Delectable Baskets: Quilt Finish

June 26, 2019June 29, 2019 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

Food Basket Quilt_1

Delectable Baskets • Quilt #220
Approximately 70″ wide by 90″ high

Basket_7

Delectable Baskets gets its name because each basket is filled with food — well — food fabrics. I’d been collecting for over twenty years, so I had a few to choose from. In February 2018 I was Queen Bee for the Gridsters, and put up a post about making basket blocks, deciding that I wanted to use my collection of fabrics with food motifs. I sent each of my beemates a couple of squares. (There is a free basket tutorial on that post, if you are interested in making some baskets.)

Baskets of Food quilt top

Not only did my Gridster Beemates send me blocks, but a few other long-time friends sent them also; I had so many blocks that my quilt grew and grew, and then it was overflowing, a lovely dilemma to have. So I pruned it a bit, as I was aiming for twin-size, and still have enough baskets for an upcoming wall-hanging.

Cathy of CJ Designs did an expanded Baptist Fan on it, leaving it nice and soft, which is a good thing, as I intend it for use in the guest bedroom, which is currently the quilting-and-thread-storage bedroom. I promise that maybe I can share.

Food Basket Quilt_4

The back, using some Phillip Jacobs (on the right) and some Marimekko (from Crate and Barrel’s outlet sale some years ago). The signature blocks (the white Xs) are pieced into the Phillip Jacobs, or at least I think that’s who designed that fabric. At any rate, the print is a lovely-as-can-be radishes. Food Basket Quilt_5

Thank you to everyone who sent me blocks. Delectable Baskets has been on my radar for a couple of decades or more, beginning with visits to Fabric Patch quilt shop, the vendor mall in the early years of Road to California, a couple of Southern California Shop Hops, and an occasional trip to Utah. There were no mail-order shops then, as there was no internet then. We bought fabric from JoAnns which it wasn’t then (maybe Cloth World?). I accrued fabrics a yard at a time, a piece at a time, a slow compilation.

This quilt was finished in an era where everything is on hyperdrive. The internet runs, assists and invades our lives, helping and hindering us in our quilting. Sometimes we are in a quilt bubble, making the same quilt (see my Flag Quilt from last post), using the same colors, same fabric lines. Other times it brings us news of friends in Australia, in Japan, Canada, Germany and certainly from around the United States, and allows us to meet and be friends with people all over the world.

Our gathering of Gridsters would not be possible without the internet, and all members, past or present, contribute to my life is a positive and beneficial way.

I am happy to know you all, Gridster Bee member or not. Thank you for enriching my life, making it a veritable feast. I dedicate Delectable Baskets to you.

Free Quilt Pattern · Quick Quilt

Betsy’s Creation: Flag Quilt Top

June 21, 2019August 23, 2019 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

BetsysCreation_1

Betsy’s Creation • Flag Quilt Top Finished!

Last week in another post, I threw together a fun little worksheet about how to make a flag quilt, then got busy and not only made this quilt top, but also a wallhanging:

BetsysCreationWH_1

In case you didn’t see that free worksheet…

BetsysCreation_Illustration

…click here to download a PDF version of this: Betsy’s Creation_OPQuilt

It’s a just a worksheet and assumes you know how to put together a quilt. Why did I have enough for a quilt and a wallhanging? Seems I had a bit of a miscount, excited as I was to be cutting into all my reds, and whites and blues. I overshot my mark of 15 sets.

BetsysCreation_1a — *I put each strip set on my design wall, then added a blue rectangle to coordinate.*

BetsysCreation_1c

I mixed them around until I found an arrangement I liked, putting four to the side for the wallhanging, then sashed and bordered them with the light blue. I used Painter’s Palette Solids in Aruba (121-100), available from Pineapple Fabrics, if your local shop doesn’t carry it.

BetsysCreation_2

Then I went outside and fought the breezes to get these few shots.

BetsysCreation_3 BetsysCreation_4

I did all the cutting, the sewing and fighting-the-breezes-for-a-picture in three days. I tell you that so you know it’s a quick quilt to make. I’ll hang the smaller version in our front hallway in July, but the larger one will be quilted and tucked into the car for fun picnic blanket getaway events.

Happy Red, White and Blue Sewing!

Other Red, White and Blue projects I have made:

RedWhiteBlueStar_kitchen table

Red, White and Blue Star

SweetLandLiberty_front

Sweet Land of Liberty

Red White Blue Quilt

Red, White and Blue Quilt (friends blocks)

AmericaIsATune_front

America Is A Tune (it must be sung together)

Fourth July Tiny Quilt

Happy Fourth of July (Tiny Quilt)

European Patchwork Meeting · Quilts · Textiles & Fabric

Gabrielle Paquin: Design and Graphics

October 1, 2017September 30, 2017 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Moseying along the main street, we headed to Site #7, the Eligse St-Louis, where I wanted to see the French quilter Gabrielle Paquin. Previous to this, in my hotel room in Geneva, I had previewed all the exhibits, looking up the artists and deciding which ones interested me. Paquin was one of them.

EPM Paquin_site1b

EPM Paquin_site1d

I had seen photos of previous years’ exhibits, and the fact that many of them were in churches. But it just doesn’t prepare you for the juxtaposition of the sacred and the quilting, the symbols of religious life coupled with the themes and ideas and colors and patterns of the quilts along the sanctuary walls. It was wonderful.

EPM Paquin_ESE

She spoke some English, and agreed to pose with me. Check out her sweater.

In her biography, she writes:

“For several years, I studied drawing and painting in a school of Fine Arts, my first vocation, and since then, I practice painting as an amateur. Simultaneously, I realized traditional patchworks inspired by American models large format of the 18th and 19th centuries.

“This practice evolved towards the contemporary patchwork and the textile art that I have been practicing assiduously for ten years, thanks to a constant inspiration and stimulated by the numerous exhibitions proposed with selection by a jury of artists and curators of museums.”

You can start to get a sense of the materials that Paquin works in: striped cloth. In this one, she uses larger pieces that her usual strips, and has appliquéd them down to the background with a satin stitch on her machine. I like her small monogram in the lower right corner.

EPM Paquin_3

EPM Paquin_4 EPM Paquin_4a

I didn’t quite catch the name of this one (top, and detail, bottom), but it shows her use of her striped material. I kept wondering if she cut up old shirts, or old clothing, or haunted fabric shops to find all these variations.

I was impressed with the quilting on this piece, as it gave me great ideas.

All the placards were in French, so I’m using Google Translate to write them in English, plus heading over to her website where she has some of these quilts.

She has found so many ways to use this fabric; I didn’t include all her quilts in this series, but many of them.

EPM Paquin_7 — *Two Black Sisters*, 2016.

What a huge impact the simple reversal of value (light-dark) can make!

EPM Paquin_9asite
Looking towards the back of the church. She is sitting there at the table with the white tablecloth, waiting for people to come and talk with her.

EPM Paquin_11

EPM Paquin_12 — *The Eye of the Cyclone*, 2009.

We call cyclones “hurricanes,” and after this year, can definitely relate to the eye of such a storm.

EPM Paquin_13

This title says something about a spider, and it was pinned up to show the creature responsible for this exotic web.

EPM Paquin_9site

Please visit the gallery on her website for more quilts and inspiration.

Note: this series about the European Patchwork Meeting has a main page, with a listing of posts.

200 Quilts · Quilts

Riley’s Quilt

June 30, 2017June 28, 2017 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

Red, White, and Blue giveaway info is at the end of this post. Many thanks to all who entered!

RileyQuilt_8

If my grandchildren come to visit me long enough, we can crank out a quilt. Last time it was Keagan’s. This time, it was Riley’s. I discovered last time that simpler quilts are best, so I started leafing through my BLOCK Magazines from Missouri Star, until I happened on her pattern titled Slice of Life, found in Volume 1, Issue 4. You can get a download here.

Riley Quilt layout

Riley picked out blue and green prints from my stash (using your stash is also a good thing to do) and he ironed while I cut. He arranged the squares on the wall into groups of nine.

Originally the book called for “layer cake” squares, which if you have a layer cake (or have the pre-cut sizes memorized), you are set, but I don’t. I get grumpy when patterns call only for precuts, and don’t tell you what the actual dimensions are, so I’m telling you that I cut squares that were 10-1/2″ square. [Yes, I know they are bigger than a layer cake.] I narrowed the sashing, cutting it at 2″ (sewn in it will measure 1-1/2″ wide). You make three of these giant nine-patches, then cut them apart like this.

RileyQuilt_3

I cheated a bit, and folded the giant 9-patch into fourths, and took a bare sliver of fabric off the fold when I cut–kind of like when the local quilt shop cuts fat quarters. Then we arranged these new designs up on the wall.

RileyQuilt_Hallway

Sometimes Riley took a break with his little sister.

RileyQuilt_4

I sewed the giant pieces together, but sometimes Riley did. I pinned it a LOT when it was his turn at the sewing machine, also teaching him not to sew over pins.

RileyQuilt_5

Everyone helped pin baste the quilt on the kitchen counter. We would pin a large section, then shift the quilt.

Everyone helped quilt, even the littlest sister, as well as my daughter, mother to these three charmers.

Binding was next, again from the stash. Late that afternoon, they went to the beach and my husband and I headed up the mountains to our church’s camp for the young women. I sewed on the binding all the way up, and while we waited for the program to start. I finished it.

RileyQuilt_8a RileyQuilt_8b

Backing is Marimekko fabric. RileyQuilt_8c

He couldn’t think of a title, so I wrote a couple of details on the back. I think this is the section that Riley quilted–I think it’s great that he helped in all phases. This is Quilt #184 on my 200 Quilts List.

The youngest of these grandchildren is eight years old, so I imagine her turn will be next! Baby Blues comic strip ran these this week, and I thought it fitting (although the sisters do quite well, too!)

Congratulations to Nancy S. who won the bundle of Painter’s Palette Solids! I’ve been in touch with her via email and will get the bundle sent out to her. I had the best time reading over all the comments about fireworks, from those who had a first date watching them (that happened to me, too, early in our courtship) to those who watched barges-full launch them into the air. Thank you all for your wonderful responses!!

(This is for those who mentioned that they watched them over the Washington Monument.
I did too.)

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200 Quilts · Quilts

Sweet Land of Liberty

June 12, 2017June 7, 2017 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

SweetLandLiberty_front Sweet Land of Liberty
Quilt #182
28″ square SweetLandLiberty_upper border

I started this in January, prepping up the stars and beginning the hand-blanket-stitching a couple of days after my rotator cuff surgery. This was a bright spot during that time, keeping me focused as I moved forward through different steps of what I was calling my “Liberty USA” quilt. SweetLandLiberty_stars

My friend Susan of Patchwork N Play, in Australia, is always hand-quilting her quilts, and I wanted to try that, too.

SweetLandLiberty_star

So I rustled up some patriotic colors of perle cotton from my Oh Christmas Tree quilt, and went to town…well, riding on a pony and all that, because it took some time to do this.

SweetLandLiberty_detail

I cut some fabric for the rod pocket this week and on the selvage, I saw this. Perfect for my title, I thought! SweetLandLiberty_back

It’s up there, stitched onto the rod pocket in the upper right corner.

SweetLandLiberty_label

I listened to Hamilton, the novel, last year and one take-away for me was how imperfect our early Founding Fathers were, but what a magnificent thing they created as they pulled together and figured out our country and its laws. They had patriotism in its purest form: e pluribus unum, out of many, one (our country’s motto). I try to keep that ideal in my head every year as I celebrate our Independence Day.

And yes! I finished the quilt by my self-imposed deadline of July 4th, so that’s great news.

RainbowGardensLiberty — (You’ve seen this photo before…)

This makes three red, white and blue quilts for me.

AQuiltingLife_RWB I’m way behind my friend Sherri, of A Quilting Life, who has over a dozen in this collection. Head over to her blog to get a tour. I’ve got to get busy to catch up with her!

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200 Quilts · Quilts

Rainbow Gardens, redux

June 7, 2017 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

RainbowGardens2017_front

Rainbow Gardens (the original) was made for a swap back in 2015, and I always wished I’d kept it for myself. So this week I did the next, best thing: I made a new one.

RainbowGardens2017_upper corner

I had all but one of the fabrics for this 18″ mini quilt still in my stash, as I pretty much hoard my Kaffe Fasset fabrics. I tried to quilt it the same, too, using my favorite Magnifico Thread from Superior Threads. But the backing is different, as is the label:

RainbowGardens2017_back RainbowGardens2017_label RainbowGardens17_corner

The backing is “pindar paisley” from Alexander Henry, from 2012. The front of the quilt is all Kaffe Fasset fabrics, some new, some older.

RainbowGardens2017_angle

I also updated the pattern, trimming out this and that, and editing it more tightly, and it is up on Craftsy for sale, if you want to replicate this. And even though it feels strange to say this, I’m going backwards and keeping the number from the original make: this is quilt #148 of mine. RainbowGardensLiberty

I so rarely duplicate my quilts, that this feels a little odd. I have plans to remake one more, but that will come later this summer. After sending off these two quilts to their owners, I wised up and began duplicating everything I swapped from then on. I rather like my quilts, I guess. Have you ever swapped a quilt, and then wished you had it back?

I also finished another quilt this week. Stay tuned.