Author Archives: zippyquilts

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About zippyquilts

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

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!

 

 

Tilda, and a Forgotten Finish

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A few months ago I was caught by the Tilda craze. The fabrics were just too beautiful to leave in the store, so an assortment came home with me.

Turned out they were all medium values.

I played with various options and finally decided to use my little inserted strips to bring some definition to the blocks. I’ve used these strips for years to add structure to various quilts.

And inserting this picture reminded me that I probably never blogged about the quilt shown above. More later.

Now back to Tilda: the little strips helped the individual blocks, but more was needed.

I inserted big strips to make the whole quilt echo the individual blocks.

And that’s it for the Tilda quilt.

Quilt Stats:

Name: Tilda

Finished size: 64″ x 82″

Designed and made by: me

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

And now a full view of the quilt I made from improv blocks done last year:

 

Food For Thought

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Of course I read a number of blogs and thought I’d pass on links to a couple I enjoyed.

The first post  is by a blogging friend,

Photo courtesy of Andrea herself!

Andrea Huelsenbeck.

She recently wrote a blog entitled “What Happens to Your Blog After You Die or Lose Interest in It?”

Click this link to read her post.

Because of this post, I am leaving specific instructions for a family member to delete my blog when I die.

I wrote a few years ago about making arrangements for a friend to dispose of the contents of my quilt studio after my death. That’s an important thing to consider, too, since often a quilter’s heirs don’t know what half “that stuff” is or what to do with it.

 

Then there’s is Leo Babauta’s post on intellectual property and why he doesn’t copyright his blog.

zenhabits.net/uncopyright/

I’ve followed Leo’s blog off and on for years because we share some of the same values and I like his perspective. It is because of his example that I have very little in the margins of my blog, while many of my colleagues have numerous icons, lists, etc. His example also helped me to decide against affiliate links in my blog.

A blog needs pictures, so here’s one of Leo. I just lifted it from his blog without worrying about it 😀

author2

Photo courtesy of Zen Habits

Of course this is really a quilting blog, so here are pictures of a couple of quilts one of my groups recently made for Flying Horse Farms, a camp in Ohio that serves children with serious illness. The fabric draped in the upper corner is a pillowcase to go with the quilt.

Let me know what you think of the blog posts referenced above.

Quilty Road Trip!

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I recently joined some friends for a visit to Ohio Amish Country. It was great being together, and we ate at some yummy restaurants. Of course we also visited a number of quilt shops! Here are a few of the highlights in case you’re over that way.

We stayed at a nice Air BnB in Berlin, within walking distance of downtown with good restaurants and shopping. We soon learned that the name of the town is pronounced BUR-lin, not like the Berlin in Germany.

Our best food probably was at Rebecca’s Bistro in Walnut Creek. They serve only breakfast and lunch, but it was delicious. Most of the rest of our meals were in restaurants with traditional Amish fare. One of our party had a plate of mashed potatoes with noodles, chicken, and gravy. A couple of us had a delicious salad with chicken and strawberries. Various roast meats with mashed potatoes and gravy looked good, too.

There were many nice quilts to view in the shops. Here’s one of my favorite panel quilts, but I don’t recall which shop it was in!

And look at this beautiful hand quilting done by some local Amish ladies!

We saw a group of these ladies working at a big quilt frame in one of the shops, but of course did not take a picture of them. One of our group who had been struggling with hand quilting sat with them for a while and they were generous about giving her some pointers!

There was some shopping for “antiques” as well, though I don’t think anyone bought anything. There were too many other ways to spend money!

Finally, there were wonderful bakeries everywhere, so we were “forced” to have cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

I would go back just for the cinnamon rolls.