Heart’s Garden • Mystery QAL Part 2

February 13, 2022September 13, 2025 Elizabeth E.7 Comments

Here we go again, this time for Part 2 of Heart’s Garden.

How did I arrive at this design? I thought I was going to go for a whole quilt of EPP circles, yes I did. But I became increasingly unhappy with the quilt that was up on my screen, so I scraped all the pixels off the computer and threw them into the trash. I wanted to expand, yet honor, the circle but leave enough room in the design to go where I wanted it to go.

First, some eye candy:

Lisa was the first to send me a photo of her completed circle. I love this group of fabrics, and Lisa’s placement of colors.

Susan’s was next, a photo grabbed from her IG feed. Can hardly wait to see how this one evolves, as I love those deep colors playing all together.

I’m keeping to one bundle of Sherri and Chelsi’s Sincerely Yours fabric line, so that helped determine what I chose next. I went with one fabric for all the arcs, and a variety of fabrics inside the arc. I’m keeping in mind how I want the quilt to flow outward from the colorful center circle, and this made the most sense to me.

back of the first part of the assembly

The arcs are sewn together, then the seam allowance on the outside large arc pressed under. I made a template of the large arc pattern out of freezer paper, and used that to help me get that pressed edge, but you can also eyeball it. Don’t burn your fingers with the iron!

I put the arcs to the feed dogs, so I can help manage everything from the center circle side, keeping a straight seam when the presser foot hits the center circle and wants to wobble.

The twidgiest part is where the arcs meet the corner. You can just stop sewing at the larger arc’s pressed outer edge, or you can sew the seam (photo #2 and #3) and then unpick those four stitches later. I did that method. Both methods work.

Then you’ll appliqué the whole unit to a larger square. Tips are in the pattern.

Cut out the back and save it for more uses.

(Hint: Yes, there will be more uses–coming in March!)

I had a pretty good idea of what colors I wanted for the inner appliqué hearts (pinned on here), but I dithered on the outer circles, ending up with red. My advice: wait until you choose the border before you decide on those circles.

I have had fun working with this group of cheery fabrics, but after seeing Susan’s and Lisa’s I’ll want to try some different fabrics, too.

I have a hashtag going on Instagram (yes, with the heart on the end):

If you are making this, please tag it when you post, and I’ll draw from there for some photos next month.

[UPDATE: The entire pattern is now live and living in my online pattern shop.] Hope you enjoy making this second part–post them so we all can enjoy them. P.S. If you can’t manage another project, feel free to download for another time.

Happy Quilting!

Pillows · Quilt Shows · This-and-That

This and That • February 2022 • Sticky Issues

February 11, 2022September 13, 2025 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

It’s February, so I’m leading with hearts…quilted hearts.

My first finish for February, and it seems, like the whole of 2022. The sludge I’m walking through these days seems to be rather marshy and thick, filled with Instagram rabbit holes, fascinating detours, some sighing and looking out the window, but certainly, no energy to Get My Stuff Done (best video ever). All of this is to say, I’m celebrating this pillow’s completion.

It’s month two of a new year for the Gridster Bee, and Shelley has autumn leaves on her mind, as did all the people doing the Riley Blake sampler quilt. I was off to a great start.

Not.

I wasn’t the only one having trouble with getting this block together, and I wonder if it was the pattern? My 7th grade Home Ec. teacher taught me that one–that sometimes it IS the pattern and not us.

Got it right, but that wasn’t the first mistake I’d made, either. Back to the pattern thing.

This popped up. It must explain why my energy level is so low, if I’m only getting about three hours of sleep per day. It’s because I’ve been writing patterns. One pattern is massively overdue (Borders for Tannenbaum), but I’ve finished the third draft and it’s 12 pages (I like to explain things). The other is the ongoing (and upcoming) release of Part 2 of Heart’s Garden. I have had hundreds of people get their free download of the Part 1, so look for the next installment very soon. Very Soon. Now to address two sticky issues.

Sticky Thing #1
In my last Road to California blogpost, I celebrated Linda Anderson’s quilt art. I still celebrate it, but my friend Dot commented on how one of the photos in her recent Piecework Magazine was a twin, a clone, to one of Linda’s quilts.

The above photo in Piecework, taken by Eric Sebastian Mindling.

I didn’t see any attribution on Linda’s title cards at the exhibits, so as realization slowly dawned that perhaps this quilt might have been a quilty copy of someone’s photo, I began looking for other similar examples. I found the following photograph online:

I couldn’t find a direct link to it, but it seemed to lead to Eric Sebastian Mindling, who has lived over twenty years in Oaxaca. You can see it behind Linda’s head in the photograph I took of her. I wrote in that post about the moving picture of the mother and child. I found that one on Mindling’s website. And here, below is another photo from Mindling:

This one is Linda’s.

I wrote back and forth to Dot about this copying without attribution. Dot offered, “Perhaps Linda was on one of his tours, and they both took photos of Maria at the same time”? But there are too many instances where the poses are exactly the same, the perspective the same.

When we enter any quilt contest now, we are asked to identify the sources of our inspiration. When I submitted SHINE: The Circles Quilt, I mentioned the ceiling of that church in Ljubljana, Croatia with all its painted circles. I don’t think it takes anything away from any of our creations to acknowledge the spark that led us to our make our quilt. In Linda’s case, and the way quilt shows are run now, if we use someone’s pattern or use a photo, we have to get their permission. It’s a mystery as to why this was not done in this instance, as the quilts are beautiful in their own right, even if they were taken from someone else’s photo.

Sticky Thing #2

This is the title of Mary Fons latest contribution to the quilt world, and is from the short video she recently put up on YouTube. Fons is commenting on the trend that has been around for a few years now: of cutting up old quilts to be re-made into clothing. She has some hilarious examples, some designer examples, some hideous examples. I get that not every quilt is beautiful (I’ve known that for a quite a while), and doesn’t deserve the “heirloom” treatment of a museum storage in acid-free tissue. But does that mean we are all destined for the scrap heap? The cutting room floor? The comment I put up there in support of Mary’s video was quickly rebutted by someone else. I wrote back to the commentor:

“But [Mary’s] larger point, which often seems to be subsumed in many of these tit-for-tat [comment] responses, was the query: is our craft merely to be a tool for someone else’s particular novelty, fame and glory? Or do our quilts, from now and back into the ages, have value by themselves? Can we acknowledge them and revere them or are we quilters just part of the excessive consumer machinery? Perhaps both, but I prefer to think that what I spend time on, and what my mother and grandmother spent time on, have value, and carry their particular history.”

Watch the video. See what you think.
Happy Quilting!

Quilt Shows

Road to California • Part III (final)

January 30, 2022September 13, 2025 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

Do I start with the stellar and then move to the sort of interesting?

Or, do I lead with the one that everyone breezed through, and finish with the exhibit where everyone lingered?

I’ll do it that way, but first — thank you for all your fun comments; I appreciate them, and am happy to know that you are enjoying seeing Road’s quilts. Another reader (thank you, Dot!) tipped me off to Accuquilt’s run-down of the show in between talking about the virtues of their product. They seemed to really like my Wealth of Days quilt (maybe because they have a die for cutting Flying Geese). My quilter, Kelley Bachi, was also complimented, which made me pleased. We’re at 4:01, in this segment. We’re at 16:04 in this segment. Blink and you’ll miss the quilt, but you’ll see others.

First, the exhibit where I rarely saw people. Sugary and saccharine-sweet, the Diana exhibit took up a large space on both sides of one of the main aisles, and like past Cherrywood Challenges, people made smallish square quilts on a theme. But unlike the last one I saw — of Bob, the painter — no one was lingering here. Here’s a sampling.

My least favorites above don’t have names associated with them. The really least favorite out of the whole exhibit? My, my, I couldn’t say as there were so many to choose from. If you see a name label above, it was one of the few lovely ones. I noticed that the jewelry was often done to ~~excess~~ perfection.

As a reminder: click on any image to make it larger, then hit the small X in the upper right to return to this page.

And then there was the amazing exhibit of the quilts from Linda Anderson (I apologize for the any distortion in the photos; all the quilts were perfectly flat and squared up). Every year Linda puts another masterpiece in Road to California, and I always try to find it. She has her background in painting, and uses that skill, along with raw edge appliqué and free motion quilting, to create these masterpieces.

The figure/s in each quilt draw the viewer in to find clues as to how they are thinking or feeling, or what they are doing. One year, when my grown daughter was really ill, Linda had a beautiful quilt of a mother and daughter that seemed to say to me, “It will be all right.” I mentioned that to Linda and she knew the quilt (not in this group). I was so glad that Road hung her quilts in a special exhibit.

Maria’s Tree, by Linda Anderson

And that’s a wrap for Road to California 2022!

UPDATE: Please see this post for commentary on Anderson’s quilts and correct attribution.

Mystery Quilt · Quilt Shows

Road to California 2022 • Part II

January 27, 2022September 13, 2025 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

Road Two of Road to California Quilts. You may want to do this in two bites, but we still have Part III coming, focusing on some specialty exhibits (it’s shorter). Click on any image to make it larger, then hit the small X in the upper right to return to this page.

Thought I’d lead with a high-impact quilt.

I just want to know how she kept track of all the circles. Sometimes I wish they’d tell us how long a quilt took, but maybe I don’t want to know.

I liked the shape of the White Spotted Rose Anemone, by Kelly Spell. I kept wondering what the next wave of ~~covid~~ quilting was going to look like, and perhaps these curves against those lines might be an indication: texture?

Now I know what to do with all those labels in my notions drawer that I’ve been saving. I’m pretty sure I could get a pincushion covered…

Road to California has lights at the base of each quilt, and those lower lights really give a sculptural quality to the stitching.

I have a such admiration for all the detail in this quilt:

All those little houses everywhere, and patchwork flags! As a reminder: click on any image to make it larger, then hit the small X in the upper right to return to this page.

Click to see the teensy-weensy strips in this pineapple block. It was in an exhibit labeled Pride.

I appreciate the humor in this quilt. The exhibit was titled Conspiracy Theory Challenge, and most were clever but political (so.tired.of.that). So I focused in on this scene with cows being lifted heavenward by UFOs.

A perfect quilt for this year, but I think the message does not just stop there. That’s one of the interesting things about quilt shows. I see the expression of quilters being themselves, making their art the way they see it. We have all kinds in a show like Road (which is why it is one of my favorites). They strive to represent art, modern, traditional and I like that many quilts which I’d never see are sent to this show. I get to “meet” a lot of new quilters who have chosen the motto “Be You.”

Love the phone in the back pocket, along with scissors.

Pretty sure that fish lady is made of milagros, but not certain. This one and the one below appear to be about 17″ tall, a foot wide, but I’m guessing.

I love the little peoples everywhere.

Last of the smallish quilts. I thought her treatment of the “fringe” was lovely.

This was such an interesting quilt, made with six colors, and shades of gray, black and white.

Making a whole cloth quilt seems like such a challenge.

I loved the eyes, so I made that the big image in this gallery of Road quilts. The full quilt is on the lower left. I never saw the back of the piece; wish I had!

Not square! (big smile)

Colors!! No, they don’t have chains to keep the quilts from running away. Something about protecting the quilts and fire-marshall-said-so business.

Simple shapes, bold colors, value contrast, great design = smashing quilt.

This quilt, made and quilted by Zena Thorpe, is titled Connectivity. I kept zeroing in to see the quilting, as well as the appliqué. She doesn’t say how she did it, but it looks handsewn. Beautiful work.

We’re almost done!

I also wish they’d put the size of quilts on the title card. I’m guessing this is about 24″ tall. Gorgeous work by both artists.

I’ve been focusing on gardens lately [with the Mystery Quilt of Heart’s Garden I’m hosting (free! on this website!]) so I really loved all the details of Hanne Lohde’s quilt in memory of her summer home in Denmark.

And the final quilt in this post is from Janet Stone–who else to lead us out? By the way, it was also a big prize winner at Houston 2021, and their photo is quite a bit better than mine.

And that’s a wrap for this segment. Next post I’ll have the Cherrywood Diana Quilts, a few pieces of clothing, and quilts from artist Linda Anderson.

Thanks for all your comments last go-round. I tripped on my stairs and slugged the wall accidentally, so haven’t had use of my right hand for a few days, but I didn’t want you to think I hadn’t enjoyed your comments. The hand is getting better. I said to my husband, I may be older, but now it is obvious to me that all the guys in the movies are pulling their punches and not making contact. Now that we never leave our homes, does this mean we’ll have higher incidents of injuries in the home? Hope not. We don’t need to add one more thing to our list of Bad Stuff for the Covid Years.

And speaking of that, I also find it interesting that I didn’t see any visual representations of covid. Not one. I’ve always enjoyed Becky Goldsmith’s covid quilt (above), made right at the beginning of our pandemic, and since we are just past the 2nd anniversary of the first diagnosed case of covid, I thought we’d see more. I once drew up a sketch, but decided I didn’t want to spend my time making it. If I do anything, I’ll do hers (it’s a free download on her website; link above).

I’ve had several hundred downloads of the free mystery quilt-a-long of Heart’s Garden, so those of you who are making that, good luck with your EPP sewing. Our hashtag Instagram online is: