Clever little ideas for quilting faster and more easily.
This little Log Cabin quilt (30″ x 42″) is going to my new step-niece, Allison. I bought the Log Cabin blocks on Ebay years ago and decided to assemble them as part of my “clean the sewing room by making new projects” initiative. This is a limited success as a cleanup measure, but it does…
I recently received a treasure trove of quilting supplies from my daughter’s cheerleading coach. The coach’s grandmother died at age 95 last summer. She was a dedicated quilter and quilted right up to the very end. When I went through her boxes of fabric, trim, finished blocks, buttons, templates, and all the miscellany of a…
I’m cheating a bit by posting this on Work in Progress Wednesday, because this little baby quilt is actually as finished as it will ever be, but here it is! This quilt was part of a pink reduction project I’ve been carrying out in my sewing room. I’m trying to shrink the size of my…
Like many of my quilts, this newly finished quilt has been a long time in the making. Roman Stripes is a pattern that used to be popular with Amish quilters (and may still be, although I didn’t see it when I visited Pennsylvania Dutch country a few years ago.) I adapted the pattern by making…
The winner of the Blog Hop Giveaway, chosen at random, is Joanie Page of Joanie’s Quilts. Joanie will receive a DVD from Piece O’ Cake Designs and two charm packs from Thimbleberries. Thank you to everyone who entered, and my apologies for taking so long to announce the winner. What have I been doing that distracted…
I recently joined the Lib-Quilters group on Yahoo. This group is dedicated to the spontaneous and wonky style of piecing pioneered by the original liberated quilter, Gwen Marston. I’m just dipping my toe in the waters of wonky piecing, but I like the free spirit and crazy color combinations that prevail in this group. (By the way,…
Right after I finished my post on how to sew a Friendship Star block, I discovered an easy variation of the block that uses three fabrics instead of two. This gives the block a whole different, scrappier look. In the three-color variation, the star’s center square is a different fabric from the star points. Here’s…
Today I had to admit that it’s February, and not even the beginning of February, but almost Valentine’s Day. It was time to finally take down my beloved snowflake garland and put up something — anything — that celebrates red, or pink, or hearts, or love, or something. For some time I’ve been meaning to make a…
In the spirit of making good use of the blocks that are taking up space in my sewing room, I’m in the process of making one of my favorite easy quilts — a rail fence quilt made entirely with batiks. I’ve made this quilt many times, for friends, to donate to charities, and to sell….
This quilt grew out of an advanced case of clutter frustration. I was tired, tired, tired of having bags of scraps sitting all around my quilting room. I swore to myself that I would get rid of all the scraps from at least one of these bags. The red bag was my starting point because…
Today’s project (and yesterday’s, and tomorrow’s) is machine quilting a quilt using some of the improvised Log Cabin blocks I made from my red scrap bag. The blocks themselves make a vertical line of red in a field of white. The blocks are simply stitched in the ditch, and now I’m working on stippling acres…
This Courthouse Steps lap quilt quilt (47″ x 62″) was my second finish of the year 2013. And if the autumnal color palette and the leaf prints make you wonder if I started it in the fall, you’re right — if you guessed the fall of a long-ago year that has already faded into distant…