Month: November 2019

I finished this quilt and shipped it off earlier this week. Since it has arrived at its destination, I can share it here now.

And you’re not seeing double. This is the second quilt I’ve made out of these fabrics.

Someone saw it online and wanted to buy the original, but wanted me to make it bigger by adding big borders. Well, I loved the first quilt so much, and I felt like the wide borders would just make it look odd, so I talked the buyer into having me start over and make the same quilt bigger, and they agreed.

I was lucky to find the same layer cake that the first quilt was made from. So I ordered it lickity split and was on my way.

The buyer has blue bedroom walls and wanted blue fabrics in the quilt. I convinced them to let me find reds and yellows that had bits of blue, and I made a visit  to my LQS that has a good selection of KFC fabrics. I found a handful of fabrics that had pieces of blue in them, and the fabrics did the trick.

I went back and forth on the quilting design several times. The buyer wanted the quilt more “fluffy” so I opted for a looser design. I love the way the long wavy lines work with the vertical lines of this quilt. Here’s the quilting pattern that my long armer stitched into the quilt. It’s Urban Elementz Modern Beach Bubbles design.

We chose a light yellow thread for the quilting, thinking it would read somewhat bright. I love the way it appears and disappears in the fabrics.

This is the first quilt where I’ve included a label. The buyer requested one, so I enlisted the help of my friend, Carol, who has a top notch embroidery machine. I think I’ll do more labels in the future!

I opted to use the black and white jumble for the binding. For me, there just wasn’t any other choice. I just love what that fabric does on this quilt!!!

The buyer said that the quilt exceeded their expectations and they appear to be thrilled with it. Plans on it becoming a family heirloom. What a lovely thought!

Yes. I’ve made a lot of quilts on this pattern. Four to be exact.

But this is the one that started it all.

I originally saw one of these posted on the Kaffe Fassett Collective page on Facebook, made by Lori Allison who owns All About Color Quilting and I fell in love with it immediately. I knew that I’d have to make it. And amazingly, I actually have the book that the pattern is in. My friend Linda gave it to me a couple of Christmases ago with the accompanying ruler.

(The pattern is called Algorithm by GE Designs. It’s in the Stripology Squared book.)

So I made a list of the fabrics I wanted to use and realized that I had most of them in my stash, but did have to purchase a couple of pieces. There were also a couple pieces in the original that I omitted and added a couple of other fabrics.

I took all the fabrics with me on vacation in August/September and cut out all the squares and strips for my quilt and cut out the same fabrics for my friend who has made the same quilt. I purchased the backing fabric while I was on vacation.

After I got home I got all the 10 inch squares cut and sewed in my white on white strips assembly line style. To make this process go more quickly, I folded all the strips in half, wrong sides together, and pressed the crease. Then I folded all the half-squares in half, right sides together, and pressed down 1/2 inch on the fold.

Here’s the quilt pieces all prepped and ready to start sewing. Once they’re prepped like this, you can really sew them all together quickly. it’s worth the time to do this work ahead of sewing.

These creases made it really easy to match up the center of each piece with the center of the strip, and the varying wrong side/right side folds made the pieces nest nicely together for sewing.

I love sitting down at the sewing machine and really cranking through piecing quickly. I had these 56 squares all sewn together in a couple of hours. The first photo here shows the white on white I used. I like it much better than a solid white.

Once I got all the blocks sewn, squared up and cut, I tossed them up on the design wall. I usually like to just get them all up and then start moving things around. Part of this process usually involves sending photos to friends and having them point out things I’m not seeing. It can be hard to see areas that need work when you’ve been looking at it for hours on end.

This photo is of my friend’s quilt. I marked it up and sent it back to her showing a couple areas that needed to be adjusted. She sent plenty of photos of my quilt back with mark up as well.

As I was putting my quilt together I pretty much knew that I wanted to use the citrus color way of Kaffe’s lotus leaf fabric. I just love the fabric, and this color way has been a favorite of mine since it came out. This fabric is in the front of the quilt as well.

This quilt is at my long arm quilter as I type. Here’s the quilting design that she will be using. It will be really great with the verticality of the blocks. It’s Bohemian Beaded Shade from Urban Elementz.

This quilt will be only my second with a label. It’s going to be a house warming gift for my sister and her husband. They will be surprised.

Earlier this fall I got some special orders for some of my zipper pouches with the Mia Charro animal panels. I had made one of the hippo pouches and some dog pouches earlier in the summer, and everyone just loved them. These panels are so adorable and have so much personality and color!

Each of these pouches has a zipper pocket on the back, and they are lined with batik that matches the frame around the panel. The hippo has blue chambray framing the panel, and has Kaffe’s lavender Mille Fiore for the lining.

I just love picking out the batiks to go with each of the panels. it’s really a great way to make the panels really sing. Of course, I just love batiks! So any time I get to make something from them, I’m happy.

I saw some of these adorable cat and bird panels at Center Diamond quilt store in Cannon Beach, OR, and picked up a strip of each. Maybe some day I’ll actually get around to making something from them!

I’m always thinking two or three projects down the line. I think I have at least 15 quilts in mind at this time.

My latest project is this really fun scrappy batik star quilt. I’ve had this pattern for over a year. I saw it made up in beautiful bright batiks at one of my local quilt stores and just fell in love with it. 

I had actually pulled some gorgeous batiks from my stash to make this quilt right after I bought the pattern. I got looking at it a couple weeks ago and decided that I’d use my collection of batik scraps left over from making pouch sets. Plus, my friend who just made this quilt was visiting and let me use the scraps she had left over from her quilt.

So I was able to cut all the bright pieces from scraps. I purchased the light background at the same time I bought the pattern.

This is all that was left over from my bright batik scraps:

That’s a really small pile!

I actually put all the pieces, nice and organized, into a bag thinking that I’d start sewing later. Ha! I couldn’t wait to get started!

GAH! I just love batiks. I should have taken these photos during the day rather than at 10 pm. they just don’t photograph as well at night. But each block is just amazing! Click on each one to see a close up. That first one gives me chills!

I’m making a throw size quilt, which takes 20 star blocks. I have all but four sewn together. I’m still figuring out how to proceed once they’re done. Should I arrange the stars on the design wall, and then add the colored borders before sewing it all together? Or should I just assemble blocks, and then toss them onto the design wall? Still thinking about it.

These blocks will end up being 15 inches square, so this will go together pretty quickly.

The colors are much more vibrant than the photo shows.

I heard from my long arm quilter today that the red and yellow algorithm quilt I sold is done! I will pick it up tomorrow night. Just can’t wait to see it.

Holy cow! Have I been busy! It’s been nearly three months since my last post here and I’ve been creating up a storm.

I just have to start chunking away at it all.

So, what happened after the blue Algorithm quilt? Well, I loved making it so much that I decided to use up another KFC layer cake and make another one. And I like this one even better! The best part? THAT BLACK AND WHITE JUMBLE… OMG! IT JUST MAKES THE QUILT SING!!!

And all the color. it’s so fantastic! I like this quilt even more than the original one that inspired me to make this pattern.

I started with a 2016 KFC Layer cake and added a few more fabrics to get the blocks I needed. It was so much fun to put this together because the fabrics were all just so amazing together!

I happened to find some of the yellow Roller Coaster on sale and bought enough for the back. I’m going to wait to take this to my long arm quilter because I have a couple in line in front of it, and I don’t really have any plans for this quilt so I can afford to wait.

I posted photos of this quilt on the KFC Facebook page and someone contacted me and wanted to buy it, but they wanted it bigger. After consider different options to make it bigger, I decided I loved it too much to mess with it and proposed to the person that I make the same quilt again, but make it the desired size, and they said yes. So there will be another, bigger version coming to this blog soon.

GAH! These fabrics!