Heart’s Garden Mystery QAL • Part 5

May 15, 2022September 7, 2025 Elizabeth E.15 Comments

Heart’s Garden
57″ square• Quilt #264

Gardens can be mysterious. In our case we planted the melons and the round cucumbers and some nocturnal visitor came and dug it all up. Will those seeds pop up somewhere else? Were they get eaten? What’s in the heart can also be mysterious, even to those who might have some experience in the matter. Are we charitable? Are we passionate? Are we kind, snarky, tough or tender?

But in the case of the QAL for Heart’s Garden, the mystery is now solved!

This is the final free pattern for the 2022 Mystery Quilt-A-Long. I will have a Part 6 that will show some embellishments, but that will be a post, and not a pattern release. ~~Heart’s Garden Part 5 will remain free until early June 2022 when~~ all the patterns will be combined into one that can be purchased.

I’m sure you’ve seen these images of Part Four on Instagram. Joan’s quilt is a brilliant range of hues from yellows to pinky purples. Lisa has used a wonderful selection of blues, pinky reds and tans to great effect. Linda’s quilt took a different turn when she used the borders from my Evergreen, Ever Life quilt, amending them to fit the center, and Susan (on Instagram or at her blog) has also made changes, using five flowers on two sides. I love them all! [As I receive updated photos, I will post them.]

Heart’s Garden finishes up with a row of heart blocks, like a happy picket fence around our garden. Generally I used medium-dark fabrics with a scrappy low-volume background. All fabrics are by Sherri and Chelsi, from their Sincerely Yours line. I love the brightly colored prints from peach to purple and think this makes a really happy quilt. Sherri is a friend of mine (we both taught English Composition classes) and I think this quilt would also be great in her newest line, Seashore. One reason I love showing all the quilts at the beginning of the post is for you to think of different colorways for your quilt than the one on the front of the pattern.

And speaking of the front of the pattern, Part Five is ready for a free download at my PayHip shop. (Reminder: In case you didn’t get any of the other parts, they are there for sale as well.) But, again, in early June all the parts will disappear to be replaced with a complete Heart’s Garden Sew-A-Long pattern for sale. Now let’s talk construction.

I started with the corners, making a Log Cabin block with darker outside corners.
Then I discarded this block and made the ones you see in the quilt. That’s why I have a full box of orphan blocks!

I like to sew Log Cabin blocks from measurements, but in case you like paper piecing, that option exists for you as well in this pattern. In fact, I made up FPP options for all parts of this border: the log cabin corners, the heart block bottoms and heart block tops.

I ended up using the paper piecing for the heart block tops and was happy I did.

There is a slightly different proportion on these hearts than usual, as I wanted a certain look for the border. I cut out backgrounds and tips and triangles. Detailed instructions for how to do this accurately and carefully are in the pattern. (Tips to make wonky hearts are also there.)

I smoothed out the center onto my design wall, then as I made hearts, I arranged them around the quilt.

There’s always this moment that you wonder: was this quilt worth it? I had only seen it inside, in my room and a lot of time I was sewing at night during winter.

But when I took it outside and saw the natural light hitting all those fun hearts and flowers and birds and patchwork, I was really glad I persevered. And I love the stained-glass photo of the quilt from the back. Sigh. I was content.

When the top was finished, I sent it off to Krista of KristaStitched, who used the Bebop e2e panto at my request. I used a neutral backing and Soft and Bright polyester batting. She did a great job. I bound it with a narrow strip of the geranium color that was in the fabric line. I did have to send away for the half yard, as I’d pretty well used up all my fabrics.

I have one more post about this quilt, showing a few more bits in Part Six, but there won’t be a download for that one–it will live here on my blog. So head over to my pattern shop and get your free pattern. If you don’t have time to sew it now, feel free to save it for later. But please–do not share the patterns with your friends or families. I did this free sew-a-long as a thank you to all my blog readers, and do want you to download your patterns in my shop, not post or share them without permission. Thank you 🙂

For those who have been following along, I hope you’ve enjoyed this Heart’s Garden Mystery QAL. See you soon for Part Six!

Hope you can occasionally piece and quilt–

Something to Think About

Happy Mother’s Day 2022

May 7, 2022September 7, 2025 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

Well, Happy Mother’s Day a bit early, actually, as tomorrow we are headed to Los Angeles to celebrate my sister’s newest grandchild. We’ll probably wear masks. Our luncheon is outside. Life goes on. Mother’s Day is a day to honor our mothers, and I’m lucky to have a great one. She turns 92 years old at the end of this month, and I am fully in Abraham Lincoln’s camp: “All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”

I’ve had a great mother-in-law, and a mother-in-law that wasn’t so great — or at least that’s how I viewed things in my earlier life. Now that I’m a mother-in-law, I understand the not-so-great woman much better and hope she will forgive me for my failings. I’ve had great women who taught me how to quilt, mothering me into a craft that has sustained me for years. I owe them a great debt.

Where does the beginning start? We think this weekend of mothers and how they give birth to us and raise us. If we are fortunate we have a good mother. If life throws you a brutal curveball, you had a terrible mother. Reams of paper have been used in writing about those two polar opposites; I will not add my words to that pile today.

But somewhere we all had a beginning. Some beginnings are early, and we can locate the source and revere what gave us our start. Other beginnings come later, often after tragedy, pain, death, or divorce, and the reins of life are picked up again in a new beginning. I think it appropriate that whoever you decide is your mother — whether it be a birth mother, or an adoptive mother, someone who took you in, or someone who freed you to grow and fly — I hope that this day you are able to honor and remember them.

I also honor the mothers of all these grandchildren in our laps, a photo taken years ago, those young children giving us such delight (three are missing!). My daughter and daughters-in-law are all devoted to their families. I also love and respect my sisters, my in-laws, aunts, grandmothers. While there are always a few ringers, women who are best at a distance, I am fortunate to have such a great circle of love from women in my life, examples to follow and people from who I can pick up advice about teenagers, babies, husbands and daily living. And quilting.

I wish the same for you.
Happy Mother’s Day!

Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Textiles & Fabric

This and That • May 2022

May 4, 2022September 11, 2025 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

I so appreciate you all: thank you, thank you! I was able to pass on the info to WordPress, my blog software company, a reliable source for writing these past fifteen years and three months. Bugs climb in everywhere and I’m hoping they get this one resolved.

And thank you also for all the beautiful things you wrote. I treasured and read them all–often out loud to my husband. I have the best readers!

Usually I write for a Sunday publication, but this week got tripped up a bit, so I’m late.

Laurie, our Queen Bee for the Gridsters chose a pineapple block, two if we didn’t mind, and she asked for them in yellow and orange. I had made these blocks once before, with a free download of the pattern here, but the crown this time is a little different, a little taller with an extra row of blocks. We also added an extra border of low-volume blocks that wasn’t on the pattern. It took me a minute, but if you treat the extra low-volume blocks as part of a row, it goes better. (The other way is adding strips of blocks when the pineapple is finished: that’s a not-so-great method.)

Started quilting one of my own designs: Triad Harmony. I’ve made several in ombre fabrics which are fun to work with. I picked out all the thread colors for the star points, then went a different direction, decided to quilt them as one unit, so only one color of Magnifico thread was needed. Then I quilted a wrong color (hence the seam ripper).

I like to date-stamp my quilting along with what was finished. Lovely night-time fluorescent-lighting photo.

Here’s a comparison of the two quilt sizes in the pattern. I originally had a working name of Spectral Light for the larger one, but I just changed it up today to Eris. I’ll explain later on, when it’s finished.

Now I’m working on the red stack of nine-patches for another Christmas quilt. There is something so lovely about occupying my hands with nine-patches. It leaves me free to listen to audiobooks like Pachinko.

Those of you who are long-time readers of this blog, know that I am fascinated by and appreciate traditional clothing; the hanbok is no exception, having written about it when we visited the Chojun Textile & Quilt Art Museum when we in Seoul.

I was also interested in this article from the New York Times about the history of the hanbok.

You can make your own! Folkwear Pattern for Hanbok

Mother’s Day is coming up, then the last part of Heart’s Garden will drop. Krista, who is quilting it, has sent me images of the quilt up on her frame, and I’ll be excited to show it to you when it is complete. So far there are four parts:

On May 15, 2022 Part 5 (~~free pattern~~) will drop. [UPDATE: Pattern is now available in my pattern shop.]

If you have missed any of the parts, Part 4 is free until May 14th, and Parts 1, 2, and 3 are available for purchase. Part 5 will be free until the pattern comes out. Soon I will consolidate all the parts and have one pattern for sale, but that will come closer to June. I will have one more: Part 6, but that will be a blog post. If you don’t have time to sew this now, be sure to grab the free patterns for later. I have three quilters who are sewing along with me, and I love what they have done. A couple have made changes to the pattern, which are also fun to see. As I remind them, they are not pattern testers, but quilt makers. Feel free to make it your own!

Happy Quilting,

Something to Think About

Polish Pavilion: Something fun for a Wednesday

April 27, 2022September 11, 2025 Elizabeth E.27 Comments

The Venice Biennale, the art or architecture exhibit in Italy, is shown every other year and it just opened. So all the art world has pictures everywhere about what is being shown and who is showing it. This one, using fabric, caught my eye.

Polish-Romani multidisciplinary artist, educator, and activist Małgorzata Mirga-Tas has been selected to represent Poland at the Fifty-Ninth Venice Biennale. Her “Re-enchanting the World” will occupy the Polish Pavilion during the event’s run, from April 23 to November 27, 2022. Known for a practice comprising sculpture, painting, installation, and large-format textiles, Mirga-Tas challenges discriminatory Romani stereotypes and cultivates a positive image of Roma culture. Her work frequently incorporates clothing belonging to friends and family, which she collages into patchwork screens showing scenes of the garments’ wearers engaged in everyday life, smoking or talking or just sitting around.
Art Forum

There are several places in Venice, Italy where the art is displayed, and many nations participate. I grabbed screenshots from the YouTube video for the pictures below, because hey–it’s FABRIC; the video is a three-minute overview of the art.

Britain took the National High Award (a golden lion) for their music presentation Feeling Her Way, by Sonia Boyce. I mention this also because the backdrop for her presentation are walls that look like patchwork and because the video is kind of cool to watch, to listen to.

I took a lot of photograph and digital art classes when I went to college and went through many “evaluations” or “workshops” of what we produced in the dark room/hovering over a computer. So I kind of laughed at one of the paragraphs in the Art Forum review, as it is so very “art-speak.” I propose some minor edits that can describe any of us and our quilts.

Original phrase: “unusually attractive visual form (opening the pavilion to a wider audience) combined with an original and deliberate ideological concept ‘proposing a new narrative about the constant migration of images and mutual influences between Roma, Polish and European cultures.’ ”

My Souped-Up phrase: I use an unusually attractive visual form, combined with an original and deliberate ideological concept of using various geometric and free-form shapes in order to propose a new narrative about the constant integration of images and mutual influences between traditional, modern and art cultures in my quilting.

Like that? You, too, can art-speak!

Happy Quilting!

P.S. I’ve been having some problems with some software changes by the hosting service and WordPress and I are monitoring how comments are emailed to me. If you have a moment and could help us out by leaving some sort of comment (even a word would do, but I read everything) so we can see if this is a bug, or a problem with their new forms, we’d appreciate it.

If you send me a comment, I’ll enter you in a drawing for all my old clothes, so you, too, can enter the Venice Biennale and be world-famous. I’M KIDDING. But if you could leave a comment, that would be great.