The Friction of a Hawaiian Quilt Block

July 12, 2026July 10, 2026 Elizabeth E.7 Comments

Occasionally in Adam Mastroianni’s substack there are these fascinating-makes-me-think-or-go-aha sorts of observations. His missive this week happened to coincide with two other events: a couple of days at the beach and the making of a Hawaiian quilt block.

First, the quilt block. I posted I was starting this Hawaiian style of quilting and immediately a couple of quilters commented that it was a total fail for them, didn’t like it, tried and never doing it again. But it was Block Two of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the Indian quilt-a-long and since I already had finished the first block, I was determined to try the second. I also have never attempted a Hawaiian Block.

Second, the days at the beach came about because one of my sons was bringing his family to Oceanside, and I asked if my husband and I could tag along for part of their trip, and then the other son, who lives in the area, also joined us. Their dog Misa is above; she hated their pool when they first moved in to their new house, but now, she loves it. (Misa, too, is a part of this.)

Back to Mastroianni. He writes “The internet gives every social trend a pair of rocket-powered roller skates, speeding it toward its…final form. On Twitter, for instance, memes go from punchy to passé in a matter of days rather than decades. But if we could play culture on 1x speed rather than 10x speed, if we had time to screw around with different strategies before the game reached its cutthroat stage, we might have discovered different paths entirely….Instead, in a hyper-competitive marketplace of ideas, we end up with the same few memes, all done to death” (source is above).

We quilters have also been subjected to this rocket-powered roller skates. How many rainbow-ordered quilts have you seen in the last few years? How many quilts have you seen that really don’t need a pattern because they are so simple — but somehow they are everywhere and we all make one? Sometimes it is because we all read the same Instagram posts, or that the pattern writers are counting on the viral effect of social media to send sales skyrocketing. Fair. It’s a marketplace. But I can’t tell you how many guild show-and-tell nights I have sat through where every quilt somehow resembles the one before it, or the one before that.

Mastroianni calls this “de-frictioning.” He describes it like this: “We’ve forgotten how much time people in the past spent consuming content that they didn’t actually want to consume: the unskippable clunker of a song that came in the middle of an album, the late-night infomercial that you sat through because there was nothing else on, the magazine you read cover-to-cover in the waiting room….Each new media technology reduces this friction…they all allow us to spend more time with the content that we supposedly desire. And what happens when this friction goes away?”

Two Russian artists, Kolmar and Melamid, decided to find out, and interviewed people in many countries about what their most wanted painting was, and what was their least wanted painting. Here’s USA’s (source via Mastroianni):

If you were to interview quilters what their most wanted quilt block was, and what their least, what would we see? We would probably see what they were seeing the most. If they saw a lot of printed panel quilts, they may be looking for their favorite panel. If you were at a modern guild, you might get something abstract or perhaps boldly colored. We tend to go with what we see, what we are used to.

The weird thing was that so many people’s “most” pictures were similar, but their “least” pictures were quite different and interesting. Mastroianni notes that “people are capable of acquiring more interesting tastes, if you give them the chance. This is the work art does for us—it stretches our desires, rather than merely satisfying them.”

And this is the work that the little bit of friction of a new project can also do.

So what to do when a quilt-a-long comes into your view and it is a Hawaiian quilt block? Or you are moved into a house that has a swimming pool and you have never been in one before?

Or you go to the beach and get out of your regular routine and you see a group of beginning surfers feel the friction in the few inches of whitewater high up on the shore?

Then instead of sitting there like a lump, you reach into your bag and carefully pull out the pinned Hawaiian block, and really get going on it. No, it’s not perfect. You probably won’t make it again. But you don’t want to read the magazines you brought, the family is all at lunch and you are guarding their stuff, so you thread your needle and get going, and by the end of the day, and after good conversations and an occasional walk on the beach, the block may have a certain coconut suntan-lotion fragrance and perhaps some sea salt spray, but it’s mostly finished.

Another deviation from my usual.

And here’s where I got my quilter roller skates on and skated right into the sameness, but this time, happily so. More info here, and how to get her free pattern. Audrey is looking for more, so make one and send it off!

300 and Beyond · Free Download · Free Quilt Pattern · Quilts · Red, White and Blue

The Betsy Ross Quilt • Quilt Finish for America250

June 28, 2026June 27, 2026 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

It’s a big, fancy year for the United States, this 250th celebration of those men in white powdered wigs slaving through the heat of Philadelphia in 1776, trying to figure out how not to have a king, but something else. As Honest Abe Lincoln described it 87 years later, we wanted a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” The three documents that were eventually crafted, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights are known collectively as the Charters of Freedom. And so we celebrate this beginning.

We’ve done this celebrating before.

The first one I remember was in 1976, and it was the summer of the Bicentennial (200 years). This is about all I can recollect: a picnic with my toddler.

This year, the Semiquincentennial (250), that son will be celebrating the 4th with his family of five in another state, and hopefully they will remember more than a picnic.

When starting a government, or a marriage, or a school, or any great endeavor, there might be some failures. According to noted historian, Joseph J. Ellis, author of The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding, there were “two unquestionably horrific tragedies the founders oversaw: the failure to end slavery, and the failure to avoid Indian removal” (Kindle, p. 8). Ellis’ book discusses these contradictions, and we are still grappling with these today. Between 1500 and 1800, while “five times as many Africans as Europeans were carried to the New World” (ibid., 13), only a small portion of that diaspora was carried to North America, making us a predominantly white nation of interlopers on the Native Americans who lived here.

Those aren’t the only mistakes we’ve made.

Thomas Jefferson declared in The Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” This year, we celebrate that, but I do keep wondering: are we moving towards that beautiful idea, or away from it? And with all the examinations and navel-gazing, maybe we can acknowledge that we aren’t perfect as a nation, but that we generally are pretty amazing?

While I try to hold all these disparate thoughts in my tiny brain — for this 250th celebration, I made a quilt.

My childhood nickname was Betsy, so of course I loved this panel for the back.

This is Quilt #317 and many of the details are on the label. I actually had a different title, but this week decided I wanted to call it The Betsy Ross Quilt. So I made a new label and took off the first one:

(Photography location scout and quilt holder is my saintly husband.)

So this year it will be probably a more contemplative celebration, given the tensions in our national dialogue. I like people on both sides of that dialogue, but my overriding desire is to see how we can care for each other — the people — rather than just going for power or for ruling over the populace. There’s a reason why those Founding Fathers eschewed the idea of a king, and I kind of think they knew what they were doing. The dialogue — fraught as it may be — will continue.

Samuel Adams, 250 years ago this year, was on to something:

Freedom of Thought and the Right of Private Judgment in Matters of Conscience, direct their course to this Happy Country.

While I don’t have any great answers about how we make our way to that Happy Country, I just know I want us to keep trying. As a quilter, I honor that spirit of making mistakes, recognizing them and unpicking a few stitches in the process, so I’ve put out all my red, white and blue quilts around the house to jolly things up over here. To celebrate well.

I hope you do too.

Happy 250th Fourth of July!

Information on some of the Quilts

• The large quilt with EPP circles is I Hear America Singing. Most of the circles patterns are free here on the website.

• Tiny Star free download of pattern (and instructions) found here: https://opquilt.com/2018/07/03/happy-fourth-of-july-2018/

• The post about Betsy’s Creation, my version of the flag quilt, talks about America (of course), with a link to free download and instructions to make the quilt.

• Blog post about the star quilt (with flags in jars on top), has instructions and free download for that mini-quilt.

Monuments and Sights in Washington, D.C.

My husband once had a year-long sabbatical with the Department of State, and I got to know that beautiful city well. Here’s the George Washington Monument in November, when the late fall sunlight turns it golden, taken from the World War II Memorial.

This quote, on the side of the Supreme Court, gets at that delicate balance between just being right vs. recognizing that our liberty needs to be guarded by justice.

My favorite memorial of all was the Lincoln Memorial, especially when I could catch it at odd times, when all the tired tourists had gone home.

Below are some paintings on the ceiling of the Capitol Building (in addition to the Samuel Adams quote, above) that remind me how we stitched our country together:

Free Quilt Pattern · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilts · Sawtooth Stars

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 · 300 Quilts · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Red, White and Blue · Something to Think About

Quilter Micro-Seasons • Aerial Beacon Quilts

May 31, 2026May 30, 2026 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

I read recently how Japan has multiple micro-seasons, not just our talked-about four. Some of the micro-seasons are East Wind Melts The Ice, or First Cherry Blossoms, or Great Rains Sometimes Fall. Devon Peticolas has worked out that New York City has 12, and one of my favorites is what he calls “Hell’s Front Porch.” (photos by my DH and I)

Apparently, one of my quilting micro seasons is Make Something in Red, White, and Blue. I know people who have this season year-round (Carol, I’m looking at you), but mine just comes around about every May, right around Memorial Day.

Here is The Kid Sister to Aerial Beacon, a quilt finished some time ago, but the when the Computer Ate My Homework (aka, my Patterns), it took me two more years to redraw and re-write to get the pattern out.

But now I have.

The pattern, Aerial Beacon, is now my PayHip Shop.

But there’s another there, too: Santa’s Night Ride, which was published in Simply Vintage Magazine, December 2023. The copyright restrictions are now past, so now you also can get this in PayHip, my online pattern shop.

Why didn’t I combine them? The publisher wasn’t interested in the larger quilt, but did like the smaller version, so I wrote that up and it was published. When I went back to finish up the original Aerial Beacon quilt — because I included so many photo illustrations and variations of the pattern (FPP, EPP and regular piecing), as well as three different border treatments — the page count became quite large, and I didn’t want to freak anyone out with the size of the two combined. But I’ve got them both on sale for a couple of weeks (no coupon needed) and combined it’s about the price of one pattern. (So you don’t have to choose, if you don’t want to.)

If your quilty micro-season is calling out for a red, white, and blue quilt, here’s my recipe for this one. Make the four blocks, then add a 1″ border. I added cornerstones in that border.

I tried a new-to-me half-square-triangle method when I found a small baggie of already cut blue and red/white print triangles, cut off from some other project (I have no idea what). I had recently purchased the Quilt in a Day Triangle Square Up Ruler, and I laid the 2 1/2″ marking on the stitched line, then trimmed. Then I pressed to the dark side, as always, and trimmed the dog ears. I was only lacking 7 half-square triangles for my outer border, showing that truly, I am in the right micro-season and the red, white, and blue gods are smiling down on me.

I had a bit of fabric leftover from making these center blocks, so I used that fabric in the corners of my two outer borders.

I’d originally made these red, white and blue blocks to test the Aerial Beacon pattern using the cut-out-the-pattern-pieces method, rather than using the foundation-paper-pieced method. I do think it’s easier to do the FPP method, but take your time with the first block to get the hang of it.

But since school is out in some places, and going-to-be-out-soon in others, maybe you are in your Go To The Beach micro-season, and need something seagreen and sunny. Then maybe make it up in these colors.

All three together in the garden, showing their relative sizes: 26 1/2″, 36 1/2″ and 65″ square.

I’ve been trying to think of other micro seasons for quilters. Certainly the Sew Until You Are Too Tired To See Straight could be put on the calendar somewhere around October and end the night before Christmas. There’s also the New Fabric Lines Drop, which happens right after quilt market. I can think of also think of seasons for Make a New Tote Bag (right before a trip somewhere), Clean out the Stash to Make Room For More (when you see a new group of beautiful fabrics). And I just noticed ads pushing holiday quilts: I detect another micro-season heading our way!

Whatever season you are in, savor it–

Some Real Aerial Beacons

I wrote about Aerial Beacon here, if you want to read about the genesis of it all, and here, for the early signposts, the large concrete arrows, and how airplanes navigated once upon a time (scroll down in the post to get past the Ladies’ quilt). Here are some more images.