Time for the third Frivols box to reveal its secrets, and to be made into a quilt.
I loved the reproduction/traditional fabrics as they appealed to another side of my fabric-loving self. I don’t usually buy these, but I enjoyed working with the rich colors and rich surface pattern.
More information is on the bottom of the tin, such as size and additional fabrics required.
Moda’s blog post about this indicates that a bunch of smaller blocks can be made, instead of these larger blocks. Okey-dokey, but no. The cards are inspirational (I blurred out the measurements for their bonus block for copyright reasons), and again include the directions for another block on the back. Okey-dokey, but no.
After cutting them according to the directions, I stacked them up, and put them back into their tin.
Now to report on the Painter’s Palette Solids Giveaway.
The Random Number Generator picked #21: Cathy C. Congratulations to Cathy–I’ve sent you an email letting you know. Thank you to all who entered my little giveaway!
QuiltCon is so many things: a quilt show, a conference with great speakers and classes, shopping–complete with short demonstrations going on, a chance to meet Famous Quilters, a chance to hang out with friends and people you don’t see much, and most of all, it’s quilts. Lots and lots of quilts. And fabric–did I mention that, too?
I arrived with Leisa Wednesday night in time for the beginning of the conference on Thursday, February 22, 2018. I stayed until Sunday afternoon, about 10 minutes before they rolled up the rug and kicked us all out. It was inspiring, exhausting, stimulating and I had a great time.
Three of my local quilt buddies came with me: Simone, Lisa and Leisa, and we met so many others at different lunches and dinners:
from l: Leisa, me, Mary, Joan (end of table), Cindy, Jenn and Heidi
I was able to see my quilt hanging up Paintbrush Studios’ booth. In the circles above (click to enlarge) it’s evident the booth was busy (center circle), and Deena, Amy Barickman and her mother were so kind and helpful.
I had TOO many classes, and generally I learned something new from almost all of them:
(Click on any circle to enlarge.)
I love the pencil case of my seat-mate in my Boho Embroidery Class. I wonder what Angela would say about that sign (!), and you see the beginning of my printing. Thank you to my daughter for the Amazon Gift Card which became a great squeegee. My umbrella is crying–we need rain!
Famous Quilter had a Craftsy film crew wherever she went and even in our class. I thought the operator of the Steady Cam deserved a photo.
Pineapple Fabrics booth at QuiltCon 2018
I had was asked by the kind people of Paintbrush Studios to do a demo using their Painter’s Palette Solid fabrics, and since I love those solids, I knew it would be easy to talk about them…
…until I saw that the cozy 20-seat demo space had been replaced by a large screen and 80 chairs. My husband talked me down off the ledge, and Leisa cracked jokes to make me laugh and forget I was terrified.
(photo by Leisa Plocher)
The first demo was difficult for a variety of reasons, but at the second demo on Sunday morning, I had a great time. Thanks to everyone who came and I hope you were all early enough to get a kit.
Instructions can be found here and here (where you can also right-click to download the instruction card) in case you want the info.
I also have a few samples from QuiltCon that I’m happy to share. Leave a comment below if you’d like to try Painter’s Palette Solids. I’ll pick one winner from the comments. If you are a follower, leave me a second comment stating that, and you’ll have twice as many chances!
I have finished Frivols #2, and maybe it was just because I was listening to another Maisie Hobbs mystery, but I had things go awry in a couple of places. Because of this I thought I’d lead off with where I went wrong.
So, this went right. I stitched together the four smaller HST to yield this little cornered square.
But now…those corner blocks! Was I supposed to do all navy blue in making these? Some red? All the red? The pattern doesn’t give you specific directions on this one. I had cut all the quarter-square triangles from the 4″ squares–cutting up blue, red and cream, sewed them together as they showed, and was now left with this quandary.
So I had my pile of trued-up HST made from the smaller squares, and now a pile of cut quarter square triangles. I didn’t catch this little bit: “make matched sets.” That means the same blue and the same cream will create a “set.” The same red and the same cream. I didn’t do that, so my corners are a lot more red and the quilt is a bit more scrappy.
I did the best I could. I chose to get the “set” with the lighter fabrics, and yet you can see there is that one wild-card darker fabric, lower left. It’s supposed to match the one on the other side.
The real quilt shown on the front of the card is slightly different than the drawing of the quilt, and that’s where I became stumped. My advice is to use a large table, or your ironing board, or something and lay out all the squares and their split corners.
Because I used more red in the making of the centers, I had less of that for the outer split (quarter-triangle) corners, as well as for the outer border. Oh well. Back to the philosophical part of the brain, realizing that I’ve had these Frivols tins for over a year and it won’t matter to anyone how they get sewn up.
Pressing on. First two split-corners are sewn on, and I’m now doing the other two, and trimming dog-ears.
When squaring up your blocks, pay attention to: 1) the diagonals, 2) where those little triangles on the sides and top point to. You want it to be visually fluid.
After 55 permutations on the design wall, I’m good to go. And that’s the end of the nighttime photo shots.
Border #1 attached.
Border #2, after figuring out all the version of the triangles and where they go (I wish I’d had a few more reds…). Yes, the border’s a bit long, and not perfect. (A truth: rotary cutters erase mistakes and never gossip.)
I found a backing I liked that was busy enough, layered it into a quilt sandwich and began my FMQ the way I always do: trying to figure out what to do. I didn’t want to do a million little stitch-in-the-ditch lines. So I went to my IG hashtag #fmq and found this idea: a ribbony frame for the center, and I added the small four-petal flower.
So I’m always trying to connect the dots between today’s patchwork and our fine history, and think this could be a connection: if you erase the middle of that block, and put in that square-in-a-square, you’ve got it. Nancy Cabot (from the 1930s) called that block a Cock’s Comb, but certainly it’s not the same.
But for my title of Windowpane, the repeated themes of squares and angles reminded me of a window I saw once in a Loire Valley chateau.
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.
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 