Patchwork Ghosts / Beauties Pageant 191

I’m not a fan of celebrating Halloween, but The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt is a seasonal story I can get behind. Are you familiar with this picture book? Written by Riel Nason and illustrated by Bryon Eggenschwiler, The Little Ghost is the charming story of a ghoul whose patchwork sets him apart from his friends. The happy ending and it’s relatable message make it an enjoyable read for kids and adults alike. Take a peek at one of the book’s illustrations, below. Super sweet, right?

Another quilter transformed the book’s hero into stuffies last Halloween, and with this year’s holiday on the horizon, I knew I needed to follow suit! 

Construction was super easy: I sewed 3-inch squares into 4-by-6 panels, quilted them, added the mouths and eyes, and squared the bottoms. I then stuffed the bodies with a little polyfill and whip-stitched the bottoms ... Voila! Two cuties!

Rooting through my scraps and selecting fabric for the patchwork was fun, as was making the felt faces. A circle die on my AccuQuilt Go made cutting the eyes easy, and a little embroidery added some life to them. I will be shipping both stuffies, with a copy of The Little Ghost, to my nieces.

Are you sewing anything for Halloween? If so, I’d love to hear about your project in the comments.

My Halloween sewing is over. I’m in the mad rush to finish up QuiltCon submissions (which happens some years despite my best intentions to avoid it) and working on a new pattern release. If you enjoy testing patterns, this one is easy. More details are in my latest Instagram post here.

 

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Dreaming of Bags / Beauties Pageant 164

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I have a lot of fun quilt projects on my sewing table these days. I’m using up my Bonnie and Camille stash on two easy quilt tops, I have two other quilts in the works, and my Gypsy Wife project is ready for binding. What I’m really dreaming of right now, though, is making bags.

Before I was a quilter, I was a bag maker. I’ve made easy bag patterns. I’ve made hard bag patterns. I’ve made bag patterns that claimed to be easy but ended up being rather hard. Big bags, small bags ... I’ve made them all.

This drawstring bag I made a year ago was fast and easy.

Sewing this bag was simpler than it looks.

And now I’m getting the itch again. It started when I received the gorgeous cross-stitched bag at the top of the post. My quilty friend Kathy (Kayak Quilting) made it for me, and I am over the moon about it. There’s something special about receiving an unexpected handmade gift. Could I have made a comparable bag for myself? Sure, but I love this all the more because someone made it for me.

The bag pattern I have my sights on next is Anna Graham’s Sandhill Sling design. I need a small casual bag for taking to the soccer field this spring, and the Sandhill Sling fits the bill. I purchased a kit from Stitch Supply Co. for the sling. Now it’s just a matter of fitting this project in amid those quilt WIPs. I find it hard to switch gears between quilting and other sewing. I’m not sure why that is. (Can you relate?) Once I have a few more tops completed, I think I can act on the bag pattern. Wish me luck!

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Plaid-ish / Beauties Pageant 154

Hey, there—long time, no post! I’m happy to be back on my blog after an unplanned break that included a month’s worth of appointments compressed into a week, a visit with my in-laws, and Thanksgiving with my side of the family. Aside from one deadline-driven project I’m working on, I’m hoping to mostly coast through the end of the year. Lucky for me, I have projects close enough to the finish line that I will still have fun stuff to share, even though sewing is in low gear for me through the new year. : )

Pictured here is one of those finishes! It’s my first Plaid-ish quilt. It’s also my only Plaid-ish quilt—until I finish my Gypsy Wife quilt. I’ve decided that feat will earn me a second Plaid-ish. What makes this pattern so much fun? It’s the fabric pull, friends. I love sitting down with my scraps and stash, and developing a palette. It’s almost as much fun as designing patterns. What makes Plaid-ish extra satisfying is that it uses no background fabric, so it busts through a ton of fabric.

 

And there are so many good fabrics in this beauty. Two collections from Kate Spain—Aria and Canyon—set the stage color-wise. (I had bits left over from this quilt and this quilt and this quilt.) I built the palette from there, focusing on salmon, periwinkle, grassy green, aqua, navy, and gray. There are selections from Alison Glass, 1Canoe2, Lizzy House, Janet Clare, and other fabulous designers. The pattern, a freebie from Erica Jackman, of Kitchen Table Quilting, is built around low, medium, and dark tones. If you’ve never played with value before, it’s a blast—you’ve got to find the time to sew a Plaid-ish!

I splurged and sent this project to Narda at Maz Q’s Sewing and Quilting Studio for an edge-to-edge panto. I like to quilt my tops myself and considered stippling this one, but it’s an oversize throw and I knew Narda’s work would give it a polish that my domestic and I couldn’t. 

We have so much to catch up on! Please share your finishes from the past few weeks (more than one upload is encouraged!) in the linky below. It’s nice to be back. : )

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Pretty in Pluses Reveal / Beauties Pageant 139

I wanted to share a new pattern I’ve been working on called Pretty in Pluses! 

This design was precipitated by a fat quarter bundle of Hindsight, by Anna Maria Horner for FreeSpirit Fabrics. I adore AMH’s collections, but this one in particular features large-scale prints. I had a hard time finding a pattern that would work with this line without cutting everything into little bits, so in the end, I just designed something myself.

The result is a modern take on a plus sign quilt. It’s a whole-composition design—in other words, the larger sizes are created by enlarging the plus signs, not by adding more blocks. I’ll be releasing the pattern in early September. It still needs to go through a round of testing and tech editing before it’s ready for you to sew. : )

I’m crushing hard on this finish, friends. Hindsight includes new colorways of AMH’s echinacea print. I think it might be my favorite fabric design of all time from her ...

I originally wanted to use the American Made Brand solid in light turquoise as the background but opted for Kona Silver instead because this beautiful print got lost against the pale green ...

The center block was an opportunity for a little fussy cutting ...

Pretty in Pluses’ simple, streamlined design was the perfect opportunity to get fancy with the quilting. My friend Ophelia quilted this with the most beautiful panto. I’m in love with the texture!

I’m excited to get this pattern into testers hands and see what they create. I’ll be sharing those beauties here and on Instagram in another month!

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Back to Being a Bag Lady / Beauties Pageant 114

Before I started quilting, I sewed bags and home decor items. And although I’d rather carry a bag of my own making or sew some window treatments instead of buying them off the shelf, it can be hard to change gears. These days, it’s usually all quilting all the time.

So when a friend and I made plans to go for a walk, it was the self-imposed deadline I had been missing. I had promised her a handmade backpack, and our date to walk was what I needed to get it done!

The result is pictured here. It’s a simple, straight-forward drawstring backpack with a single pocket on the exterior. I used the Lionel Drawstring Backpack Pattern, by I Think Sew. It was fine for the five dollars I paid for it. If you are interested in making something similar, there are plenty of other options—including free tutorials—online.

I chose to quilt the exterior panels to give the bag more body; otherwise, I didn’t do anything fancy. Heck, the pocket doesn’t even have a zipper.

For me, the hard part of bag making is finding the necessary notions. I found the gray synthetic drawstring from a nice selection of colors at Crosscut Sewing Co., a local fabric shop.

I was pleasantly surprised with the outcome here; the final product was much nicer than I was expecting. In the past, I’ve sewed certain bags patterns ad infinitum. (For real. Plug “Jane Market Bag” into the search function in the right-hand sidebar, and you’ll see what I mean.) This backpack may be my next serial sew—it would make good end-of-year teacher gifts.

What I really want to work on next, however, is a new quilt that I designed with huge blocks. I’m super excited about it, and the background fabric should be arriving on Monday. Yahoo! Now that I’m in this home dec mode, however, I should bang out a few more projects I’ve had planned, including a pillow and two pouches, first. After those are done, I have two in-process quilts to finish and then I can start the new one. Darn you, self-discipline!

A quick public-service announcement: Love Boldly, my most recent pattern release, is still available at Quilt Pattern Mart at the introductory price of $7.50. I’ll be sure to share tester projects in next week’s post! In the meantime, check out some pics on Instagram.

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A Huge, Scrappy Finish / Beauties Pageant 89

Buy the pattern here! 

 

I haven’t made many bed-size quilts. Medium-ish throws—say, 55 inches by 65 inches—are my happy place. But when I designed my Warm and Cool Coin Quilt pattern, I knew I needed to tackle a twin-size version of it, just to see that bold diagonal line traverse a big quilt.

My go-to complementary colors are orange and blue—I just like the way orange brightens up blue!—so that’s where I headed in my scrap bin for this project. In all, piecing the top ate up over 3 yards of orange and blue scraps.

As you can see in the picture below, I used fabric from Cotton and Steel, Carolyn Friedlander, Anna Maria Horner, Denyse Schmidt, V and Co., and more. The soft gray background is Kona Shadow, and the darker gray binding is Kona Graphite.

The owner of my local quilt shop quilted this for me with a diagonal plaid pantograph. I love how the quilting design is linear but still softens the sharp vertical and horizontal lines of the coin stacks.

If you want to make your own scrappy coin quilt, my Warm and Cool Coin Quilt pattern is available in my Etsy shop.

And if you need more proof that I’m a serial orange-and-blue-quilt maker, check out these quilts from the FBTB archives ...

• Little Man in Blue and Orange
• Birds in Blue
• Little Lady #1

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Seeing Double / Beauties Pageant 67

The Show Me Something Purple Linkup, hosted by Sarah Goer, was the kick in the pants I needed to finish my fifth and final version of Camille Roskelley’s Little Man Quilt, from her Simplify book.

Why five versions of the same baby quilt pattern? Because it’s an easy pattern whose yardage requirements are easily met by the fabric I have on hand. The first three versions I sewed were all for little boys (see them here, here, and here). My fourth and fifth quilts are going to sisters: This purple finish is for my 4-year-old niece, and its peach and blue counterpart (see picture below) is going to her little sister, who is scheduled to arrive by this time next week.

What I like so much about this pair is that they’re completely different quilts made from the same line of fabric, Rae Ritchie’s Seaside Carnival. The only print they have in common is the strip of ocean waves, a fabric by Janet Clare. You can see it at the top of this picture ...

My favorite print from the entire Rae Ritchie collection—beating out even the soft pretzels, featured in my fourth version—has proved to be the mermaids. Dear Stella has released that design in a different colorway, and I’m trying to come up with an excuse to buy some!

You would think that a fifth go-round with the same pattern would make me an expert, but I made more mistakes with this dang purple quilt than the others combined ... First, when I was quilting it, I realized that there is a discrepancy in dye lots: Two blocks are ever-so-slightly different from the other ones. The disparity is most noticeable in artificial light, and I fear it will become more prominent with each washing. I also had a weird experience squaring up the project after quilting. Until I remedied the situation, the quilt was more parallelogram than rectangle. Sigh. It’s a sign. After five finishes with the same pattern, it’s time to find another go-to baby quilt pattern!

DonnaleeQ was recently expressing a similar gripe to me via email. She said after 30 years of quilting, she still makes the occasional silly mistake. Whereas my pitfalls were dye lots and squaring up, she managed to cut a stack of squares the wrong size. (Been there, done that!) How about you? What amateur mistakes do you find yourself making, even after having sewn dozens if not hundreds of quilts?! Commiserate with the rest of us in the comments below. : )

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