What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I have two new quilts to share.

Austin was published in Make Modern #60.

Good Tidings was published in Annie's Christmas Pattern Book.

Good Tidings

Both quilts were made using Island Batik Fabrics collection Peppermint Sprinkles. 

Peppermint Sprinkles is a beautiful collection - perfect for Holiday sewing. I love that it has elements of the season such as reindeer and snowflakes but it isn't so Christmassy that the quilt/decor becomes outdated by January 1.  It has year round appeal.

That was my thought process as I designed Good Tidings in EQ8.  A fellow quilter/blogger once said that ...

This week has been more fun at the fair in the evenings, with time to sew during the day. Monday evening was the pork competition, and the emphasis was on international cuisine. The contest was called PassPork to Flavor, which I thought was clever. So, knowing how much I like Japanese food, I went with Asian Pork Lettuce Wraps, using ground pork. Placing the filling in a pretty bowl, I layered lettuce leaves alongside sprinkled with green onions.

The judges awarded my dish Third Place. Afterwards, they remarked on how nice the presentation was, with little bits of green onion ...

Let me introduce you to Olivia.

Olivia likes the outdoors!

This is such a beautiful collection with a wide range of values from light yellow, through medium red and orange all the way to deep purple. I love these warm colors. Look for Buds and Blooms Layer Cake in your local quilt store.

Here are some more pictures.

Breezy Day

Glowing Fabrics

Gorgeous Fabrics

To make Olivia, you need one layer cake, one focus fabric and ...

I loaded this quilt prior to our trip, and thought I could get a row or two done before we left. I was given the top and batting meant for a Quilt of Valor, but they didn’t have a backing large enough. Well, I knew I had a lot of fabric, and welcomed the opportunity to not only contribute to Quilts of Valor, but also make a bit of headway on my Stashbuster totals. The traditional log cabin pattern in vintage look fabrics looks warm and cozy.

One thing I like to do is check the borders to be ...

Finishing up the Quilt of Valor this week was easy, as my machine behaved itself. Amazingly, I ran out of bobbin thread at the end of a pass each time, so no tying off in the middle of the quilt. That doesn’t happen often! I used white Glide thread on top, and white Bottom Line in the bobbin.

The pantograph is Blue Star from Urban Elementz.

I finished it up on Monday, and the client picked it up on Tuesday. She’ll trim and bind it, then add a label, and it will be ready to award to a ...

This past week was a busy one, with four meetings, a field trip to Black Mountain, a couple of pickleball games, and a sew day with friends here. It was lovely to have a private retreat, with chatting and sewing most of the day, celebrating friendship with a dear friend who is moving away this month. I started out by undoing some of the sewing I did during the international bloggers Zoom call. I had put borders on a Quilt of Valor, and I hated them. The fabric, while nicely patriotic, was too chaotic next to the scrappy border. It ...

Note: Giveaway now closed. I actually selected two winners because I found enough for two kits. Winners have been notified. Hope to hear from them soon so I can mail off their prize!

Good morning all! I intended to post this before Memorial Day. Somehow it didn’t happen so I am writing it this morning. No worries though. While patriotic projects are good at any time of year; May, June and July usually put people in the mood for red, white and blue with Memorial Day, Flag Day and Independence Day during these months.

Doesn’t ...

April is starting out better for getting some quality quilting time in, and I have enjoyed that. Sewing has always been my therapy and stress reliever, so it was good for me to be able to spend some time at the machine. I had to miss the day retreats at the guild last week, three day-long sewing days where you can sew with friends, then leave your machine and go home to have dinner and sleep. It’s the first one I’ve missed in several years, but couldn’t be helped. I hate that I missed that time with ...

When I was on retreat, I put this top together from leftover blocks from our Safelight Quilts. Since I had enough red and blue, it made sense to use them in a Quilt of Valor. This is the mountain peaks setting of the block. If you’d like this pattern, click on Scrappy Quilts. Needless to say, this would be a great Stashbuster for our challenge, too.

Anyway, even though I have made several of these and bound them without borders, this time I wanted it just a bit larger, so borders were in order. I had this wonderful star ...

Our longarm group decided it was high time to get away from our worries and have some fun. We booked the same retreat house we’d been to before, Febuary Hill in Jonesborough, Tennessee. I did a post on this lovely place the last time we went, so you can see the gorgeous quilts and antiques – Febuary Hill. Each of us took a covid test before we came, only if our tests were negative were we allowed to be there. Luckily, all of us tested negative so we could relax. This time we arrived early on Friday, so we could ...

I have named him Varun, after the Hindu deity of sea and sky and rain. By now Varun has traveled the width of the country and reached Bernie on the west coast.

Varun  - 60" by 80"

Varun - Green Backing

Each plus block finished at 10" square. 48 blocks were arranged 6 by 8 for a finished quilt measuring 60" by 80". Varun is my contribution to the Positivity QAL and is a Mercyful Quilt. 

Thank you from Mercy Hospital

Mercyful Quilts Update

Wrapped with Kindness (may need tissues)

A Note from Mercy Hospital

Here are the pictures showing the progression ...

It has been a crazy few days, with Hurricane Fred stopping by as a tropical storm on its way up north. The rain began on Monday with the brunt of it on Tuesday. Of course, a tree came down on our road, taking out a power line on Tuesday. The storm resulted in a lot of flooding and power outages all over the area Tuesday and Wednesday. Thankfully, we have a generator so I could still get sewing done and be online, at least until the most severe part of the storm hit on Tuesday afternoon. But on Wednesday in ...

While most Quilts of Valor recipients prefer a patriotic theme color scheme, there are some that would rather have one that is more suited to their decor. Some also have issues with post traumatic stress where a patriotic theme would be too painful to see everyday. With that in mind, we like to have a few Quilts of Valor in the closet to award that are more everyday in colors. This particular quilt top was made by a lady in Oklahoma, specifically for a veteran who lives here. The top is all batik fabrics. The backing is a thin polyester ...

Since I already have FOUR quilts in progress, I really should have used my extended sewing time today to work on them. And I did. A little.

But then I heard the call of the scraps. I received these beauties recently and even had an idea of what I wanted to do with them.

A whole lot of cutting later I had a pile of small pieces that will be thrown away.

And an entire quilt kit, ready to use. As soon as I finish at least one of the four. Probably…

A lovely Quilt of Valor was given to me to quilt, and I finished the work on it over the weekend. The design is simple, basically a churn dash with a star center. For each block, you’d make four flying geese units, then place them with some half square triangles, additional bars, and a solid center square. Then the quilt top was sashed to bring it up to the minimum size for a Quilt of Valor.

The backing was a wide back, my favorite to use, but there was a minor problem. The corners were clipped, presumably to keep ...

Traditionally string quilts are pieced using a foundation of lightweight muslin or newspapers. In old quilts you often see the newspapers still inside. A string quilt uses long scraps of fabric. You can use scraps of any color or use coordinating colors for your quilt.

For my Quilts of Valor I use scraps of blue and red with a single white or tan fabric on the diagonal. I place the blue fabrics on one side of the diagonal and the red fabrics on the other side. This creates a look that is similar to the log cabin block. Where log ...

It is late March 2020. Most of us are quarantined inside. At least those of us in New York are! I had planned to schedule a class at Stash away Quilt Shoppe in Rome NY, for a Quilt of Valor using the Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star ruler. I decided to just post the lesson here and share it with anyone who would like to make Patriotic Lemoynes.

I went to my EQ8 software and designed this quilt for Lynn. This is a great skill builder for those that took the Tucker University Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star class but haven’t ...

These nine patch star blocks were started last October at an overnight retreat, and then I set them aside for completion later.  I had managed to get the stars mostly done, but had to bring them home to complete them as I didn’t have the corner white squares with me.  I made 20 stars in all with nine-patch centers using a jelly roll in patriotic colors.

At the end of February, our local group held its bi-annual quilt retreat, where we can leave our machines for three days, but we sleep at home. Due to travel, I could only ...

When we left this Quilt of Valor, it had the sashing finished and border added to bring it up to the right size.  If you missed the first post showing the block and how it was made, click on Quilt of Valor.

It was loaded on the longarm, and I chose a navy blue thread for quilting.  This time I used a cotton Masterpiece thread on top and Bottom Line in the bobbin.

I have a Stars and Stripes pantograph, and I just don’t like it.  It is so linear that it is not only difficult to get the ...