New Year/New Look

Posted on May 13, 2018 by zippyquilts

This marks the beginning of my sixth year of blogging about quilts. To celebrate, I’ve upgraded to a paid plan so you shouldn’t see ads when you view my blog. I don’t ever take advertising or affiliate links, but I was on the WordPress free plan, so they were allowed to put ads on my pages. Those ads should be eliminated now.

Mini-Quilt for Jill

Finished Gypsy Wife

Scrap quilt made with strips that finish 1″ wide

Floral Fantasy, a “one block wonder” quilt

Mount Pisgah

I’ve also updated my picture to a more recent one! The even better news is that you were spared the 5 years of changes in hairstyle that came between the old one and this one 😉

As I start the next year, I’d like your opinion. What would you like to see/read about on the blog? Please leave me some comments! And thanks for reading–I appreciate my readers, and many of them have become friends.

Classes Coming

Posted on May 6, 2018 by zippyquilts

I recently started teaching at A Stitch in Time in Franklin, NC. It’s as “local” as quilt shops get for me in this rural area, so I’m very happy to be able to teach there. It’s an excellent shop and I sort of have to work to avoid drooling on the fabric…well, you know what I mean 😉

So here is the quilt I will be teaching in July…

Scrap quilt made with strips that finish 1″ wide

August…

“Red Pepper” is made from a quilt pattern entitled “Yellow Pepper”

And September…

Happy Squares, one of my original designs

Of course, while I was in the shop I got a little fabric! This is a specially-printed piece from Hoffman California that has 8 coordinating fat quarters in a 2 yard cut!

There were other nice prints in the series, but I’m a fool for dots. If you need some, too, you can order from A Stitch in Time (and no, I do not make any money from it; this site is non-commercial).

Have a great week!

Quilt for Jill

Posted on April 29, 2018 by zippyquilts

This little quilt was made for a woman who has volunteered at our clinic for years, providing physical therapy services to many of our patients who have hard physical jobs. She has accepted a position at another university and will be leaving us next month.

It started out years ago as a single block. I’m sorry to say I have no idea where the pattern came from. After making one block I decided it was entirely too tedious to make a series of them for a quilt, so it went in the orphan block pile. When I was asked for a quilt block to give to Jill, this one immediately came to mind.

I added a border and was lucky enough to have EXACTLY enough fabric left from one of the prints to make the binding. I used a grid-print backing so it will be easy for people to sign on the back. The quilting in a spiral did slightly distort the overall quilt into a shallow bowl shape, but that steamed right out before I put on the binding.

Quilt Stats

Name: for Jill

Size: 15” x 15”

Materials: Quilting cottons

Quilter’s Dream Request Loft cotton batting

Superior So Fine thread used for piecing and quilting

Quilted by: me

Block designer unknown–please contact me if you know so I can give credit

A Few Pictures…

Posted on April 22, 2018 by zippyquilts

…from a recent very productive quilt retreat!

This string quilt by Rena was a very successful design, I thought:

Here’s the back of the string quilt, and she also made this cute Halloween quilt top:

Mary made a string quilt, too, this one all in purple:

And Jerri finished a large Bonnie Hunter quilt with a zillion pieces:

I worked on half rectangle triangles, which turned out to be a lot more work than half square triangles:

And a good time was had by all!

What have you been up to?

Blue Ridge

Posted on April 15, 2018 by zippyquilts

My modern guild is having a challenge to produce quilts for display when the traditional guild has its next show in the fall. The guidelines are: no more than 36″ on any side, and using some Riley Blake solids whose colors were extracted from a landscape photo chosen by the guild. The quilts aren’t due for several months yet, but I had a brainstorm and produced mine already. Here we go:

The quilt is faced rather than bound

And here is a detail. In case you haven’t caught on, this is the one that was stained by basting spray. However, that came out just fine with dry cleaning.

Name: Blue Ridge

March 2018

Finished size: 30″ x 17″

Fabrics: Riley Blake solids

Quilted by: me

Fun with Rickrack

Posted on April 8, 2018 by zippyquilts

Or ricrac, or rick rack, whatever. I found a lot of spellings when I was trying to decide!

This fun way to piece curves was part of a class I taught this past weekend, and it was so cute in the blocks the students made that I just had to do a tutorial.

We were piecing quarter circles as part of my quilt YOW, which you’ve already seen:

So here is a partially assembled block with one curved seam left to go:

Select rickrack and lay it along the edge of the convex piece. Probably would work with the concave piece, too, but I haven’t tried that:Sew the rickrack down with the usual 1/4 inch seam

Now turn the raw edge and attached rickrack to the back along the 1/4 inch seam and press. Here’s the front:

And here’s the back:

Lay the convex piece on top of the concave piece and line up the edges.

Flip over and try to line up the raw edges all along the seam on the back.

Applique the convex piece to the concave piece by stitching in the ditch. I used silver metallic thread just for fun, but matching thread works well, of course. And here’s the finished block.

Sort of modern-retro. Go try it!

Scrappy Fun

Posted on April 1, 2018 by zippyquilts

First, let me say that the 505 spray that stained my quilt came out entirely with dry cleaning, just as the manufacturer suggested.

Remove 505 with dry cleaning

Last weekend I taught my “Scrappy New Year” quilt at Studio Stitch in Greensboro, NC. Everybody brought stacks of scraps cut into strips of various widths.

We joined the strips into strip sets.

Then we cut the strip sets into 1-1/2 inch strips and assembled the pieced strips into blocks.

The blocks varied in size and shape, depending on the choice of the designer.

And there was at least one alternate layout for rectangular, rather than square, blocks. When the pieced strips alternated with solid strips the blocks went faster.

Eventually, everyone will have a quilt something like this:

Scrap quilt made with strips that finish 1″ wide

And as a last fun part of the weekend, I got to see a beach bag I made for our daughter several years go.

How was your week?

Some Fine Discoveries Online

Posted on March 25, 2018 by zippyquilts

I’m always looking for better ways to quilt, and recently I learned several things online that I think you may like, too.

First, I just finished an art quilt that I wanted to face rather than bind. I’ve faced quilts before with variable success, but I wanted a refresher on just how to do it, so of course I did an internet search. I found this great tutorial by Terry Aske and followed it. The quilt came out MUCH better than my previous attempts! The secret is in NOT sewing around the corner and then trying to turn it. Here’s one of my corners.

Look at that nice, sharp corner!

But wait! Aren’t those spots on my new art quilt? Why yes, they are! For the first time in many years of using it, 505 basting spray made spots on the front of my quilt! UGH! After failing to find a satisfactory remedy in a web search, I wrote to the manufacturer of 505 and got a prompt reply: Try Dawn dish liquid, and if that doesn’t work have it dry cleaned. I’ll let you know…

Sandy and Cindy at Gray Barn Designs mentioned putting scraps in a “starters and enders bowl”. I call those little scraps “bridges”, but the idea is the same: we need scraps to sew onto and off of when we chain piece in order to save time and avoid having the machine “eat” the thread when starting a new seam at an edge. I thought it was a great idea and I’m putting a bowl for such scraps in my studio right now! No more digging through the trash when I need a scrap to start or end a seam (yes, I know why they call bridges “starters and enders”).

I made this bowl myself in a previous life, so I especially enjoy having it in my studio

Finally, I ran across this article, by a quilter in Romania, suggesting that quilts be washed and blocked BEFORE they are bound! I had never heard of this idea, but in a lot of ways it makes sense. I have not tried this, but if I ever decide to make a show quilt that needs to hang smoothly, I probably will do so. The only thing I can’t figure out is how/where I would lay it out to block it. Somebody must have more open floor space than I do, or make smaller quilts!

So I simply must know: Has anyone reading this tried washing and blocking a quilt before binding? I can see how it might make sense, but eeeek! The extra work!

So Many Plans!

Posted on March 18, 2018 by zippyquilts

I’ve been working on a project to be published in Modern Quilts Unlimited in late summer, so there have been no pictures of current sewing lately. However, that is now finished and I’m focusing on several other projects coming right up.

First, I’m going to be teaching a very un-modern quilt at Studio Stitch in Greensboro in May.

Sunbonnet Sue Visits Quilt in a Day

This is an old, old Eleanor Burns version of Sunbonnet Sue but the pattern is still available. It’s the easiest way I know to do perfect applique! And it’s fun to add trinkets, like this fish bead hanging from Overall Sam’s fishing rod:

Also, I’ve signed up for Quiltfest. Luckily, it’s in July when I’ll have some vacation time available again. I’m going to be making a boxy tote with Carrie Licatovich and a star quilt with Renny Jaeger. Then I’m signed up for “shibori resist with indigo dying”, taught by Debbir Maddy. Which reminds me, I haven’t used the fabrics I made in my last dying class… I always enjoy Quiltfest because it’s just the right size: There are well-known teachers, but not a crush of thousands of participants. And of course there are sales at Tennessee Quilts, too! Oops!

Finally, I’ve finished a donation quilt. I’ve gotten far, far behind on my donation quilts, so those will be floating to the top of the to-do list soon. Here’s the first one, finally quilted and bound:

The concentric squares are pieced; the other pieces are a print from Michael Miller

Do you have any fun quilt events coming up?

Another Fun Guild Program

Posted on March 11, 2018 by zippyquilts

This is part of my occasional series on guild programs, with the hope that it will help others who need to come up with program ideas.

Our modern guild has no money to hire speakers, so we are taking turns sharing our talents. One of our members recently volunteered to teach us block printing on fabric, and she furnished all the materials herself!

Suzanne brought a beautiful print she had made as an example

A few of us had done block printing in the past, but these blocks were much easier to carve. Apparently the block medium is now made of soft rubber rather than linoleum–a big improvement for the hands and wrists.

Some people carved abstract designs, using the whole block

Everyone got a square of rubber to carve. Some people carved a design on the square using the entire thing. Some carved an object and then cut out around the object so that it could be glued to a board backing for easier handling.