Did Vasarely get there first?
300 and Beyond · Free Download · Free Quilt Pattern · PatternLite · Quilts

Did Vasarely get there first?

Elizabeth E.6 Comments

Maybe. Maybe Victor Vasarely got there first in the art world, but I’m guessing the origin of circles on squares, or even squircles on squares, may have come from all the mending the first woman did on her children’s clothes. Just a hunch. I really have no way of knowing this, but when my friend Dot mentioned the artist Vasarely as being reminiscent of our #backtosquircles project, I believe she was on to something. Have fun looking at his art.

My Tips and Tricks

Caveat: If you would rather fold laundry or scrub out the bathroom than do hand appliqué, I have a post on how to do nearly invisible appliqué on machine, using monofilament thread. It’s quick! It’s easy!

Back to the method I used *this time.* (I might change it next time.)

To cut out the shape: I would often iron on my freezer paper version of the pattern (I just printed it directly from the pattern). Other times I would just use a pin. Always I used my rotary cutter to slice around the fabric, and usually I was working with four layers of one polkadot fabric. (I learned in this project how many many many polkadot fabrics I have.)

In my past appliqué lives I have always cut out a bunch of the shapes out of freezer paper and pressed the fabric onto that. I would place shiny side up, and nudge the edges onto the shiny stuff and they would generally stick. When it was cool, I would take the pattern out and use it again.

This time I tried Old School Methods: spray some spray starch into the lid, and using a small brush, stroke it around.

Like this.

You can just see where it’s damp from the starch. Don’t use too much. I always lay down a piece of cloth on my ironing board to catch the dribbles.

Place a template (here I used mylar and punched holes in it — more on that later), pressing the corners and sides up over the template. The starch should dry and hold it in place. Let it cool, then remove the template. Duh.

I finger press some marks at the centers.

Then I arrange the cooled, pressed squircle by eye and pin it down. Sorry if this is repetitive for you experts — feel free to leave a comment if you have more tips; this is always helpful!

Sometimes you’ll get a little bump out. That just means underneath the seam allowance has its knickers in a twist. As you stitch along to this spot, with your needle, sweep the seam allowance away from the bump (in the directions of the arrows) and it should ease up and smooth out.

Sometimes I just put four pins.

Other times that squircle isn’t going anywhere.

I use the Thread Conditioner from Riley Acres, and I like the Super Bobs Bright Thread Collection. Rachel uses her own bees’ beeswax to make the conditioner, and I like how it feels, and it never gets hard.

I’ve sort of started evaluating my polkadots for this project. The ones on the left are rejects. The ones in the middle I was thinking about, but in the end, I only used the ones on the right: regularish-shaped dots, with not too much else going on.

Twenty-two done. I’m ahead of schedule, happily.

I made you a chart to keep track of our squircles. I added it to the pattern, and tweaked the pattern a bit, if you want to download it again:

Squircle_OPQuiltDownload

Okay, that’s it for my squircle tips and tricks.

The mylar sheets can be found on the Great Store in the Sky, and I just slipped the pattern underneath and traced it off with a fine Sharpie marker. The Mylar cut easily with scissors. I punch holes in my Mylar so the steam doesn’t build up and warp the template. Although with the starch, I didn’t use steam this go round.

This little project will sink into the background for a while, so I promise, no more squircles posts for a while. But the pattern (free!) and the tips and tricks will stay here on the website for your use.

keyword search term on this site: squircles
hashtag on Instagram: #backtosquircles

I could listen to Rose talk about her job in the hardware store every day.

Squircles
300 and Beyond · Free Download · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilts

Squircles

Elizabeth E.16 Comments

You knew this was coming, right? After you saw that last post about squircles, I’ll bet you knew I’d go hunting and fall down a rabbit hole. You are very perceptive.

This is a squircle grapefruit from designer Tai Tan. I found it on Dribble, which is also a website I didn’t know about before.

A squircle is not a rounded square, apparently. There is some design technique that can explain it, and it has to do with the flat edges. In a rounded square there are flat edges. In a squircle, they may LOOK flat, but they are every-so-slightly rounded (from here).
John Uttley also has a nice grid of squircles to admire, and here’s more to see if you want.

Lisa, my quilty friend in the previous post, was as happy as I was with these quilts, so we thought we cook up a project. It went like this:
1st idea: make blocks and swap
2nd idea: swap backgrounds but still do your own appliqué
3rd idea: set up a challenge to do *so many* each month, and check in with each other.

Third time’s the charm. We’re doing a Squircle Challenge. So I went looking and besides the designers, I found some quilters:

Marla Varner’s blog, Penny Lane, feels like the OG.

I did an image search and was able to source this image to Zippy Quilts, my friend Mary’s blog. This quilt alternated squares on squares, and squircles on squares. It was made by Carolyn Brown.

This is from the Instagram feed of laurispringer.

Last quilt I found was from Amanda Jean Nyberg’s website, and she calls it “dot your i’s quilt.” This is different because of the low-value backgrounds.

So here’s the story. I started the PatternLite with using a 5″ block (5 1/2″ with seam allowance) and that’s the first one in the pattern. But then in my stash box, way in the back of the closet, I found a stack of Charm Squares in Painter’s Palette Solids, my favorite brand. The 4″ squircle just looked too crowded.

So I redrew the squircle, to be more squircle-y, with slightly rounded sides. Then I resized it to fit — making it a 3 1/2″ (finished) size. That seemed to fit the backgrounds much better. So you have two sizes and two shapes in the free pattern.

I spotted my purple/lime green polka dot fabric at the top of this photo of Machelle Preston’s quilt, in the current Springville Quilt Show (see previous post).

I have been hoarding collecting polka dots for years now. This is why: Come A-Round, from earlier in my making (Quilt #90).

However…I noticed that I seem to have plenty more dotty fabrics, so why not use them again, borrowing Machelle’s idea?

So here are the first three, courtesy of one of those sleepless nights that come along once in a while (if you haven’t seen Melanie, you are missing out). Now I just have about 177 more to go, but don’t worry, in the pattern there are two sizes (the 5-inch requires fewer blocks), and a helpful chart so you don’t panic. Just tote this project around to doctor’s offices, pick it up while watching TV, or while you are hiding from your family in a quiet room.

Because we dreamed this collaboration up in August, and everyone’s going back to school, that’s our theme. Our hashtag is #backtosquircle, a play on Back To School. We have an easy schedule, for who needs more pressure in their lives? The drill:

  • choose your block size/quilt size
  • make a bunch
  • every 20 blocks made, post it up on Instagram with our hashtag #backtosquircle (if you use that social)
  • take it slowly!

Here’s your free 5-page Squircles handout. It has the templates for the 5″ blocks, for a 4″ block and some basic directions.

You know the usual: send your friends over here to download it, rather than making copies for them.

CLICK ON DOWNLOAD BUTTON, below.

Squircle_OPQuiltDownload

(Updated Version as of August 2025)

Happy Squircling!

(This is the squircle-ish font I could find.)

Bibliography


Quilt Show 2025 Springville Art Museum
Quilt Shows · Quilts

Quilt Show 2025 Springville Art Museum

Elizabeth E.13 Comments

I like making these little “postcards” with names from the map. The Mesa is that long dark stripe of rock on the lower right side of the photo, moving away from the road. Yes, we took another roadtrip, as mentioned in the last post, where I talked about making dresses to wear to the wedding.

But this post isn’t about the wedding, although it was lovely. It’s about the Springville Art Museum’s Quilt Show for 2025.

I met my friend Lisa at the show, and at my request, she took me first to her award-winning quilt. She pieced the top and quilted it — a stunning beauty of a New York Beauty quilt. I had been a judge at an earlier show, so I was aware of how hard it was to get a ribbon — and she did get one! I’ll post some of the quilts from the quilt show, but first I want to start with a posthumous display of Carol Ford’s quilts, a special exhibit at the museum.

Summer Sampler, by Carol Ford Quilted by Virginia Gore

The Spirit of Alaska (2013)
Made by Carol Ford

Quilted by Virginia Gore

Carol writes: “I spent a lot of time in Alaska, and I love batik fabrics. Everything about this quilt reminds of the color and beauty that I have seen there. This was one of the most difficult quilts that I have made…I think that the quilting truly brought this quilt to life.”

Ice Bear (2017), by Carol Ford. Quilted by Virginia Gore
She writes that she and her daughter went to “Manitoba, Canada to photograph polar bears. We stayed at Churchill Wild Lodge, which is one of the National Georgraphic’s most remote lodges in the world.”

Carol Ford’s My Garden Patch (2014); quilted by Virginia Gore

We turned a corner from the huge room of quilts, and launched into the main quilt show. I loved the dazzle dazzle below of Danielle Adams’ Land That I Love (she quilted it herself):

Mariam Gunderson both made and quilted her Various Blocks in Shades of Blue. That’s quite the border: all the quilt has beautiful stitching.

Christine Ricks made Tessella or Big Tess (2025), and it was quilted by Tamera Ellis. This one really stood out among the more traditional quilts in its gallery.

It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2023) was made by Tracie Buys, and quilted by Connie Atkisson. She combined two patterns — houses and children holding hands — to make this quilt. She writes “A neighborhood is a group of many different individuals that are from different cultures and backgrounds, and we should celebrate those differences.”

I wondered if I’d find a temperature quilt. Loriann Fish’s My 50th Year (2025) is a celebration of a half-century of living. Began the first of June 2024, she ended it in May of 2025, with a color key in the lower right corner of the quilt.

A map of the museum layout.

So many beautiful quilts to show, but in this gallery, the Hafen-Dallin gallery, I chose this one:

Squircle Square, by Machelle Preston. Quilted by Konda Luckau.

While I just loved the design of these many squircles, it was the movement of color and value that really sang. Machelle Preston writes “My friend Karlene found a cute rainbow quilt on a modern blog. We both decided to make the quilt. I did my “squircle” squares hand-appliquéd, while she did her squares machine-appliequéd.”

Here’s her friend’s quilt:

Squircle (2024), by Karlene Riggs.
Quilted by Konda Luckau.

Karlene writes:
“I got the idea for this from a QuiltCon quilt I saw online, but which had no pattern. All the “squircle” fabrics were from my dot collection. The backgrounds were mostly solids. I decided to use all the stitches I could from my sewing machines!”

My La Passacaglia (2023) by Jeri Holley. Quilted by Mindy Powell, who did a stunning job on the outside borders.

I knew you’d want to see a close-up of this!

“This quilt was the result of an online class with Brigette Heitland. After putting it all together, I found it looked like a train […with] all the bright colors. This was made by Jeanette Ivie, and titled Modern Train (2024). Quilting by Sharon Rawlings.

Autumn Baskets (2025) by Myrt Gehring; quilted by Carole Liffereth
This has a combination of wool and cotton in the center section (bordered by the blue).

Esther Avila’s My Color Theory (2025). She writes in her title card that “I had lots of solid fabric scraps and sewed them all in strips to make squares, then cut diagonally twice…I love the little stripe of black and white. It gives the right touch.”

Thought you’d like this interplay of modern, traditional (Bee Happy, a Lori Holt design) and my friend Lisa’s masterpiece. That’s combination of quilts is one reason why I like this show. Our show at home tends to group all things alike, as in All the Landscapes, All the Animals, All the Moderns and so on. I prefer the novelty of discovery, which you can only have if there is a change-up.

We went upstairs, where they were having a retrospective of their decades of Spring Salons. All the art was amazing. Click through on this link to read about it. They have a listing of all the art, if you have some time.

The Quilters (2023)
Kathleen Bateman Peterson

This was upstairs, and of course I wanted to bring it home with me.

It reminded me of another painting I’d seen the day before, in the Church History Museum. Titled Sisters, it is by Beth Jepson. In our church we call each other “Sister” and “Brother” (as in Sister Eastmond.) So this painting is about all of us women, working together.

The artist writes: “I love the diversity of sisters, old and young, beginner and expert, working together to create a piece of art that is functional and often gifted in charity.”

I put a few pieces of art up on my Instagram, if you are interested, but you can also head to the website for the Church History Museum to see the rest in this exhibit.

Finally: the Wedding Wrap-up

All these were catered by my daughter, Barbara. Click on the little arrows at the side to advance the show.

  • 1–Desserts table, from the side
  • 2–Crew in the kitchen finishing the last minute prep
  • 2–Macaron tower
  • 3–Cake pops (bride’s colors were sage, tan, black)
  • 4–Key Lime Pie cups
  • 5–Our children and I (I don’t know where my husband was at that point); Father of the Bride is on the right.
  • 6–Father-Daughter dance, which made me weep
  • 7–The happy couple, listening to the speeches

Okay, my dress. Well, about 3 days before the wedding and after I’d sewn three wearable toiles and was about ready to start on a fourth, I got the news that grandparents were supposed to be in solids. Dark solids. Sigh.

So I wore a black skirt and a turquoise jacket, nice and proper and cooperative.

But I changed into the dress below for the reception.

The fabric is Shape Sorter in Blue, by Eloise Renouf of Cloud 9 Fabrics. I purchased the wide back which has a silky feeling to it. This was taken after a couple days of rest, standing in my blue kitchen. A happy backdrop.

May you celebrate your quilting talents, great art, weddings for those you love, dresses that you don’t wear, and arriving home safely after a long ride home–

Sacred Mending, by Paige Crosland Anderson
Dimensions: 48 x 64 x 12 In.
Medium: Acrylic and oil

Title card: Painted quilt patterns with names like “All Hands Around,” “Worlds Without End,” “Straight Furrough,” “Jacob’s Ladder,” and “Winding Ways” fit within this altarpiece. The patterns represent the ways individuals reach—for help, for purpose, and for repair.

The Dress Does not Make the Quilter
Clothing · Free Download

The Dress Does not Make the Quilter

Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Well, actually Rabelais said “The dress does not make the monk,” but since I’m not a monk like Rabelais — although I do sit monk-like day after day at the sewing machine — I prefer my variation for the title of this post.

There comes a day when an occasion arrives and even though Thoreau cautioned us to “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes,” it was time for a new dress for a granddaughter’s wedding, even though I’m aware that I’ll be mostly on the sidelines as this newer generation Does Things Differently so I need to get with it and adjust. But still, maybe it’s that I wanted a new dress? And that my sister had been making a lot of outfits from Merchant and Mills patterns and I Wanted In On The Fun.

The Beautiful Bride, from her IG account. Her mother is a photographer, so they snapped the bridal portraits early.

IDK how you feel about me sliding a dress post into a quilting blog, but this is what I’ve been doing with my sewing machine and time. The idea was to make a wearable toile out of each of the three patterns I was auditioning. Which meant that the dresses made from the flat folds picked up for cheep at M & L fabric shop probably wouldn’t fit me as well as I would want them to, which is why I’m not modeling them in this post. I also remember why I leapt over to quilting long ago: The Fitting Question. I remember at age 20 feeling like I was as large as a barn. And at 30, I thought I was zaftig. Oh, honey, I now want to say. You looked fabulous. The problem is that I was trained to sew on that 20/30-yo person, and now this person (some years down the road) is not who I know how to sew for. But I’m trying.

Dress Number One

I need to take out most of the extra ease I put in, but I wore it out anyway, along with beads from a quilt show. Jewelry rights a lot of wrongs.

Dress Number Two

Again, I put too much ease into this wearable toile (again, struggling with fit), and if I choose this one to make for the wedding, I’ll make it more like the pattern. I got all my patterns from Hart’s Fabrics in Santa Cruz, California and they came lickety-split, especially considering that Merchant and Mills patterns are from England.

In five years of owning my sewing machine, purchased in December 2020, I’d never used my buttonholer. I had to watch a video online to figure out how, but it worked like a charm the other night.

Dress Number Three

I’m still in the middle of Dress #3. It’s a Simplicity pattern I’ve had forever, and is a plain-Jane shirtwaist dress. I found two lengths of this blue-and-white fabric in my stash. Guess I forgot and ordered it twice, but it came in handy when I needed to make one more wearable toile. I’ve re-cut the sleeve piece twice; I like my sleeves a little longer — like to my elbow — but we’ll see how this turns out.

Pockets

I don’t know about you, but to me a good pocket is mandatory. I traced off an old pattern to make myself a basic pocket pattern, and here it is for a Free Download:

OPQuilt Pocket_PatternDownload

It basically looks like what’s in the photo, above. I used fat quarter-inch seam allowance on the outside edge, but you can cut it larger, if you want.

For placement on your dress, when holding up the main section of your pattern to your body, bend your elbow and figure out where you’d like your hand to slide in. Think also about where the bottom edge will be; you don’t want to be reaching down to get the car keys out of your pocket. Then mark that.

I sew the pocket onto the side of the dress in a 1/4-inch seam, press to the pocket, then serge that section only. After pinning the side seams/pockets together sew about 1″ below the top edge of the pocket piece, then all the way around the pocket, then to a point on the seamline and then down the seam to the hem. Like this:

Serge or zig-zag the raw edge. Or as Merchant and Mills patterns say, “Tidy up the edge.”

You can also stabilize the pocket by sewing it into a waist seam. To adjust for that, grab a pencil, like the one from your Dad’s art box, and draw a curvy line upward. Try to make it match your waist seamline. This is the cheesy way. Watch the following Video (That May Confuse You or Help You) to see it done more professionally than just a pencil line: How to sew a waist-anchored pocket (this also helps you draft your own)

What else?

Whichever one I think will work best will get sewn up into a light blue linen print I’ve been hoarding for a couple of years. Then I think I’ll sew a skirt or two when I return. I’ve seriously neglected my wardrobe the last few years, and I generally hate all clothes in the stores. (Or maybe it’s just trying them on that I hate.) Thankfully my sister is cheering me on, and my husband is an angel and has learned to say nice things about my wearable toiles, such as “You’ve never looked better,” and tries not to choke as he delivers his scripted lines.

I’m skipping my A Quilting Life QAL update post this month, mainly because I haven’t yet worked on it. I’ll just do both July and August together, after I return from the wedding of this lovely grandchild #3. And then I’ll launch back into some of my Economy Block sewing, too, as well as some quilting on the New York Beauties. Oh! and seaming together my Posh Penelope. August will be busy!

It’s heating up here…enjoy your July–

Pocket Links

Reforming a pocket to get anchored at the waist, from In The Folds

Design Your Own In-Seam Pockets

Professor Pincushion Talks You Through Adding a Pocket

Bernadette shows you the same thing, but also how to figure out where to put the pocket