Tessellations! By Jean Larson

Posted on February 15, 2015 by zippyquilts

As promised, my friend Jean Larson has written a tutorial on tessellation quilts. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! –MJP

Tessellating designs make me happy. Tweaking those designs is even more fun. I want to share the joy of starting with a very, very simple design and watching it blossom. My inspiration comes from this web site: http://gwydir.demon.co.uk/jo/tess/

Start with a simple gridded block and create a light/dark design. Here, I’ve started with a 3 x 3 grid. Then re-color the same block with the lights and darks reversed

.The grid lines are only for design purposes, and each block can be constructed with a single square block with 2 corner triangles attached using any method you prefer.

Here are some design possibilities…A simple “cat head” quilt using only 2 colors.

Different looks can be achieved with variations in the color placement.

Blocks can be inverted and turned for even more quilt designs.

Just imagine all the possibilities with color in these!!!!!

It’s even more complex when you design with a 6×6 grid. Here are the positive and negative versions of another block.

These blocks can be constructed using half-square triangles integrated with larger fabric pieces. If these blocks were to finish at 6 inches by 6 inches. The center column on each block would be a single 3.5 inch wide by 6.5 in long piece of fabric. The side strips would include some half-square triangles.

A couple of the quilts that can be made:

Looks like spools, some gray, some white, all standing up. Same quilt with alternate blocks turned a quarter turn yields a different clearly recognizable tessellation. Reminds me of tessellating doggie rawhide chews 😉

Now back to the spool quilt from above. The “thread” areas have been colored in. No blocks have been turned.

This shows the power of color and value (lightness and darkness). The colored part, being next to the gray and being closer in value to the gray, unites those parts of the block, and gives the illusion that we have all gray spools on a white background, some standing up, some lying down.

I hope these examples can be the seeds to sprout some design experimentation with tessellating shapes.

Start with 2 square grids
Create a positive design, and its negative design
Alternate them in a quilt layout
PLAY!
And play more with color!

Happy Quilting (and Designing)!! –Jean Larson

Meet Lee Monroe of May Chappell Patterns

Posted on January 25, 2015 by zippyquilts

Images for this post are the property of Lee Chappell Monroe, May Chappell and used with permission.

Lee Chappell Monroe

Lee is a North Carolina quilter, designer, and teacher who came to my attention through her blog, which is titled May Chappell. Like a lot of other people, I initially thought May Chappell must be her name. Here’s her explanation of where the name of the blog actually came from:

Why May Chappell? There are always loads of questions about why the company is May Chappell and not Lee Chappell Monroe. You can read all about it here. The short version is that it is named for an awesome lady, my great grandmother.

Lee designs quilt patterns and sells them through quilt shops. She went to quilt market for the first time last year, hoping to give her patterns a wider audience. In addition to quilts, she designs pouches and “loves all things fabric”. Like many modern quilt designers, she is trained as a graphic artist. Here’s one of her quilt patterns:

All Strung Up, a May Chappell design

And here are a few questions Lee was kind enough to answer for me, as well as pictures of more of her patterns:

Here’s a tote bag Lee designed to use mini-charm squares

Q: Where do you think the quilting field is going?

A: This is a toughie. I usually see trends in the questions that I get from my students. I’ve had a lot of students lately that are self taught and they’re interested in learning more about precision. I’m a big believer that there is more than one right way to do things in quilting, but there sure are some wrong ways!

Q: What about your personal quilting future?

A: I have new patterns coming for Spring Market that I’m really excited about. I’m a terrible secret keeper so I usually want to put out the design right as I draw it!

Q: I know you took your patterns to quilt market, but where could I buy them? I don’t see them on your website [Note: They ARE on her website, at least now. Silly me 😉 ]

Eye Candy, one of Lee’s quilt patterns

Lee’s Designer Star Quilt. If you go to her website/shop you can see a picture of the whole thing.

A: I love designing patterns and the printed patterns are available through local quilt shops. Because I also teach quilting at local shops, I’m a huge advocate for supporting local! Quilt shops are a huge resource for the sewing and quilting community. If your shop doesn’t have my patterns, they’re available through the distributors. You can also purchase PDF patterns through my website here. I teach all over North Carolina and I’m starting to expand out across the country. Teaching is my favorite part of my job; I’m passionate about quilting and I love sharing that. You can see my teaching schedule on my website, too.

Q: Show us something pretty you’ve made lately!

A: This is a table runner I made for my brother using my Blue Ridge pattern.

Table runner by Lee Monroe

This post ran longer than usual, but that’s because I just HAD to explain a little about why Lee Monroe has a blog named May Chappell 🙂

A Toddler Quilt and a “Finish”

Posted on January 18, 2015 by zippyquilts

One of the things I like about Aunt Marti’s UFO challenge is that I get to decide what constitutes a “finish”. With that in mind, my January “finish” consisted of sending my Charley Harper quilt off to the longarm quilter. Lest you think that just means handing it over, I had to select backing and make binding so that when it comes back I’ll be all ready to bind it. So here it is ready to go:

Turning Twenty Again, Charley Harper fabric

Binding is ready for when the Charley Harper quilt is returned to me

I started making the binding when I finish the quilt top for two reasons: I already have the fabric right there, so it saves time later. And I don’t accidentally use that binding fabric for something else before the quilt is ready for it 😉

My other finish this week (and this one is really, really finished) is a toddler quilt. It is 42″ x 52″ and is backed with Minkee Dot fabric. It has no batting. (Yeah, I know, that means it’s “not a quilt”. Right.) This makes it both soft and light, so a toddler can carry it around with him. He can use it to make a fort, take a nap, have a picnic, or whatever else. Here it is, from start to finish:

Toddler Quilt

I think this simple design would be good for a donation quilt, as well. It was quick and easy to make, and I think it shows the cute fabric to advantage.

First Finish

Posted on January 4, 2015 by zippyquilts

Metro Hoops quilt made by Allison at Cluck, Cluck, Sew

Inspired by the beautiful Metro Hoops quilt Allison showed over at Cluck, Cluck, Sew, I mentioned the Quick Curve Ruler as something I wanted to try in a recent post. Here’s a picture of her quilt so you can see what inspired me.

My clever son-in-law gave me the ruler for Christmas, and as soon as we got home I tried it out. As always, I learned a lot. Certainly the Metro Hoops pattern is a nice modern alternative to the traditional wedding ring quilt. What I wasn’t prepared for was the fudge factor required to make it work.

My first Metro Hoops block

It made a really cute block, but then my inner perfectionist kicked in 😦 The block required a lot of “easing in” along the seams to make the points match up. *(You can skip to the reason why at the end of this post, if you like.)

Luckily, I almost never cut out a new quilt completely before making a test block. After making one block for this quilt, I decided 5 hoop blocks was my limit. The blocks really are quicker and easier to make than they look, so I got the 5 done in a few hours. They are nice big blocks (finish 15″) so I had a good start on a baby quilt.

I drew an approximation of the block with my EQ7 program and came up with this layout:

My EQ7 layout for the Metro Hoops blocks

Another half day to make the alternate blocks, then a day to put it together, make a back, and quilt it–and voila! The first finish of 2015!

About the Quick Curve ruler: the women who designed it have lots of cute quilt patterns on their site, so it’s worth checking out.

*BUT, if I make metro hoops again, I’ll modify the directions to make it more to my liking. I think the basic issue here is that the single curve provided by this ruler is used for both the concave and convex curves in the quilt. That means there is no seam allowance to make the curves match nicely. The project is “saved” by the fact that the curve is less than a quarter circle, so it’s possible to fudge the sewing to make it go together without adding seam allowances. It does work, but don’t think it’s going to fit the way pieces cut from most curved templates do. If you decide to do it, be forewarned to relax and get rid of the inner perfectionist!

Happy new year!

Year End Review

Posted on December 28, 2014 by zippyquilts

For better or worse, I published goals at the beginning of the year, so here’s the review of my progress:
I met all the goals! (Does that mean I didn’t set them high enough?) I retreated with my buddies THREE times instead of just two! I attended 3 big national shows as well as 2 local ones (all were excellent). I took a couple of fun and useful classes, one of which I still need to write up here so you’ll know about it. I submitted several quilts to shows/contests and 3 were accepted. The one I donated to the Quilt Alliance even won something, and sold for $300 to benefit the Quilt Alliance! And I had lots of fun, which was really the point of it all.

Here are pictures of a few of my projects from the second half of the year. The pix of projects from the first half of the year are in this post.

Spring Sun, a design by me, using blocks paper pieced from a totally different Judy Niemeyer pattern! It took about 2 years, but it’s now DONE.

Zippy Star Quilt and Pillow as shown in Modern Quilts Unlimited, Summer 2014

Packet of Posy Seeds, done for the Michael Miller spring challenge

Zippy Star I, which sold at the Asheville Quilt Show in September. This was my “practice piece” for the MQU quilt shown above.

Donation quilt for Ronald McDonald House. I’m going to work more on using up orphan blocks next year.

And, despite the risk, here’s what I plan for the coming year:

1. I’ll retreat with my buddies at least twice, probably 3 times again!

2. I’ll attend one big national quilt show, maybe two. I’ll attend at least one local show.

3. I will limit much more strictly the shows and challenges I enter. It takes too much time and effort that could be spent on making what I want to make 🙂

4. I’ll continue to make donation quilts, including one for the Quilt Alliance. Please consider making one for the Quilt Alliance yourself. You can read about their mission here. Click on “2015 Quilt Contest” to learn about this year’s challenge.

5. I’ll continue my blog, and I think I’ll put up instructions for a few easy donation quilts just in case somebody is looking for ideas.

What’s coming up for you?

5 Favorites of 2014

Posted on December 21, 2014 by zippyquilts

1. Favorite quilt show I attended: Vermont Quilt Festival. You can see some quilts from it here and here. And here again is a detail of one of my favorites:

Detail of Fill the Void by Cinzia Allocca, at Vermont Quilt Festival 2014

2. Favorite thing about blogging: Meeting new friends, both in person and online. Read about a couple of them here and here, if you like.
3. Favorite modern quilt trend: some textures and low-volume prints (those that show more background, having the prints smaller and farther apart) to get us away from all solids, all the time. Some of my favorites include these from Carolyn Friedlander:

From Carolyn Friedlander’s Architextures collection

and these from Alison Glass:

4. Favorite new (to me) quilt tool: Frixion pen. It comes in lots of colors and erases when you iron over the markings. Only drawback I’ve found is that you can’t see the mark on dark fabric. For that I still love my chaco liner with yellow chalk. Show below: chaco liners on left, frixion pens on right.

5. Favorite lesson learned: I’d rather see my designs in print than at quilt shows. Yes, I entered several shows and contests, and I won something. But my favorite quilt of the year (from those I made) was the one that was published in Modern Quilts Unlimited. So here is a picture of it again.

And what were your favorites of the year?

Michael Miller CHALLENGE

Posted on November 23, 2014 by zippyquilts

I like a good challenge as much as the next woman. In fact, I’m happiest if I learn something new from each project. So I was happy to accept the current Michael Miller/Modern Quilt Guild challenge using Michael Miller’s (MM’s) spring pastel solids.

Michael Miller sent this package of Cotton Couture solids to all contestants.

Like a lot of modern quilters, I don’t use pastels much. That’s the first reason this was a challenge. I decided that, since black is a great background color for brights, something dark but not black would be a good background for pastels. So I ordered cotton couture in indigo, eggplant, grey, and charcoal to give me a choice. After trying out each one with the fabrics provided by the MM people, I chose charcoal–always a favorite color for me!

The next challenge was trying to find somewhere I could buy additional yardage of these particular fabrics. Most places that carry Cotton Couture were out of them! So I decided I needed to design something using just what came in the package, plus my charcoal background 🙂

I designed the quilt with Electric Quilt 7 (EQ7) as usual, so I had an easy way to try out lots of different ideas.

I’m a big fan of star blocks, so I experimented with the 16-patch star often called Ohio Star, and finally settled on this version, in which the block is divided into four quarters that are rotated and combined in various ways. Here’s the EQ drawing:

And here’s a picture of the almost-finished quilt. Binding it is an additional challenge, since I don’t want the binding to show but I want the corners to be square (which is difficult if I do a pillowcase binding). I’m counting this as my November finish 😉

My quilt for the Michael Miller/Modern Quilt Guild challenge

And please check out my Quilt Alliance donation quilt on Ebay. Here‘s the link. I’m so happy that it’s doing well! If you don’t know about the Quilt Alliance, check them out through this link.

Around the World Blog Hop

Posted on November 3, 2014 by zippyquilts

I’m happy to be part of the Around the World Blog Hop, a chain-letter type project in which bloggers tag each other to keep it going! Here are my answers to the four questions:

What am I working on? My current project is the Michael Miller Challenge for QuiltCon. It is challenging in several ways that I’ll elaborate on in a future post. Meanwhile, here’s a picture of the progress so far.

Pieced quilt, Michael Miller Cotton Couture fabrics

Quilt in progress for the Michael Miller Challenge

How does my work differ from others of its genre? I enjoy making quilts with bold colors (one of the reasons the MM quilt above is a challenge with its pastels). I value good design over intricate workmanship and believe difficult quilts should be re-designed to make them easier. I focus first on the visual impact of the overall quilt, then on the details. Which is probably how I have more than once committed to making a quilt before I’ve quite worked out the details on how to do it.

This T Shirt quilt for a friend was not really planned ahead

Why do I write/create what I do? I write to make contact with other people and to promote quilting and quilters. I create for fun and to challenge myself. My idea of a good project is one in which I learn something new. Even if it’s a difficult lesson sometimes. The blocks below were made in a class. I enjoyed the class and learned a lot, but one of the things I learned was that I didn’t want to make any more of them 😉

Yin-Yang blocks from a class

How does my writing/creating process work? I read/observe/learn everything I can and then work on a problem off-and-on until a solution comes to me. Then I make the quilt. I’m sorry to say I can’t really verbalize it any better than that.

Around the World: I was tagged by my friend Melanie. Check out this post about the worst quilt book she owns!. And I’m tagging Ann at Sew Messy, who is a pattern designer; Ann doesn’t yet sell her patterns on her site, but she has some fun pictures, so stay tuned. I’m also tagging Lyric at LyricKinard.com, who is an art quilter and teacher. Check our Lyric’s website and classes for LOTS of new ideas!

Tidbits: One may be for you

Posted on October 26, 2014 by zippyquilts

1. Here is some beautiful fabric that just arrived from the Michael Miller company! It’s for my next magazine project (for Modern Quilts Unlimited). I love to use batiks for the “solids” in my quilts because of the texture and highlights they give to the design.

Michael Miller Batiks

2. Who wants these selvages I’ve been saving? I know the author of one of the blogs I read commented that there is a selvage quilt in her future, and I’m pretty sure there’s none in mine. Comment or e-mail me if you want them.

Melanie, whose blog is Catbirdquilts.wordpress.com

3. For those who may want more traditional lessons on color than the ones I’ve provided in my design series, my friend Melanie in Iowa has some nice posts. You can find them here and here. I think you’ll like them!

Zippy Star I, which was sold at the Asheville Quilt Show

4. Woo! I recently sold a quilt at the Asheville Quilt show! And it’s a good thing, because–

5. My digital camera somehow got a little piece of lint inside (at a quilt show, of course) and I can’t get it out! Any recommendations for a good replacement?

6. I aim for a blog length of around 350 words. I figure my attention span is short, so yours may be too 😀

7. And the more pictures in the blog, the better. So here’s my October finish, another quilt for Ronald McDonald House. I quilted it on my new Bernina 530QE. There’s definitely a learning curve to that BSR, but I’m pleased with the result.

Free motion quilting with my new Bernina

Meet Jo Glover–The BigStitch Quilter

Posted on October 19, 2014 by zippyquilts

BigStitch Quilting by Jo Glover

Big Stitch quilting has gotten to be a big deal in the past few years, so I was thrilled when Jo Glover, who published the original directions for BigStitch Quilting, spoke to our guild last year. She agreed to be interviewed for this blog. Here’s what she said about her development of the technique:

Jo Glover

“In 1988, when I started quilting, I was more interested in the line designs of the quilting, rather than the patchwork. It frustrated me that my fine hand quilting–natural thread on muslin background–didn’t show.”

“In 1991, I went to Japan and saw their sashiko with its strong visual impact. Thick light thread on solid dark fabric.”

Another sample of Jo’s BigStitch Quilting

“Upon my return to the US, I started using a high contrast #8 pearl cotton, longer stitches, with the traditional rocker motion of hand quilting with a hoop and thimble.

I was pleased to find that larger scale designs looked good with the longer, thicker stitches. The new needlepunched cotton battings permitted a longer distance between quilting lines.”

Jo Demonstrates BigStitch Quilting

“BigStitch was coined in the booklet I wrote and copywrited in 1993 (under my name at the time, Jo Walters). It still sells.” [You can get a copy of Jo’s booklet directly from her for $7.50; just e-mail her at GloverGirl52 at gmail dot com for her mailing address, and of course give her your address.]

“To reach a wider audience, I uploaded a series of BigStitch lessons. They are available at no cost on YouTube; just search “BigStitch Jo Glover” for the 5 lessons and Gallery. I’m for the preservation of hand quilting.” [Here is the link to Jo’s YouTube lessons. I am so impressed that she did this!]

Matisse’s Goldfish, by Jo Glover

“Right now, I’m stitching straight lines about 1/3 inch apart, using crochet thread AND NO HOOP OR THIMBLE, ssshhhh. My friend Jane Cole brought this style, called chiku-chiku, to my attention. (Chiku-chiku is the sound a sewing machine makes when stitching) Jane got it from Quiltmania magazine, issue # 100, in an article featuring the originator, Akiko Ike.”

Pillow with close lines of BigStitch quilting by Jo Glover

“Mixing fine hand quilting, BigStitch, and machine quilting (and now, chiku-chiku) in the same quilt is fantastic. I do prefer solids or hand dyed fabrics to showcase the hand stitching. I see many Modern quilters featuring their machine quilting on solids, and that’s great.”

Amerika Blooms by Jo Glover

“Quilters I have known and loved include Gwen Marston, Jonathan Shannon, my friend Jane Cole, the Gee’s Bend quilters, Fran Skiles, Jacquie Gering and Katie Pedersen, and Yoshiko Jinzenji.”

Zippy Quilts

Modern Quilts With A Twist

Category Archives: Modern Quilts

Tessellations! By Jean Larson

Meet Lee Monroe of May Chappell Patterns

A Toddler Quilt and a “Finish”

First Finish

Year End Review

5 Favorites of 2014

Michael Miller CHALLENGE

Around the World Blog Hop

Tidbits: One may be for you

Meet Jo Glover–The BigStitch Quilter

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