What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

It’s been a while and am glad to be back. I was out of town for several weeks and blogging was just not on the list.

Blue batiks, green batiks and a few white thrown in and what do you get? A string quilt! The blocks were positioned to make diamond shapes. This was a LOT of sewing but so worth it! I have found that fleece is a wonderfully warm backing for quilts, and batting is not necessary. So, I went with a dark blue backing and straight line stitching.

I’m really happy with this design and ...

Or maybe a serial sewer? Add generosity to that and you get eleven (11) Hospice quilts!!

Laurie moved to another town some time ago, but we do have fun keeping in touch with texts. There was a week or two that she was maniacally sewing – in a good way! She finished a few of her own projects, made quilts for teens aging out of the foster care system, made quilts for the Community Pregnancy Center, and made quilts for Hospice. Eleven of them! I never tire of hanging them all out on the clothes line and taking a pic. Pretty ...

I found myself floundering the past week as I was working through emotions on the loss of my sister. She had been sick for a while and although her passing was imminent, it somehow doesn’t seem real when it actually happens. To help clear my mind, I went to my 2 1/2″ strip box and began to sew. Mindless sewing can be so very therapeutic!

A few hours of sewing resulted in this scrappy Hospice quilt. I cut a backing from a pretty printed fleece and hung both in my flimsy closet to be quilted another time. Of ...

Fifty Five inches long, thirty six inches wide! How fun this was! Hubby was responsible for the fabrics I chose. He suggested I use some of the home dec fabrics in my stash. They are all bright. colorful and a nice heavy weight, and a no brainer as I have a ridiculous amount!

It was a bit odd to be cutting such large pieces and even odder to be sewing 5/8″ seams. My quilter’s brain had to really work on placing the fabrics at the right place under the needle!

The sewing was easy, but the stuffing – oh ...

 I always look forward to the announcement of Pantone's color of the year. This year's colors really resonated with me...

Illuminating and Ultimate Gray. Both beautiful, separately and together. In fact, I have decorated my guest bedroom and bath in these colors. So it felt good to dive in and use them together in a small quilt. Small because the McKinney Modern Quilt Guild will be displaying them in the display case at the library again this year, as we did in 2019.

I actually made my quilt several months ago. After I pattern tested my friend Jane ...

This quilt should be named Forever! The quilt top was finished about three years ago. My brilliant idea was to hand quilt it with embroidery cotton doing a big stitch. I stitched, stitched, and stitched some more. The project got put away for quite a while. Finally, I pulled it out and have been determined to get it done! Unfortunately, I couldn’t do much stitching at once because it caused my hand to cramp. The quilt was being handled so much the outside ends were getting sloppy so I trimmed and bound it. There was enough quilted that I ...

Many moons ago I stitched strips from a roll together, then cut them into triangles. For a reason not known to me now, I put them away in a bin.

Time to sew these together, but I needed a plan – or did I? I decided on a free-for-all, thus the name “Melee.” It’s not entirely unplanned. I did make a “spider web” as the center.

After that, it was anything goes! The outside borders were also planned. They hold everything else in.

There wasn’t much left over and I knew none of it was going back into a ...

 Hi all! Has it cooled off where you are at all? We had several very hot days, including one where it reached 99 degrees, then we had a really big thunderstorm yesterday and it really cooled off. My husband and I call those "red storms" because of how they look on the radar, but this time red was our lucky color since it really is much nicer outside now. My brother, however, lives in Portland, Oregon, and he is baking, so I really do empathize with everyone in the heat. 

Finished the baby rag quilt I started here. It was a quick sew, but the clipping took a while. I’d clip, rest, clip some more, do something else, then clip, clip, clip! The quilt has been washed and dried twice to get it fluffed up. Each washing & dry will make it more snuggly.

I secured the outside of the quilt with an extra strip doubled over instead of binding. It too is clipped. The stripe brightens the quilt and pulls it all together.

For the backing I used a bright directional print, but altered direction of the design. SNUGGLE ...

So happy to have completed two more quilts for Hospice. These will be the last of my finishes for a while as I will be concentrating on a few of my personal quilts.

The first is a quilt with triangle blocks that were cut on the Sizzix and sewn together by attendees at a retreat in 2019. Seems forever ago, especially since there weren’t any retreats in 2020. I’ve been going through my donation bin lately and pulled these out – put them together – quilted – sewed the binding and done!!

Next was a quilt that was donated quite some ...

Last week I shared the flannel rag quilt kit I prepared for a week long retreat I’ll be attending. Of course one isn’t enough, so I now have two more ready to go!

First up is a string block kit. I pulled from some beloved batik greens and blues and one almost white and cut into varying strip widths. The plan is to sew them onto paper piecing paper doing a diamond design. I love to do string quilts! For me its both fun and therapeutic sewing. Sewing this quilt will also be perfect for a retreat as ...

Idea

I have trouble expressing my feelings and thoughts into words and talking about it. This quilt represents my wish that human nature can embrace difference. Different is beautiful, wonderful, inspiring and makes life and things around us interesting. It saddens me that often being different is used to divide us, introduce fear, hate or violence. We need to do better.

Design

The design and name of this quilt was inspired by the Sesame Street Song “One of these things“. It teaches that things are different and says “one of these things doesn’t belong” so are we teaching children ...

It’s been a couple of weeks. Spring has really sprung here and I’ve been outside enjoying all the color and amazing nature. Uhhh, the pollen not so much! In absolute contrast, last week we went up to the Blue Ridge Mountains for a couple of days to celebrate my birthday and it snowed! It didn’t stick, was pretty to watch – the best kind.

And now for a fabulous delivery made to my home last week. Thank you to Dolores for three amazing quilts she has donated for Hospice. She is an excellent and long time quilter and ...

 So last week, I finally finished up my first exercise in color and value.  I'm all proud of myself since it really illustrated visually what I knew intellectually.  So much easier with a picture don't you think?  

You can see my observations on the first four columns here.  This week I added the last which was to add the complementary color of  the red - green.  Now it didn't turn all Christmas which was my daughter's guess.  I knew enough to combat that by  changing the saturations of the green.  What I did notice was that as ...

This is the second pattern I am releasing here as a free pattern, as it is no longer available on Sew Mama Sew (published 2014). Mod Squares is basically using a traditional 9 patch block, where I played with both size and color placement of the pieces.

This was an early quilt I had made (so not perfect), I think it was the first time I tried free motion quilting. It is, however, one of the most loved lap-quilts and lives in my son’s room. I hope you enjoy the pattern too, as it would make a great baby ...

Recently I learned of an acquaintance that has an unpleasant health condition. I also learned that a friend would be visiting with her and I wanted to send along a quilt of comfort. I went to my closet of flimsies and found a bright, cheerful and colorful top that would be perfect. I also had the best bright green fleece for the backing.

Several years ago I cut this bright colorful collection on my die cutting machine using a large triangle die. It was quick piecing and the best way to showcase these large prints. Having not looked at this ...

 Oh my - so much happened yesterday, and I don't think I'm going to get to it all. As promised, though, let's talk about those Cloth Paper Scissors Studios magazines. 

The magazines came out quarterly, and I seem to have purchased them all. The time frame is 2010 - 2014 or something like that. Here's the cover of the one that I'm just finishing. 

Cloth Paper Scissors Studios magazine