I first saw this quilt hanging in a shop I visited while travelling. It was made in the original dark colors as designed by Tim Holtz, but it was striking. I downloaded the pattern (available free, here) and procrastinated for a few months.

Finally I gathered my Tim Holtz fabrics and made my version in lighter colors.

The only difficult part was getting the fabrics cut in the correct orientation. The name of the pattern is “Curious By Nature”. Once I got the pieces cut, it went fast because there are only 32 pieces!. I love the quilt and loved making it. Did I mention I love this quilt?

And here’s a picture of where all 8 points come together at the center. I take little credit for this, because the pattern included shaped points that made this possible!

I love those Tim Holtz fabrics–they’re so wierd! And did I mention I love this quilt?

Quilt Stats

Name: Curious By Nature

Designer: Tim Holtz

Finished size: 61″ x 61″

Pieced by: me

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

I’m usually behind on binding quilts for several reasons that I’ll spare you. Anyway, that makes it look like I’ve made a lot of quilts in quick succession, when really I’ve just procrastinated. Then I get around to binding a bunch of quilts at once and people think, “Wow, you’re really productive!” See how that works? Ha!

This is the second finish of 2025. It’s called “Ice Cubes”. I got the idea from a quilt by Zen Chic (her pattern here). I made it to use scraps, and mixed white and cream neutrals for the background. It made a good “leaders and enders” project.

Quilt Stats

Name: Ice Cubes

Finished Size: 54″ x 54″

Design: Inspired by a Zen Chic pattern

Pieced by: me

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

More to come!

When I straightened out my studio for the new cabinets, I found some “leftover” fabric sent to me by my blogging friend Elizabeth (OPQuilt). Then a short while later I learned that she had torn up her studio looking for fabric to bind her pomegranate quilt. Oops, I realized it was the very same fabric! I contacted Elizabeth to let her know I was the culprit and we both got a good laugh out of it.

Here’s Elizabeth’s picture of the original fabric:

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Eastmond

And here’s her pomegranate quilt, pattern available here.

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Eastmond

Then, since I’d found the fabric, I decided to use it for a donation quilt. One of the places we donate has a particular need for quilts for older boys, and I thought these green-gold-magenta fabrics would be perfect. I added a couple of fabrics from my stash for variety and was ready to go.

After looking through patterns, I selected this one by Elizabeth herself! It’s available in her PayHip shop, here.

Photo courtesy of Elizabeth Eastmond

And now my version of the quilt, after adding fabric from my stash for the borders.

Last but by no means least, here’s a little bundle of scraps to be passed on to a scrap-loving friend. I wonder what will happen to these fabrics next!

Here’s the first finish of 2025, made last year but finally bound now.

This was made from the BQ2 pattern (available here) to make use of the sewing-themed fabrics I’ve collected.

Hopefully you can see the spool, needle, and thread in the quilting pattern

Quilt Stats

Name: Quilt Drama

Finished size: 63″ x 77″

Pattern: BQ2, by Maple Island Quilts

Pieced by: me

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

Now to binding the rest of the quilts!

The change of year got me even before the year changed! When I scheduled this for January 5, WordPress defaulted to 2024 and I didn’t catch it. So you probably got this last Sunday, but it was intended for January 5 2025, and here it is now!

I’ve said before that I make a practice block before deciding to make the whole quilt, and here is another situation in which I’m glad I did.

I bought this pattern, only to realize that it’s just a variation on a Karla Alexander quilt I made years ago.

It has the same problem as the original pattern: it’s difficult to get curves to lie flat when both the concave and convex sides are cut the same (i.e., with no seam allowance on either). So, as you hopefully can’t tell from the picture, nothing lies flat here:

Additionally, I don’t care for this look. Sure, it might be better when the rest of the colors are added and mixed up more, but I’m over it already. So I re-arranged the blocks:

This quilt includes some of my favorite Alison Glass fabrics, so I was determined to find a way to make it work. I went to dinner, then came back and just put the other fabrics from the collection up on the design wall to see how it all looked.

I decided to use the blocks I’d made so far as a panel. I put a little border around the panel to set it off from the background blocks.

The following day, I cut up and rearranged some of the remaining fabrics, then sewed it up.

The finished top is about 57″ x 68″

I love it! It’s nothing like what I started out to do, but it’s satisfying to me. And I’m really glad I made the sample blocks because this way the fabric wasn’t wasted.

This was a banner year for quilt production–I won’t bore you with how many and where they went, but there were a lot! Here are pictures of a few of my personal favorites. Where a pattern is involved, I give the information along with the picture. Where there’s no pattern, feel free to just make your own pattern to copy mine.

This is my version of the Bloem pattern from Zen Chic.

This little house quilt was made for Habitat for Humanity

“Blue Sky and Sunshine” was made from orphan blocks

This is from the pattern “Contrasting” by Zen Chic

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

This pattern is BQ4 from Maple Island Quilts

This is my modification of “Mod Fish” from Colourwerx

This Quilt of Valor was made using a free pattern from Krista Moser’s website

I made this quilt from orphan blocks and was surprised at how much the side borders added to the composition

On to 2025!

I recently got a fancy little addition to my studio: a thread cabinet!

Husband Steve took a woodworking class this fall and made this beautiful little cabinet. Then we didn’t have a place picked out for it. After deliberation, it landed in the studio to be used for my cones of thread! Score!

At present the finish is fresh, so I get a slight smell of linseed oil and varnish when I come into the studio! It’s very pleasant, sort of like that new car smell.

And here’s another quilt going out the door for a good cause. The 8 year old grandson has a wonderful teacher this year, so he’s giving her this quilt for the holidays. I’m showing a detail view so you can see the beautiful snowflakes quilted by Linda Nichols.

Happy holidays to all of you!

I’ve mentioned that I’m taking Tara Faughnan’s Block Studies Class, and I’m happy to say I’m having new experiences. The most recent assignment  is to use the designated palate to make blocks in limited sizes/shapes (though she says we’re free to change any part of the prompt). The goal is to create movement/focus/etc. through use of color and value alone.

The assignment turned out to be MUCH harder than it sounded, at least for me. My first attempt at a block design using her formula (with one black/white fabric added by me) resulted in this block, which took about 10 hours to work out.

My second attempt took even longer, perhaps 16 hours. Here are some of the (many) iterations I tried

and here is the finished block.

Finally, I made this block which took only about 3 hours–maybe I’m catching on? Or maybe I just quit worrying so much.

And this block was made to use up scraps, totally without reference to her guidelines.

Whew! This class is closed for now, but I do recommend Tara’s classes if you’re ready for a challenge!

It’s obvious I’m not up to her standard (yet); look at some of her finished “studies” here. It appears to me she used a much wider range of colors than I did, so maybe that’s the next challenge!

Patterns are one of the things I look for when I visit quilt shops, because it’s always nice to find something new and unusual. That’s how I came to make these fish:

The pattern is “Mod Fish” by Colourwerx. Your LQS probably can order it, or you can get it here. The pattern was well written, easy, and fun. Of course I made a few changes, but those were just because I wanted to, not because the pattern needed modification.

Friends helped me choose the fabrics, all of which came from stash. This was a great place to use batiks because of their organic feel. I quilted it by zig-zagging around the fusible applique and along some of the stitching lines. Because this is intended to be a wall hanging, I used poly/wool felt as batting. (It’s firmer and more stable than regular batting, so you don’t have to quilt closely to keep it from sagging when hung.)

Luckily, we visited our daughter’s new vacation house at the beach over the Thanksgiving weekend, so I was able to give it to her as a housewarming gift.

Quilt Stats

Name: Fish!

Finished size: 35″ x 46″

Pattern by: Colourwerx

Pieced and quilted by: me

All of the quilt groups to which I belong make donation quilts, but one group (only 4 members) recently met and sent the following donations on their way.

Twelve quilts for Flying Horse Farm

24 quilts for Ronald McDonald House

Here are individual pictures of a few of them

We’ve heard comments like, “Wow! That robot quilt took so much time, and you’re GIVING IT AWAY?” We believe that donation quilts should be as pretty and well made as quilts we keep for ourselves.

Some of us make quilts because we learn something new with each quilt, or because we enjoy playing with beautiful fabric. We get satisfaction out of it, and the group member who delivers the quilts says the staff at our designated charities is always appreciative. Also, quilting keeps us sane! Just sayin’.