Category Archives: Pattern Review

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

 

Up Next: The 25 Year Quilt

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I recently decided to make the Postcard from Sweden quilt, which I’ve admired for some time.

The photo above is from the front of the pattern.

I had to search for the pattern, which has always been free courtesy of the designer, Kelly Liddle. I’d like to link you to her, but I can’t find her except on Instagram (@jeliquilts). Anyway, the pattern is now available free for download from Stash Fabrics, here.

I have an extensive stash because, until recently, we lived in a rural area where the nearest “local” quilt shop was at least 45 minutes away. I gathered all 36 colors required for the top from stash!

This picture shows the first 15, so there was quite a stack by the time I had all 36 on the table! This is a 25 year quilt because that’s the period of time over which I’ve collected this stash.

For a few fabrics I had to substitute other choices that were not quite solid.

And even then it sometimes took more than one fabric to get all I needed of an unusual color.

And several of the fabrics had been cut long ago for unremembered projects!

But eventually, the huge stack of fabrics was reduced to a small stack of 6″ strips and the remaining fabrics were put back where they belong.

That was a full day of pressing, cutting, and folding.

I made a few fun discoveries along the way.

First, a couple of the fabrics seem to be poly-cotton blends. They are from before “modern” quilting came along, meaning that only the Amish and Gwen Marston were using a lot of solids, so I had trouble finding solids in the stores. Much of what I did find in fabric shops (which at the time had a lot of clothing fabric) was poly-cotton blend, and I took what I could get. So there’s some poly-cotton fabric in the stash and that will be used in the quilt.

Second, there were solids from several different fabric companies, now that everybody has their own line.

Finally, some fabrics were prewashed and some were not. There’s a whole story there, but I’ll spare you!

I’ve cut those strips into squares and paired them up ready to make HSTs, so progress has been made!

With regard to that stack, I didn’t completely follow the pattern (surprise!). There are excruciatingly precise instructions to enable the quilter to reproduce the original exactly, but I don’t intend to do that. I paired up some colors the way the pattern suggested and did what I wanted with the rest. We’ll see how that works out.

Gathering the fabrics was a fun review of the past 25 years of collecting, and now we can all look forward to the Postcard from Sweden quilt in the future.

 

Oodalolly: A Finish

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I’ve been running across pictures of Rachel Hauser’s Oodalolly quilt for years at various places on the internet. I’ve always admired it and though it would be fun to make, but there was no pattern that I could find. Finally I wrote to Rachel to ask about about it and learned that the pattern is in an E-book she wrote to accompany her color course. She acknowledged that I probably didn’t need to take the course but kindly agreed to sell me just the pages of the book that contain the pattern! So here it is, my very own version of Rachel Hauser’s Oodalolly!

No, there isn’t a funny lower right corner, but that corner swung toward me, creating the illusion!

The pattern was just as much fun as it looks like. I learned some things and enjoyed making it, so it’s a win-win. The only “odd” thing about this quilt is that it is NOT made from scraps (OMG!). I bought a fat quarter bundle of Alison Glass fabrics at a sale a while back, and used it for this quilt. I did leave out some of the less vibrant colors, but there was plenty of fabric without them.

The back is made up from a large piece of lightweight upholstery fabric I was given and a few strips of a sheet.

Quilt Stats

Name: Oodalolly

Finished size: 57″ x 73″

Designed by: Rachel Hauser, website here

Made by: me

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

A WOMBAT

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According to a facetious list of quilting terms I have, a WOMBAT is a quilt that is a “Waste Of Money, Batting, And Time”. Which is why I’ve named this quilt WOMBAT.

The full sun on the west side of the house washed out the colors a bit

And here’s the backing!

This was one of the patterns provided by the Modern Quilt Guild. I usually ignore those, BUT in this case a blogging friend made one and it sounded interesting. In particular, she commented, “Who thinks like that?” with regard to the written instructions in the pattern. I like to find out how different designers think and plan, so I jumped in.

In fairness, I learned a couple of things, but I thought the written instructions wasted a lot of printer ink and time giving detailed instructions for things that were easily improvised. Anyway, it’s done. Finished in 2022, actually, but I have a backlog of quilts to bind and blog about, so here it is at the start of 2023. Happy new year to all!

Quilt Stats

Name: WOMBAT

Designed by: Charles Cameron, for the Modern Quilt Guild

Finished size: 63″ x 87″

Made by: me

Quilted by: Elisabeth Pugh

Did anyone else make this quilt? If so, what did you think?

 

 

Night Sky Finished!

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Whew! Night Sky, a Jaybird Quilts pattern, was what we politely call a “challenge”. A friend and I made it together and both used some naughty words.

But here it is, and it looks pretty good.

Night Sky from a pattern by Jaybird Quilts

Here’s a detail of one of the stars.

And the back, which is a leftover sheet from the 1990s! This is also a good place to see the lovely quilting. I think those swirls really add something nice to the quilt.

Quilt Stats

Name: Night Sky

Finished size: 56″ x 64″

Designer: Jaybird Quilts

Made by: me

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

P.S.: take a look at this wonderful pegboard my husband just made for hanging all my rulers, templates, etc, etc. The wood is quarter-sawn white oak, for those of you who care about such things 😉

Sidetracked Again

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Every once in a while I come to the surface after being inundated by quilts, scraps, binding, etc. Most recently I took a class at Studio Stitch to make this little clutch.

Of course I’ve made lots of bags, pouches, etc, etc, but I’d never used a frame closure, so I wanted somebody to show me how it’s done. Hint: It was a lot easier than it looks!

Also recently I dug up the pattern for the Celeste Dress, bought close to a year ago.

Celeste Dress, courtesy of Itch to Stitch

I figured the pattern had waited long enough so I made the dress. I studied the size charts carefully, and the fit is perfect (well on me, maybe not on the hanger)!

Pockets! That’s what sold me on this pattern!

I recommend the pattern for those who have some garment construction experience.  It’s a nice pattern and turned out well. I bought the pattern through PatternReview.com for two reasons: first, I could read about how it worked for other people before deciding, and second, I was able to order it already printed on full-size paper so I didn’t have to print at home and the tape the pattern together! (Been there, done that.)

Caveat: rayon probably wasn’t the easiest fabric to make it from.

Now back to the quilting…

 

Why Does This New Quilt Count as Finishing a UFO?

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I hate the recursive nature of most social media, including Pinterest. You don’t dare click on what looks like a good pie recipe, because you’ll be fed pie recipes for at least 6 months, probably longer. HOWEVER, I do remain a fan of Pinterest, where I still find a lot of fun quilt ideas. Recently I found this pattern via Pinterest and just had to have it:

The pattern is available on Etsy, here.

I had just the place for the quilt, having decided a while back I wanted to make a “summer rain” quilt to go over the stairs. We’ve had this lovely Japanese silk scarf over the stairs, but it was time for a change.

I got the blocks made. Oops, I got the blocks made following her directions and then made a number of my own design. Anyway, I liked the way they all looked together.

This is a small quilt, so I decided to use a sort of baste-as-you-go construction by sewing rows down to the batting and backing, sort of like you’d do if you were making a QAYG place mat using strips. Then I quilted it in vertical lines. Not my favorite thing to do, but it worked fine.

I think you can see the vertical quilting here. The lines were marked with blue painter’s tape, and are at pseudo-random distances apart.

Oh, and why does it count as finishing a UFO? Because I had started an improv quilt with this in mind but never finished it! I got out the blocks I had completed for that and combined them with blocks made using Maryline’s pattern, and got rid of another UFO 😀

Quilt Stats

Name: Summer Rain

Pattern: City Quilt by Maryline Collioud-Robert, plus some blocks I improvised

Made and quilted by me

Finished size: 39″ x 50″

And BTW, I recommend this pattern. It was a lot of fun!

 

Interview: Sherry of Powered by Quilting

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I recently ran across this quilt by Sherry Shish, of Powered By Quilting, and I’m very impressed with it. It’s a great mix of traditional and modern looks

Simply Cornered, as shown on Sherry’s website

I contacted Sherry and asked a few questions, which she graciously answered. Here’s The interview:

Q:  How did you get into quilting, how long have you been doing it, and when did you decide to make it professional?

A: I had been hand sewing and doing other crafts for many years before I learned how to sew on a machine.  I’ve been quilting for just over 5 years now and I fell in love with all the different aspects of quilting.  I started pretty early designing patterns since I really love seeing my ideas and my style of quilts.

Q: Where do you get your design ideas?

A: Everywhere… but I find it easier to put self constraints on what I’m designing to help narrow the focus.  I really love secondary designs (like really love them) so a ton of my patterns have a secondary design.  I create, iterate, rotate, recolor, and repeat several times before I land on a design that I love and want to make.

Q: You’ve got a lot going on with social media. How much time does it take?

A: Social media is hard… It’s necessary, but sometimes I’d rather just be me and pretty pictures are not reality.  I should spend more time on social media, but I find I give what I can and that has to be good enough.

Q: What are your goals for your quilting business? What are your goals for your quilting art?

A: I would love to make it my main source of income, but I have a good day job that makes it very difficult to balance time and commitments.  There are things that I would love to be able to do such as kit more of my patterns, teach, lecture, etc. but time is precious and there are things that I’m still prioritizing over adding to the business side to make sure I keep my sanity and don’t burnout in life in general.

Back to the quilt that impressed me: It certainly does have a great secondary design. I drew it in EQ8 and re-colored it because I think it would be striking if done all in one color.

My EQ8 drawing based on Sherry Shish’s pattern “Simply Cornered”

It appears Sherry has made the pattern available already to her Patreon subscribers, and she also sewed it on her Twitch channel in January. It will be available through her PayHip store in March, and you can pre-order here.

I will be making this pattern and following Sherry’s blog. Please join me in wishing her luck!

 

Cheater stripes!

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Studio Stitch has had this beautiful striped fabric for several months and I’ve been wondering what I could do with it.

Then I found this pattern: Oriana by Alison Glass. It’s intended to be made with strip sets, but it was just perfect for this fabric!

Those sharp points weren’t the easiest thing to do, but I love the way they worked out.

I made this quilt with just part of the number of circles called for, and it finished at 47″ x 48″.

I’ve loaned the quilt to Studio Stitch to display, and I’ve written a “cheat sheet” for them. If you  want to use striped fabric instead of making strip sets, they’ll give you a copy when you buy the pattern, which they have in stock. (I’m not sure it’s on their website, but you can phone them at 336-288-9200.)

And here’s a money saver: Alison had intended to have templates available, but COVID has held that up. This means all you have to do is trace her printed templates (in the pattern) onto LARGE sheets of template plastic and make your own. That really was pretty easy.

So of course when I went to Studio Stitch to show them the quilt, they had this new fabric in…

Just sayin’ 😀

More Stars

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Lucky Stars by Atkinson Designs is one of my all-time favorite quilt patterns because it is so clever. It uses fat quarters and makes lovely stars without the need to worry about cutting off the points!

I don’t recall how many quilts I’ve made from this pattern, but here’s another one. It’s made with the fossil fern fabrics I’ve collected over the years for no particular reason other than a love for those fabrics. Hoping to use them up, I made the back out of my scraps.

Julia Madison quilted it with stars and loops–perfect!

Quilt Stats:

Pattern: Lucky Stars by Alex Anderson

Fabric: Benartex Fossil Ferns

Finished size: 59″ x 44″

Quilted by: Julia Madison

Pattern available here. As always, this is not an affiliate link; it is just for your convenience.