I love it! AP&Q featured our Quilter’s Applique Caddy on their favorite finds page! I always love seeing what cool things their ‘finders’ have found…
As before, this photo is used with permission from American Patchwork & Quilting® magazine. ©2014 Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved.
Lisa Boyer is the lucky winner of the box of crumbs. She was chosen by my very favorite random number generator—my mom. Once I explained to mom why she had just picked a number, she was very excited. Mom loves this sort of thing :-). Lisa, if you didn’t get my email, contact me at becky@pieceocake.com. I need your shipping address.
I have one more item on my desk that needs a home. This is an almost-finished small quilt. I made this quilt to illustrate a point, but it didn’t really do what I needed. I was in a rush and thought that maybe I could make it work but when I got around to quilting it, I had to admit that it just wasn’t going to work in the book. Luckily I had time to make a different quilt. But what to do with this quilt?
I call it Hopscotch. It’s simple and graphic, and about 32″ square. I started quilting it in a variegated rose/red King Tut cotton thread. My intention was to unify the dark and white areas of the quilt. I think with more quilting, it would do that. Or, it could be quilted differently. The lucky winner is free to rip out the quilting I have done in favor of something else.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to finish this quilt. I do not want to add it to my (small) pile of UFOs. I’m hoping that one of you would love to have it.
Included with the layered, partially quilted quilt is most of a cone of the King Tut quilting thread that I started with, fabric cut for the sleeve, and black and white bias binding, ready to attach. Here’s Belle, keeping watch over the folded quilt (with the back showing), the sleeve, thread, and binding.
As before, leave a comment and mom will choose a number, this time on Wednesday.
Every day is a sprint.
I'm guessing that the same is true for many of you. I sometimes wonder if it has always been this way. I have dim memories of times when I could sit and read a book—very dim memories. I don't necessarily think that my life was better then, but there are days when I wish I could focus on one thing without knowing how many other things I also need to be doing. OK, enough of that 🙂
I was in Monterey and Pacific Grove, CA, last week to teach for the quilt guild. Monterey is such a great place to be. The people were wonderful, the weather was lovely. On the way to dinner one evening I spotted this in the sidewalk. It made me smile.
While there, I got to visit one of my all-time favorite shops, The Back Porch. Of course, I shopped…
I didn't shop for anything in particular and the stacks reflect that.
In the same way that I did after my last shopping trip, I thought I'd tell you why I bought what I did. The first two fabrics that went in my pile were these:
Both are linens from Kokka. The penguins are designed by Nancy Wolff, the telephones by Melody Miller. They are not inexpensive fabrics but I have used similar fabric before and I am always sorry when it's gone. (FYI: Linen and regular cottons are not a problem to combine in quilts. They sew together well.)
The penguins have text on them! You know how I love text…
These two cottons are both designed by Stella but I didn't realize that when I bought them. One of my students had used the light branch fabric as a background and I really liked it. The concentric circles didn't make me think of tree rings until I saw the two fabrics together.
Besides the fact that the Kokka linen is expensive, I'll bet that many of you don't buy it because you aren't sure how to put it with other fabric. Here are some ideas:
I would not have normally have thought about putting the tree fabric with the penguins but it works! I would add more fabric, but this is a nice start.
The more delicate, feminine floral looks really good with the telephones. It makes me think of myself as a teenager. I probably add some light fuschia and teal, possibly a lot of cream, and a deep dark burgundy.
The orange tile print from Kaffe Fassett is pretty nice with the telephones too. In fact, it surprised me…
And I like it even better with the yellow and orange fabric by Thomas Knauer for Andover—although I would use the yellow in very small doses.
What else I would add? Probably blue, more aqua than true blue.
I'll share more in a couple of days. Until then, I hope you have a nice holiday weekend!
I like to quilt my own quilts but every now and then I admit to myself that I just can't do everything. Luckily, Angela Walters has come to my rescue!
Spinning Wheels is the first of several quilts that she is working her magic on. I received the quilt last Monday, bound it, and sent it off to be shown at Quilt Market. Can you believe that I didn't take a picture of it, bound? I slapped myself upside the head. And then I asked Angela if she had taken pictures. Yes, she did.
I love the different quilting designs that she used. Everything works well together, adding life to the quilt but not overpowering it.
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Definitely check out Angela's blog.
I don't know about you, but this makes me smile :-).
I’ve been buying fabric lately – more than I normally do –
to use in the quilts for the Color book. I’ve shopped at quilt shops and online
without much thought about how these fabrics will be used together. I’m really
enjoying the quirky relationships that are happening between these different
fabrics.
For example, I bought this cute little floral print:
I bought it knowing that it was more gray than clear. I use clearer colors often, but not exclusively. That said, when I bought it I
thought this would be more of a filler fabric. But darned if the little floral didn’t want to
buddy-up with a variety of other fabrics in the stacks on my table.
It thas a great texture that plays well with a variety of prints. I love it with this puff-ball fabric…
Because the puff-ball fabric is soft and gray, the little floral feels cleaner next to it.
I didn't particularly love the next print, but I bought because it was interesting. I like it a lot better when it is with the little floral print.
When I put the little floral with this blue and white print, it both look brighter.
You might be wondering where I will go from here. I'm not sure. I like each fabric pair, but I'm not sure that I have a quilt in mind in which I would use all of these together. It is more likely that I'll leave these pieces all together in a stack and watch them. In time I'll figure out which fabrics together make me smile more.
I only bought 1/2 yard of that little floral print… I wonder if that will be enough? I am resisting the urge to buy more. I know that if it turns out that I need more and can't get it, I will find something else and that choice will be more interesting in the long run. There. I decided – I'm not going to buy more!
Both of my nieces, sisters Alea and Rachel, had babies in July. I don't always promise a baby quilt because I can't always get one made but this time I did promise. To both of them. And I finished both quilts before the babies were much more than 1 month old! Here is the quilt made for Annabelle Grace:
Rachel requested color combined with black and white. I decided to play with progressions of color and size to give Annabelle something to think about. Small strips lead to larger strips, light yellow blends to darker blue. The dark blue strips are centered and act as an axis in the design.
I wrote her name in my best longhand and enlarged it to make a template. I used the cutaway applique technique and appliqued it in place with perle cotton.
The quilting is fun! I quilted lines in the strips but switched to flowers in the prints. (Note: you can click on any of these photos to see it larger.)
I made this quilt to hold up to wear and washing. The more it is washed the softer it will be. I mostly used prints so that stains won't show so much. If it gets dragged around on the floor – that's just fine. I hope Annabelle uses it for a very long time.
Tomorrow I'll show Addyson's quilt…
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