A friend and I just went to a 4-day retreat at Jittery Wings in Newberry, South Carolina, and it was terriffic!

I mentioned Jittery Wings and Mitzie Schafer last week as one of my favorite color resources. She has a unique approach and the purpose of attending her retreat was to learn her method.

This is the “first draft” of the quilt I am making from the retreat with Mitzie

Mitzie designs and makes quilts that are colorful, and much more complex than they appear. She has a specific method for choosing and arranging colors; you can read about that on her website and get her free workbook to explain further (click on the little box that says “get the workbook”.)

Here’s the palette I selected with Mitzie’s help. I don’t have the colors exactly in the right order, but you can see that they do flow.

Mitzie is a woman with many talents. She is a former marathon runner and potter, but she switched to quilting about 10 years ago due to medical issues. She quotes Tula Pink saying “It takes 10 years to become an overnight success” and it appears that Mitzie has accomplished just that. She has grown her pattern business while developing her own unique style of choosing and arranging colors, which she calls “color flow” and “controlled improv”. It looks to me like she has put in 10 years of hard work while keeping her “day job”, and I love the result!

Here are some of Mitzie’s quilts. This first is “All the Good”; my version is in last week’s post.

This is Mitzie’s pattern “All the Good”; photo courtesy of Jittery Wings.

Next is Mitzie’s quilt “Caper”. Believe it or not, that’s the pattern for my quilt at the top of this post. Color and block arrangement make a big difference!

Mitzie’s quilt “Caper” she arranged the colors in rainbow order for this version; photo courtesy of Jittery Wings

This third quilt is Hush Punk.

“Hush Punk” by Mitzie Schafer; photo courtesy of Jittery Wings

This final quilt is “Tambo Star”. The friend who went to the workshop with me chose this pattern, and we soon learned the arrangement of blocks is rather complex. Mitzie was there to help! Look closely for the stars.

“Tambo Star” by Mitzie Schafer; photo courtesy of Jittery Wings

As soon as I got home I joined the Jittery Wings Hive, primarily because Mitzie offers guided practice in her color and design principles. It also happens that the Hive includes courses on making her Hush Punk and Cosmic Sass patterns. I bought both of those at QuiltCon but haven’t made them yet, so stay tuned!

Have you made any of Mitzie’s patterns? Send pictures!

Quilters seem to be forever worried about color. Although I stand by the saying “Color gets the credit, value does the work”, color is important too. Here are three of my favorite color resources.

Tara Faughnan has a fantastic color sense. I took one of her block studies courses and very much enjoyed it, especially seeing her color choices for the palettes and watching her explain her process.

Here are some of the studies I made in her block studies program, all mashed together about to made into a quilt top. M. J. Kinman recently presented to our guild about her gemstone quilts, which are wonderful. In order to get the “sparkle” needed for her gems, she made an extensive study of color. She has now written a book called Crack the Color Code.

I can’t recommend the book highly enough! She has studied some seminal works on color and summarized them in clear, practical terms. I’m especially pleased that she explains Josef Albers’ Interaction of Color, because I owned the book for years without being able to get through it!

Although I haven’t yet made anything with specific reference to MJ’s book, it does explain why tis little quilt I made a few years ago has some glow.

Finally, there’s an excellent free resource from Mitzie Schaefer of Jittery Wings Quilt Company. She calls her method “color flow” and offers a free workbook that explains it. If you follow this link to her website you should see a little floating window that says “Get the Workbook”. It’s free and I recommend it!

In addition to her ideas about color, she has definite opinions about quilt layout. Her website has video presentations about her preferred layout for some of her patterns, and I have found them useful. Here’s one quilt I made several years ago from her pattern “All the Good”.

What are your favorite color resources?

My September UFO was #6, shown here:

There weren’t enough blocks for a quilt top, so I made some more, then added a couple of borders. Here’s the finished top, which is about 47″ square.

I’m happy with it, so it’s going on to someone who quilts donation quilts for me.

That was more fun than I expected, but I probably won’t do that particular leader-ender project again.

Most of us give away lots and lots of quilts, some to dear friends and family and some to organizations like Ronald McDonald House or Quilts of Valor. But what are we expecting when we give a quilt?

We all have stories about people who really appreciated a certain quilt. For example, a long-time friend sent me a picture of her grandchild using a quilt I made for her baby many years ago, when we were both having babies.

Another friend sent a picture of her child playing with his quilt.

Even quilts given by strangers may become heirlooms, like these quilts sent by the Canadian Red Cross to England during WWII.

So what to think about the man who used your quilt to lie on when he crawled under his car to change the oil? We’ve all got multiple variations on this story, and we’re all a bit insulted, or at least perplexed. How could someone not appreciate all the work that went into that quilt? (But wait–“appreciate” by whose definition?)

“Mod Owls” made a good teacher gift because the mascot at my grandsons’ school is an owl

I’m as guilty as the next person of telling stories about quilts I gave that weren’t cared for in the way I expected. But I’ve been thinking about this, and I believe I’ve had it wrong.

If I give a quilt, that means it’s no longer mine. It belongs to the recipient to do with as (s)he wishes. Perhaps letting the dog play with that quilt was the best use the recipient could come up with. It’s no longer my quilt and not mine to judge.

There are many chandelier quilt patterns out there, but this one was free on the Free Spirit website

I enjoy remembering Garrison Keillor’s comment that most quilts sent “overseas” by “church ladies” go to equatorial climates where their best use is as mulch. There are several good points in that remark.

I may not give another quilt to the person who used it to protect the floor under the baby’s high chair. (I should have given her a tarp!) But I’m working on letting go when I give something.

What do you think?

Our local quilt guild has a show coming up, and therefore needs items for the boutique. So when I saw a free pattern for this interesting-looking table runner, I made it.The pattern is available here, and of course there’s a whole quilt option to make from these blocks, but the two in the middle of the runner were enough for me! My version finished 13″ x 54″.

And the other really quick finish was binding this donation quilt:

Quilt Stats:

Name: Cat

Designed by: me, using a panel I found in the scrap bin

Finished size: 49″ x 53″

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

This was an easy week! I hope you had a good week, too.

Some friends recently got together to make tote bags, so here’s the “bag show” (as opposed to a quilt show).

These were all fairly easy to make with free patterns found on the internet.

The tote bags are from a pattern posted years ago, the Market Tote Tutorial by Bijou Lovely. We did modify the instructions by using one layer of foam batting rather than interfacing both the outer fabric and the lining as in her instructions.

The pyramid bag is from a free tutorial here at Loganberry Handmade. It is way easier than it looks!

The two large totes made from oriental fabric used quilting cotton. The orange and black bags were made with upholstery fabric from IKEA.

When I went through the blocks for the August UFO, I took the big central strip and put the rest in the orphan block bin. The one I used is marked below; the rest were orphans.

However, after a couple of weeks I thought I would get out the other blocks and see what could be done with them. They didn’t look promising as they were, so I cut them apart and started fiddling with them.

I tried out various additional fabrics

Then started adding pieces

And finally came up with this finished top, borders added to make a good size for use:

The top will now go to one of the friends who quilts our donations.

For August, I pulled a paper slip out of my basket and it was UFO #4, shown below.

I decided there was no way all of this was going together in a quilt and elected to use the big piece only.

The rest went into the orphan block box. Then I auditioned various options for finishing it by drawing in EQ8.

Finally, I just added wide strips on the side.

This top finished 62″ x 45″ and will now go to the friend who quilts our donations for Ronald McDonald House.

A friend recently brought me a charm pack of shweshwe fabric. You can read about it here if you’re not familiar with it. I was especially interested because I have a blogging friend in South Africa, where shweshwe fabric comes from. Most of the African fabrics we get here are from other areas of that continent.

After considering for a while, I decided to make tote bags for both of us.

This is a modified version of the Charm Party Tote by Penny Sturges. That pattern may still be available on Etsy, but Noodlehead has lots of good bag patterns and I mostly use hers now.

I used foam batting, which was an oddity to me when I first discovered it, but it works really well in bags.

Do we need to go shopping now that we have tote bags?

First, the really fun (but challenging) quilt: I’m making Cassandra Beaver’s 2026 Block of the Month (BOM). I don’t usually do BOMs because I prefer not to put things away every month, then get them all out again, etc. However, when she offered mid-year sign-ups I decided the design was just too good to pass up. You can see it here. Be sure to scroll down and see the picture of her whole quilt. It’s gorgeous. I emailed for permission to copy her picture here but haven’t heard back, so you’ll have to use the link to see it.

The advantage of signing up mid-year is that I got all of the first six months at once, so I didn’t have to fiddle with it so much. Her instructions are excellent. Here are my blocks for the first six months.

One pundit commented that “the little white squares” are a nice design element, but of course they’re the block numbers!

This is not the final arrangement. The quilt will be queen size, so I’ll have to put it on the design wall in sections when it comes to final assembly.

I absolutely loved doing those blocks, but they were challenging. So as a little easy project afterward, I made this quilt.

The feature fabric was one of those “must have” things discovered on a visit to distant shops and it’s been waiting for about 18 months for inspiration to strike. This picture shows only the quilt top. It will be passed on (with batting, backing, and binding all ready) to the friend who quilts our donations for Ronald McDonald House.

What’s your favorite quick-and-easy quilt design? I’m always looking for ideas.