Christmas Trees • Quilt Finish

December 1, 2024August 23, 2025 Elizabeth E.11 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)

Factoid #7: Label

Factoid #8: (last one) This is quilt number 296. Four more to go to reach my goal of 300. Then what? (I don’t know. Probably not much will change.)

Have fun choosing fabrics and breezing through a fast quilt–

Twilight Garden • Quilt Finish

September 8, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

One summer night when we were sitting out in the garden, the year before all the mosquitoes arrived, we watched the bats dip and speed away, the tiny bird dash in to alight on the fountain. The night was calm, the sunset was unfurling in the background. We lingered, talked, until the stars blinked on and the twilight had slid into night. This quilt is about that kind of night, that feeling of letting the chatter of children, and friends, and a loved one float around you, when time is…timeless.

Sometimes ideas have to percolate a while in my brain. I’ve learned you can’t hurry them, anymore than you can recapture your sew-jo, as quilters like to say. Creative time comes on its own schedule. (This is Quilt #292 on the Quilt Index, above.)

I was also inspired by a trip in 2016 to Copenhagen and Stockholm, where I learned about the art of Poul Gernes, an artist who used strong colors, and simple shapes that expressed a wild traditionalism, if there is such a term.

(from here)

So somewhere between a summer night and a trip long ago, I started playing around with flowers on strong stems, then threw in the center tendrils to focus the eye. I’d been given a stack of Tilda’s polka dot flowers, which are not a typical palette, and I found some linen-look fabric for the background and leaves.

This was all I’d envisioned, but it just didn’t look “done.” So I ordered up more fabric–difficult to do when designers don’t label their colors (well, Kaffe does…)–and got to work.

It was during my New York Beauties project, so I kept going back and forth between the bright saturated solids of that quilt, to these inviting, musky deep colors of twilight.

I pinned everything together with short appliqué pins, and took it on the road — traveling to see grandchildren and the total eclipse in Texas.

Yes, I cut out the background of the flowers, and lined the centers of the flowers for a flat, solid look. (I glue-dotted the lining into place, to hold it until I would get it quilted.)

A couple of nights ago, I grabbed Dave and we went out to the side garden just as the light was dimming, so as to photograph the quilt. This light makes the details soft, the dense quilted foliage falling into the deep blue background, letting those simple Danish-inspired flowers rise to the front.

I wrote the pattern as I made this, and decided to add in three different sets of instructions, in case you were making it with raw-edge appliqué or needle-turn or machine appliqué. And then I added that outside border, so it’s thorough, with lots of patterns and words. But hopefully you’ll find your own design when you make it, and will add another garden to our world.

I went back and forth between Intermediate or Experienced Beginner, but in the end, decided that if you knew something about appliqué, it would go better. But other than that, it’s not a difficult quilt. I do have an extensive guide for laying it out, but it’s okay if you just want to use your own eye. I do reference a couple of quilters in the pattern, who I thought explained things well. One is Gladi Porshe, who writes about making vines and mixing appliqué styles.

Pattern is in my PayHip Shop here. Usually my patterns are $12 US, but I decided we all need more flowers so I have it for an introductory price until mid-November. Sometimes I post a coupon for a percentage off when I put up a new pattern, but this way, you won’t have to enter in a code, and can just grab the deal if you want it. All my patterns are downloadable PDFs.

Enjoy a night in a twilight garden–

Do you like giant?

August 25, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

Giant ideas? Giant bugs? Giant fabric stores? Giant mounds of laundry?

Sometimes we like giant things, like big spaces, big bowls of our favorite desert, big travel trips that include The Very Large Array. Other times, we don’t: huge messes that we have to clean up, massive surprise expenses, big insects, a huge amount of bumper-to-bumper traffic, or hurricanes. It’s like we know that some leaps of fancy and expressive gestures bring exuberance, excitement, joy, like standing next to a really tall sunflower in a field of yellow in the south of France. This big, we like.

Standing next to the heap of stuff we just dragged out of the garage and now have to sort and put it back in? Or the downed trees and aftermath of a storm system on our corner of the world? Or a task we’ve been putting off and putting off that has gotten ginormous in our imagination? Maybe not so much.

We like Big that we choose. We like Big that takes our breath away, like the Grand Canyon, or a sunset that stretches for miles across the New Mexico desert. We like Big where we can stand on our own solid ground and meet that idea or sight or brilliance, while not being swept down a canyon in life-threatening rushing water. As Arash Javanbakht and Linda Saab note “When our “thinking” brain gives feedback to our “emotional” brain and we perceive ourselves as being in a safe space, we can then quickly shift the way we experience that high arousal state, going from one of fear to one of enjoyment or excitement.”

Consider The Lilies of the Front Yard, quilt number 51 • March 2003

However, I’m more interested in the brain shift needed to think Big. I remember taking a class with Jane Sassaman once at a guild retreat, and she was encouraging and lovely. I have always done better with small-scale projects, but in Sassaman’s class I got busy creating the wildest thing I could, as I greatly admired her quilts. She strolled around the class and came to help, when I raised my hand, stuck as I was on the design in front of me.

“Can you go bigger?” she asked. “Really make that lily jump out of its place? Get those leaves to look slightly menacing?” I’ll try, I said. Alas, I could not. Did not.

One website offers up that large-scale art is a way for the artist “to express themselves in a way that is unique and personal” and that “[l]arge scale art follows the tradition of monumental masters like Botticelli, Rembrandt, Monet, Picasso, and Klimt. Especially popular in the 18th century, it was used to depict scenes of history on large scale wall art. Thus, for its sheer size and themes, this type of painting was considered “more important” than portraiture, still life, and landscape.”

Well, I don’t know about all that, but I did make a few giant flowers, gave them a latticework frame and a blue-sky border.

So maybe all I have to say today is to do something big.
You might surprise yourself.

Giant Flower pattern found here.

300 Quilts · Quilt Finish · This-and-That

Quilt Finish: (dreaming in color)

July 28, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

I have a 2-D Brain.

Yesterday we went to our town’s Maker Space which was filled with all kinds of machines from sublimation to a movie studio to laser cutters to several 3D printers, and it was on this last enterprise that they decided to train us. We filed into the computer room, filled with all kinds of computers (nice ones!) and opened up the program and started to design. I mean, I tried to design. The plane on which I was creating was wobbling all around, and then it would leave my screen, floating around.

Many of the design tools were like my Affinity Designer at home, but not really. I just couldn’t figure this thing out, even though I was madly clicking and trying. It was then I realized: I have a 2D brain. My final project in my Digital Art class many years ago was titled, Leaving Flatland. I won’t bore you with the details, but that exhibit came back into my mind as I sat at the fancy computer, desperately trying to leave flatland. At the end, I deleted my file of 3D doodles, and we went on a tour of the building. The very next room was a room filled with sewing machines.

Now we’re talking.

(dreaming in color) • Quilt number 289 • 24″ square

I’d been thinking about flat quilts this week, as I kept calling this “the flat houses quilt” while I was working on it. I wanted it to be a smooth 2D plane, where color would be the focus through repeated shapes. Simple. Flat. Repeated. Colorful.

In the 3D world, they did have this concept of printing something to help you print, a circular idea which still is rolling around in my mind. But that’s sort of how my patterns evolve: I am making the quilt as I’m writing the pattern, each process a support and discovery for the other. I originally imagined this as a large wall quilt. And then maybe I wanted it a bit smaller. And smaller yet, to fit a particular corner of my sewing room. And I wanted to try some reverse appliqué. I wanted it to be made in grunge fabrics. And I wanted to be able to make it with the windows >inset< rather than >applied.< By the time I was finished with the quilt, I was finished writing the pattern.

I spent time on three patterns this week:

This one, because it was old and needed a make-over. How old? It didn’t even have the one-inch key on the templates, as I didn’t know how to make that item when I first started out.

This one, because although it was mostly finished when I posted about the quilt last week, I needed to finish it up for someone who asked about it. This has three different sizes and looks.

This one, because it was finished, and I was ready to post about the quilt.

Like many of you, I watched the Paris Olympics opening ceremonies, and like some pundits, declare Mongolia’s outfits far and away more beautiful and interesting than some larger nations’ costumes (like why does the USA always seem to have the same ones, over and over?) I got a kick out of the boats on the Seine, and the various parts that sort of held together with luck and a prayer, but that last song by Celine Dion was incredible, as was the lighting of the cauldron. I loved it all.

The athletes have been featured in many different ads (Sara Blazer for Dior).

I knew it would happen: Christmas prints are finally back to Christmas green and Christmas red, after veering through pink and turquoise and whatever. While it was fun for a while, I’m happy to see these colors come back.

And this kept us on edge this week, too. This roaring fire was too close to my neighborhood and too big, and too fast and frightening. Our city’s firefighters tamed the beast, started by three teens with fireworks. As one boy was running away (as caught by a security camera), he turned and asked “Do you have a fire extinguisher?” The man of the house answered, “You are way beyond that now,” as the kid jumped into a silver pickup with his friends and roared off.

I signed up for a class at our local-yet-national quilt show, Road to California, one where I wouldn’t have to think too much, nor buy too much, nor cart insane amounts of gear: blackwork embroidery.

A friend advertised on Instagram that she was So Done With This Quilt and did anyone want it? I was second in line, and this week it showed up. Absolutely gorgeous work, with every point pristine and every flower in place. I hope I don’t ruin it, but did order pattern and fabric to try and finish it. That will be my winter project.

This is my summer project, with my friend Leisa: a Halloween quilt. We are both suckers for Halloween quilts.

Quilting, while listening to PBS Newshour, which discussed Biden’s stepping away from the race, and Kamala Harris’ ascension to presidential candidate.

(This has turned into a This and That Post, sort of unintentionally.)