The Latest New Quilt Project

While doing "secret sewing" I can't show you, I am making another quilt at the same time:

This is not the final design placement and there are many more blocks to go, but you get the idea.

The corner triangles are being sewn on as "leader/enders" while making the secret quilt. Easy and it gives me a sense of accomplishment as each star goes from 6" to 9" finished and finds a place on the design wall.

At the first Joyful Journey Retreat, one of the women was working on an old project she was eager to get finished. I really liked it and thought I would want to make one like it someday:

All of April's Sawtooth Star points are the same light off-white fabric and the centers and backgrounds are different fabrics. The sashing and cornerstones tie it all together. I like the wide variety of fabrics very much, especially in the outside perimeter triangles. But when would I have time to start yet another quilt from scratch?

While laying in bed, when I should have been sleeping, I remembered I had 40 6" Sawtooth Star blocks I received in a swap, from Barb Vedder's blog: Oh, My Stars Swap  Perfect!

I "did the math" and decided to cut 80 squares, 6" each, to provide the 160 triangles needed to surround each star. Rather than dig out 80 fabrics, my original plan, I quickly decided to cut 2 each from 40 fabrics, in a wide variety of colors.

Once the four triangles were sewn on the four sides of the star, I pressed them firmly and trimmed the block to 9.5" square. This allows the stars to "float" just a bit. To float them even more, I could have cut those squares larger, say 6.5", 7" or even 7.5". That would make the stars larger. 

Once all the stars are surrounded with triangles and trimmed to 9.5",  I will decide what sashing and cornerstones I want to use. This makes for a larger quilt and gives each star room to shine.

Swaps are notoriously challenging--I have participated in many over the years. Even though Barb's instructions were clear and spot-on, not all of the blocks I received followed those instructions. A few had bias on the background triangles instead of straight-of-grain, and the requirement to use "quilt shop quality muslin" wasn't always followed.

Adding your own fabrics to blocks received in swaps is a good way to control the quality and fix block sizes that are not exactly perfect.

I once participated in a swap of Dear Jane blocks done in Halloween fabrics--fun! It was a big swap with people from several countries and many US states. The person who coordinated it was up-front from the beginning. As she received your blocks, they would be sorted into 5 "quality levels"--A, B, C, D, and E. If you sent in A blocks, you got A blocks in return. If you sent D blocks, that's what you got in return. I can only imagine what any E blocks looked like! I tried hard to be sure I sent in A's.

Here is a poor photo of what I did with those Dear Jane blocks. I gave the quilt away and now cannot find any other photo of it:

My recommendation if you want to create a swap: choose the participants wisely, be sure all agree to follow whatever the rules are, and be sure everyone understands the rules. Also set a time requirement that allows adequate time but not too much time--most will do their blocks right at the deadline.

Let's quilt.

Barbara

Take A Minute

Recently, I received a card in the mail:

I call it a "love letter". It was from one of the Sunday Sew & Sews, and someone who also attended the awesome Joyful Journey First Retreat in March.

She took the time to tell me what our group and Retreat mean to her. How much she has learned since she was a "baby quilter" when we began our journey together, just over 3 years ago. How much she gets from the joy of quilting.

It was one of those notes that bring tears of joy to the eyes. Over the years I have received many of these, from students mostly, and they are all saved in a lovely basket:

Someday my kids will find them and see their mother in a different light.

SO, take a minute--is there someone who means a lot to you? Are you sure they know the positive impact they make in your life?

Take a minute--send a note, handwritten, in the mail--to let them know. If for no other reason than it will make them happy. It will touch their heart.

If you haven't mailed anything lately, first class postage is currently 55 cents. I buy a book of "Forever" stamps when I need them so have to look up the current rate.

Send a note, it only takes a minute. Then:

Let's quilt.

Barbara

Announcement, Announcement, Announcment!

Guess what? There will be a Special Exhibit of my life's work at International Quilt Festival Houston this Fall, October 2020.

International Quilt Festival Houston--George R Brown Convention Center

To say I am "over the moon" is putting it mildly. The Exhibit is entitled "My Joyful Journey" and will feature quite a few of my quilts from the mid-1980's when I was a "baby quilter" to my current work, and a few award-winning quilts.

I consider this my "Lifetime Achievement Award"--to present my progression as a mostly traditional quiltmaker, from the early days when they were "less than lovely" to where I find myself today.

My first International Quilt Market was 1996, when I attended as  the "buyer" for my local quilt shop, Patches & Stitches. I have attended every Fall Market since and every Festival since 1999, when I began working for the Education Department of Quilts Inc. There is much about that experience that I love, I have written about it many times, but this, oh, this is really a special dream come true.

This collage was assembled by Quilts Inc. and represents just a quick look at the past. So much has changed with quilting and yet much has remained the same--our passion for playing with fabric and thread to create a vision as well as make useful objects. I especially like that it features 1996, the first year I stepped into the George R Brown Convention Center, when it was somewhat smaller than it is today:

Yes, I know this is a weird year. And, yes, I know many people might not come to Houston this year. But as long as there is a Festival, and that is most definitely the plan today, my quilts will be there and I will get to see them hanging as a collection. Pretty cool....

In the  next few weeks I will know which quilts are included. Some of these:

Maybe some from my "Artsy Period", like this one:

Maybe one of my favorites, like this one I worked on for 7 years:

They have a lot to choose from so I will be very interested to see which quilts are selected to represent my work and make an interesting Special Exhibit for attendees to enjoy.

I hope you will make it to Festival this year--a show that only needs to go by one name: "Houston". A place I feel at home, a place filled with people I love and admire, a place I am so honored to be able to share my work.  Make your plans and I'll see you in Houston!

Let's quilt.

Barbara

A Quilter's Legacy

A couple months ago, a quilter friend of mine passed away after a long and fulfilling life. Find out more about Janet here:  A Tribute

Janet made lots of quilts for donation to various organizations, like the hospital NICU, Veteran's home, and others. Her daughter found a large stack of these in progress. Janet had a goal to make 50 of these but did not complete her task.

The Sunday Sew and Sews agreed to finish this project in her honor. Recently, Janet's daughter brought four carloads of stuff to my house for this reason. It has taken some time to organize all the quilts to get them ready for the Sunday Sew and Sews to pick up but they are ready:

Janet was very organized. She had a notebook with four typewritten pages of all the donation quilt tops she had made. That was enormously helpful to me as I found each top, selected a back, batting and binding for each and got it ready for someone to complete:

 The binder also held many patterns Janet had collected over many years for donation quilts--from magazine pages to those printed off the Internet, all neatly stored in the binder.

Just one page of four

The sizes she used the most for various purposes

It took the better part of 2 days to get all the quilt tops ready. There were at least 50 bins of fabric to go through for backings and bindings and bags of batting to cut. I found good selections for each quilt, including the 3 that needed borders added or backing pieced together.

Dining Room Command Central

Garage Staging Area

Janet had two favorite designs she liked for the quilts she made for children. One pattern she designed in 2004, she called the Sawtooth Star Quilt. Janet loved Seminole Piecing and often added it to these quilts as well as her own:

With Seminole pieced border

Very simple border

The one she called "My Favorite Donation Quilt: is very simple--she let the fabric do the talking:

Super Simple

Seminole Pieced borders

Some little boy will love this

Both of these patterns finish at less than 45" wide so one length of fabric makes the back. It take 1.25 yards for the back and just over 1/3 yard for binding.

When people say "I don't have time to make donation quilts" I will think of these and how easy they are to put together. 

Once in a while she made a more time-consuming quilt to donate:

Floating Stars--she probably got these in a swap

Two of the Sunday Sew and Sews volunteered to quilt a bunch of them on their longarms. Robin took 16 and Holly took 10. All I had to do was be sure I gave them all the yardage needed for big backs and batting and binding for all those quilts.  There was a full roll of Warm and White batting and many bags of 3 yards of 90" wide batting, so plenty on hand for the longarmers and plenty to cut into pieces for the remaining 20+ quilts to be done on domestic machines.

When the 26 being quilted by Robin and Holly are done, they will pass them on, along with the binding I included for each quilt, to another Sunday Sew and Sew for final completion.

Now the Fun Part: Once I had all the quilts prepared, I could look through the bins to see what I might want. Oh, yes, we each get 3 bins for our own personal use. There are thousands of yards of fabric here:

As I am making Quilts of Valor at the moment, I was thrilled to find yardage of reds and blues I can use for borders and backs--thanks, Janet! She tended to buy everything--all colors--all styles, fat quarters and 3 yard pieces. The women will have fun this weekend picking out their 3 bins to take home.

One simple rule: no cherry-picking, you take the whole box. Fortunately, Janet had things pretty much in organized groups in the bins. There is sure to be something here to make everyone happy. Three people have already come to get quilts to work on--they were surprised to see all these boxes to choose from.

There are also lots of books--some she even had two copies of. Sadly, today most quilters don't want books, they want to find everything for free on the Internet or YouTube. There are some real gems here, some from 25 years ago, some very recent. I hope they find a new home. If you are looking for a specific book from the past, let me know, it might be here  and I'm  happy to share:

Last Summer, Janet did a giveaway of TONS of fabric and she told us there was still plenty left. Read about that here: Do I NEED More Fabric?  She was right...

I thought I have a lot of fabric, now, really I don't feel so bad. While I often say "I have a sinful amount of fabric"  what I really mean is "I am the curator of an extensive personal textile collection".

Janet would be pleased to know her 50 or more donation quilts will be finished and donated in the next few months. We are pleased to do it in her honor and memory and her family is ever-so grateful. Do you have a "final arrangements plan" for your stash? Since none of us will live forever, that's not a bad idea. 

Let's quilt,

Barbara

Let's Quilt!

On a Cruise! Now is the time to plan for a wonderful time next year, April 18-25, 2021. We are going on a sea cruise and I know it will be a great time.

Scrappy n Happy Cruise Registration and Details


To make it easy to find, the link will remain right on my blog, see it there, at the top, on the right? Tell your friends to join us too. Have a spouse or partner who loves to have fun on a big ship? They can come too--they receive a discount for not taking the classes.

VERY IMPORTANT--be sure to put my name in the Registration form when asked How Did You Hear About the Cruise?  There is something special in it for you if you do so don't miss out...

A month ago I made the first announcement about this opportunity:

Let's Look Forward

Several people have signed up--only 90 students will be joining us--I sure hope you will come too.

These past weeks have been difficult so I am choosing to look ahead to happier times.

Let's Quilt!

Barbara

Multiple Projects--All the Time

Recently, a friend wrote her blog and said it seemed very odd to her that she was working on FOUR projects, simultaneously. 

She is an art quilter and teacher of free-motion quilting, so our work is fairly different. I just smiled to myself, because I had no idea how many projects I am currently "working on", but I was pretty sure it was more than four. And "sheltering in place" or "quilters' quarantine" has nothing to do with this--I always have multiple projects going.

Finally got this top finished and I love it. I might not be able to part with it. That just means I have to make yet another Quilt of Valor, the 3rd this year, to be ready for Veteran's Day. The quilt is titled "Sail On" and was published in Easy Quilts Spring 2019. I added the Flying Geese border and outer red border:

77" square

Since I changed the pattern, to my regret, I had half square triangles left over. So, when I was still thinking I would be giving this away, I decided to make a small version, with 6" stars, instead of 9":

At first I thought I would just cut solid strips of the reds and blues instead of piecing them from squares but I really like the look of the squares and I can use up smaller pieces of fabric so I think it will be squares for the red and blue rows. I don't think I will add the flying geese--a simpler pieced border is in the planning stage. There is some interest in this as a class--if the patterns can be purchased, I will do that.

The Stay At Home Sampler from Temecula Quilt Company can be found on Instagram--easy 3"  blocks that use little fabric. I might incorporate a pieced center I made during our great Joyful Journey Retreat in March:

Here are five blocks cut out, waiting to be leaders/enders for other piecing:

Another Leader/Ender project uses the extra Double 9 Patch blocks I made to test the heavy starch method, so I could add that suggestion to one of my blogs about Afternoon Delight--the 2020 Block of the Month Quilt for The Quilt Show. Eventually, this will be a baby quilt and the rows will all be the same length:

At night, while the TV is on, I am handquilting this fat quarter of terrific fabric I bought in Texas last year on a teaching trip. It has wool batting and is a pleasure to quilt, just follow the lines:

Waiting for me in my cozy chair:

When that hand project is done, I will get back to Simple Gifts, a needle-turn hand applique project I started years ago with Mary Sorensen. The pattern and all the fabrics are safely stored in a box and when I dug it out 6 months ago, I knew it was time to get back to it, so I have added a couple leaves recently:

Another project that is floating in my head involves this block, an antique I saw on Pinterest. It is the most "pinned" of all my pins on Pinterest--every time someone pins it I think "I really need to do something with that block design". First, I drafted it--the 12" large block is too large--or maybe I've been working with such small pieces in recent years that it just looks huge to me. The smaller block finishes at 7.5" to keep the math somewhat simple. I like it better:

Every day I see them on the side of the design wall and think about what to do next--make an even smaller one? Change the color plan? Not sure, but this will become something later this year.

That brings me to some special sewing. This week I pre-washed these babies so I can get started. I don't often work with solids, not since my days of making Amish quilts, so these will be fun. More to come on this project later:

So there are 8 projects, just the ones it was easy to photograph and show you. There are at least 3 more on the back burner that will move up in line as these above get completed.

How many projects do YOU work on? Only one at a time, or several?

Let's quilt.

Barbara

AFTERNOON DELIGHT--Month 5

Here we are at Month 5 of Afternoon Delight.

This pattern is the 2020 Block of the Month pattern offered FREE to Star members of The Quilt Show--join today to receive the entire year of patterns free. This is in addition to all the great content provided by The Quilt Show, 26 shows, a new one every two weeks, and so much more. If you want to know more about why I am such a fan, here is why.

If your Shoo Fly blocks are done, all you have this month are four Applique blocks.

I will confess, I did not make any of these for my Demo Quilt. Several of these blocks are similar to earlier blocks so I don't have much new info this month.

Here are the blocks from the Sample quilt made last year by the Sunday Sew and Sews and me:

Block 17

In the written Instructions, Sue recommends fussy cutting a beautiful print fabric for the flowers for both Blocks 18 and 19:

Block 18

Block 19

Block 20

See my earlier blog with detailed instructions for this "Twirly Balls" kind of block:  

Block 10

Here are the other two blocks that are very similar to Block 20. They are so similar it was hard for me to find them in my photos: 

Block 23--coming in Month 7

Block 10--done in Month 3

What if there are some applique blocks you just don't like? This is a great opportunity to design your own block or substitute one you prefer. Draw a 6" block and play around with simple shapes for your design.

Note that some of the applique blocks are "Circles" and some are "X's"--this will be important at the end when you assemble the quilt. Substitute a Circle for a Circle, or an X for an X.

Since Month 6 was released two months early so you could start on the 64 Double 9 Patch blocks, next month I will feature some of the work being done by others on this quilt. You are encouraged to post photos on the Forum so I can find them. I will ask your permission before I show your blocks. Please post your photos here:

Show and Tell Your Blocks

Let's quilt,

Barbara