Happy Fourth of July Block!

July 4, 2020July 3, 2020 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

I decided to give my Shine: The Circles Quilt blocks another run, prompted by a backdoor agreement that won’t be mentioned at this point, but when/if it happens, I will be more than happy to splash it all over.

This time, the blocks will coalesce into one pattern, which will soon be available up on my pattern site, PayHip.

I remember my Clothing and Textiles teacher telling me that the inside of a garment is where the real story is. So here is the inside of this circle. Carol showed me her Red, White and Blue stack of Mackinac Island prints from Minick and Simpson, and yes, they arrived at my house probably only a day after they arrived at her house. (Quilt friends can be quite wicked that way.)

They, of course, are last year’s treasure, but I’ve been finding other prints that have been joining the stack growing to the side of my cutting table. And Minick and Simpson do have a companion collection coming out later this year, so we’ll see if I need any more.

I call this first block Swirlygig, but it floats a different direction than the original block.

This was the original Shine quilt. It’s time for a up-do-re-do!

Pattern coming soon. Happy Fourth of July!

This free tiny flag quilt pattern is up under the Tab: Past Endeavors -> Tiny Quilts

This free four-patch flag pattern available here

300 Quilts · Mini-quilt

MetaStructure/Metaesquema

June 14, 2020January 11, 2026 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

MetaStucture/Metaesquema
Quilt #231
11″ wide by 16″ high

Recently our Inland Empire Modern Quilt guild had a challenge that required that we use at least 4″ square piece of classic blue fabric, that any one side be no longer than 24″ and that the theme was Urban.

I’m on the board for this Guild, and am VP of Communications, so to help advertise it, I set up a mood board and we handed out a card with the 4″ square of fabric stapled to it. We chose Lapis, a Painters Palette solid from Paintbrush Studio, and I purchased several packets of it from Pineapple Fabrics, when they ran a booth at Road to California.

Then Covid-19 hit and it scuttled our plans. Like most, we were knocked flat for a bit, but then put together a Zoom meeting and resurrected our challenge. We had several amazing entries, seen on the guild website.

MetaStructure/Metaesquema was my entry (seen above).

I wrote on my label:

Helio Oiticica, a Brazilian artist (1937-1980), made hundreds of his Metaesquema paintings. Here are a few:

I like the way the solid blocks in the Metaesquemas kind of slump into each other, like a square that lost its energy, or tried to take off and was misdirected, or else it was trying to get away and couldn’t get free of the grid.

As noted above, Oiticica was closely linked to the global Concrete movement. They stripped art from any lyrical or symbolic connotations, believing that art should have no meaning other than color, line, and plane. Kind of sounds like catnip to a quilter, doesn’t it?

He created his Metaesquemas between 1957 and 1958. He coined the term as a means to “describe a work that, although schematic (esquema) in its formal development, is still open to the subjective interpretations inherent to metaphysics (meta). Oiticia was aware that artworks are objects that exist in time and space,” and are subject to the viewers’ interpretation (Philips).

For the contruction, I made wide 1-1/2″ borders around my blue squares, then created a tilt on them that I liked. I cut a few tilting to the left and a few tilting to the right, then arranged them. Of course, I would like to try this in a bigger quilt, with more white space around the tilted squares, but for a first go at it, I’m pretty happy.

Hop over to the Inland Empire Modern Quilt Guild website to see all the entries and the winners.

300 Quilts · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilt Finish · Travels

Azulejos • Quilt Finish

February 16, 2020January 11, 2026 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

Azulejos • Quilt #227
61 1/2″ wide by 75 1/2″ long

It was a rainy, wet day in Lisbon, and we’d made our way by bus to the Lisbon National Museum of the Azulejo, or the Tile Museum. We were rewarded for our efforts as I began to call it the Quilters’ Resource Center. If you are a grid enthusiast, as I am, it was heaven to walk through, with all sorts of interesting ways to think about what’s in a grid, as well as how to use color and negative space to make a design. And so, from a small sketch on that day in 2016, I created this quilt.

I was also inspired by a beautiful fabric created by Alison Glass from her Handiwork Collection. It was just so….azul (or blue, in Portuguese). I filled in with other treasures from my stash, and got to work trying to make it easier to construct.

Cathy Kreter, my quilter, did a nice tight design for the quilting.

So why if I finished it in November, have I not put it up here until now? Two reasons: one is I was seeing if my favorite magazine was interested (not this time, they said), and secondly, it was slated to hang at Road to California with a collection of modern quilts made by my guild, the Inland Empire Quilt Guild. We were honored to be able to have our quilts hung in the atrium as quilters entered, so I kept it quiet. There are more pictures on our Guild’s blog, taken by our President’s husband, a professional photographer.

On Sunday after Road was over, I had to wait like forever to pick up the three quilts I had at Road. My husband snapped this as we were leaving, Ladybird in my hands (well, the backing for Ladybird — a stellar print by Jane Sassaman).

Today I took some more photos of Azulejos, laying it down by the tools of the painters who were working at our home that day, scraping popcorn ceilings painting. It’s nice how a quilt can brighten any corner!

300 Quilts · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt

City Streets Pattern Release

September 7, 2019September 7, 2019 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

City Streets_1

City Streets now has another rendition.

City Streets_B1

I made it up in a 15″ block pattern, and broke into my meager Tula stash to create a colorful quilt. This pattern is made for beginners, with no triangles anywhere. I envisioned the 15″ block to sew up quickly for baby quilts and other times when you need a quilt. Fast.

I cut and sewed this all in a long morning, which leaked a bit into the afternoon. It’s a pretty quick sew if you are experienced, but a bit longer if you are a newbie.

City Streets Pattern Cover

City Streets, with both sizes included, is now for sale on PayHip. (Get coupon, below.)

Yardage City Streets

I also learned a few new things in my Affinity Publisher Software, making the pattern more colorful and easy-to-read. Above is the yardage chart for both versions.

You’ve seen a photo shoot on the first version of this quilt, but more pictures of the new version (not yet quilted) are below:

City Streets_B3

Here’s a coupon code for you in case you want to pick it up. Head over to PayHip and use CITYSTREETS20 — it will get you 20% off the price for a little more than a week (it expires on September 17th).

Happy Sewing!