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’.

I found the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild’s Block of the Month (BOM) for 2024 while wandering around on the internet. Probably wandering on the internet when I was supposed to be doing something else, but whatever. I liked the quilt and all the instructions were right there (for this year so far), free for anyone to use. Here’s the link.

I followed the instructions up through September, then improvised for the rest of the blocks because I can’t stand to have something like that unfinished, waiting for instructions. Here’s the result:

Linda Nichols quilted it using the “Retro Lines #1” design from Urban Elementz, and I think it goes perfectly with the quilt.

Tthat little print in the circle is another thing I did just to practice inserting a whole circle. I think it gives the quilt “personality”.

Quilt Stats

Name: Like, Totally

Design by: Seattle MQG, 2024 BOM (slightly modified by me)

Finished size: 57″ x 57″

Pieced by: me

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

I’m catching up on some binding (I’m actually months behind!) so it’s going to look like I’m making a quilt every week, but I’m not!

After finding a box of UFOs (from 2021!) while re-arranging the studio, I set out to finish all of them. Here’s the last of it!

These improv blocks from years ago

were made into this quilt

I particularly like the quilting, done by Linda NIchols. I do wish I had chosen a whiter background; this one is pale gray.

This panel, attractive though it is, went to the donate pile after much consideration.

And the last two pandau blocks have been put away for when I need them to decorate shirts or bags.

Whew!

Meanwhile, I’m taking Tara Faughnan‘s Block Studies Collective class, which is a six month program. Every month she presents a color palette and a block as prompts, with instruction regarding both. However, students aren’t required to use either!

The first month’s block was the hourglass, and here are my little studies.

I don’t know that I’m crazy about any of these by themselves, but it was interesting to experiment.

The second month’s block was log cabin, with multiple potential variations. She suggested paper piecing tiny blocks, but since her instructions are optional I wasn’t having that! I cut strips without rulers and made the following construction, entitled Along Comes Orange.

I especially appreciate Tara’s advice to apply a black and white filter to a photo of the palette to check contrast. It’s quite surprising to realize how much of what I see as value is really color!

I’ve been thinking of variations on log cabin blocks for some time, so there probably are more to come. And, surprise! These exercises are creating more orphan blocks/UFOs!