Plitvice • Quilt Finish

March 29, 2019January 11, 2026 Elizabeth E.29 Comments

Plitvice
Quilt #218 • 76 1/2″ square

After four years, I finally finished up the quilt of multiple pieced hexagons. Yes, every seam on that top is hand-stitched. I’ve had many posts about this, but here’s its final and complete post: it is done!

Back of the quilt, using an Andover Fabrics wideback fabric. No piecing, no fussing around. This was so slick–just buy the three yards and send it off to the quilter, Darby of Quilted Squid, who did a great job.

About that edge binding: it was supposed to be a faced binding, tucked behind the quilt, but once I saw it on the edge, that was the missing piece that fell into place for me. I wasn’t quite sure I liked this pile of English paper-piecing, until I saw that. But I stab-stitched the facing in perle cotton all the way around, to get that nice tight, bound edge look. That’s why it’s so large on the back–I didn’t want to cut down the width of my facing, so I went with it.

And if you’ve been reading my Instagram account, you know we are poppy-crazy out here with our California Superbloom, so we took the quilt on one of our poppy-hunting treks to get the two photos you see in this post.

Plitvice_1 — *Plitvice Lakes National Park, Croatia*

You can use the tags on this post (click on them) to search for other entries of this quilt, if more information is needed. Many thanks to Katja Marek for starting us on the Millefiore road.

Creating · EPP · eQuilt Universe · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt

A Bit Frosty this January

January 4, 2019December 28, 2024 Elizabeth E.19 Comments

Remember this?

And this?

This is Shine: The Circles Quilt, and I started it as a English Paper Piecing project, putting the free patterns up on this blog, beginning in 2014. I also have a page dedicated to these blocks, giving out the patterns and tutorials for each, until the last four (which used to live on Craftsy, but that’s another blog post. Coming soon.)

And then this new year, I opened up mail from one of my heros, Becky Goldsmith to see this:

and this:

all advertising her newest endeavor.

As near as I can tell, she has no idea I exist. She is not copying me. She has fancy borders, and has done the quilt twice. I think this is a classic example of what the German’s call “der Zeitgeist” or “the trend of thought and feeling in a period.“

But I am a bit frosty about this, for one reason only: she has a megaphone, and I have only this blog. I used to have a blog and a Craftsy site (!), but I guess I also have Instagram, which might have a zillion followers if I unblocked all those creepy men or Quilt-Content-Thieves. But is it really “frosty” or is it more that I’m jealous? I think the latter.

I still have my Shine patterns here, but really, I have to yield the selling floor to the firepower of Piece O’Cake Designs, in making a quilt with a grid of paper-pieced circles based on the traditional style of a compass rose. I don’t have her readership, her TV show appearances, her mailing list. She’s a tsunami. I’m a wobbly sprinkler on the back lawn. To be truthful, Goldsmith earned her tsunami status through hard work over many years; again, she did NOT copy me at all. I have all of her books, and have made a couple of her designs, so you do have to put me in the category of Total Admirer. But that’s not the issue here.

My takeaway: when quilters come up with designs similar to one another, it’s not always a copyright issue, which is the usual scream that emmanates from the collective online voice. Sometimes it just is the Zeitgeist.

Sometimes the Sew Together Bag is merely a copy of her grandfather’s toiletries kit (this fact mentioned to me while we were standing in line together at Market in Salt Lake City), and my Mini-Sew Together Bag was a version I was working on when I didn’t like the bulk of the original, and my Smile Bag came before byAnnie’s Clam Up bag and perhaps we were both inspired by the bag for the First Class United Airlines customers, and perhaps they were inspired by some ancient Japanese zakka. That’s how these things go.

Okay, I feel better now.

Updates to original post are in black text.

EPP

Millefiore Quilt Update

November 28, 2018November 24, 2018 Elizabeth E.22 Comments

Millefiore mood board

It all began here, with my Millefiore mood board, drawing on colors from the National Park in Croatia, Plitvice Lakes. I had decided to jump in and go with all of Quilting America that year and join the The New Hexagon Millefiore Quiltalong. I was pretty much nuts to do this. This was photographed on January 19, 2015.

Millefiore first sewing

First glued-up paper pieces: January 19, 2015.

First Rosette.png

First public appearance for Rosette #1: March 14, 2015.

All Rosettes_OPQuilt

Last public appearance for quilt, mocked up in Photoshop: July 15, 2018. That’s over three years, if you are doing the math.

As you know, I hated the crenellated edges on this particular quilt. So the quilt sat in the corner until this week. Then suddenly it was do or die time, and I picked up making little sections to fit into the cut-outs.

Millefiore Center_2

And here it is today, all edges filled in.

Millefiore Working Mess

I pretty much used all the papers I’d taken out of the rosettes — once they were sewn together — and categorized these pieces into bags, using paper clips and rubber bands to keep them organized.

Millefiore numbering cutouts

To keep track, I took a photo, and numbered the half–hexies I was making. I ended up not needing to do this for every corner, as I used long triangles that fit into the zig-zaggy sides (#5-12) in a variety of darker fabrics (taking cues from the adjacent blocks).

Millefiore place tryout

I kept one half-hexie out on my cutting mat and tried different “puzzles” of what could go in that shape. I had pretty much determined that I was not going to use a full half-hexie; I’d seen others and to me they looked bland, like they didn’t add anything to the quilt. I did end up using one, but the fabric had a print that just worked.

Millefiore pinning

I used triangles and a variety of other shapes to fill in, always letting the adjacent fabrics dictate what I’d use for the fill-in fabrics.

Because I like to keep records, and because I’m hoping this will help others when they try this technique, here are all the filled-in shapes and the marked spaces (scroll past fast, if it doesn’t interest you):

Millefiore Fillins_1 Millefiore Fillins_1A

I did my own thing on this rosette.

Millefiore Fillins_3 Millefiore Fillins_3A

I liked how I was able to complete the “bird points.”

Millefiore Fillins_5 Millefiore Fillins_5A Millefiore Fillins_6 Millefiore Fillins_6A

The half-hexie on the lower left is the only one cut from one piece of fabric, but I think it reads as more complex.

Millefiore Fillins_7 Millefiore Fillins_7A Millefiore Fillins_8 Millefiore Fillins_8A

I used a floral Kaffe fabric from deep in the interior (just barely out of sight on the middle left).

Millefiore Fillins_9 Millefiore Fillins_9A

Millefiore Center_3 — *Stained Glass View*

Millefiore Center_4

This is the rosette that started it all, and I still like it.

Quilt Stand

More info on my new quilt stand, coming in a couple of weeks. But now I have my final Frivols to attend to!

EPP · Quilts

Rosette #6 for the New Hexagon Millifiore Quilt-A-Long

September 20, 2016September 30, 2016 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

Here’s my rosette #6 for The New Hexagon Millifiore Quilt-Along.

And here is the original.

Why did I change it? I started looking at all the composite views of the rosette and just thought the star was too prominent, that it started a new conversation in the middle of the living room when the party around it was already having a nice chat, thank you very much. While I thought the original design was very clever, I needed it to change.

Here are the changes I made:

In the black Circle #1, I created a new piece — that of two tall 30-60-90 triangles merged into one equilateral triangle. I studied my friend Laurel’s rosette (she is all finished with her quilt top) and noticed that in hers, as well as in many others, the right triangles of 30-60-90, when placed back to back with another, create a third pattern. It does the same thing in the original block, above. But I wanted to use this bargello/flame fabric and I only had a little bit, so that made my decision for me.

In the dark pink Circle #2, I looked at other blocks that I’d sewn in my previous rosettes, because I wanted to nab their papers and re-use them. I found this shape in an earlier rosette, figured out that it would work, and am happy with the “ribbon” the multi-colored light-green fabric made.

I had to sew on my equilateral triangles on the center section first, then the next inner row of partial hexies, in order to make it fit (the ones with the bold radiating circle design). Then it was add the last round, alternating the birds and the citrus fruit hexies.

Here it is, laid out in Photoshop, which isn’t really the greatest approximation of how it looks in real life, but I’m not yet to the sewing-it-together phase. I’m still not 100% sure about the colors of Number Six, but I will try to bring in one more yellow spot somewhere — maybe in 10a — so I can balance those brights.

Stay tuned.

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