Quilts

Sentimental Journey: Bee Blocks for the Mid-Century Modern Bee, part II

June 5, 2015April 27, 2019 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

I’m back to the Sentimental Journey–a round-up of all the bee blocks I’ve made, and the quilts or collections where my blocks ended up. Carla, of Grace and Favour, inspired by Jen Kingwell’s Green Tea and Sweet Beans, asked us all for a sampler block with a texty background.

Here’s mine. Of course, I loved this quilt so much, I copied it for January 2015–now I have one too.

Another year, Carla dreamed up this terrific tutorial for making an arrow, and she combined it with a couple of other blocks, some neutral backgrounds to make this quilt.

Here was mine. This was fun because I was able to use a lot of stash fabrics and it still looks interesting and modern-ish.

A feather block, this time for Susan of PatchworknPlay, from a now-defunct tutorial by Anna Maria Horner. Susan sent us the greige background fabric, and asked us for the two-color combo shown above.

She ended up having some feathers in different sizes (probably because of some printer scaling not set to 100%), but I loved the way she set them all on the diagonal, making this beautiful quilt.

Inspired by a quilt she saw on Pinterest, one round Susan asked us for brightly colored solids with black background; above is my block. It took me forever to get her my signature block (I really miss my mind when it wanders) but she waited for me and added it to the back. Here is the front of her gorgeous quilt:

Linda of Flourishing Palms asked us for strip-pieced diamonds. The tricky part is to get the strips going the right way (trust me on this).

She also asked us for pink and green “bar” blocks, which she has now used to complete her “Strawberry Fizz and Lime Pop” quilt.

A gifted domestic-machine quilter, she has now started to quilt it. These photos are taken from IG, so aren’t that great, but click on the link to her quilt name and see many more!

Mary of Molly Flanders asked us for this set of triangles (above) as well as this set of blocks (below), but is planning on making a larger quilt using both, so doesn’t have a grouping to share.

These two fun pink Cross-X blocks were for Mary, of Mary on Lake Pulaski. She turned our blocks into this quilt:

And this is her collection of the Union Jack blocks she asked us to make for her. I won’t tell you where mine is, because even though I ripped it out three times, I still don’t think it was very good. It looks fine in this grouping, though, proving there is strength in numbers, even if the numbers are quilt blocks.

The final set of blocks and quilts are for Anne Deister, of SpringLeaf Studios. I loved making Anne’s blocks because I always felt as if I were in on a big secret, as she is a pattern designer and we were helping her figure out, and pattern test, her designs. So here’s one set of blocks, above, which turned into the quilt top below:

Which she then refined, and made up in her stash, turning out this beauty, above. She calls it Matrix, and it should be released soon (she gave me permission to post these photos). It was easy to make, and fun to see the finished product.

And then this block turned into this terrific quilt:

Anne calls this Tumble, and again, the pattern should be released soon. We’ll probably do a blog hop/giveaway, so I’ll keep you posted.

She has an artist’s eye for staging her quilts. I love this photo.

So that’s it for the originals. We have had some leave our group, and some newbies join us, which I have written about as I’ve made their blocks. It’s been a rewarding experience working with all these women!

Quilts

Elizabeth’s Lollypop Trees Hit Print!

June 3, 2015November 8, 2023 Elizabeth E.25 Comments

The Lollies hit print! Diane, a reader of this blog, recently sent me a note telling me that my quilt was in QuiltMania’s May-June issue. I thought it might be a pitch for Kim McLean’s fine pattern, so at first I didn’t think it was mine. She wrote back: “It’s yours!” and then she sent me photos to prove it.

I about fell over.

Bless you, Diane, for letting me know (as I received no notice from the magazine). It was a part of a spread for Road to California this past year, and I was thrilled to be included in this article. I ordered a copy from Fat Quarter Shop and it arrived via post today. What a lovely surprise!

Quilts

Wonky Baby Baskets and Narrow Stem Applique

May 25, 2015May 22, 2015 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

(momentos left at the Wall–I am grateful to those who have fought in service of our country.)Happy Memorial Day, to those of you who are in the United States. We spent a year back in Washington, DC some time ago, where I toured every monument I could (going to the Vietnam Wall on Memorial Day and waving on the East Coast Rolling Thunder motorcycle riders on the bridge near the Lincoln Memorial; today I’ll be waving on the West Coast Rolling Thunder). I also joined a lovely little quilt guild, named the Mt. Vernon Chapter of Quilters Unlimited (which covered the entire state of Virginia), where I learned this technique.

I recently made a wonky basket quilt with some baby baskets (below). Here’s some basic guidelines for the baby baskets.

Follow the directions for the Wonky Baskets, cutting the base pieces smaller, as the finished size is shown above. So maybe cut the upper part in the 5″ by 3″ range, and the lower part the same (it will be bigger after you splice in the basket).

Follow the instructions for the bias strips for the bigger basket, but sew these narrower–about 3/8″ wide. I’m using leftover handles strips for the big baskets. The woman who taught me this. in our Mt. Vernon Guild, made very narrow stems for her flowers by using this method. So I call this the Narrow Stem Method.

Trim close to inner stitching.

Laying the basket below (to gauge for the width), pin on the handles with the raw edges facing towards the outside. Place the handle edges at least 1/2″ inside the basket to allow for turning.

Stitch on sewing line.

Now press the bias strip outward–letting the fabric fall back over the stitched line and the raw edges.

Stitch down both edges, then finish block as for the bigger wonky block. If you were doing a stem, you would hand-stitch down that outer edge invisibly.

Trim as shown in above photo–to 4 1/2″ by 5 1/2″. I combined two to fill out those rows without the wider basket blocks.

I had some leftover little baskets, so used them to make tiny Dumpling Bags, using a free pattern from Michelle Patterns.

One of my favorite memorial sites in Washington, D. C.

My mother remembers this day not just for the Veterans, thinking instead of its original purpose: that of taking a day to remember our own deceased relatives. She still calls it “Decoration Day.” My parents would go around to all the graves of their deceased ancestors and leave flowers.

I went up last year to see them on this weekend, but they’d already done most of the graves. I did get to go with them for a couple of my great-grands, my father anchoring the pot of mums with bamboo skewers so it wouldn’t tip over.

This week is also my mother’s 87th birthday, and so I celebrate her as well.
Happy Birthday, Mom!

Quilts

Baskets Finished!

May 22, 2015 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

You know, I think I have had more fun with this little quilt than I have in a long time. Of course, maybe the fact that last Monday I taught my last class of the semester may have something to do with it. (At church this past week, I was flanked by two K-12 teachers from two different districts, and they knew practically to-the-minute how long before school let out for the summer.)

Here they are without the borders.

The suggestion I’d seen for a border was a piano key border, so I whacked up a bunch of 6″ wide, random-width strips and put them together. I just couldn’t figure out why I didn’t like it. I thought it was the fact that there were a lot of light-colored pieces in there. So I ripped all the borders apart (which is why I have a photo of only one border–on the bottom) and took out the lights. Still didn’t like it.

I had this older piece of blue fabric laying on the board so I could cut it up for darker “keys” for the piano key border, and pinned it up to the quilt and liked it! Not quite enough, so I pieced in some random pieces to hint at the idea of a piano key border, and went with it.

Tutorial for the big baskets is *here.* Tutorial for the baby baskets is in the next post.