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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!

I’ve been obsessing over a quilt I saw on Facebook last week. Literally thinking about it all the time. I decided to dig into my stash and found this 2016 Kaffe Fassett layer cake and decided to make up this quick throw size quilt. I used a black and white batik that I got on sale for $4 a yard for the accent strips.

I happened to have the pattern that this variation is based on in a book a friend gave me as a gift a couple of years ago.

This literally went together in three evenings. I sewed the blocks and white strips in assembly line fashion over several nights, then tonight I squared them up, cut them in half, and tossed them up on the design wall.

I wasn’t really crazy about this layer cake, and even at the point in the constuction in the photo below was sort of “meh.” But I just LOVE how it turned out when the blocks were done!!! I can’t stop looking at it!

Then there was some magic that I can’t tell you about. It was some pretty fucking amazing magic!!!

With all the bias edges, the blocks ended up really wonky! So it was critical to square them up.

It’s odd, but I just love squaring up blocks! These were damned easy to do because no seams have to match except the corners so I could basically just eyeball the center line. Makes squaring up very quick.

The quilt that I’ve been obsessing over is a version of this made from a more specific color way of Kaffe Fassett Collective Fabrics. I definitely want to make another version while I’m on vacation. I pulled a bunch of fabrics from my stash and ordered a few more to give ma all I need. I will share photos of my vacation quilt when it’s done.

This quilt was made on a variation of a pattern called Algorithm by Gudrun Erla. It can be found on the inter webs. You might also find one legit and legal video about these blocks.

 

 

 

 

I’ve been chunking away at the twelve batik pouch sets I cut out a few weeks ago. . . one a night a few nights each week and then a few on the weekends. I’ve got 11 of the 12 done.

I just LOVE this blue and red set. The colors are so bold and saturated. I wasn’t sure about it when I selected the fabric, but I love it now.

I’m not typically a pink lover, but this set is really pretty. The batik on the top is somewhat unusual. I’ll probably never see it again.

I also really love this blue set. Blue isn’t my favorite color, but I love this shade of blue. And the fabric on the top is really fun and vibrant.

And I love this black and red set. I love the contrast of the dots on the bottom and the botanical print on the top. It’s bold and I love it!

And of course I love this green set. Green is my favorite color and this has just a hint of aqua to make it sing. It feels very watery to me.

Nothing more cheerful than yellow. I love the sunburst on the top and the jaunty dots in the middle. It makes me feel happy!

And here’s the rest. One more to go to finish all 12.

I have put off finishing this quilt back for several months because I was dreading matching all those paisleys. Then a friend suggested that I add strips of a different fabric for contrast and to avoid having to match prints.

So we dug through my stash and found this red Kaffe Fassett guinea flower. And I love it!!!

With this backing, the quilt will effectively be reversible.

I can’t tell you how much I love this paisley fabric. I’ve loved paisleys since I was a kid. I remember vividly a little paisley dress my mom made for me when I was in kindergarten. It had a little Peter Pan collar and cuffs.  But this is the most amazing paisley fabric ever!

This back is for my KFC hexagon quilt. Three quilts will go off to the long armer this week.

I got a lot done this last weekend. I told myself that I wanted to get three quilt backs done so that I could get them all off to the long arm quilter. And I did it!

The bottom blue and green quilt is made from batiks and is a disappearing nine patch pattern. I made this a couple of years ago anticipating that my nephew would be getting married and I wanted to give them this as a gift. Well, they’ve finally announced a date. I’ve got plenty of time to get it done, but I want to check it off my list.

The middle quilt is the scrappy batik wonky log cabin quilt that I talked about in this post. It’s also the cover photo on this blog. I bought the backing for $4 a yard last summer in Salt Lake City. It’s sort of a small cow print in black and white. It’s really bold and fun and it will make this a wild quilt! It makes me very happy!

The top quilt is my Kaffe Fassett Collective hexagon quilt that I made this spring. You can see it in this blog post. I used my favorite tangerine paisley jungle for the back, and added some red Guinea Flower. I was originally thinking I wanted to use all the paisley, but the thought of matching the pattern on two long seams made me want to cry.

I’ll share photos of these quilts when they’re done. I hope my long armer hasn’t retired!

I also cut out the batiks for 12 three-pouch sets — that’s 36 pouches! Now that they’re cut I can easily sew a set in an hour or two. I plan to take the finished sets on vacation with me as I’ve had people request some to buy for gifts.

I’ve already completed two sets and have two more partially done. I had to stop because I didn’t have the right zippers. 100 new zippers on the way!

I just love these batiks! they are so bright and colorful!

On Sunday my friend Helen came over to spend a few hours and get some lunch. Helen is a maker who deals with knitting, felting, and dyeing and occasional sewing. She brought some lovely cotton fabric with her and we twisted, knotted, rolled and banded it all in preparation of indigo dye. I told her a few months ago that I wanted to cut some of her indigo dyed pieces and make something fun. So she did the right thing and got me involved in the process. She will do the actual dyeing when she has enough pieces to fill the vat. It will be a couple of months before I see the results of my work.

On my trip to Canon Beach last week my friend Linda and I stopped at Center Diamond quilt store on the way into town, like we always do. I bought  a few nice batiks and a couple pieces of Kaffe fabric, and then as I was checking out I saw these adorable Mia Charro panels of dogs and wild animals.

I couldn’t wait to make them into pouches!

These are made with blue chambray and linen as the main body of the pouch, with a batik frame around the panel and batik linings.

I just LOVE working with the linen and chambray! I love the way it looks and I also LOVE the structure and the way it turns out so tailored. I can’t get enough of it.

The panels are adorable! Really not like anything I’ve ever seen. I bought a third yard of each and will be able to get a LOT of pouches out of them.

the facial expression of these dogs just kills me!

The colors in the wild animals are so vibrant. I’ll have fun putting together fabric combos. Lots of colorful options!

I couldn’t wait to dig in and make a pouch from the hippo! She is so adorable. So I started looking through my stash and landed on this muted brassica color way from Philip Jacobs. This pouch is lined with Kaffe’s mille fiore. The frame around the hippo is blue chambray. I love how this turned out!

It’s got a zipper pocket on the back. I made it big enough to hold my iPhone.

Here’s a larger view of the two dog pouches. I love these with the batiks. I’ve got a lot of batik scraps left over from my three-pouch sets that are big enough to do the lining and frames on these. I love the batiks with these panels! And I just love the linen. It’s so nice in person… such a lovely texture. I’m going to be sad when I run out of it.

And of course, I have a real soft spot for terriers and LOVE this one with the blue chambray. I just love that fabric!

I have a friend coming over today to talk about quilting and felting, and then we’re going to go to lunch. I hope to finish the quilt back for my Kaffe hexagon quilt this afternoon. Then I’ll have three quilts ready for the long arm quilter. I’m also cutting the pieces for 12 batik pouch sets

Picked up some blank journals at the craft store a few weeks ago, and had a gorgeous day this weekend so sat outside and did some painting in the shade.

I painted some journals for gifts last Christmas and everyone really loved them. A bunch of women at work take them with them everywhere. So I picked up a stack of them thinking I’d paint a few now and then and have some ready for gifts.

It’s hard to find these blank journals that aren’t really pricey. So when I saw these at Michael’s for a decent price, I picked up a stack.

Got three done. Planning on doing a few more this week.