What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I think I'm going to call my tree quilt "Pine Hill" because that's where I grew up in Dunedin.  I went to Pine Hill Playcentre, and Pine Hill School. And the trees on my tree quilt look like pine trees to me.

Well, the hand quilting on my Spooky Darlings quilt didn’t last very long because even after the first day I could feel a few twinges in my hands. 

So, I decided to change to machine sewing and I made a few more trees for our Capital Quilters tree quilt along. I still had all the fabrics set aside, so it was quite easy to make some more wonky trees.  

Some Tula Pink Holiday Homes prints

Some Kaffe Fassett Mosaic Circles

I laid all my tree blocks out and started to think that it looked a bit plain, so I ...

The latest Kaffe Fassett Collective fabric has arrived! We’ve got the new Neptune and Mars colorways in all the pre-cut variations.

Kaffe Fassett is the name everyone knows, but not everyone is aware that it is actually three men – Kaffe, Brandon Mably and Philip Jacobs – working together to make the designs and then Kaffe colors the designs to make them all work together.

With so many creators, the lines often contain 70 or more fabrics, which is A LOT to bring in. So I ordered 16 of my favorite prints from the line to bring in as yardage and ...

A quilt shop about an hour and 45 minutes north of me hosts an annual fabric challenge, with gift certificates to the store as prizes.  Here’s the challenge packet.  Must use Kaffe Fassett Tiddlywinks fabric in blue, finish 24" square or smaller, and have a face on it

Started with cat photo, and edited in photoshop to have smaller value range.  Printed out grayscale photo to 24" square size on several sheets of paper, and taped together.

selected fabrics and arranged in value order.  All Kaffe Fassett.  

made a value scale from a strip of background

Outlined and numbered ...

I loved the Starry Night pattern, but I wanted to use some of my lighter floral Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics, so I teamed my fabrics with Tula Pink's pastel solids for this pattern and I love the result. 

The Cactus Flower print has some great motifs that are just crying out to feature in large blocks like these.  

I have a theory that Covid and/or the vaccine got a lot of people pregnant - I can hardly keep up with the baby onslaught! The last two posts showed some of my recent baby quilts, and here's the front of my newest:

Long before "gender-fluid" was a common phrase, I debated with myself about how girly or (why isn't boyly a word?) to make a baby quilt when the biologial sex was known.

And nowadays, of course, I'm even more conscious of stereotyping. There's a whole lot more girly fabric in the quilt world, than ...

Bordered Diamonds is finished and I'm very pleased with it. I think I fulfilled my goal of "Summery florals". There are so many beautiful Kaffe Fassett Collective prints in this quilt. 

The bird fabric is "Summer Tree" by Philip Jacobs - out of print now

The centre fabric is "Orchids" in blue by Philip Jacobs

Centre fabric is Brassica in Rust by Philip Jacobs

I really enjoyed making this quilt.  The big diamonds give plenty of room to showcase the flowers in Philip Jacobs' and Kaffe Fassett's designs.  And when you put smaller scale prints in the borders, they ...

Bordered Diamonds is such a great pattern.  

The original pattern is in Simple Shapes, Spectacular Quilts by Kaffe Fassett, but that book is out of print now, so I've been using Midnight Diamonds from Quilts in Burano by Kaffe Fassett.  I think the patterns are the same, but I haven't got out my ruler to check.  

I've had fun mixing the fabrics and applying borders to the fussy cut blocks.  I especially like the big Cactus Flower block above, surrounded by the blue section of the Diamond Stripe.  The blue in the border highlights the blue in ...

Life is a whirlwind of extremes. Happy times; hard times. Miracles and loss. But as our hearts are stretched in a thousand directions, they sure do grow! 

If you’re anything like me, you pour your emotions into your quilts. And this week’s quilt is bursting with love!

Watch Jenny stitch up the wildly popular Exploding Hearts quilt by Laura Piland for Slice of Pi Quilts. This stunning heart quilt is a triumph of triangles with half-square triangles, hourglass blocks, and quarter-square triangles, too. (We love Exploding Hearts SO MUCH, we created a kit with the pattern and beautiful ...

It doesn’t get easier than this classic quilt block! Using Layer Cakes cut into half-square triangles, the chevron quilt block is the perfect project for a new beginner quilter! Even if you’ve been stitching up quilts for awhile now, this simple pattern offers a unique opportunity to quilt in a hurry (not like any of us would EVER wait until the last minute to make a handmade gift).

To make this into a full quilt, all you’ll need is a solid layer cake and a printed layer cake – but the good news is you can truly make ...

I've just finished making the Starry Night pattern from Kaffe Fassett's Quilts in an English Village and it was a bit tricky due to the Y seams, so I thought I'd record what I did.  

1. Always check www.kaffefassett.com/book-corrections/ for pattern corrections before you start.  There is a pattern correction for Starry Nights because Template A diagram is too long in the book. The short parallel side should measure 2 3/4" and the long parallel side should measure 8 3/4". So make that change in your book before you start.  

2.  I ...

Have you ever heard of a Colorado block? Many quilters know this quilt classic by another name, the Dutch Windmill. Using layer cakes, this traditional half-square triangle quilt block comes together in a flash creating a unique and vintage design that has been loved for many years. How many years to be exact? While Jenny couldn’t find much information on the original of the name Dutch Windmill, the Colorado quilt block can be traced back to 1941 where it was published in the Kansas City Star!

To stitch up this classic you’ll need two layers cakes, one of ...

When Quiltfolk announced a webinar with Kaffe Fassett I signed up right away.  That was months ago.   Finally the weekend arrived.  The class was held for three hours Friday and three hours Saturday.

The event was called Kaffe Fassett’s Laboratory of Color: A Virtual Workshop With Jenni Smith.  The blurb:  "Host Jenni Smith will take attendees on a tour of the colorful, surprising, and rarely seen home and studio of world-renowned artist and textile designer Kaffe Fassett. Then, back at Jenni’s studio in Yorkshire, she’ll teach you how to make her unique Ribbon quilt, which was designed ...

(Note: see the next post for the wonderful Quiltfolk workshop with Kaffe Fassett!)

I sewed and I sewed until I'd made 41 four-patch basket blocks.  I used up ALL of the red 30's print.   I had a 3" x WOF piece of red that I cut in half and sewed back together along the long edge. That gave me enough for three large triangles and the rest of the small triangles to get the count to 41 and achieve a symmetrical layout.

I put the blocks away for the time being as I attend to other projects.

I ...

The Hourglass quilt block is one of the more simple traditional blocks and comes together with ease using 10″ squares of precut quilting fabric. All you need to do is chop up your layer cake corner to corner, recreate a square using two different fabrics and stitch them back together – and just like that you’ve put together a gorgeous and traditional quilt block!

This block in it’s own is an absolute favorite amongst quilters, but why stop the fun with just the basic hourglass! This block can be used in a wide variety of quilting patterns that all ...

Garden Plot is one of my favorite patterns I’ve designed because it is perfect for showing off fabrics you don’t want to cut up.

The large sections of fabric and constant color changes make it perfect for Kaffe because you can just have a riot of color and show off those beautiful designs.

The shot cotton background is absolutely fantastic. The mix of a deep teal and purple threads almost gives it an iridescent look to it.

Shop the Kaffe Fassett Collective: https://shop.quiltaddictsanonymous.com/product-category/kaffe-fassett/?orderby=date

We just got more Kaffe Fassett Prism kits back in stock! I was so excited to work with Free Spirit to bring Kaffe’s Prism pre-cut collection to life using our patterns.

The last time we had these in stock the quilts were just digital images, but my team has been hard at work making real quilts so you can see the quilts and fabrics in all their glory. And let me tell you, they’re fabulous!

First up we’re going to share our tutorial on Retro Tiles, a quilt made with one 10-inch charm pack and background fabric ...

It's a long weekend in New Zealand, and I'm hoping to get quite a bit of quilting done.  

First I need to put away all the new fabric sitting on my kitchen bench! 

The Kaffe Fassett ones on the left were a birthday gift from my mum and dad.  I chose them, and ordered them, but they insisted on paying.  I also received Kaffe's latest book for my birthday, so I'm enjoying that at the moment.

The spots and stripes were from a quick trip to Palmerston North on Monday. I was invited to judge the ...

This week I've been working on my Tea Party quilt.  How I wish I had coffee cups like this at my house!

and shiny tea cups like this too.

I think they work well with my tea pot.

I've still got to applique flowers on to all of these blocks, but I'm happy that I've finally decided on my cups and tea pot.  Although I do like the softer colours used in the pattern, I like the darker cups and tea pot even more.