UFOs and Fruits and Veggies

I'm a collector. I have a collection of fruit and veggies dishes that I bring out for the spring/summer season each year to add a punch of color to my decor.

And I have a huge collection of fruit and veggie fabrics. Here are just a few.

My fruit and veggie stash started years ago when the fabrics first came out. They went so well with my dishes I couldn't resist. Originally I thought I'd make a single quilt from all the different fabrics but I just couldn't see how to combine all the various colors and prints. It finally occurred to me that I could make several themed quilts instead of trying to combine all the prints.

I made a citrus one called Fresh Squeezed. It gets used at the beginning of the summer.

There's a berry one called Fresh Baked. It usually gets used around July 4th. It's the closest thing I have to a red/white/blue quilt.

And there's a salad one called Fresh Tossed. I use this one later in the summer as the veggies ripen.

Along with collecting dishes and fabrics, I also seem to collect UFOs at an unhealthy rate. Over the years there have been other fruit and veggie projects started but never completed. Four table runners plus a tomato quilt have lived in UFO limbo for years. The BoulderMQG UFO challenge for 2019 finally motivated me to finish many of those projects. The first ones finished were the table runners.

Besides the above two short runners, I finally finished this monster runner that uses most of the fruit and veggie fabrics in a sort of rainbow effect. It finished at 106" long. When not in use, I hang it in the shallow shelf unit where even more dishes live. Yes. I know. I have a lot of fruit and veggie dishes.  : )

My tomato quilt, Vine Ripe, was the most recent UFO project to be completed. Cara of Sew Colorado Quilting did the quilting using my favorite quilting pattern Trillium. This one is currently hanging in the hallway.

As part of the guild UFO challenge, I also made an effort to seriously deplete the fruit and veggie stash. I made 8 placemats using the stitch and flip QAYG method. You can read more about various QAYG methods here. Next came a bunch of cloth napkins. My initial plan was to hem the edges but without a serger it was too time consuming to press the edges under so I made double sided napkins instead. It used twice as much fabric (in this case that was a good thing) but they were much quicker to make. Just two pieces approximately 17" x 17" sewn right sides together, turned inside out, and then pressed and top-stitched around the edge. The double thickness feels nice and sturdy. I keep them in this basket near the table so we can just grab a clean one as needed. The placemats stacked below the basket are in use every day too.

The napkins and placemats put a good dent in my stash but there was still quite a bit of fabric left so I made a quilt tablecloth for the deck from some of the smaller scraps. I made 16-patch blocks using three different fabric combinations. Color + color for the inner blocks. Color + green veggie for the middle ring and finally green veggie + a green leafy print for the outer border. It was layered with a large leaf print and quilted without batting. Even without the batting it's a very durable feeling quilt due to all the seams involved in the piecing. The seams do make small things like beer bottles wobble just a little without the batting there for added padding. I'm happy to report that no beers have been spilled to date. Or maybe we haven't had enough to drink yet. I love how it adds color to the deck and sets a festive mood for eating outside.

Even with all these projects, there are still bits and chunks of fabric left. Enough to fill two boxes. You can begin to see just how big my stash was. I still have plans for some potholders, a few more napkins, and an apron.

Do you ever notice how sewing from your stash doesn't seem to make the piles any smaller. I think they replicate overnight when I'm not looking. I think fabric bunnies are involved. How does your stash grow?

Linking up to Cynthia's Oh Scrap linky party.

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In the Works

Seems like I haven't posted many quilty things on the blog lately so unless you follow me on Instagram it might not seem like I'm quilting anymore. Trust me though . . . I am. Several different projects are actually in the works.

In the fall, I'm scheduled to do a presentation on quilt-as-you-go techniques to my guild. I have very little QAYG experience but have always wanted to learn. Since the quilting part is my least favorite thing, I've often wondered if QAYG might be a good solution to my 'fear of free motion'.  FOFM.  No better way to learn something new than by committing to demonstrate it to others. Wish me luck.  : )

I have a disappearing 9-patch that is pieced and ready for quilting. Fell in love with this print that I picked up last year and then filled in with various yellows, pinks, corals, and oranges. These are the big 9-patches before cutting them up. As you can see, I added lattice to the blocks after seeing this quilt by my friend Elizabeth of OPQuilt. My blocks aren't as big because I wanted more blocks for more variety while still having a relatively small lap quilt.

This is how it looks pieced into rows. Next up will be a new to me quilt-as-you go method done row by row.

I have also pulled out all my old fruit and veggie fabrics. I plan to use them by making napkins, QAYG placemats, maybe even a QAYG picnic quilt. Given their end use, I decided to prewash which I don't usually do. What a mess of threads that made!

I still have one more small load to wash and then I'll get started. Summer is the season when I use fruit and veggie dishes as part of my kitchen/dining decor so these will fit in nicely. Just need to get them done before summer is over.

For the last several days, my studio has been swimming with fabric in aquas, dark teal/blues and chartreuse as I cut for a bento box quilt. Years ago I became intrigued with an aqua/chartreuse color scheme I saw in a gift shop and have been collecting fabrics ever since.

Initially I couldn't decide what quilt to make with this collection. I've always wanted to make both a bento box quilt and an x-plus quilt. The bento box won out because it fit quite well with the QAYG technique I plan to try. I'm using a modified version of the Modified Bento Box Block tutorial by Film in the Frig. I changed up some of the strip widths to better showcase the large scale prints in my fabrics. Seeing this quilt by Anne of Play-Crafts also helped me decide on this design because the color scheme is somewhat similar to mine.

Once the pattern was chosen, the cutting began. I pulled lots and lots and lots of fabrics. And the mess grew and grew. Then it was unfold. Iron. Cut. Cut some more. Cutting was way more time consuming than I expected once I began to consider which fabrics to cut into which widths. In many cases I cut several different widths from a single fabric but in some cases I didn't have enough for more than one width. Here are some of the first strip combinations.

My original plan was a large lap quilt but once my daughter saw the fabrics she feel in love and this has doubled in size to a queen. I have 12 blocks sewn and quartered and 13 more to go. That means more cutting and more fabric combinations for the new blocks. Slowly I'm getting there. Right now it looks like this.

This one will be a long time in the making since I'm doing a QAYG for this too. It will certainly be a good test of making a large quilt using QAYG methods and I'm more than little apprehensive about it. Wish me more luck.

I'll share more about my exploration into quilt-as-you-go after the presentation. It should be an interesting experience with plenty of pros and cons along the way. I was quite surprised at how many different QAYG techniques there are once I started researching. Marianne at The Quilting Edge is the master as far as I'm concerned. Her work is amazing. She has some good tutorials on her method which you can find here.

 Have you used QAYG techniques and if so, do you have a favorite method?

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Fall Sunflower Quilts

If you've followed along for awhile, you probably know I have a collection of dishes in the shape of flowers, fruits and veggies that I've mostly picked up here and there at thrift stores. Each season I like to switch it up and now that fall is officially here it's time to bring out the tomatoes, corn, pumpkins and sunflowers.

I always struggle a little with making this change because I really really love the summery flower, fruit and veggies dishes. They are all so colorful, bright and cheery. I just hate to put them away. You can see some of them here (veggies) here and here (fruits). Plus it's a reminder that summer has past for another year. But once the fall stuff is up I love it too.

Along with the dishes come a couple of fall quilts to complete the decor. I posted last week about the sunflower quilt that I've hung for years even though it was un-quilted. Probably no one but me ever really knew because it's at the end of the room and seen from a distance so most people probably wouldn't have noticed or were certainly to polite to say anything. Now it's finally done. Wahoo!!!  It looks so much better finished. More real if you know what I mean. Definitely a sight I've got to keep in mind to help me stay motivated to finish all the other UFO's.

Anyway here's the finished sunflower quilt I'm calling "Sunflowers for Vincent". It turned out relatively well if I do say so myself. I just have to spend more time practicing the free part of free motion.

The other quilt is a bit smaller and was also done years ago based on a pattern called "21st Century Bull's Eye" in a book called Quilts from Aunt Amy. The book's been around for awhile but has lots of great patterns many of which would look terrific done up in more modern fabrics. The bull's eye pattern uses a raw edge applique technique and is very easy to do. I fussy cut large sunflowers from several different fabrics for the centers and then used smaller scale sunflower prints to surround them. The backgrounds for each block are made from an assortment of green leafy prints. Every so often I threw in black, white and a touch of red. The black gave it contrast. The white added a little sparkle. And the red helped expand the color palette and add more depth. Without these extra colors everything would have been just a little too flat.

I did minimal quilting with a single free motion flower in the center of each block. Hard to see in the picture but easy to do.

So, do you switch up your quilts with the season? What do you do with them? I'd love to hear how you use all your beautiful quilty creations. Keep on stitching.

Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop

Hello all you bloggers hopping in to visit. Today is my day on Beth's Let's Get Acquainted Blog Hop. I'm so very glad she put this together for newbie bloggers like myself. I've found many inspiring blogs through participating in the hop. Hope you have too.

So welcome to my little corner of blogland. Please take a few minutes to explore some other posts and get to know my style. And be sure to hop over to Kristy's blog at Cotton Addiction today for more quilty goodness. Don't you just love her blog's name? Then on Thursday, stop by and visit Julie at That's Sew Julie and Chelsea at Pins and Bobbins.

Now for a little about me. My name is Anne and I live in sunny Colorado. I'm a graphic designer turned stay-at-home mom who has now become an empty nester turned quilt blogger/pattern designer. I've quilted for at least 15 years, but it's been an on/off affair in the midst of raising kids that resulted in lots of UFO's. Last fall our youngest left for college and it became the perfect time to fully commit to my quilting. So this year I started my blog, decided to finish some of those UFO's and ventured into the world of pattern design.

I love color and pattern so when the two are combined into gorgeous fabrics I'm definitely addicted.  : )  I'm a huge Kaffe Fassettt fan, love the new modern prints, and have become a true convert to solids. I like working with traditional blocks in a new way and I like going totally modern with more abstract designs. I've got more sketches than I can manage to sew into finished quilts but that's ok because I love the design process.

When it comes to designing a new quilt, my design background takes over and I find myself exploring all kinds of possibilities. With all the exploration and variations I was dreaming up, I decided to start publishing patterns that included those extra options. Patterns are available in my Etsy shop. Each one includes 2 basic quilts plus several optional ideas. You can make several quilts and no two would be the same.

As for a blogging tip, I feel like I'm still figuring it all out but the one thing I'd say is find a QAL or something to participate in. You'll meet lots of nice people and learn/try something new at the same time. And please leave comments. Something I've come to truly appreciate. I love to respond to other quilters and find those little connections we might share. I wish I had known about blogging years ago. The work being done out there is always inspiring, and it definitely motivates me to get more done. But be careful about comparing yourself. Lots of people seem like super sewers who get loads done every week and have a bazillion followers. Another bit of advice . . . be yourself and sew what you love instead of simply copying other quilter's work. Or if you're inspired by their work give them credit. I've realized I just need to be me and do what I love. I need to stick to my own style and continue to develop my own vision. So be yourself.

If you've visited my blog before, you know I have a collection of fruit/veggie dishes along with a fabric collection to match. Each month during the spring/summer/fall I put up one of several quilts I've made with these fruit/veggie fabrics. A couple of years ago I made a series of tablerunners from a simple design I came up with and thought I'd share that with you today. Of course those original tablerunners are still technically UFO's, but this one for fall is finished. Wahoo!!! Thank you Beth for motivating me. One less UFO.

The design works perfectly with whatever fabrics you want to use. It requires just 2 fat quarters and a few strips. Easy peasy. So here goes . . .

Fat Quarter Table Runner
finished size: 15" x 48" (shorter if you prefer)

Fabrics required:
Focus fabrics:  2 fat quarters - 1 each of 2 different fabrics.
Works best if fat quarter is 18" wide but you can adjust later to accommodate a slightly narrower fat.
Narrow accent strip:  3 strips 1 1/2" x 18+"
Wide accent strip: 3 strips 2 /12" x 18+"
NOTE: I've listed the length with a + because it's best to cut your strips a little longer and then cut to size after they are sewn.

Step 1.
Layer the 2 fat quarters face up on your cutting board.
Cut 3 strips 6 1/2" wide across the 18" side for a finished size of 6 1/2" x 18+".
NOTE: if the fat quarters aren't a full 18" wide it's ok as long as you have 17" to work with. You can adjust later.

layer both fat quarters right side up.

18" side of fat quarter runs top to bottom in picture.

Step 2.
Arrange 1 strip of each fabric into a strip set as shown below. Place the focus fabrics on the outside and keep the accent strips in the center. Arrange 3 of these sets using one strip of each fabric for each set. Be sure to keep the same order for all 3 sets. Before sewing read the following if you have directional fabric.

If either of your focus fabrics is a directional print and you want them all to read the same direction, then cut each strip of one set in half so you have 2 strips 9+" long per fabric. Flip the directional fabric around keeping the same order for the strips. Make one full 18+" set and one 9+" half-set per arrangement. This will make more sense when you see the pictures below.

Strip set with pumpkins facing to the left.

Notice that the pumpkin fabric is flipped around in the bottom photo
but the other fabrics remain in the same position.

Step 3.
Sew strip sets together and press all seams to one side.

Step 4.
Cut sets into 4 segments 4 1/2" wide per segment.
NOTE: If your fat quarters were under 18" then just cut your strip sets into 4 equal width segments across the width of your strip set. It just means your finished runner will be somewhat shorter than 48".

Step 5.
Rearrange by flipping every other segment around so that the focus fabrics alternate along the sides. This is the point where the directional issues come into play. If you made the alternate sets all your directional fabric should be facing the same way. If not they will look like this. Absolutely nothing wrong with this but I just want you to be aware of what happens.

This photo shows what happens when you arrange the segments
without flipping your directional fabric.
Note the pumpkins go in 2 different directions.

Step 6.
Sew segments together into pairs and pairs together until runner is finished. Using a pin at the far side of each seam intersection helps to match the points. Otherwise pins aren't really needed unless you're a pinning kind of quilter. Press these seams open to reduce bulk.

TaDah!  Your runner is finished. Quilt it, grab a cup of tea and enjoy your newest creation.

Here's a look at two earlier runners I made. The proportions are slightly different but it's the same concept. This design works nicely with focus fabrics that come in both a dark and a light background. The lemon one is one of my favs.

Here's another one using just 3 fabrics instead of 4. Same basic construction. Just make one of the focus fabrics shorter so that when the accent strip is added on this combined measurement is the same width as the other focus fabric.  This way when segments are flipped the accent strip is staggered down the middle.

Well, that's it for my stop on the hop. Hope you've been inspired by some of what you've seen here today and I really do hope you'll come back again. It's been fun getting to know all of you.

Keep on quilting . . . Anne   : )

Fresh Tossed

Another month of summer begins and it's time for another fruit/veggie quilt in my kitchen. August around here is when the gardens really start to produce all their bounty of veggies. I have friends who have the most amazing garden every summer. Tomatoes, lettuce, peppers, cucumbers, onions . . . you name it they probably grow it. As for our garden, I'm more of a flower gardener than a veggie gardener, but we do manage a couple of tomato plants every year. They produce enough for us and the tomato worms. Can not believe how big tomato worms are. ICK!!! Sorry but I am not a worm girl. Have to have my husband pull them off when I see one.

The design of this quilt is a mix of all kinds of salad goodness. I foundation pieced the blocks using a juicy tomato print for the center that I wonky cut. Then I added varying width strips of green veggies followed by colorful veggies and ending with another border of green. For the center block I switched up this order. I used the leftover scraps of all the colorful veggie to piece an outer border.

And what better way to serve up some fresh veggie goodness than in my veggie dish collection. You know I love my fruit and veggie dish collection. : )  Here's some of the veggie dishes.

A very colorful quilt to say the least. It's perfect as a tabletopper when serving some fresh veggies to snack on. I love eating fresh garden salads this time of year. Makes me feel healthy. So here's to eating well. Now go eat your veggies.