What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Aurora
August 2020

Back in May, I joined Jacquelynne Steves Silver Linings QAL (quilt along). Each Monday, she would release a new block, for a total of twelve. There were also six  optional embroidery blocks as part of the project. Since I’m not overly familiar with embroidery, I only did one embroidered block. I used a coloring page for the pattern, and did an owl to work with my overall owl theme. Although the group QAL is ending this week, there is still time to download the block patterns here.

The first block was a nine patch, which I ...

Fancy Fox
July 2020

Persistence
July 2020

Zuzu’s Petals
July 2020

A few months ago, I experimented for the first time with making stack and whack blocks. At that time, I only made two blocks, using different fabric for each block. I then turned each block into a trivet. I was not overly impressed with the stack and whack technique and results: starting with “nice looking fabric”, cutting it up and reassembling it, and ending up with a different “nice looking fabric”. When I expressed this observation to a quilting group that I’m a member of, I was encouraged to make more than just one ...

Yellow Ribbon
June 2020

In 2012, I began this journey of making quilts for kids in the foster system and Yellow Ribbon marks my 100th donation quilt. I had inherited a lot of fabric after my Mom passed away, and while I had no urgent need for fabric at that time, as someone dedicated to recycling/reducing/reusing/repurposing, I figured I could put it to use, and ultimately decided I would make quilts to give to foster kids. I always try to incorporate a piece of fabric that was from my Mom, Granny, Mother-in-law Edith, or Aunt Betty, but ...

Cutting Corners
May 2020

The scraps bins have really been a lifesaver these past few months of safer at home. I’ve made a good dent on my yellows (stay tuned for my next post for this one), my black/grey/white, and now my blues. I am also participating in Jacquelynne Steves Silver Linings QAL (quilt along) that started a couple of weeks ago and I will be making two baby quilts with the completed blocks: one in a pink colorway and one in a blue, using fabric from my scraps bins. There is still time to join her ...

To the Point
May 2020

During the past two months of staying safe at home, I’ve depleted quite a bit of my stash fabric on quilts and facemasks. Thank goodness my scraps bins are still plentiful, especially the black, white and grey scraps bin – which is still packed pretty tight even after making the 336 half square triangles for this quanket. A few years back, I made Flamingo Floyd based on a quilt I had seen in a magazine. I wanted to try something similar with this, but in my own design. My daughter said this has an Escher ...

Monkeying Around
April 2020

Here is the fifth baby quilt to be donated to the Little Lambs Foundation as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge. I used the 7 Seas design from McKay Manor Musers for three of the five baby quilts, as choosing and doing a unique applique for each was fun. It also was less time spent on the piecing part, so more time could be spent on the quilting part. For the quilting, I stitched intersecting circles, using a trick I picked up from the Thimblelady website. They have a lot of free quilting templates – and ...

Peach (Dino Dragon)
April 2020

I seldom make baby quilts, however this makes the fourth I’ve done in the last several weeks, and I have one more that’s almost finished. All five will be going to the Little Lambs Foundation based in Utah as part of this year’s Hands2Help Challenge.

I really liked the simplicity of the 7 Seas design, from McKay Manor Musers, which I used for Deep Blue Sea. Here too, I chose to deviate from the original puppy or kitty design and instead used a dinosaur for the applique to match the dinosaur fabric ...

Deep Blue Sea
April 2020

The design for this baby quilt is called 7 Seas Blanket, from McKay Manor Musers. While the pattern calls for a kitty or puppy applique at the bottom of the center vertical block, I opted to use a whale to match my bottom fabric. I stuffed him with puff batting to make him more three-dimensional and backed him with flannel to add stability before attaching to the quilt. Since I am still a newbie to quilting on a domestic sewing machine, I played around with different designs, making waves, rippling water, currents, and jumbo letters ...

Grandma’s Garden
March 2020

While I typically make what I like to call quankets – fleece backed quilt tops – I’ve been experimenting over the past year with machine quilting. I had pretty much resigned myself to thinking that machine quilting would be too difficult on my 1940’s something, narrow-neck Singer 401, and while it is challenging to manipulate the quilt on certain turns, I find if I go slow, it’s not too bad.

The center is quilted to resemble a flower, and from there, I borrowed visuals from my garden for the other quilting designs – leaves, vines ...

Spot
March 2020

If I had a pet giraffe, I think I’d name it Spot. The impetus for this quilt was the giraffe-like minky fabric on the back and some cute animal fabric I had leftover from Peek-a-Boo on the Savannah. I fussy cut the animal fabric to center the giraffe in the block, which I surrounded with 2″ squares pulled from my yellow and green scraps boxes. I’m not sure if there is a pattern name for this, as I was just winging it!

This will be included in this year’s Hands2Help Challenge being hosted by ...