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Quilt Care | Surface Designs

Freebie alert!

Now you can give them to the people who get your quilts. Download the freebie below by clicking on the button.

This is what it looks like: four to page. Print it out on cardstock, cut it apart and pass them out with your quilts.

I did have an old Quilt Care Card, but when my sister Susan needed one for the quilt she was making, I rustled up a new one. Much better.

As a person who often wishes she’d studied graphic design (or as they sometimes reference it: surface design) in college, I’ve been amazed by all the graphics I saw on our nightly broadcasts of the Olympics. I want to do something with them all, like making a heart block seen above. Or that very cool half-circle in segments. Another color way is below:

Here’s some links to gaze at, if you’d like seeing some of the graphics in motion:

The cool pictograms denoting the different sports
You know that box the Olympians receive with their medals? Here’s what’s inside.
I liked the little video on this post.
And the connection between the pictograms and a few sports.


Oh. Okay. (Need to update my thinking.)

Dreams Between the Earth and Sky, 2018 by Judithe Hernández from here

We went over to The Cheech [museum] last week, on the last day of Judith Hernández’s exhibit, most done in pastel chalks. So many intrigued me, but the two ladies on either side of this triptych were “clad” in the embroidered designs from huipils, a typical dress.

Here’s a snapshot of the huipil I brought back from Guatemala in 2019, when I visited my sister Cynthia (she has since returned from her church mission), and she took me to so many interesting places that involved needles, thread, looms, cloth. I could have stayed a week, but we only had a weekend.

Here we are, clowning around in a woven shawl. Don’t worry; I bought a couple.)

Three women, one of them just crowned Queen of her Village, all wearing huipils (woven and embroidered tops).

Patchwork quilt made of woven scraps, with some embroideries here and there. Somewhere I have about 10 of these parches, tucked away (of course). This entire post has more information if you are interested.

But back to the tryptich, above.

In the linked video, Hernández explains the iconography of the red ram in the center image. It’s that thing that seems to come around and interrupt the smooth flow of whatever you are doing. Of course, I’m paraphrasing. I’m all too aware of red rams in my life, in the life of friends far away, in our families. I loved that this idea was put into a visual image.

My husband and I walked on the beach this last week, as we had a mini-celebration for our anniversary. The waves drawing out the different grains of sand into patterns fascinated me.


Celebrate the bits and pieces of surface design you run across in your lives–

Post Script:

One can never have too much paper or too many pencils. The pencil above is a quilt clapper made by Modern American Vintage, with the loot from the Field Notes most recent sale: I’m a sucker for small notebooks. The pencil below is a Blackwing, purchased last year. It glows 🙂 in the dark!

trying to figure out the quilting

Free Download

Fly those Geese!

Wealth of Days underneath a poster of one of our town’s vintage packing labels

When I first starting making this quilt, I cut each flying geese block by hand because I was not able to rotary cut. I drew out the lines, cut a triangle, and piled up the cut pieces in bags for their corresponding temperatures. After constucting them, I found out how unstable the edges were, how inaccurate a method this was. Of course, it didn’t help that one arm was in a sling, but hey, a quilter’s gotta’ do what a quilter’s gotta do.

I’ve also done the snowball-on-the-square method, which is good for single Flying Geese.

But I’m a fan of the four-at-a-time, provided you use the Mostly-Magical-OPQuilt method of trimming them. I showed this trick to my friend Cindy of LiveAColorfulLife the other day and she said it changed her life. I took that with a grain of salt, considering the covid-lives we’ve been living, but I was happy it worked so well for her. Here we go.

NOTE: In the free Tips and Tricks Handout, downloadable below, I give you a formula for figuring out what sizes the large squares and the small squares should be. No more charts!

I use a 4-inch ruler for smaller Flying Geese, and a 6-ish-inch ruler for larger. (Can we talk about Rulers?) It’s all in where you take your first cut, and the angle of that first cut.

Step One. Make your Flying Geese, and grab a ruler, preferably one that has a diagonal line.

Step Two: With the flying geese point FACING TOWARDS YOU, line up the ruler’s diagonal line with that right-hand folded edge.

Step Three: Concentrate on where the r.h. tip of the ruler is, and where the measurement for your Flying Geese is. I’m trying to make a Flying Geese that will finish at 3″ by 1 1/2″ tall, so I’m concentrating on the 3 1/2″. If you have done your measuring and cutting correctly, don’t worry about the lower edge right now. Line up the r.h tip ON THE FOLD.
Line up the target measurement on the LEFT-HAND FOLD, as shown. Note: I am now free to make Flying Geese any size I want, not just what’s out there in the manufactured acrylic cutting rulers.

Step Four: Trim the RIGHT excess and the TOP excess.

Step Five (and final): Rotate the Flying Geese block so the tip is pointing away from you. Line up the LEFT (3 1/2″) and LOWER (2″) side or the measurement at which you want the block to finish. Trim away the remaining excess (as shown).

I can crank through a ton of flying geese using the four-at-a-time and the Mostly-Magical-OPQuilt-method of trimming. So can you.

Okay, because everyone likes a free handout, here it is: Tips and Tricks from OPQuilt.com — Flying Geese.

Happy Quilting!

100 Quilts · Free Download · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilts

Revisiting the Red and White Pinwheel

RWP Illus_1

Interestingly, I get a lot of mail about this quilt.  It must be on a boatload of Pinterest boards, but the pattern for this quilt has gone missing.  It was originally published in a national magazine, but in searching for it (my old link to the pattern is kaput), it seems to have disappeared.  The original was in a lot of different colors, but my friend Rhonda chose to make it in red and white for a class she was teaching seven years ago. I liked hers so well, I made one of my own.  The original pattern was an 8″ block, but I made the pattern to finish at 7 1/2″ (mostly so I could get it all on one page).

I wanted to see it in blue and yellow!

Since it’s not my pattern, and it’s disappeared and I get a lot of mail about it, I decided to draw it up in my QuiltPro software, rework it in Affinity Publisher software, and have it here for you for download:

It’s not really a pattern, but more a loose set of instructions.  It’s meant to be a scrappy quilt, and there are a couple of different views, a red-white-blue version and a Kaffe Fasset fabrics version.

You can read more about it here and here.

So you don’t go away empty-handed, if you’re not interested in a pinwheel quilt, here’s a chart that came to me in a Guild newsletter.  It shows how much yardage is in a particular precut, and what that costs per yard.

Precut Yardage Chart

Happy Quilting!

(Post and free quilt pattern download was updated May 2026)

Christmas Quilts · Free Download · Free Quilt Pattern · Mini-quilt · Quilts

Tiny Tree and Teeny Trees

Tiny Trees

I’m decorating for Christmas and wanted to change out my Tiny Quilt from Autumn to Christmas, but then got wondering how a teeny-weeny quilt would look, so got busy.  These little quilts fit onto plastic picture frames:

I have two free patterns for you here, but please remember the drill: Don’t print off umpteen for your next class, or guild meeting swap or your mother.  Please send them here to get their own pattern.

The teeny tree (4×6″) pattern is in this downloadable PDF file: Teeny Christmas Tree quilt

Updated, one-page version (2021): Teeny Christmas Tree quilt

The tiny tree (8×10″) pattern is in this downloadable PDF file:Tiny Christmas tree quilt

As you can see from the samples I made up, I play fast and loose with some of the placement of pieces, really using them more as a guideline for cutting, than anything else (although I did cut out the tree exactly).

Tiny Tree_1

Cut out all the pieces for the pattern you’ve chosen.  As I noted above, sometimes I used the pattern (shown here before I added the labels) as sort of a general guidelines.  You need an accurate tree, and a nice straight edge where you’ll sew it to the tree (the diagonal line in the photo, above).Tiny Tree_2

I sewed the “sky” pieces to the sides of the trunks then trimmed the edge that would attach to the tree.  More detailed tutorial is also on my OTHER Christmas Tree block tutorial, which is sized somewhere in between these two tree sizes. (I should open up a Christmas Tree lot with all these patterns.)Tiny Tree_3

Sew the “right” side onto the tree.  Make sure you keep the marked top triangle point pointing upwards.

Tiny Tree_4a

Trim any stray areas (above), then add the other side.

Tiny Tree_5

Straighten out the bottom of the tree assembly.  Center, then sew on the tree-trunk unit, pressing seam towards tree (so it looks like the trunk is under the tree).Tiny Tree_6a

Now to add the snowdrifts on the little tree.  On the left, I sort of place that wedge-shaped piece, determine the angle but flipping it up and down (on the right).  When I have the angle I like, flip it back up so right sides are together, and stitch along the upper edge.  Trim.Tiny Tree_6b

Repeat for lower snowdrift.  Trim excess.

Tiny Tree_7
For the bigger tree, I added on 2″ strips to frame the tree.  It needed something to jazz it up, so I got rid of the bottom strip on the pattern and just used strips all around.Tiny Tree_7a

Layer with batting and backing and quilt.  I did a meander in the sky area around the trees, then some straight lines in the snowdrift on the teeny tree, and some straight lines in the frame around the bigger tree:

Tiny Tree_8a

I also quilted some swirls in the center of the tree.Tiny Tree_8b

Time to trim.  The teeny trees trim to 4-3/4″ by 6-1/2″ and the larger tree is trimmed to 8-3/4″ by 10-1/2.”

Tiny Tree_9

Make a sleeve for the back by cutting a piece the same size as the quilt top, but then hem the lower edge, turning it up twice and top-stitching.  I know it’s hard to see in this print, but again, feel free to check out the other tutorials of tiny quilts.Tiny Tree_10a

I brought out my Blythe doll and one of my husband’s nutcrackers to pose by the quilts.

Tiny Tree_10b
Tiny Tree_110c

Looks like Blythe has the hots for the Santa skier. And here I thought she’d go for the more traditional guy:

Blythe and King

He does look a little formal.  Hmmm.  Evidently not her type.

Okay, that’s enough–I’m off to sew!

(Buttons added!)