I’ve been waiting for this, and even though I still don’t have my paper, in-the-hand catalogue…hooray! my quilt, Annularity, has hit print. This is a screenshot of the digital catalogue.
The direct link to this page in the Fall Keepsake Quilting catalogue will allow you to order yourself a kit, if you like. I’ve made two of these…now it is your turn to play with color and with the cool Painter’s Palette Solids. (Or, if you want, you can just order the pattern.) Thanks, Keepsake!
Happy Quilting!
I recently received an email from a reader, asking me about the details of my Jolly Old St. Nicholas quilt. Her simple request pointed up a problem all of us blog writers face: how to find things on our blogs. I do have an index, but she specifically asked for more information about that quilt, which is NOT on the indexed link.
While it may seem strange to have a post about Christmas in June, I will occasionally be going through some long-term projects, and collecting all the information about that quilt in one post, linking to other posts when necessary. I can see several that are strung out across several months, that would benefit from this coalescing. So here it goes for Santa.
Pattern: I used Santa’s Village, from Thimblecreek, but with many changes. See Construction Photos section for more info.
Outside Large Green Blocks: I didn’t like many of the pattern’s original blocks. So I drafted my own in QuiltPro Software, and asked my Mid-Century Modern Beemates to each make me a block, shown in this post, where there are 14 blocks to choose from. You can download templates (or pattern pieces) for each block on that page.
Construction Photos
On the original pattern, you can see the top of the tree and the tips of Santa’s toes being chopped off by the addition of their giant rick-rack. I decided I wanted a cleaner finish as I wasn’t keen about the “chop-offs” on the original pattern. I measured carefully, placing everything just so, but in the end, I slimmed down the top of the tree (inset) so everything would fit.
I also added a 1-inch red band around the outside edge. Be careful in your measuring. The center Santa block needs to finish at 24″ so if you are going to add a one-inch border, then the center Santa needs to finish at 22 inches (cut the center white square down to 22 1/2″ inches to allow for seam allowances).
The feet were a torture to applique, but they make this guy, so stick with it.
As mentioned before, the blocks were made by my mates in the Mid-Century Modern Bee; here I audition them for their placement around Santa.
Then it was time to start on the trees and houses. The original pattern has a lot of funny pieces at the ends of the trees. Basically you make a sort of flying geese block, stretched or regular (depending on where in the tree stack it is), then added a spacer at the end to even it out. I eliminated those end spacers on the top and middle triangle sections as I thought it was a lot of bother. You can figure this out.
Truth: My pattern is either lent out to someone, or in a proverbial “safe place.” Either way I can’t put my hands on it, in order to be more specific about this.
Another Truth: This pattern needed several more rounds of pattern testing. I did talk to the designer at a quilt show sharing with him some of the problems I had with it. He wasn’t very happy with me.
I’m showing you both of these photos, so you can see the types of spacers between the house and the tree. I had to put one on each end of a house-tree strip in order to make them fit (different from the pattern), so don’t hesitate to make adjustments if needed. You can see what I’m talking about if you look at the original pattern, where the tips of the trees in the corner are touching the houses. Mine don’t touch.
Since my reader asked me about the center Santa, I thought I’d throw in a couple more photos showing how cute he is. Yes, sir.
And that’s Jolly Old St. Nicholas!
My friend Simone recently launched her first line of fabric for Paintbrush Studios. It’s called On Your Mark and has its origins in punctuation marks.
Because I’m a pal, I get to sew with it. I made her a baby quilt using her fabrics, perfect because the fabric has a lovely soft hand that the quilt won’t be scratchy at all. I call this Triple Square.
It’s basically a variation of a nine-patch, using 2-1/2″ squares with side pieces of 2-1/2″ by 6-1/2.” It goes together very quickly (like I started it Saturday afternoon, and delivered it, unbound, by Monday evening). You may have seen this at QuiltCon, where she used it in her demo.
It finishes at 42″ square. I quilted it in random angle lines, going around and over and above the brightly colored squares. I threw in some random other background pieces, just to spice it up. Then I channel quilted it around the outside edges, to create a type of border.
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This is Simone’s free downloadable pattern for her collection, titled Gumdrops, which you can find on the link at the top of this post.
Look for Simone’s fun and colorful collection coming soon to a quilt store near you!
My Rainbow Gardens has made its way out into the world. I was contacted by the Victoria Quilter’s Guild in Victoria, B.C. (Canada) to ask if it was all right if they used my quilt for their poster. The theme of the quilt show and sale is the City of Gardens, which is one of Victoria’s names, according to the website for the city: “Victoria – otherwise known as the “City of Gardens” – is home to a number of spectacular gardens that range from formal to heritage, exotic to west coast, and multi-themed to mostly rhododendron.”
So, a quiet and reserved “YESSSSS!” was my response. I soon will have the poster in my possession, which I plan to tape up on the door to my sewing room studio.
While the real life poster should arrive here soon, I was sent this image of the poster by a an observant reader of mine, who saw the poster and sent me a photo of it. If you are up in that area, put it on your calendar — I would love to go to a quilt show that has live music.
Since we’ve all just finished watching the Olympics in Korea, I thought I would get you prepped up for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, by showing you their patchwork-like logos. Can we make quilts like this? They are auditioning their mascots now, because no matter where you are in or what you are doing in Japan, there is a mascot for it.
I think we need a quilt mascot.
I made this image in my very first Digital Art Class; the other students thought I was pretty much a nut-case, but I still like Lady Liberty draped in a quilt. But now as we are more international, we need a cute little quilty creature (I vote patchwork with some appliqué) to carry forward our message.
Go to it, you creatives!
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 