Triad Harmony • Quilt Finish

August 30, 2020December 24, 2025 Elizabeth E.20 Comments

*Triad Harmony*, quilt number 234
33″ wide by 29″ high

Annularity now has a little sister, and her name is Triad Harmony.

Triads that harmonize are found in color wheels and in music. The Oxford Dictionary of Music notes that “Zarlino was the first theorist to accept the triad as a full-fledged consonance. Not only did he accept it, he dubbed it the harmonia perfetta—the ‘perfect harmony.’ He rationalized giving the triad this suggestive name not only on the basis of the sensory pleasure that triadic harmony evoked” but also because of reason and mathematical theory.

But that’s not why I named it that. I don’t really know why I named it this, other than my triad block is the basis of the design. Sometimes names just drift in out of the heavens, and there they are.

I was asked to speak to the Coastal Quilters Guild about a year ago, and my friend Susan wanted to make Annularity. When we all were switching to Zoom, I thought I should try to create a smaller version of that quilt, as small quilts are more easily created in a workshop setting. And I promised her I’d try it in Kaffe fabrics, her first love. So here it is, but it’s so hot off the press, that I haven’t had a chance to quilt this version. (Coming soon, and with a different name, I promise.)

The pattern is finished and can be purchased on PayHip, my pattern site.

I also drew up a bit larger version and I loved seeing some of the drafting details, so I took a screen shot. It is also when I found a significant error in my first quilt, but I doubt you’ll find it so I’m not going to tell you where it is. Humbling moments come at me from every direction.

It’s been an intense two weeks filled with smoke from fires in my lovely California, watching most of the Democratic convention and parts of the Republican convention, worrying about people I love, dealing with asthma and a reaction to a Shingles vaccination, writing up this pattern, quilting the first quilt, cutting and sewing the Kaffe version, moving my in-person Guild Visits to Zoom visits, trying not to be cranky when we had ten days of 100+ temperatures, along with the usual.

Unlike others, I didn’t have to deal with sending children back to school in masks, a stressful essential job where I had to risk the covid-19 virus, money troubles (thinking about my early days when I didn’t have two quarters to rub together in my pocket), locating a good fabric shop, teenagers, car or computer troubles.

I have some observations about the conventions, a thought or two about some of the other things, but today I am tired, so I’ll close it out here.

Take care, everyone. Keep quilting. Keep bringing the beautiful into your lives, one stitch at a time.

Criss-Cross Autumn Quilt Top

August 7, 2020January 11, 2026 Elizabeth E.34 Comments

I’m getting ready to do a live-online presentation and teaching at Glendale Quilt Guild next week, and a deadline always sends my I-should-try-this into overdrive. So while I have the Criss-Cross pattern up online, and I thought I was pretty settled, a little voice in the back of my head said I should try some autumn colors in the largest size block in the pattern.

Okey-dokey. So I pulled a group of red-orange, purple, gold, orange, yellow fabrics and I was cooking along, pretty happy with the choices I’d made, but when I was looking for another darkish to put into what was up on the design wall…

…this fell out of a bin. It was Jennifer Sampou’s Chalk and Charcoal fat quarter stack, purchased some years ago. I used to have it out on a surface, just because I liked the colors so much, but had never opened it. (I’m sure you have never done this.)

So, in a flash, all the previous choices were down from the wall, and I had cut and was arranging all the new choices up there. The last image is adding in the strips.

So here is Criss-Cross Autumn, a 35″ square wall hanging. And since we don’t live in a climate that has a lot of rusts, golds, purples, reds in the tree canopies, but we do live in a climate that at the end of summer has a lot of golds, browns and yellows, my husband and I took a drive out in the countryside to shoot some photographs.

We were out in Hemet, by the golden San Jacinto mountains (shown above). One writer once compared the California hills to a tawny mountain lion. I grew up in the Bay Area, where in autumn, the golden grassy hills are interspersed by giant spreading oaks. What we have mostly now is not native, as I discovered when reading this essay, but like the author, I do love the colors.

Now, what to do with that other almost-quilt? How about I give it away? I’ll send you the almost-quilt (already cut!) and its strips (also, already cut, although I have to tell you that once you get adding and subtracting, you may find yourself adding more). There are also a few extra pieces in there, in case you have a different vision. I will also include a hard copy of this new pattern, with multiples sizes and variations.

Leave me a comment at the end, tell me about what colors are in your landscape around you right now, and how you feel about those colors. I’ll pick a winner using the husband-draw-a-paper-out-of-hat method, and let the winner know by email. Here are some image/photos of Criss-Cross Quilt, done in Christmas fabrics:

I’m looking forward to live-online teaching this quilt at the Glendale Quilt Guild next Saturday!

*Criss-Cross Autumn*, Quilt Index No. 232

UPDATE: Just thought I’d add this to the post. I finished the quilt a few days later, using a simple straight-line quilting pattern, varying the directions. It will be perfect for hanging up during September, when autumn arrives.

UPDATE: Comments are now closed. Winner will be contacted via email on Monday, August 10, 2020.

P.S. There’s a coupon code for the pattern, good for 25% off Criss-Cross Quilt through the end of August. The code is listed on the PayHip page.

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

Betsy’s Creation • Quilt Finish

September 1, 2019January 11, 2026 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

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.

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?

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?)

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.

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!”

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.

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:

etsycreation

Mini-quilt · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilts

Merrion Square • A New OPQuilt Pattern

February 27, 2019January 16, 2026 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

Merrion Square, Version 2_OPQuilt — *Merrion Square* 26″ Mini Quilt

First you saw this, way back in December of 2018. I had this idea in my head and with a stack of Alison Glass fat quarters from Andover, I decided to try it out.

That idea led to this mini quilt, named for a square in Dublin that is known for its doors:

At the center of the square is park, with interesting tributes to famous Irish poets and writers, so I had to include the bushes and trees.

Then I changed it up a bit, making it a rainbow of scrappy and leaving off the border.

And then this version emerged from my late-night tinkering around. Because of the (ahem) shoulder situation, I can’t quite quilt it yet, but I was able to sew it together. (I think this is my favorite.) I have since made three of these: one to send off for a sample for the Utah Valley Quilt Guild Workshop, another to head to the Valley of the Mist Quilt Guild, where I’ll be teaching it again in May, and one to hang around, just so I can look at it.

I worked with my new Affinity Publisher Beta software and wrote it up, and now it’s available for sale in my PayHip shop. Both versions are included — well, really, all three versions are included — if you go there, you can click on the little banner in the upper right corner and download a Preview, which includes a list of fabrics needed to make these.

Some of you may have seen this on Instagram today. I’ll be teaching this for the first time at a workshop with the Utah Valley Quilt Guild. I’m pretty excited about it.

You may have also seen this: I asked my Gridsters Bee Mates to make me up a slew of little houses, taken from this pattern. I want to make a lovely little quilt of houses:

I’ve had this idea floating around just as long as the others, and am looking forward to putting this together, too.

Merrion Square Pattern_opquilt_illustration — *front of pattern*

The pattern is $12.00, has 13 pages of colorful illustrations with clearly written directions. It is available for a PDF download, and you can have it immediately. [Update: it also includes the Far Away Doors pattern.) It is available in my pattern shop on PayHip.