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!

A friend and I found some good fabric with tools at a quilt show recently, so of course we bought it, since our husbands are both “handy”. Actually, they’re both pretty good woodworkers.

A lot of woodworking-themed or tool-themed fabric is way too “cute” but this had panels of realistic-looking tools. The fabric is part of a line from Quilting Treasures, if you want to look for it. Be aware that the panels are NOT printed square! I decided just to not worry about it.

I tried out several designs and finally settled on a simple one.

I made the top when my sweetie was away at a woodworking show (how appropriate) and a friend quilted it with a woodgrain texture.

Then I put the binding on while my husband was at another woodworking event, and sneaked it into one of his work rooms, where he has a large leather chair.

He seems to like it, and verified that it is, indeed, washable. Workshops can get dusty!

Quilt Stats

Name: Shop Quilt

Finished size: 60″ x 60″

Designed and pieced by: me

Quilted by: Victoria Gleasure

Still dealing with computer issues, but of course it’s necessary to take a break to sew. Therefore, I put the binding on Starfield.

This quilt started with using orphan blocks (the stars) to practice inset circles. Then I added a few more things, which you may recognize as leftovers from this quilt:

And here it is!

Quilt Stats

Name: Starfield

Size: 65″ x 75″

Design: mine

Pieced by: me

Quilted by: Linda Nichols

This week started with delivery, in pieces, of the long-awaited cabinets for the studio. There were some cabinets to be installed in another part of the house, as well, so that was a lot of pieces. These are just the ones for the studio, which got new cabinetry in three locations.

Cabinets in the studio, awaiting installation

I was happy to get new storage! Of course, that required moving everything out of the old storage and stashing it elsewhere in the house, so it was a busy time and sort of a mess.

In the same time frame, my computer developed a burning-plastic smell and DIED! To be honest, I’ve known for some time that I needed a new computer, but I was hoping to wait until next month. No such luck. (Well, OK, one of my favorite Zen fables is “Good luck, bad luck, who can tell?” but I won’t tell you about that!)

We zipped over to Costco and got a new computer, and I spent many hours transferring data, installing programs, and learning the idiosyncrasies of Windows 11! Therefore, this post may or may not look right, and the photos may or may not be good, because I had to get new photo editing software and learn to use it, too.

So, it’s been a week for lots of learning, and the new cabinets in the studio look great.

The vendor will eventually deliver the rest of the door pulls, I’m sure.

I’m hoping for a quieter week coming up!