Quilts

Mini House Quilt Finished!

July 15, 2015September 11, 2020 Elizabeth E.19 Comments

My mini houses quilt is finished! I know you’ve heard that line before, but let me go back in time to a galaxy far far away, to this:

Mini House Fail. Yep. That center certainly is puckery, demonstrating clear signs of the Training Bra Effect. Evidently, something, somehow was just not right.

It feels like I’ve been sewing on this for ages. . .

But, armed with new templates, I persevered. I cut six different combos for the center before I was finally happy. If the center fabric was too busy. . . fail. If the center was too washed out. . . fail. The yellow and the pink below are really strong colors, but the visual texture is “flat.”

Everything seamed and pressed.

To quilt a small quilt, I use straight pins to baste, sinking the point into the batting. First stabilize the quilt by sewing the strong verticals and horizontals (think: nine-patch), then sew around the rest of the straight line pieces, using a walking foot and fine thread. (I use Bottom Line by Superior Threads for this work as the thread is nice and fine and disappears.)

I stitched in clapboard on the houses, horizontal on the flatter houses and vertical on the squares, but broke out into curvilinear on the dotty houses. I swirled in a bush, did a curvilinear on the front porches and the yellow points of the Lemoyne Star, then outlined and stitched in the sky in a random fluffy cloud effect. A strong binding finished it off.

To help with hanging, I cut giant 6″ squares, folded them in half diagonally, then attached them in to the corners; I’ll insert a dowel cut to size, insert in the corners, and suspend the quilt from a push pin.

This is quilt # 147 on my 200 Quilts List and is 18″ square.

I still feel this way about my home!
NOTE: I’ve recently updated this pattern, adding another view, with a different contruction. I’ve also revised the original construction techniques, making it easier to put together:

You can find it for purchase on PayHip.

Download a copy of the pattern front for reference here:

houses-mini-quilt-18inch.pdf Download

Quilts

Matrix and Offset Pattern Giveaway

July 14, 2015July 13, 2015 Elizabeth E.3 Comments

Sometime back I wrote about the Mid-Century Modern Bee and all the talented quilters there. I also mentioned my friend Anne of SpringLeaf studios and how she is a pattern designer and maker. This week she is having a giveaway of two of her patterns, and I thought you’d want to know.

The first one is Matrix, a beautiful quilt using bold and bright colors as well as soft-toned grays. It’s fun to make and easy too. Head to Anne’s blog to leave a comment and enter her giveaway for this pattern and where you can see other versions of this quilt (she is very thorough). Hurry! for the giveaway for a downloadable PDF version closes soon. You can also buy this in her Craftsy shop if you want (info is on her blog).

The other quilt pattern she is releasing is Offset. Our group test-drove block patterns for her in the early stages of development, so it’s fun to see both of these patterns. Head over to her Offset Giveaway to leave a comment and enter your name to win one of her patterns.

I’ve sewn Anne’s patterns before and she is a ‘cut above’ in the pattern designing market. She writes clearly and makes her illustrations easy to follow with clear directions. I also like the “extras” she puts in her patterns, and it was from her pattern Facets that I finally perfected the miter when I end my binding. Again, you need to hurry! to get in on the giveaway–head over to SpringLeaf Studios and have a look around!

Quilts

Moroccan Quilt Tile

April 15, 2015 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

So it all started with this photo, from the Instagrammer JillinItaly, a small sweet shot of tiles on a Moroccan floor. It actually started with my #the100daysof4square project (an offshoot of #the100DayProject) and since I have to come up with four squares of something every day for 100 days, this was what I chose. Maybe it was the color, the interesting half-clamshell that formed a whole clamshell and an apple-core block, I don’t know. It was just one of those serendipitous moments that made me want to struggle my way through learning how to draw it in EQ7 (I still depend on my trusty QuiltPro, but wanted to become fluent in two quilt languages).

I’m also suffering badly from Spring Fever, even worse than my students (which now you know must be nearly a four-alarm alert of Teacher Fatique and Mindlessness), so much suffering that I let them out early today. Again. That’s two days in a row and the kid who went his freshman year at Cornell (but is now back here) looks at me as if something was whack-o, and the kids in the back row just grin from ear-to-ear, even though I had to tell one of them she was on track for a stupendous grade of D, if she didn’t get her Stuff Together and pull it up to a sunny C. Are you surprised when I tell you that she was completely surprised? Didn’t think so.

So I just had to do something different tonight rather than think about all of that, and here it is: a free pattern for a six-inch block of the above. Moroccan Tile Block six-inch Have fun. I have not yet made it, but Leanne of SheCanQuilt has a wonderful tutorial, complete with video, on sewing curves, so I’d check over there if I were you. That first picture from JillinItaly’s feed just lit up my wee IG universe (click on the icon on the right to see more), so maybe it’s not the only the fabulousness of the pattern, but also those colors that say Spring Is On Its Way, or if you are in the Southern Hemisphere, it may be saying, You’ve Had a Good Summer, Now It’s Time For Fall, but I’m not really seeing more than those saturated — while also being faded — yummy peaches and golds and magentas.

As far as the other project goes, I have not yet keeled over, but am still working steadily on getting it quilted. I’ve already ripped out several parts, but I think I know now what I’m doing, so that’s a relief, as any FMQ quilter can tell you. I might just yet make that deadline of Tuesday. Stay tuned.

Quilts

Neonatal/Preemie Quilts with a Free Pattern

March 29, 2015March 29, 2015 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

The Riverside Raincross Quilt Guild, to which I belong, has many community service projects, one of which is their making and donating neonatal, or preemie, quilts to the County hospital’s NICU. I sat across from Mary last guild meeting, as she patted the stack of little quilts, and told us the story about how her friend, who is a nurse, lays them all around the layettes when she gets a new stack from us, and how she loves looking at them. All those little quilts made with love.

They are 30″ square, lightly quilted (at least all the ones in the stack were, for that makes them more huggable and drapable). I had some fabric I’d ordered last year that I wasn’t that fond of (the hazards of online-ordering, although the fabric itself was very popular and cute and I thought it would be good for a boy), plus I had a block I wanted to try out, which first surfaced in the 1940s. Here is a PDF pattern for that block, a 15″ square Twin Darts: Twin Dart 15%22 block. (Click on the link to download.) Make sure your printer settings are set to 100% and it should come out okay. You’ll be making four large blocks.

It’s an easy pattern, but there are a lot of bias edges, so my advice (in hindsight) would be to give them a good shot of spray starch before piecing. All the quilts are pre-washed before they go to the babies, so it will be washed out.

Then I wanted to try a Pillowcase Binding. I liked Susan B. Katz’s excellent tutorial, found *here.*

But I ended up going the tutorial from Rita, of Red Pepper Quilts (found *here*), as it was not for an art quilt (which Susan’s is) and yes, I did baste the quilt top to the batting in a couple of places before sandwiching them all together, then turning.

I then top-stitched around all the outside edges to close up the opening, then quilted around all the arrows (or darts) and other main seams. Done! I have another one in the works, which I’ll post about, too, as well as give you the free pattern. I put this up on Instagram, and many people had the same response I did–a good way to winnow down the stash as well as doing good.

While looking through the web for guidelines about batting (apparently polyester or cotton, no wool), I found this document and modified it to post here: neonatal_quilt_guide Please check with your local guild as to size and other requirements, as they are obtained from your local hospitals.