Simple, Sneaky Patchwork Method / Beauties Pageant 243

I’ve noticed a resurgence of a simple and sneaky patchwork method on Instagram lately. Have you encountered it? It’s the hack where you iron squares to a piece of webbing and sew entire rows of patchwork together in one fell swoop. It’s a clever shortcut—one I cannot take credit for developing—and it produces a panel with perfect points in a fraction of the time.

My Experience 

I explored this technique years ago in my Cross My Heart quilt and the corresponding tutorial. If you’re looking for a quick and easy Valentine’s-themed project, I recommend checking out the write-ups. One heart requires 49 squares and some webbing. Add in a little fabric to frame out the patchwork and make a backing, and you can sew yourself a pillow in no time!

A Perfect Pattern for the Technique

The pattern that caused social media to revisit this technique more recently was Embroidery Flowers, a free pixelated design from Tilda pictured at the top of the post. Instagram users in particular were excited about this design, and Pink Door Fabrics quickly sold out of kits for the quilt.*

Veruschka, of Pride and Joy Quilting, tackled the pattern and its more than 2,000 squares using the simple, sneaky piecing method. The big difference between her approach and mine, aside from the sheer enormity of her project, was the webbing she used: TenSisters EasyPiecing Grid Panels. Whereas I manually marked out my grids, she used a preprinted product that accommodated Embroidery Flowers’ 2-inch squares.

As Veruschka explained it on Instagram, she likely wouldn’t have been able to take on such a project without the shortcut method and the preprinted webbing. She designs complicated paper-piecing projects, and all the cut and organized fabrics for Embroidery Flowers were not something that could linger in her workspace. She needed to finish the top, clean up her space, and move on to her other work.

There’s no longer documentation of Veruschka’s process on Instagram—probably because she’s now teaching students how to design and sew their own original pixelated projects. Kaitlyn, of Knot and Thread Design, however, has posted a three-part series on how she assembled a panel with TenSisters’ panels. Check out her method on Instagram in these posts: part 1, part 2, part 3. (Spoiler alert! Kaitlyn added the step of using a glue stick to keep the squares in place while transferring a panel to the ironing board. Brilliant!)

My Advice

If you think you’d like to implement the webbing shortcut in one of your projects, I recommend doing a test first—like, make a small piece of patchwork with the technique before committing to an entire quilt with it. I say this because I did not like the results I got on my throw-size Cross My Hearts quilt. The webbing changed the hand of the finished quilt, so much so that I decided to interface the solid squares in mine. 

I have a kit for Embroidery Flowers, and when I get around to sewing it, I will machine-piece it without webbing. With all the seams necessary to sew thousands of squares together, Embroidery Flowers will be a heavy top even without a webbing layer.

This is not to say I won’t employ this technique again. If I had a patchwork pillow on my to-do list, that would be a different story. A pillow could benefit from the extra substance the webbing layer contributes to the final product.

Have you tried this patchwork cheat before? Let us know in the comments!

* The kit for Embroidery Flowers is long sold out, but there’s a second pixelated pattern from Tilda that Pink Door does have in stock as of this writing, called Flower Vase Embroidery Quilt.

Related links:

• Less-Work Patchwork Hearts tutorial
• Embroidery Flowers PDF pattern download
  
• Flower Vase Embroidery Quilt download
• Pride and Joy Quilting’s Class Offerings 
  
• Knot and Thread’s videos on Instagram: part 1, part 2, part 3

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Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt / Beauties Pageant 187

When I was designing my latest PDF, the Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt, I photographed the quilt I originally made from the design for the cover and was really pleased with how it turned out. The bright colors of that quilt make for an eye-catching cover. But this pattern includes five different layout options—four of which I had never sewn before!—so I couldn’t help but embark on a new project from the instructions.

And here is the final flimsy: a super-scrappy, two-color Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt. This layout creates a huge star with what looks to me like four photo corners. (And if anyone is going to sew a 56-inch by 64-inch star, it’s going to be me!)

The nexus for the fabric pull was a set of black and white fat eighths that I won through my guild. There was everything from OG Cotton and Steel to Zen Chic to Sarah Jane fabric in it. One of our board members cut the pieces from her rather extensive personal stash. It was an awesome prize, and because I used only the prints that read as all white or all black, supplementing them with my own stash and scraps, I still have a good chunk of the bundle left over. 

It’s going to be a while before I have the bandwidth to quilt this flimsy, but I want to pick the binding and piece the backing before I fold everything up and put it aside for a few months. This black and white quilt needs a little something for the binding—specifically, something that’s not black or white. There are infrequent bits of aqua, orange, avocado, and pink in the scrappy low-volume background, so they’re logical candidates for the binding. My current plan of attack is to go with a bold pink binding and coordinate the backing appropriately.

This is only my second two-color quilt project. (See my first one, a QuiltCon challenge reject, here.) It was fun to sew with these fabrics, and even though I homed in on two colors, there were plenty of fabric decisions to make. Have you made a two-color quilt? I’d love to see the ones you have. Post one or two of them to this week’s linky, even if they are finishes from way back when. : )

The Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt PDF is available exclusively through my Etsy shop. It’s priced at just $3, with proceeds going to support a Down syndrome organization in my area.

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A Finished Fire Truck Quilt / Beauties Pageant 169

Kindly pull to the side of the road! There’s a quilt finish coming in hot!

I am happy to share my latest project with you. This sweet fire engine is my first pixelated quilt, from a tutorial by Kitchen Table Quilting’s Erica Jackman, and it makes me so happy. I love how a quilt doesn’t need to feature difficult piecing or intricate quilting to be beautiful and bring joy to its maker.

 

As I mentioned in a previous post, the challenge with this quilt was amassing the necessary 2.5-inch squares (all 750 of them!). I scoured my scrap bin, cut 2.5-inch strips from my stash, and got some scraps from friends. It took years, but my patience paid off: I did not buy any fabric specifically for this project. 

 

After collecting the fabrics, this fire truck was an easy sew. Erica’s tutorial breaks down the piecing into several sections, so I laid out each section before sewing to distribute the prints evenly throughout the top. I pressed the seams open as I sewed. I know a lot of people (maybe most?) would have pressed the seams to one side and nested them, but I would rather devote the time to pressing seams open and pinning where they intersect. Doing so creates a flatter, easier-to-quilt top in my opinion. 

 

Again, my persistence paid off here. The quilting was surprisingly fast. The flat seams were a dream to quilt over, and it was a delight to quilt a grid by traversing the seams diagonally with my walking foot without marking anything. I did, as I always do, start in the middle of the quilt for my first set of diagonal lines and quilted outward. Doing so requires burying a bunch of threads, but that’s another step I’m willing to invest more effort in. Once it was time to quilt the diagonal lines running in the opposite direction, I was able to quilt edge-to-edge with no puckering. If you’ve read about my quilting trials over the years, you know that’s a win. : )

I already told you about a pixelated Hello Kitty quilt I have planned. Well, I have since placed another pixelated beauty on my to-do list. Check out the Embroidery Flower Quilt here. (I am also going to sew the My Colourful Town Quilt, featured on the same web page.) 

I always like to have an easy project at the ready. I’ve been doing a lot of design work lately, which requires more from me creatively and cognitively, and it’s nice to relax to the hum of my machine piecing some simple patchwork together. Does that ring true for you, too?

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Kitchen Table Quilting's Fire Truck Quilt / Beauties Pageant 165

Pulling fabric for a new project is my most favorite part of the quilt-making process. And although I make plenty of quilts that focus on a single designer’s prints, if not one collection in particular, I especially enjoy making scrappy quilts. After all, scrappy projects require a lot of fabric decisions.

You can see my latest scrappy quilt in these pictures. It’s a simple design—a pixelated fire truck from a free tutorial by Erica Jackman, of Kitchen Table Quilting—but it took me years to cut the necessary 750 squares because my fabric hoard lacked the variety to make the fire truck super scrappy. After culling through my stash and scraps an initial time, I set everything aside and waited (after all, the fabric scene at my house grows and evolves over time). I searched through my fabric again a year or so later and cut more squares. Nope, still not enough. And then recently, with the birth of a friend’s little boy on the horizon, it was time to start sewing.

I love how scrappy quilts tell a story only their makers can read. You may look at these pictures and note the spectrum of colors and designs or the fabrics you have in your stash, too. I look at them and see scraps I was given by different friends, leftover bits from this project or that, fabric I found on my last retreat with my guild. I can spot the remnants of the first fat quarter bundle I ever bought and that print I thought I’d never find a project for. : )

This is my first pixelated quilt. It will not be my last! I have been itching to make a Hello Kitty pixelated quilt that made its rounds on blogs and Instagram years ago. I have a two-year-old niece who loves the Hello Kitty Squishmallow I got her for her birthday. I’m thinking she needs a quilt to go with it!

Have you make a pixelated quilt? If you have, please share it with the rest of us in the linky below. 

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An Easy, Breezy Quilt-Along / Beauties Pageant 84

Friends, I needed a reason to smile this week, so I started sewing a new version of my Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt. Can I interest you in joining me in an easy, breezy quilt-along?

The plan is simple: Start when you want, finish when you want, sew at the speed that works for you!

I will be posting any in-progress shots on my Instagram account with the hashtag  #RidiculouslyEasyJellyRollQuilt. If you want to keep tabs on this project, that’s the place to be.

Everyone is a winner in this quilt-along, and the prize is the satisfaction of making something beautiful with your own two hands. HA!

To get started on your own Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt, purchase the pattern here!

Beginner quilters, this is truly an easy pattern. As long as you know how to work your sewing machine, can read a pattern, and can sew a consistent quarter-inch seam, you’re good to go. And there is a small army of experienced quilters on Instagram who would love to answer any questions for you along the way.

By the way, I am sewing my project with a jelly roll of Basic Grey’s Gypsy Soul, pictured above, which I purchased at Green Fairy Quilts. Judi and Clint have a bunch of Moda precuts at good prices, and I received my fabric in just over a week. (I know many online retailers are behind in filling orders, so I was pleased with this turnaround and shipment from Utah to Massachusetts.)

I have so many quilts in the queue right now: Two just arrived at the longarmer, another is ready for quilting on my domestic, and yet another just needs to be bound. So of course, I started a new project. If you have one that’s crossed the finish line recently, good for you! Share it below, in this week’s linky.

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Easy-Peasy Quilt Pattern / Beauties Pageant 77

Back in 2015, I declared war on my stash of jelly rolls. Those lovely spirals of 2.5-inch strips were too much for me to resist, and I had accumulated more than I cared to admit. To use up my jelly roll of Basic Grey’s Evergreen line, I designed an easy quilt pattern and posted the corresponding tutorial here on From Bolt to Beauty.

This pattern, my Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt, quickly became the most popular page on the site and continues to be so, year after year. Maybe other quilters, like me, have a jelly roll to use up, or maybe they are pulled in by the promise of an easy quilt pattern, I don’t know!

In any event, that tutorial has been transformed into a full pattern that includes instructions for five sizes (child, lap, twin, queen, king) and two design options, as well as tips for getting the best results sewing long columns. To learn more or to purchase your own copy, visit my Etsy shop.

I know I have at least one more Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt in me, and I have my sights set on a jelly roll of Kate Spain’s Solstice collection—the last jelly roll in my stash. I may host a casual quilt-along on that front. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, what have you been working on? If you can boast a quarantine-time finish, please add it to the linky below!

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A Magic Patchwork Tutorial / Beauties Pageant 66

With Valentine’s Day less than a month away, I’ve been thinking a lot about my Cross My Hearts Quilt. It’s a cute quilt—one that now lives with a friend of mine in New Hampshire—but the real beauty is what’s inside the quilt. I used a quick and easy piecing method to make the pixelated heart blocks: I ironed squares to a piece of fusible interfacing, folded along a long seam, and sewed. Simple, right?

After making Cross My Hearts, I would not use this technique for another quilt-size project. (You can read my rationale here.) It’s a pretty perfect approach for things like pillows, though.

If this piecing shortcut or my heart block is new to you, great! Consider it an early Valentine’s gift from me to you ...

• Tutorial: Less-Work Patchwork Hearts
• Finished Quilt: Cross My Hearts Quilt

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• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
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The Jelly Roll End Is in Sight

Read the Tutorial: Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt

I used to be a girl with lots of jelly rolls. I think it’s how they display—all neatly wound together, with a peek of each fabric along the edge—that made them so irresistible. The thing is, jelly rolls aren’t as versatile as other precuts, so they tend to accumulate in my stash. A few years ago, I decided enough was enough. I was going to use up all the jelly rolls I had on hand and stop buying them in favor of other precuts. (See the fruit of that effort here, here, here, and here.)

I am pleased to announce that I have two more quilts—one finished and one in process—and then I’ll be down to zero jelly rolls. The end is in sight! To celebrate, I wanted to share how I used one of these last jelly rolls, in a log cabin quilt pattern I’ve named my Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt.

This was my first time sewing rectangular log cabin blocks. The rectangular version goes together as easily as the square one, but unlike square log cabins, rectangular log cabins have an orientation. For this pattern, if you add logs clockwise around the center log, you get the block on the left. If you add logs counter-clockwise around the center log, you get the block on the right ...

I made 16 rectangular blocks—8 of the left block and 8 of the right—to create my quilt. By rotating the blocks, I could have created these other designs, too ...

My finished quilt features Franklin by Denyse Schmidt; the mockups use one of her more recent lines, Washington Depot.

The Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt is a fun—and super easy!—way to sew through a jelly roll. For instructions on how to sew your own, see the accompanying tutorial.

For more posts on jelly roll quilts, see:

• Use All the Jelly Rolls!
• Another Jelly Roll Bites the Dust
• 4 - 2 = 4 : (
• Five Weeks and Counting

Read the Tutorial: Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt

Linking up to Main Crush Monday, Needle and Thread Thursday, and Let’s Bee Social ...

Tutorial: Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt

Read the Introduction: The Jelly Roll End Is in Sight

Please note: The Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt has been updated and converted into a PDF document. It was delivered free to newsletter subscribers (click here to subscribe and gain access to future freebies) and is now available for a nominal fee in my Etsy shop.

Odori Quilt-Along

Hello and welcome to From Bolt to Beauty! If you’re new to these parts, I’m Michelle and I quilt a lot (like, more than I will ever admit to my husband).

I was so pleased to have the opportunity to work with the Fat Quarter Shop and Art Gallery Fabrics recently to sew my own Odori quilt, a free pattern and tutorial that uses a specialized ruler to make spider webs.

Here is my Odori, all quilted and bound and ready to be used. Beautiful, right?

For this project, I was allowed to choose any Art Gallery fabric I wanted. I love AG—the colors, the variety of designs, the super-soft hand—and it didn’t take me long to home in on Amy Sinibaldi’s Little Town collection. I have a weakness for Christmas fabric, and Little Town’s tiny houses and pine needles have a longer shelf life than other Christmas lines. Its palette contains gray-blues and pinks that, I think, will allow this quilt to be displayed and used from Thanksgiving through Valentine’s Day. I often gift the quilts I make, but I may have to keep this one for me (even though I just made a Christmas quilt for my family)!

I knew I wanted to use this print with the tiny houses, but I wasn’t sure
whether there was enough color in this design to use it in the spider webs or
whether it was low volume enough to use it as the background. Once I started
cutting and sewing my quilt top, I came to the conclusion that it would work well
either way.

The beauty of the Odori pattern is that it’s easier to assemble than it looks. Following the instructions, I sewed strip sets and used the Creative Grids Spider Web Ruler, provided to me by the Fat Quarter Shop, to cut my wedges. The process was gratifying and I had extra fabric, so even after I completed my six rows for a 50-inch square quilt, I kept sewing. I added two more rows for a rectangular quilt that measures 50 inches by 67 inches. (Note: If you want to supersize your Odori, buy the foreground prints as listed in the pattern and an additional half-yard of the background. Follow the instructions, saving the extra wedges and the ends of the strip sets for use in the two additional rows. You will also need to make an extra strip set with fabrics B, C, and D.)

I quilted this project with an all-over two-inch grid.

I think the hardest part of the assembly is getting the center points of each block right. Here is how I recommend doing it ...

1. First, place the two halves of a block right sides together, line up the center-most seam with pins, and sew a scant quarter-inch seam through just that intersection. (Don’t sew the entire length of the seam.)

2. Open up the block to see how the points line up. If you aren’t happy with it, unpick the stitches and try again.

3. If you like what you see, place the fabrics right sides together again, pin the other intersections (I like using a pin on either side of the matched-up seams), and sew the entire seam. Be sure to sew right over those initial trial stitches from step 1.

4. Open your block up and press.

Pretty nice, right? I have another example of this shortcut here.

To make your own Odori quilt, head to the Fat Quarter Shop’s Jolly Jabber blog for the free pattern and video tutorial. : )

Linking up to Let’s Bee Social and Needle and Thread Thursday ...