Sawtooth Mania • Queen Bee February 2020

February 1, 2020January 29, 2020 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

I sat down one day to draw up a simple sawtooth block. Thirty-five variations later, I got up. Really, it’s all the same 8-inch block, but it is what’s inside that 4-inch square in the middle that makes it fun. As Queen Bee of the mighty Gridsters this month, I am looking for some Sawtooth blocks from my bee-mates. I’m calling it:

And like any beauty pageant there’s always a first phase; after looking at all of the first thirty-five, I’ve winnowed it down to these 25 semi-finalists.

I’ve left more explicit directions on our Bee Spreadsheet, but have fun choosing your favorite block to draw. Indicate which one it is on our sheet, and I’ll send you some templates. Remember, I only want ONE from you, so choose your favorite. And the reason why?

Not only do I have a specific layout, involving just twelve blocks, it’s also because I want a different signature block: a Tiny Envelope block (also found here). More instructions and information are given on the spreadsheet, but here’s the download for the instructions for the 6-inch envelope block:

Tiny Envelope Flier

Gridsters: Remember to make it in the same color as your Sawtooth Center, but to use PRINTS that match your solid, with the exception of the white center. Cut that from the fabrics that are coming your way for your Sawtooth Stars.

Everyone else: Feel free to use or borrow these sawtooth ideas. Pattern coming soon for all of them.

Tiny Envelope & More Blocks

January 19, 2020January 19, 2020 Elizabeth E.20 Comments

Gridsters January 2020

It all started, this idea of Tiny Envelopes, when a) I came down with a bad cold and everything I’d ever done in the world seemed lame and stupid, and b) Carol, our Gridster Queen Bee for January had us all make wee televisions for our signature blocks, in order to match up the larger block of Lori Holt’s vintage TV.

Okay, maybe I exaggerate on the first reason, but this is my THIRD cold of the season, and I am sick and tired of being sick-and-tired. And I live in sunny Southern California, and no one ever feels sorry for you in the winter.

Then, last night, when the cold and sniffles had interrupted my sleep and I lay there, pondering this (can you tell I’ve been watching Jane Austin’s Sanditon on PBS, where they belabor every point, and examine everything to the point of madness?), following in Carol’s footsteps seemed the way to go.

Tiny Envelope

This little 6″ finished block will be my signature block for when it’s my turn, which is coming right up next month. Last fall I spent many hours making a variety of my chosen bee block in my quilt program, in preparation for my turn at Queen Bee.

And it was that, which all of a sudden seemed so inane. So last night this made perfect sense.

Tiny Envelope Illustration

So here are my instructions for making Tiny Envelope blocks, in downloadable PDF form (it’s slightly different than the illustration above):

Tiny Envelope Flier

(The usual caveats apply: don’t download for classes, parties, or your best friend. Please send them here to this blog to get their own copy.)

Here are a slew of pictures to go along with the Tiny Envelope blocks flier:

TinyEnvelope_1

All the bits.

TinyEnvelope_2

I sewed one slender envelope strip on one side, trimmed it; then repeated the process. Press.

TinyEnvelope_3

Now take that square that you cut in half and sew to one side, letting the tip of one side of the triangle extend 1/4″ past the edge. The other side will really extend. (Pay this no mind.)

TinyEnvelope_4

Sew the other side on. You can see the 1/4″ bit of the tip extending on the upper left side. Thankfully, it does the same on the bottom. Stitch, trimming off that excess first triangle.

TinyEnvelope_5 TinyEnvelope_6

Now for the background. Same idea. Look for 1/4″ on the lower right edge, and let the rest of the triangle flow off the top.

TinyEnvelope_7

Sew the other triangle on. Trim and press.

TinyEnvelope_8

The sides were bugging me. I laid a 4″ ruler, so that the 45-degree angles matched up perfectly with my inner envelope, and trimmed both sides.

TinyEnvelope_9

I sewed on the strips for both sides, then evened up the top, too.

TinyEnvelope_10

Lower strip is on. True the whole thing up to 6″ square, or leave it for me to do when you send it. Either is fine. And also for my Gridsters, use a background that is lively (no low-volume stuff), but that still reads “light,” like this one. The envelope part will match the color of your eventual choice next week. Like that makes any sense, but soon it will. The rest of you can just make fun little envelope blocks.

In other ~~news~~ blocks…

Tri-Ball

My friend Simone designs new and interesting blocks for our chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild. This is the Tri-Ball block that’s coming up to submit to the March drawing. I really love this one!

Extra HSTs from Tri-Ball

Snowball Triangle Example

Since this has some snowball corners, if you double-sew that seam 1/2″ apart, then cut in between the two lines of stitching, you can get some fun HSTs.

Orange Fields HSH

I’m also re-writing, re-freshing my Home, Sweet Home pattern, and changed up some of the construction techniques, so I made up a new version. I call this my Orange Grove Houses, especially now that its January and all the citrus is popping out in Southern California!

Quilted My Small World

Lastly, before this cold hit, I was able to finish up the quilting on My Small World. It’s good to hit the pause button now and again, to enjoy the (here comes my Jane Austin voice) fruits of our labors, the blessing of our handiwork.

Now I’m going back to the bed to practice some fainting and work on handling those nasty spells that come over a Victorian woman. But boy, do I love all the clothes they wear. It’s worth watching that show, if only to catch a glimpse of Miss Heywood’s dress with the pineapple sleeve caps!

sanditon-charlotte-heywood-sidney-parker-1571036275.jpg

Happy Quilting!

300 Quilts · Quilt Finish · Quilts

Betsy’s Creation • Quilt Finish

September 1, 2019August 29, 2019 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

Betsyscreation_1 Betsyscreation_2

I found this 1920s vintage park with a grandstand in a small town just to the north of me and took my husband and my most recent finished quilt there, so we could do some photographing. And some reminiscing.

Fleming Park

It’s a sweet little small-town-built-long-ago park that for some miracle has remained. Named for an officer of the local cement company at the time, it’s known as the Thomas J. Fleming Memorial Park, built circa 1922-1925. Why is this important?

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I grew up in a small little town (not so little anymore), but it had that feeling of walking downtown on a hot summer’s evening, catching the fireworks on the 4th of July after seeing the parade that morning. It had the feeling of being able to drop your school bag at the door, change in to your “play clothes,” and head over past the Muehlstein’s home to send this and that sailing down their irrigation canal until you knew it was time to go home for dinner. (And did I mention that my childhood nickname was Betsy?)

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We’d walk up to Heber’s house and offer to find the eggs in his chicken coop for him. He’d let us. We would wind crepe paper in our bicycle spokes and all show up for a local parade. This was also a place where I was smallminded at times, like when I teased Marlene in fourth grade over something dumb, and then used up all her Scotch tape. It’s a place where others can also be mean, like when I got beat up by the Mitchell boy, and cried all the way home. (Later my mother saw him on the road, rolled down her car window and gave him a talking-to like I’d never heard.)

This small town in America was my place, where I learned to behave myself so no neighborhood mother would ever have to lean out her car window and give me a scolding. And how I wish I could go back in time and find Marlene and tell her how sorry I am. It was a place to be small, to grow up, and to leave behind.

Betsyscreation_9

But I catch glimpses of it when I think of it as a land of red, white and blue, where we love flags and fireworks and the Fourth of July. It’s a land of learning to get along with your neighbor because you never know when that person with the different name would give you a lifetime memory. Like when I needed to learn to ride a bike and Joan Muehlstein gripped the back of the seat, ran alongside me, and hollered, “Turn towards the wobble!”

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It’s mountains and vast plains, it’s small towns and big cities. And America is where I like to be the most, even though now I’ve traveled and love Berlin and Bologna and other different places with wonderful people who’ve gone themselves through nice and mean, dark and light, thick and thin. It’s when I return from far away and see that flag on the wall at the airport with a sign that says “Welcome to the United States,” well, I get a misty-eyed, just like in those movies from the 1940s.

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It’s my home, this America. And to me, it’s a pretty great place.

Betsy’s Creation • Quilt #225
Pieced by Elizabeth Eastmond • Quilted by Cathy Kreter
72″ wide x 86″ tall

Quilt began on Flag Day: June 14, 2019
Finished August 20, 2019
More info and a free worksheet for making this quilt can be found here. I also made a companion smaller flag:

Free Quilt Pattern · Gridsters · Quilt Bee · This-and-That

Wonky Hearts Aflutter

July 25, 2019July 26, 2019 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

Wonky Hearts_7

How do I make nearly 60 wonky, improv-y hearts and not go crazy? Now there’s a challenge.

Wonky Heart Illustration

I started here, with a rough pattern of how big I wanted my “improv” wonky heart to be. The free PDF file is available for download. It finishes roughly at 5 1/2″ wide by 7 1/2″ tall.

Click here: Unfussy Wonky Heart

Wonky Hearts_2

I started with the heart pieces. I layered up seven pieces of different pink and red fabrics, pinned on the heart pieces and placing my ruler along their outer edge, I cut around them with a rotary cutter: it wouldn’t really matter if I was hyper-accurate…close enough would do. I repeated this nine times.

Wonky Hearts_2a

Then I did the same thing with the background pieces, but was careful with my directional fabrics: I kept the pieces oriented as they would sew into the heart block.

Wonky Hearts_1

Everything’s stacked up.

Word Quilt in Process — These photos were taken over two weeks’ time, as I tried to fit all the words together. Words were made in The Spelling Bee, from 2016.

I shuffled the fabrics so no two fabrics would be together, and made a sample heart (at the top of the post). I pinned it next to the quilt of words I’d been working on, closed up the machine, turned off the iron, and enjoyed the sunset:

Sunset July 2019

Word Quilt Mock-up

When I woke up in the morning, I decided to try a digital mock-up of the quilt with the hearts as a border, as I wondered if the hearts were too big. I sent the photo to my two of my quilting buddies and they gave me two thumbs’ up. I’ll probably try to sneak in a narrow red/pink border between the quilt center and the outer border of hearts.

I’ve become braver about being wonky and improv-like, skewing seams, overlapping, cutting off points, generally going at it easy, instead of pristine.

Wonky Hearts_5

I have a few more hearts, now, and while the widths vary from 5 1/4″ to 5 1/2″ (I just trim them where it feels right), I’m forcing them to 7 1/2″ tall (that’s before seaming). Because I am tired of cutting off the points, I’ll now be cutting about 1/2″ off the bottom heart section before I seam it to the top part.

This is one of two long-term UFOs that haunt me in my dreams. The other one is Small World, which I keep in parts in a basket in my shelves. I do have hopes on finishing that one, too. I signed up for a Jen Kingwell class at Road to California in January; I suppose one goal would be to have it finished so she could sign it? Right.

July Gridsters Block 2019

In other sewing news, I finished July’s Gridster Bee blocks for my beemate Linda and sent them off.

And I’m trying this new type of tomato, developed for scorching temperatures. This year we were almost chilly and foggy until June, then the temps shot up high. I haven’t had good luck with my garden in three years, after a stunning first year of beginner’s luck. But hope is a thing with feathers, said Emily Dickensen, or my case, tomatoes.

I’ve also started quilting City Streets, a quilt of my own design.

Quilting City Streets_5

I’d picked up this Magnifico-cousin (same type of thread) when I visited Superior Threads last time. It’s color 101, and it looks like a gold thread, but isn’t a metallic thread:

Quilting City Streets_4

I hope I don’t run out before I finish this quilt.

Random Quilter

Finally, in my discussion about how the internet irritated me, I read a ton of blogs, some of which I can’t quite remember. But I did take a screen shot of this gem, a featured quilter on a truly dedicated quilter’s blog. (Given what he says about his favorite fabric color, I don’t think he would like my gold thread.) However, I leave you with the hope that you, too, have started quilting several times, as well as the ability to make the quilts in your head.

Free Quilt Pattern · Quick Quilt · Quilts

Bee Happy QAL Progress • June 2019

June 13, 2019June 7, 2020 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

The wheeled devices in the So Very Cute Project I ~~lost my mind and~~ decided to do are completed. It’s nice to see it before it goes to a Time Out in my closet, so I can get some Real Quilting Work done.

But before I tell you about the basket of flowers in the back of the truck, you need this chart from Whip Stitch:

Head to her website to read all about it, or download it here. Trust me, you’ll want this, as the weensy little instructions with the Clover bias tape makers will drive you batty.

This is Lori Holt’s logo for this delightful project. Notice the dog in the back of the truck.

Notice how the people who live in my quilt realized that they needed the space in the back of the truck for hauling baskets of flowers.

Make 1/2″ mini-hexies for the flowers, fussy-cutting a couple. Cover some triangles, sized in relation to the flowers, then give each a pleat in the lower edge before sewing them on. I used three “leaves” and five flowers. I used the lower edge of piece D8 as a pattern for the basket, then turned it upside-down to get the wider edge at the top.

It is really dense in that section, with the layering of fabric. I’m one who cuts away from the back whatever I can to lighten it up for quilting:

BeeHappy_June_6 — one more wheel to cut out

The Guidesheet for this week can be found in the tab above, Bee Happy Tutorial Sheets, under Projects for 2020.
See you later, Bee Happy-Sew-Along-gator!

I’m still working on this quilt, which I call Ladybird, because it reminds me of a ladybird beetle (sometimes called a Ladybug).

I finished the first book (long, but good) and am now onto another:

And this happened. Yes, no more PT. Now I’m getting ready for my project for tomorrow, Flag Day, the day when we find our rolled up flags in the front hall closet, and hang them out front, a prelude to the month of July, when it’s all red-white-blue all the time.

Okay, my wannabe flag quilt morphed into this flag-like wall hanging. I say flag-like, because I read one Instagrammer say that she had to make another less flag-looking quilt because her family didn’t want to lay hers on the ground for picnics.

I opened up my QuiltPro program, guessed out the proportions and figured it out. There is no pattern in my worksheet, because I do assume that you’ll figure out how to make this, if you really want to. Again, if either of my arrangements bother you, make one that you like. I was inspired by a lot of what I saw on this post from Quilt Inspiration, where you can find lots of free flag and flag-like quilts for your patriotric needs.

Here’s my worksheet, with all the dimensions, in a downloadable PDF file:
Betsy’s Creation_OPQuilt I named it after the original creator of the flag: Betsy Ross.

Happy Flag Day!!

Free Quilt Pattern · Gridsters

Scrappy Radiant Star

June 3, 2019June 3, 2019 Elizabeth E.7 Comments

Mary, of NeedledMom, chose this block for her June turn as Queen Bee of the Gridsters. Originally found on Wombat Quilts website as a free illustration, I redrew the block to Mary’s specified 6-inch (finished) size. Four of these blocks are put together to make Mary’s larger 12-inch block.

Click on the download PDF file here:

Scrappy Radiant Star

You’ll need four copies to make one 12-inch block, as shown below:

Notice there are FIVE colors per Mary’s larger block. Four corners have the same color, which when sewn together make that center star. But in looking at the way she designed it, the colors are to be distributed throughout the quilt. You can see her initial thinking about this version on this blog post (where you’ll also get a glimpse into her gardens and cooking. I love reading her blog).

Peek Marys Chart — *Just a peek–download below.*

Mary gave me permission to post the chart she drew up to keep her ideas straight. You can download this as a PDF:Mary’s Chart_ June Gridster Bee

You can see that she’s diagrammed the main stars (in the center), and the secondary stars in the corners. We Gridsters each chose two blocks, identifying our choices using her coding on the sides and are now sending them to her.