Author Archives: zippyquilts

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About zippyquilts

I quilt for pleasure but I also teach and write about quilting.

Quilts for Veterans

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One of the guilds I joined recently participates in the Quilts of Valor program, awarding quilts to veterans.

My parents met when both were in the Army during World War II. They would have been touched to have their service remembered years later with a quilt.

However, both of them died before I knew of the program.

Therefore, these two quilts are not only to honor living veterans but to honor the memory of my parents and their service.

This first quilt is made from the Lucky Stars pattern by Alex Anderson. It’s another one I’ve made numerous times and it’s always turned out well.

The second quilt is a modification of the Wish pattern by Cluck Cluck Sew.

Both of these were quilted by Linda Nichols, who is an official Quilt of Valor longarm quilter. I hope you can see this nice panto she used. It’s called “Star Spangled”

P.S.– A blogging friend asked if I had written about my parents’ service, so I thought I would add what information I have. Mother’s jobs with the army included recruiter, sex educator for female personnel, and finally WAAC commander at Keesler Field. Daddy was an aircraft mechanic, first in Texas and then in Europe.

Both left the army with the rank of captain. I recall that one outranked the other by virtue of having been promoted a few days earlier, but I don’t recall which. I do know that Mother outranked Daddy at home 😀

 

 

Fall Classes

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Studio Stitch has published the fall class list. Of note for those of you with embroidery modules, there are some new embroidery classes that look like fun.

For quilters, here are the classes I’ll be teaching!

In September it’s basic binding. This is something many quilters struggle with and I promise to make it easier.

Also in September I’m teaching a class to rescue some orphan blocks! As I’ve mentioned, I have a lot of those and I suspect other quilters do, too. Here’s the quilt for the class:

And note that the blocks do not have to be all the same size/shape/etc. We have work-arounds!

In October I’ll be teaching two quilts (but at different times!). The first is Weathervane. There’s a kit for Weathervane available at Studio Stitch or you can just bring the pattern (also available at the shop) and your own fabric. (There’s a discount on the class if you’re using the kit from the shop, plus of course you get 15% off the kit since it’s for a class. Just sayin’–double discount!). This is a good quilt for perfecting your half square triangles.

Then later in October I’m teaching Wish, a pattern from which I made this Quilt of Valor.

There are fun classes by other teachers as well. You can hop on over to the shop’s website to check them out.

If you’re local I hope to see you soon!

 

Hello, Holly!

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Holly Alloway’s work first came to my attention when Studio Stitch featured this quilt as the 2022-2023 Block of the Month (BOM).

Quilt (c) Holly Alloway, designed and made by her

You can see why I took notice! Holly recently agreed to talk with me and show me some of her quilts.

Holly designed this BOM several years ago using Deb Tucker’s rulers and techniques. Quilt design (c) Holly Alloway

Like many of us, Holly has been sewing all her life, though she started making quilts “only” about 40 years ago. She has lived various places around the country and has found both guilds and classes useful in her development as a quilter.

Another BOM using Deb Tucker rulers. Quilt design (c) Holly Alloway

Holly has a particular affinity for specialty rulers and a significant talent for designing with them.

This crate contains part of Holly’s collection of specialty rulers

She loves Deb Tucker’s rulers and has done several previous BOM designs using them.

More of Holly’s designs using Deb Tucker’s rulers

When I asked how she came to design the elaborate quilt shown at the top of this post, Holly said, “Well, Jaybird Quilts came out with those rulers.” She had already designed some modifications of English Paper Pieced (EPP) quilts so she could machine piece them.

Using the Jaybird Quilts rulers, Holly set about making many more EPP designs by machine.

Eventually she had re-designed enough EPP blocks for three quilts! The first is at the top of this post; here are two more.

And that’s not all! Holly is also a fan of strip piecing. I especially enjoyed seeing these two quilts.

And here’s the most unique thing: I originally asked to interview Holly because of her UFO management strategy. She allows herself only as many ongoing projects as she has years of life left! She has asked her family to give her a set of papier mache numbers each year representing how many projects she’s allowed to have!

I won’t tell you how many that is right now–I didn’t ask and she didn’t tell 😀  She does admit to being “over budget” presently due to several projects she has going. I just love this idea! We all need to get realistic with our quilting plans.

This bag is a current UFO for Holly.

Holly has made many more beautiful quilts than I could include here. I’m sorry to say she doesn’t publish her patterns, but we have enjoyed having her daughter teach some of her blocks in the BOM program at Studio Stitch.

Please note that all original blocks or quilts in this post are (c) Holly Alloway, various years.

 

Two Quilts for Flying Horse Farms

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Yes, the quilts do seem to come in pairs lately.

Flying Horse Farms is a camp “where children with serious illnesses live without limits”. A friend started making quilts to donate to them, so several of us have joined in. Here are the two I have made most recently.

Quilt for a Boy is 58″ x 72″, made from batiks using a modification of the classic Turning Twenty Again pattern. I’ve made that pattern numerous times and every one has turned out great. The camp especially needs quilts for older boys, and I thought this would fit.

Fun fact: this quilt incorporates a cotton handkerchief I found on the trail during a hike years ago!

And the back is an end-of-bolt batik I bought years ago as well.

Mod Owls, 62″ x 75″, was made because I bought these cute plaid fabrics and needed something cute to do with them. My blogging friend Elizabeth sometimes refers to being caught in the “dungeon of cute”, and I guess I was.

The pattern is “Mod Owls” from Sew Kind of Wonderful and uses both sizes of their original rulers. I still really dislike making curves without seam allowances, but I just had to do this quilt and was too lazy to design new templates, so here it is.

And look at this owl panto Linda used!

The backing was donated by a friend and I found some plaid for the binding!

I think it will be a cute quilt for some kid at camp.

Both quilts were quilted by Linda Nichols.

 

Starting Bloem

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I had seen Libs Elliott’s Bloem quilt several places online before I found the pattern at Five Little Monkeys recently, so when I saw the pattern I decided to make the quilt.

I got these two patterns at Five LIttle Monkeys and I’m starting Bloem, the pattern on the left

I like the fact that the quilt is designed for several alternative layouts, and I like the bright colors. When I bought the pattern I thought I already had templates for most of the blocks, but when I got home and looked at the templates they weren’t quite right.

So I got a big piece of template plastic and some spray adhesive and made templates.

I found that just tracing the templates onto the plastic wasn’t too great because it was hard to see the clear plastic template! However, it worked great to cut out the paper shape,  spray it with adhesive on the printed side, and then put the printed-and-sprayed side on the plastic. I used crummy scissors to cut out the plastic, of course!

And naturally I had to re-design the quilt to suit myself, both in terms of the blocks used and the colors. Here are a few of my attempts on EQ (Electric Quilt 8).

This is my modification of the Bloem pattern from Zen Chic

And here’s the quilt so far on the design wall. Some of the blocks are overlapping so they’d all fit.

 

I’ll keep you posted!

 

Two More Orphan Block Quilts

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As I probably have mentioned, I have over 100 orphan blocks. Some are from swaps, some from blocks I made to learn something, some just extras from quilts I’ve made.

Yes, that bin is full of smaller orphan blocks, with the big orphans stacked on top!

I have made numerous quilts in the past to use some of them up. Here are a few just for review.

Aha! Orphan blocks can be cut up to make new blocks, as I did with my Giant Circles quilt, here

I’ve used orphan blocks to make greeting cards, here

orphan block on bag

This is a great use for orphan blocks. Just attach to a bag, and you have a handmade gift!

Splendid Stars, 51″ x 53″, was made from orphan blocks left from numerous projects

And of course I’ve attached orphan blocks to shirts.

quilt block on a shirt

Here’s another orphan block on a shirt

Recently I was browsing patterns and noticed that the folks at Maple Island Quilts had used one of their patterns to set some orphan blocks, so of course I ordered the pattern.

I have made two quilts. Here’s the first, which I considered the less successful of the two.

Quilt made using orphan blocks and the BQ5 pattern from Maple Island Quilts.

I thought the points coming together would make the design cohesive, but the blocks were just too dissimilar. And yes, there is a “mistake” block that I decided to leave “as is” when including it in the quilt 😀

Oops. But this is not the time to re-make this block!

The second quilt was made with the other design offered in the pattern, and I believe the blocks are more homogeneous as well.

Finished quilt 54″ x 68″, made from BQ5 pattern

Perhaps Elvis helped this quilt be more successful.

But the favorite block is this one. It’s a print from many years ago. I used the fabric to make a quilt for a friend who is a child psychologist.

What do you do with orphan blocks? How many do you have?

And just in case you have a LOT, the BQ5 pattern is available here. It is well written and I do recommend Maple Island Quilt patterns because I’ve never had any trouble following their directions! Several other patterns in the line would work for orphan blocks, too.

An Excellent Quilt Shop

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We recently went to Western North Carolina for several craft-related events and I fit in a visit to Five Little Monkeys, a quilt shop in Weaverville just north of Asheville. (Who can resist a visit to a quilt shop while travelling?)

One of the greeters at Five Little Monkeys

Five Little Monkeys turned out to be a wonderful quilt shop, well worth the side trip!

They had multiple bolts of some of my favorite fabric lines.

I love these large-scale novelty prints from Alexander Henry!

There was a huge selection of patterns! It’s conveniently located on the stairs leading up to the sale area 😀

I never saw so many patterns in one shop!

And they had a better selection of quilting books than any store I’ve visited in the past couple of years. Just look at this!

The owner designed this quilt for the wedding of friends and she does sell the pattern through her shop.

Wedding quilt designed by Angie, who calls herself the “Queen Monkey” at Five Little Monkeys

There were multiple other lovely quilts on display, including this one that I thought was especially fun.

Not a great picture, but the quilt was up high. Fun to look at anyway!

There were many attractive displays throughout the store. I had to walk through several times to decide what I “needed”. I’m not showing everything I bought because some items were gifts for folks who probably read this blog. But you get the idea.

I did get some half yards for my low volume stash.

The fabric on the far right has silver metallic speckles, but my camera doesn’t like metallic

And I found a couple of patterns I just have to try.

Stay tuned for quilts made from these patterns. And if you get to Asheville, it’s well worth a trip to Weaverville to visit Five Little Monkeys!

 

Swedish Sunrise

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I first mentioned this quilt when I spent a lot of time cutting squares of very particular colors for the Postcard From Sweden pattern. (Here, if you want to read that post.)

Photo is from the front of the Postcard From Sweden pattern

My arrangement of colors originally cut for the Postcard From Sweden pattern

After cutting all the squares and looking at the layout in the pattern, I decided to change it up. I put more of the blue at the top, green at the bottom, yellow in the middle, with the idea of imitating a sunrise.

I made a quilt with a similar idea a couple of years ago. I chuckle about it because some people call it “perseveration” when you repeat an idea like this, but if you’re an artist it’s called “working in a series” 😀

Here is the previous quilt:

Sunrise, 75″ x 50″

And here are some close-ups of Swedish Sunrise.

Quilt Stats

Name: Swedish Sunrise

Finished size: 61″ x 76″

Designed and made by me, using the colors suggested in the Postcard From Sweden pattern

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

 

 

Anniversary

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Back at the beginning of June I marked (or failed to mark in print) the 10th anniversary of my blog.

My blogging friend Andrea recently reviewed her stats and noted her most popular posts. I almost never look at my stats because I’m writing this for fun, not for fame, but I liked her idea. So because of her I’m going to review several things I found interesting when looking at my stats.

First up: Where in the world are my readers? One of the things I love about blogging is the opportunity to exchange ideas with people I’m unlikely to encounter otherwise. Not surprisingly, most of my readers are in the U.S., followed by Canada, Australia, and the U.K. generally. After that there are a number of European countries, other English-speaking countries, and some countries I never heard of!

A blogging friend in South Africa wrote about her borage, so I planted some and it’s beginning to bloom! The circle shows a little hitch-hiker I found on the plant.

I have had no readers from Greenland or most of the countries in the African interior.

Pinterest and the WordPress app itself are the most frequent source of viewers. I know people often click on pins (Pinterest) from my blog because of the pages on which they land when visiting me. Many visitors come to this post I wrote years ago about Jo Glover, one of the original Big Stitch quilters. I expect it’s because of the pictures of some of her work, including this one:

Some Big Stitch quilting by Jo Glover

As for other popular posts, of course many people visit the home page and About Me pages. Another frequently-viewed post is about AQS Quilt Week in Chattanooga in 2016, possibly also because there were so many quilts from there added to Pinterest.

But the thing I enjoy most about blogging, regardless of stats, is encountering other quilters and their ideas. I’ve only met one blogging friend in person, but I’m hoping to meet others one of these days.

Laura visited in 2021 and was the first blogging friend I met in person.

In looking at some of these older posts, I’m surprised to see how long I’ve been exchanging comments with some of these friends. Some blogging friends have disappeared, to Instagram or otherwise, and I’m sorry to see them go. I did finally subscribe to Instagram just so I can see what’s going on with my friend Chela (colchas_y_mas), but it isn’t really a habit yet. And I’m pretty busy, so maybe it never will be. I did manage to post one picture so far 😀

Based on this review, I have a suggestion for friends who are trying to get more traffic to their blogs: Post your stuff on Pinterest. And I have it on good authority that your blog can be sent over to Instagram. I haven’t figured it out yet, but that might drive traffic to your blog as well.

I’m just happy to have met so many people through my blog, regardless of traffic in general. And to all my followers and commenters, THANKS!

Two Quilts

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I mentioned last week that I had forgotten to blog about my improvisational quilt, so here’s the whole story.

Last summer I took part in an improv quilt-along hosted by Shannon Fraser Designs. I made a bunch of blocks in response to her prompts.

Eventually, I used my signature little black strips to combine them into a final design.

And then I forgot to blog about the finished product. So here we go:

Quilt Stats

Name: Improv 2022

Finished size: 42″ x 57″

Designed, and made by: me, in response to improv prompts from Shannon Fraser Designs

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

More recently I made another raid on the scrap drawers and put together this top.

It’s from an old book from Cozy Quilt Designs, entitled Strip Clubbing: Fast and Easy Quilts with 2 1/2″ Strips. I was pleased with the pattern and directions. Instructions were such that every one of those seams nested!!! How great is that? Because of that, almost all of those intimidating-looking intersections were close to perfect! Woo!

This is only about 36″ square, so it will be a donation quilt to cover a premie incubator at a local medical center. If you’re interested in the book, your best bet probably is a used book site like Abe Books. Sure it’s available new, but it’s old enough that there are plenty of used copies out there at a fraction of the price.

Have a good week!