

I cut a 4″ block from sixteen different solids (then sliced it in half diagonally), choosing four gradated hues from four different color families: violets, blues, greens and yellows. I then cut a 4″ block from ten different low-volume background fabrics and sliced those on the diagonal so I could mix and match the backgrounds. Yes I had some triangles left over on the backgrounds, but I wanted a variety.

I cut four 3 1/2″ center squares, then laid out all the cut pieces so I could see the play of backgrounds to the colors. After I was able to get an arrangement I liked, I stitched the two half-triangles together, pressing the seam allowance to the darker side. I trued them up to measure 3 1/2″ blocks, using the nifty BlocLoc ruler I bought at QuiltCon. It’s worth every penny, believe me.

Then I sewed each color family together as if it were a nine-patch, then trued up those four blocks. Last step is to sew the four blocks together.

I am always stumped by “how to quilt this thing.” I decided to keep playing around with the triangle theme: I traced smaller triangles in each larger one, and echo-quilted those. In each color group the triangles are placed in different places, providing a different, yet harmonious quilting design. The background was quilted in the wavy line stitch from my sewing machine. I had to dodge around the triangles a lot, switching back and forth between the wavy stitch and a straight stitch. That’s one more reason I’m glad it’s a mini: they are easy to maneuver on the machine.

So that’s the season for my mini quilt experience. It was a good experience and I had fun coming up with ideas.

Rolling Rainbow Star
Quilt #150

I did finally finish the pattern to Rolling Rainbow Star (above) and it’s now in my PayHip shop, if you want to make a great little 16″ quilt.

I do have one more mini that I didn’t swap. More on that in the next post.

200 Quilts

Mini Madness Wrap-Up (Mostly)

October 16, 2015May 18, 2023 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

This past summer, I joined four swaps, then had my head examined and swore never to do it again. It was sort of a good thing to have some small things to try out my design skills and to keep me quilting, so I guess another title for this post is “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” I do plan to do individual posts on a couple of them (so you’ll see them again), plus I have one more mini quilt that I made with quite a story (not shown, but soon). But so far, here they are, in the order they rolled out from my house.

Mini House_frontlabeled — *The Heart’s Solace: Home, Sweet, Home* (No. 147)

Although a little bit late (she had fabric and pattern issues), Emily sent me mine and I am so in love with it. I ended up drafting her a pattern on my QuiltPro quilt software, which I’m happy to share with you. It’s in a PDF file: Emily’s House On the first page, the piece for the narrow sashing around the central patchwork square is cut off. I’d recommend using the width of the pattern piece as a guide and cutting a strip to fit your work after you start sewing it together.

This post has links to my PayHip store where you can purchase the pattern.

Here is the creative and beautiful quilt I received from that swap–a lovely Dresden-plate type circle of houses. I love them all and love the variety of sewing machine fancy stitches that my partner used. I hear there is a pattern out there for it called Dresden Neighborhood (by Persimmon Dreams) and you can buy it from Craftsy.

One hallmark of swaps is the little gifts that you send, although I did join a swap titled “Simply Mini.” (More about that one later.) I made two of my swap partners Dumpling Pouches and filled them with interesting PostIt Notes, some washi tape and quilty trinkets. I’ve seen some swap loot that is over the top; I hope my partners aren’t disappointed (all of them have received their packages).

Rolling Rainbow Star–I made one for the Simply Mini Swap and then had to make one for myself. I changed up the binding on it to tell them apart.

I love this backing.

Flying Rainbow. The last one I made was for the Schnitzel & Boo swap–the grandmama of all swaps on Instagram, now in it’s fourth year. I wanted to say I did that one, and now I can. The quilter I was to send to liked bowling, cooking and classic comic books, so I bought her some bowling score fabric to use the quilt, and backed it with fabric showing wee chefs and bakers.