Category Archives: Pattern Review

Contrasting Quilt from Zen Chic

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I saw a version of this quilt in a show a while back and liked it, so when I learned it was a Zen Chic design I bought the pattern. And to be honest, it’s been finished for a while; I’m behind on binding again!

The blue and white main fabrics came from an informal shop hop in Amish country, Ohio, a year ago. I’ve been looking for he perfect pattern for using them! The pattern was well written and I enjoyed making it. And just FYI, it’s not paper pieced. It’s available here.

Quilt Stats

Name: Contrasting

Finished size: 56″ x 55″

Designer: Brigitte Heitland

Maker: me

Quilter: Lewis Schafer

 

I Love This Finish!

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This pattern came from a shop I visited on vacation last year. Then there was the issue of templates, which I ended up ordering from the same shop where I’d bought the pattern. Of course I can make templates, but it’s so much easier to cut around an acrylic template than to draw around a home-made template and then cut with scissors.

I got the small templates because that’s all that was available. Here’s a detailed picture in which you can see the lovely swirl quilting as well as that pointed lozenge that finishes at 2-1/4 inches long!

The quilt was exhausting to make, but I love it now that it’s done! There was the option to make the background pieced as well, but I passed 😀

Quilt Stats

Name: La Fin du Monde

Finished size: 40″ x 40″

Pattern: La Fin du Monde by Libs Elliott

Quilted by: Lewis Schafer

 

Some Fun Bags

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I’ve been eyeing this canvas fabric ever since Studio Stitch got it in, and finally I bought it and made some bags.

First up was a tote bag from a free pattern I’ve used many times. You can find it here, on the Bijou Lovely site, still available for free. The instructions are clear and well illustrated. I added a Kraft-Tex bottom panel, which is a little more complicated, but it won’t be any trouble if you’ve worked with Kraft-Tex before.

There was a little fabric left, so I made a BIG pyramid bag using another free tutorial, available here. This is another one I’ve made many times, but usually as smaller bags to hold jewelry or the like. This one is about 13″ high and I’m going to use it as gift wrap. (I avoid disposable gift wrap, but that’s a story for another day.)

I can recommend both of these patterns if you are in the mood to make bags. I did use my serger to finish the interior seams on the pyramid bag, but that’s the only “unusual” piece of equipment. I’m pretty sure you could just zigzag those seams anyway!

Another Fun Pattern

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Every once in a while I find a fabric I just MUST buy. Then it can be a challenge to decide how to use the fabric to highlight the reason I love it. I recently used the BQ2 pattern for a couple of these fabrics and I like the way it worked out.

The first fabric I just “had to have” is Wild Blossoms by Moda. Here’s a picture from the Moda site. It may not be clear on my blog, but you get the idea. It’s an ombre print across the width of fabric.

I modified the dimensions of the blocks in the BQ2 pattern because I had exactly one yard of the feature fabric, and here’s the final quilt.

The second “must have” fabric was this cat print designed by Chong-A Hwang, whose designs I frequently admire.

I had enough of this fabric to make a twin-sized quilt for one of our guest beds. I hope the guests like cats!

I recommend this pattern for big prints you want to show off. The pattern is well written and the blocks are big so the quilt is quick to make. I’ll probably be using it again.

Anybody else out there have favorite patterns?

What Was I Thinking?!?

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I found this unusual pattern at Five Little Monkeys and liked the look of it.

The pattern wanted me to buy a 120 degree triangle ruler, but after discussion with a math-loving friend I decided to try cutting those 120 degree angles using the 60 degree line on my long ruler.

It worked, sort of. After making a few blocks that way I concluded that the price of the recommended triangle ruler was less than the price of the fabric and time I wasted trying to get the triangles right.

The result was that some of the triangles for the quilt were cut with one method, some with the other. However, the real oversight on my part was failure to notice that there are places in this quilt where TWELVE points come together! Or don’t actually come together, in my case. Yikes!

I do love this quilt. It is a striking design that works well with these bright fabrics.  So I’ll make do with these points that don’t match and use my own little trite saying for this situation: “A good quilt is a done quilt!” (Thanks, Diana, for this insight years ago in another context!)

Quilt stats

Name: Oops

Finished size: 54″ x 63″

Pattern: Henry’s Humongous Hexagons by Carl Hentsch

Made by: me

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

Another Type of Circle Quilt

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This is a finish from some fabric I bought a little over a year ago at a nice shop in St. Agatha, Maine. I’ve since seen the Robert Kaufman Venice fabrics elsewhere, and they are all just beautiful. In addition to the lovely colors, the fabric weave is sateen, so it feels exceptionally smooth. Here are pictures of a couple of the fabrics in the line:

I puzzled for months over how to make the perfect quilt from these fabrics and finally settled on this pattern.

I’ve never used patterns from this company before and, whether the problem was with me or with the template, my first attempt did not produce a round circle!

OK, not a great photo, and the block isn’t even lying flat, but you can see that those side arcs aren’t quite what they should be.

After arguing with the pattern for a while, I just re-drew the block in EQ8, printed templates from EQ , and used those. The re-drawn block turned out just fine.

So here is the quilt, and I’m happy to say I like it a lot!

Quit Stats

Name: St. Agatha in Venice

Finished size: 58″ x 69″

Pattern: Circle Time, with several changes by me

Made by: me

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

And here’s one last picture, because I recently read in Meg Cox‘s newsletter that I should take a picture of the quilt top twisted up. Not sure why, but it is kind of a fun picture in this case.

 

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.

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!

 

 

Some Fun Hexies

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This is one of those patterns that just looked like fun, so I made it. And it was fun. I’ve made Sassafras Lane designs before and the patterns are well written and clever.

Above is the “A side” (if you’re old enough to remember what that means), below is the B side. After I made the blocks with printed fabric I decided solids would be better, so I made blocks with solids and used them on the front. Since I DO NOT need any more orphan blocks, I made a back from the “leftovers”.

And I’m happy to say the longarm quilter found a hexie pattern for quilting it!

Quilt Stats

Name: Hexie Party

Finished size: 55″ x 62″

Pattern by: Sassafras Lane

Made by: me

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

Wild Geese: Another Finish

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It may seem like I’m finishing a quilt every 15 minutes, but the truth is that I’ve gotten waaaay behind on binding. Since I don’t count a quilt as finished until I bind it, catching up on binding makes me look very productive 😀

This quilt is from a pattern, Wild Geese by Natalie Barnes. It’s available on Etsy here, though I’m sure there are other sources as well.

I’m not entirely sure how I came across this pattern, but I was so impressed with all the interesting angles and bright colors that I bought the pattern and made it immediately. I enjoyed pulling out all the bright scraps!

The pattern was quick and easy to follow. This was a fun quilt to make and I think it’s fun to look at, too.

And BTW, I’ve just learned from Laura, a fellow blogger, that a project that jumps ahead of other things in the queue is called a squirrel! Am I the last to learn that term? Anyway, it’s a good one because most quilters I know have studios full of squirrels, as do I.

Here’s a picture showing the backing and binding.

OK, that backing fabric. I bought it with the idea of cutting it up for an easy kaleidoscope quilt, where the MJ wouldn’t have been quite so obvious! Oh, well.

Quilt Stats

Name: Wild Geese

Designed by: Natalie Barnes of Beyond the Reef

Finished size: 52″ x 71″

Quilted by: Linda Nichols