Four Planes of Connection

August 11, 2026August 11, 2026 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

Not airplanes. More like what’s demonstrated in the above photo, if you can figure it out.

Math-type planes, like angles and parabolas and spheres and not only those, but rectangles and triangles and hallelujah, now we’re talking quilter language. Right? Well, it gets trickier when you are in Mathland.

The circle above is the Klein Quartic. No, please don’t ask. Just enjoy the colors and shapes. On the right is the Klein Quartic that’s quilted, a structure by Elisabetta Matsumoto, showing how this works. No, I don’t know how it works either.

After I’d finished my quilt with the four houses, I went looking for something “four-ish” so I could give it a name and fell into this article, from the 1860s…

…which had the quilt title phrase in the article. Good thing, because all that about nodal and zomal is way above my quilty pay grade.

There are all kind of “fours” in our world.

Crawling on all fours.

Four points of the compass. Four elements. Or the Montessori delineations. Or the anatomy descriptions of Planes of the Body. And if you are willing to wade through AI slop when in an internet search, there is all sorts of mumbo-jumbo about matter-life-mind-culture.

It’s purely coincidental that the rocket-ship-math-fabric was grabbed in this photo. Actually, I was thinking more about family relationships.

Our four children. My four sisters. Four grandparents.

All of us with planes of connection through shared memories, good days, bad days, sorrow, joy…many more than just four ways to connect. It could be a neighborhood of friends that come in and out of our lives. But when I look at these houses, I see family most of all, which sometimes can be as tangled as a Klein Quartic.

One of my books notes that “The basic relationships governing planes are relatively few in number. Much of the problem of using these relationships is determining just where and how to use them.” **

Boy, howdy.

After a long hot summer I must admit I often struggled with some of those planes of connection. Relationships and relating to each other can be a challenge as well as a delight. However, our lives hold good, our lives hold the awful, and we build a multi-faceted experience just by living in this real world of ours.

And for me, August brings a remembrance of one of those happy experiences.

Glad our planes connected–

**Book was found in a library discard cart and is titled Graphic Science and Design, by Thomas E. French and Charles J. Vierck.

The Singular Sawtooth

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

Or, the Almighty Sawtooth. Or the Magnificent Sawtooth. Or the Sawtooth Supreme. But first:

The famous novelist, Joyce Carol Oates, talked about what she turns to after she finishes a novel, as she described herself then as spent, and empty. Poetry, she said. I was sitting in that audience when she gave that talk, and it taught me the value of not abandoning the craft when weary. But it also taught me that it’s okay to take a moment after going full steam ahead, a thousand hours a week, pedal-to-the-metal. This week was one like that, maybe not like writing a novel, but the always On, always Going, and by Thursday, I turned to my kind of poetry: sawtooth stars.

A rendering of a current popular pattern, but I’ve done this before:

“This” being to make an outer frame of the sawtooth’s Flying Geese blocks, and insert a design in the center. Why do we like the Sawtooth Star so much? I think the answer to that lies also in why we like star blocks so much. And it was to this I returned this week, after dancing around with multiple combinations of everything for the Granny Square blocks.

I’ve had this sawtooth star idea floating around my sewing room for probably five years, the how-to sheet pinned to my design wall just to the side (see the free download at the end). It was time. The large block measures 20″ finished.

The handout/pattern is pretty loosey-goosey but after you make the inner quadrants, trim them to 5 1/2″ square, making sure you are centered with your ruler. And maybe also centered in your soul. Kidding.

I like to make my Flying Geese components using the four-at-a-time method. I have a whole post about that here, and the free tip sheet can be downloaded from that same post. Or from here, in my Beginner’s Series of blocks.

As I mentioned, these are jumbo blocks, 20 inches square, finished. The one on the left is destined to be quilted and then made into a pillow for — what else? — Flag Day, which is today! (Put out your flag and celebrate America’s 250!) The multi-hued block will probably kick around my sewing room for another few years until I decide what to do with it.

But there is one more.

Yellow and blue are two of my favorite colors.

This came from when I was experimenting with BlockBase+ software and wanted to insert blocks into a different frame than a Sawtooth. Original post is here.

And now I wanted to finish this idea.

Here’s something I sketched up in my Affinity Designer software. That’s a total of 64 sawtooth blocks surrounding my houses, and finishes at about 55 inches square, a nice wallhanging size. I included the info when I revised the Build Me A House pattern. (It’s a PatternLite pattern: cheap.)

This block finishes at 6″ square — after spending several hours on the two jumbo sawtooth stars, this was made in a blink of an eye, it seemed like.

First one done, sixty-three to go. That blue fabric in the center square is from my very first quilt. I try to slip it into my current quilts when I have a chance.

It’s been lovely to spend some time writing poems–

OPQuilt Pinwheel Sawtooth Star Download

Before I sewed on the top Flying Geese: I thought it looked kinda cool.

If you are honoring the 250 anniversary of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, be sure to visit the Official America 250 website. There are some fun ideas on there to commemorate and celebrate!

300 and Beyond · Free Download · Free Quilt Pattern · PatternLite · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilts

Our Quilty Neighborhood • Free Pattern

January 18, 2026January 17, 2026 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

We quilters love to make house quilts.

We love to make landscape quilts. We love to make pictures of our pets, our people. We love to use traditional blocks as well as fly far away from our roots and use modern blocks.

We — all of us quilters — like our neighborhood.

But where has it gone? I came across Nic’s blog (from NZ) and they mentioned that so many blogs had shut down or stopped publishing. Recently I was updating my Reading Library (at the very bottom of this blog: just scroll, scroll, scroll and you’ll get there). I had to create a category called Sadly, in Hiatus. I keep their links because I know what treasures are in their blogs, and what great conversations are to be found, and interesting stories to be told, so feel free to stroll that (now, quieter) neighborhood, too. Yes, there are some Instagram pages in the Reading Library from friends who don’t maintain websites and blogs. If you know of a good quilty blog (maybe yours?) that should be there, leave me a comment at the end of this post.

I could mention something wonderful about every blog on my list, both those on hiatus and those that are active, so I don’t really want to single anyone out, but I will credit Flourishing Palms from Linda Hungerford as an inspiration for a quilt on my 2026 Want To do List:

And Yvonne’s Quilting Jetgirl has just tempted me with the SAHRR project, first seen on Janine’s blog, Rainbow Hare, last year. And I also have the Plaidish quilt, from Erica’s Kitchen Table Quilting on the list. I’ve signed up for a few of her QALs, but they always hit at a bad time, but this quilt is sort of her signature quilt. You had a link last week to Gladi’s blog, always with some mention of the seasons. Mary, of Zippy Quilts, always has great ideas of what to do with my orphan blocks…I could go on and on, but I’ll stop here.

I also keep a category called Mercantile, with some more commercial blogs on it. You’ll also find there are some clothing pattern sites and sources for fabrics, as my sister Susan got me more into sewing recently.

What Inspires When the Spark is Gone is a category of frequently updated links, that I read for inspiration when the doldrums hit, or the sew-jo is missing.

I’ve also asked for recommendations of blogs, and a reader sent forward a vote for Debbie’s A Quilter’s Table, which I’ve read for years, too. We used to be in a couple of bees together, and in strolling through Debbie’s blog, I found this:

Which led to this:

And good news, all these little birds all came from one Charm Pack (5″squares). Here’s some cutting tips:

From the charm pack, choose 16 prints you like, and then find their duplicates. Divide them into two equal piles. From the first pile, cut the block in half diagonally, making two triangles. Put one set aside, and from the other, cut the birds’ heads, as shown. You can discard the triangles on the side, or save them for another use. Now pick up the pile with the matching fabrics.

You’ll make two cuts in through each five-inch square. Make the first cut but don’t move them. Then make the second cut, so you’ll have four bits. Keep the 3″x3″ block. Discard the 2′ x 2″ block, or save for your scrap box.

Then sew along the long edge of the 2″ x 3″ blocks to make a larger patch; trim to 3″ square. Or, just do what I do:

Draw a line diagonally across one of your background squares. Plop it on top of the extended square. Stitch on either side of the line, 1/4″ away from the line, then trim off the edge, and cut on the line. Standard HST-procedure except for that blob on the right. Then press to the dark side, then trim to 2 1/2″ square. You’ll need four of these per bird.

I’ve stacked up a few pieces before I start batch-sewing.

Sew the triangles on either side of the head, then sew to the body. Press, then trim to 4 1/2″ square.

Sew two HSTs together, then two more. Sew the first set to the body. Sew the second set to the white square in the lower left. Stitch everything together. (See photos, above.)

Two Reminders:
• Trim the body/head square to 4 1/2″ and then, after assembling,
• trim the whole block to 6 1/2″, please.

This is what it looks like from the back. On most of them I put one seamed HST in each wing-set, but here I have them both on one side. Now take your sixteen blocks and have fun arranging them.

Working Title: His Eye is on the Sparrow. It’s 24″ square, with two-inch borders and cornerstones.
I’d been thinking about someone I know who has been having a rough go. I mean, we all take turns at that wheel, but now it was their turn. I had tried turning the darkest bird, but it was too much and too obvious. The pink sparrow, the one we all don’t notice all the time and who is quite possibly having the toughest time, is the one we need to keep our eye on.

The other title I thought of was Murmuration, when the birds fly in a huge swirling artful array in the sky. I rarely see them myself in nature, but I love videos of that effect. However, I went with the above.

This is my freebie for you, a wee gift. Click to download.

Darting Bird PatternLite Download

I was able to cut and sew this thing in no time flat. I have a huge project I’m about to tackle and maybe I just needed a little something to get my sewing warmed up? I had fun making it, and hope you enjoy it.

I’ve read some take a Slow January, but this month we threw away the 50-year old workbench in the garage, and bought one of those fancy new rolling ones. We’ve cleared out lots of junk, and my car is loaded for a trip to the hazardous waste facility–who knew what we could accumulate in paint and pesticides over all this time! Happily, we found a new Fixit Guy, and he’s helping us with replacing switches and light fixtures, drywalling and painting. I think it will all be done by the 31st.

But this coming week is Road to California! Even though it is a national quilt show, it’s also our “local” quilt show — only 35 minutes from my house on a good LA freeway day. I’ll be going up several times to see the quilts, find out what the vendors brought, hang out with friends, and then it will all be over for another year. So, no. January is never slow around here, but we do hibernate in the dead of summer. At that point, I’ll be inside with with the A/C on (set to a responsible temperature) and sewing away. But for us Southern Californians, we play our January away!

Your neighbor,

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

Christmas Trees • Quilt Finish

December 1, 2024August 23, 2025 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Biography of this quilt:

Factoid #1: It could be Christmas Trees. It could be Easter Trees. It could be Halloween Trees, even though I posed it in a Christmasy setting in a small town in Arizona.

Factoid #2: Started in a small sewing group swap in 2016, it lingered in a bag somewhere in my closet. I found it again this year, and when my friend Lisa finished hers up and prompted me to Get Going.

Factoid #3: The block pattern has been spruced up into a charming new version of itself. Get it yourself by clicking on the Download button:

Christmas Trees 2024_OPQuilt pattern Download

This free download will also be at my pattern shop on PayHip.

Factoid #4: This is a great quilt for using the shirt from your husband/boyfriend/son that has worn out. Or your Dad (see different trees from different shirts, below–somehow blue checks are popular).

Factoid #5: These make up fast. What takes the most time is picking out the fabrics. I decided a slim border with a fun binding would finish it off nicely.

Factoid #6: This is the second “holiday-ish” quilt I finished this year. I never seem to get into the mood until Thanksgiving rolls around. Next on the list: order the Christmas Cards. (eye roll)