10 Quilty Secrets

Posted on August 31, 2014 by zippyquilts

Several of the blogs I read have recently revealed “10 Quilty Secrets” and I thought it sounded like fun, so I’m playing along. If you would like to see some other bloggers’ secrets, here are the links: The original post seems to have been at 13Spools.com, and the idea has been picked up by several blogs I follow, including Catbird quilts, wombat quilts, and Christa quilts.

And so, here are my 10 Quilty Secrets:

1. Although I’m participating in Marti’s UFO (unfinished object) finish-a-month this year, I had FAR MORE than 12 UFOs at the beginning of the year. Oops, still do! Here’s the August finish, a quilt for Ronald McDonald House made from orphan blocks:

2. My nearest LQS (Local Quilt Shop) is an hour away, which I take as an excuse to have a good stash at all times 😉

3. If I start a quilt and don’t like it for some reason, I abandon the plan and turn it into something else–another quilt design, a table runner, whatever.

4. And sometimes those I-don’t-like-this projects just become long term UFOs 😦

5. In my world, a good quilt is a fast quilt. I’m not patient enough for the zillions of little hand-pieced hexies, for example.

6. For that matter, I DON’T EVEN LIKE hexies! Yikes!

7. I value good design in quilts and in other useful objects.

8. I LOVE to learn new techniques and try new things, so I take lots of classes Even if they seem like stuff I could do easily without a class I always learn something.

9. We’ve moved a lot, and one of the best ways I’ve found to make new friends is to join a local quilt group.

10. I think every quilt needs a little purple!

So, what are some of YOUR quilty secrets?

6 Orphan Blocks, 1 Donation Quilt

Posted on August 17, 2014 by zippyquilts

I’ve probably mentioned that one of the ways I’m motivating myself to get rid of the excess in the studio is by joining Marti’s UFO finish of the month over at 52 Quilts. As part of my ongoing effort to “clean it up, move it out” I’m making a series of donation quilts out of my orphan blocks.

Orphan blocks from a recent project

I had these 6 blocks that I liked, so I looked for fabric to go with them. The bright turquoise went well, but I had enough to join them only, not to frame them. Searching for something to make it wider, I found a piece of black/white chevron fabric and decided it needed to be used, and FAST.

My daughter recently point out, “When you find chevrons on your mouthwash bottle, they’re on the way out!” 😀

Finally, I had some colorful Michael Miller dots that seemed to fit in:

And WOW! A very “lively” improvised quilt.

I’m going to practice free motion quilting it on my new Bernina, and it will be the August UFO finish of the month. Then off to Ronald McDonald House it goes.

Excitement x 3!!!

Posted on July 13, 2014 by zippyquilts

Woo! It’s been an exciting week!
My entry in the Quilt Alliance “Inspired By” Challenge won 3rd place! Here’s a picture of it, and below that is a link that will take you to a short video showing all the winners! I am SO excited!

Whirlwind, my 2015 Quilt Alliance challenge quilt

And HERE is a link that will show you all the winners in a very short youtube video.

The quilt will now tour with the other entries and will be auctioned on Ebay next fall to benefit the Quilt Alliance.

And here’s a picture of the second excitement: [photo] I finally finished my quilt for the Michael Miller challenge. It’s a packet of flower seeds with the new scanning code I now see on items at the nursery, composed of multiple colored triangles. I don’t think you can scan mine; I designed it based on the code but didn’t copy exactly.

Packet of Posy Seeds

Finally, I had a “very significant birthday” and my husband gave me a new Bernina

Bernina 550 QE

for the occasion! I’ll be reviewing it after I’ve used it for a while. For now I’m just enjoying trying out all the features!
So, as they used to say on the radio, listen in next week…I’ll have pictures from the Vermont Quilt Festival, which was really good.

The year so far…

Posted on June 29, 2014 by zippyquilts

Oops! It’s the end of June already, so half way through 2014! Therefore, here are pictures of a few of the things I’ve done so far:

Quilt Alliance Challenge 2014

Detail of a quilt I submitted to an IQF contest

Next is the June “finish”. I’ve been sending a finish every month to Aunt Marti at 52quilts because I need the motivation of her challenge to get some of my UFOs (Unfinished Objects) cleaned up! As you can see, this is pieced but not quilted; Aunt Marti let’s YOU decide what qualifies as “finished”! And after 2 years staring at these HSTs (half square triangles), I think putting them together into a top for a donation quilt qualifies as “finished”! So if you need motivation to finish some of your UFOs, click the link above and head over to her blog 🙂

Donation quilt top is the finish for June!

In Fairyland, entered in the Vermont Quilt Festival

Swap Block–88 little squares!!!

Swap Block

Improv 9 Patch for Ronald McDonald House

As always, 20% of the projects took 80% of the time! So it’s good to have the little pouches and swap blocks to be done relatively quickly! What have you been up to?

10 Donation Quilts!

Posted on June 8, 2014 by zippyquilts

Ronald McDonald Quilts

I have a little group of quilty friends that I retreat with at least twice a year. We all make quilts for Ronald McDonald House of Cincinnati. This last time, just 3 of us finished a total of 10 quilts! Here are some of them.

R McD House of Cincinnati wants all quilts 40″ x 40″ so, as I’ve mentioned before, these are a good opportunity for a lot of experimentation:

Try new designs to see if you like them
Make orphan blocks into quilts
Try new color schemes
Donation Quilt, 40″ x 40″
Use up fabric left from other projects
Use your scraps to make an improvised quilt top
Use up charm packs (yes, we’ve all bought a few extra!)
Make a simple quilt as a rest from challenging projects
Quilt the tops yourself for practice
Try out binding entirely by machine–makes the quilt more durable
Anyway, enjoy this little quilt show! And check with your local Ronald McDonald House if you’re interested in donating quilts to them.
Quilt with teddy bears

Pieced back

Charm Squares

Leftovers

Girlie Colors

More Charm Squares–this one more of an I Spy design

More leftovers–can you tell some group members have grandsons?

Boy Scout theme–there were 2 of these–and look at the quilting, 1/2″ apart!

My improv 9 patch

Orphan blocks with improv sashing

Two Favorite Quilt Patterns

Posted on May 18, 2014 by zippyquilts

I love designing quilts and making my own designs, but I also enjoy making quilts from outstanding designs by other people. I thought I’d list a couple of my favorites, and I hope you’ll let me know (in the comments) what some of your favorites are, too.

A floral quilt made from Lucky Stars by Atkinson Designs

A favorite quilt pattern for me should be striking in appearance, should have foolproof instructions [because I certainly could be a fool on any given day ;-)], and should be something that makes me say, “I wish I’d thought of that!”

Lucky Stars by Atkinson Designs. This is the first quilt pattern I ever bought, though far from the first quilt I made. When I started quilting, I just decided what I wanted, drafted the pattern,and then made it. Buying this pattern was a revelation! Such great instructions! Such great results! And so little effort compared to what I’d been doing! I’ve made this pattern several times, and the recipients have loved every one of these quilts. I’ve also used this to teach “Make Your Second Quilt” for advanced beginners, and the students loved it, too.

: Lucky Stars in Batiks

: A baby quilt from leftover blocks

I LOVE any quilt with concentric boxes, and having them in multiple sizes and bright colors is just the BEST! This quilt pattern is Outside the Box, by Rose Mason. I put 4 of these together to make a queen quilt for a friend’s daughter when she got married, and it worked out really well.

Outside the Box, pattern by Rose Mason

And even that didn’t wear me out on concentric boxes! I’ve made many more, both from patterns and my own designs.

Please leave a comment telling me what your favorite patterns are, and I’ll pass along the love in a later post.

Happy Plaids is my own design, but there are MANY similar quilts out there

Personal labels 3 ways

Posted on May 11, 2014 by zippyquilts

The first quilt to have my new label on the back!

I’ve been thinking for some time that I’d like a “standard” Zippy Quilts label to sew into the binding of my quilts in addition to the usual label I put on with the name of the quilt and the date. I’ve seen several such labels and think they look cool. They make me think the creator takes herself and her work seriously enough to have a professional label.

I collected a bunch of ideas for making labels on my Pinterest page, here, if you want to look. Pinterest is great for gathering idea from around the web and organizing them all in one place. I also got some of those ideas by doing a search within Pinterest for “fabric labels”, which lead me to things other people had discovered.

It boiled down to just a few good options in 3 categories:

1. Print your own labels, sort of like I do my labels with the quilt name/date/etc. This would be fairly economical despite the cost of printable fabric, because the labels are small. However, the washability of some of the printable fabrics was in question, and there would be the need to finish the edges in some way to avoid fraying. Nevertheless, there’s a very nice tutorial on how to do it here, on the Emmaline blog.

2. Get commercially-made labels, either woven or printed, from specialty companies that make them. There are lots of companies that offer lots of different labels, from laundry tags like you sew into your kids’ clothes before they go to camp to really professional woven labels. The cost varies a lot, too. The main drawback was that, for the better looking ones, you have to order an awful lot. What if I had 1000 labels I didn’t much care for?

3. Design your own at Spoonflower and have them printed up on fabric for you to cut apart into labels. There’s a tutorial on how to do it here, on a nice blog called “While They Snooze”. This is what I ultimately decided to do. They’ll print either a sample or a fat quarter (FQ) for you, so I ordered FQs of 2 different layouts to see if I liked them.

Spoonflower labels–first layout

I cut them apart with pinking shears to avoid a hard edge and sewed a little hem around each one to prevent fraying. I think another time I’d make them a little smaller, but this is a good start. The Spoonflower site is easy enough to use that I never even had to contact them for help.

The second layout

My second layout left space below my name on each label so that I could cut out the label, hem the sides only, and then fold it in half, inserting the remaining raw edges in the binding. This avoids the need to sew it down separately on 4 sides. I may like this better, but I haven’t had time to try them much yet. The first one is going on my Quilt Alliance donation quilt, which I’m still binding. I think I’ll go back and put them on all this year’s projects.

If you get some labels made for your projects, write and let me know what you did and how it worked out.

Label on Quilt Alliance quilt back

Quilt Alliance Challenge

Posted on April 20, 2014 by zippyquilts

After thinking I would use Sunbonnet Sue as my inspiration,

Scraps!

I did a total about-face and chose a scrap quilt instead. I LOVE scrap quilts, and since I certainly HAVE a lot of scraps, it all works out 🙂

Here’s the process for this year’s Quilt Alliance donation quilt. I wanted to use tiny scraps and have one tiny star. I used Electric Quilt (EQ7) to print a foundation pattern for a star that finishes about 3″ square. The first one I made, using the brand of fabric we’ve all

Paper foundation for star

Foundation pieced star, finishing 3″

depended on for solids, was just a little off. Turns out the “beefy” thick texture of that fabric doesn’t lend itself well to tiny, tiny points (the center square here is 1/2″ x 1/2″). So I re-generated the foundation pattern and, as often happens, decided on a little design change at the same time. Then I made the star using Moda Bella black, which is a lighter weight cloth that folded more crisply in such a small space.

Joining scraps

Scraps

Improvisational piecing

For the rest of the quilt I pulled out my zippy-colored Michael Miller cotton couture scraps and just sewed them together as I took them out of the box. Eventually I had to cut a few more “scraps” to finish the top. There were so very MANY seams that I was glad of the lighter weight of this cloth, almost like voile. It took many days to do this, quite a bit longer than I had expected for a 16″ x 16″ quilt! The smallest pieces finish about 1/4″ squares or triangles!

Quilt Alliance Challenge 2014

So here it is! I would love to count the pieces, but I don’t think I have the energy left to do it! Besides, who wants to know a thing like that? 😉

Stash smash: 8 inch squares

Posted on April 13, 2014 by zippyquilts

I’m slowly working my way through my stash, and currently my focus is on “unfinished projects”. There seem to be a lot of them 😉

8″ Squares

I found this stack of 8″ squares that was made as the start of a quilt a while back. I didn’t like the pattern once I got started on it, so here’s this stack with no purpose. Not my favorite fabrics is part of the problem, I think.

Of course, SOMEBODY sure would like these fabrics, so I had options:

1. Try to give them to friends. But those friends probably would try to give me some of their stash in return!

2. Put them in the donation pile. Several problems with that idea; never mind!

3. Make them into something. Since I make a fair number of donation quilts for Ronald McDonald House, that seemed like the best bet.

So I paired lights with darks and cut each pair into 3 unequal strips. I did the cuts at random intervals, but parallel to the sides to keep the blocks from getting too wonky. Then I traded the center strips and sewed the strips back together to make a set of 2 blocks.

Cut at random intervals

swap the center strip

First assembly

I stacked the sets again and cut them at irregular intervals, switched the middle strip again, and re-assembled them into irregular 9-patch blocks:

Cut the new blocks the other way

swap the center strips again

Two blocks finished!

Now they are a donation quilt top for Ronald McDonald House, and this one will be suitable for an older child, since the fabrics aren’t juvenile novelty prints. Success! Another stack gone! And another donation quilt done!

I’m taking part in “Aunt Marti’s” UFO challenge so to finish 12 UFOs in 2014. It might help you get your UFOs done, too. Click HERE for the link to the original post where she tells you how to do it.

Nine Patch Quilt

Hope you have a good week. Maybe some of your leftovers would make good donation quilts, too!

Stick your neck out with me!

Posted on March 9, 2014 by zippyquilts

OK, folks, you may recall that I made a donation quilt for the Quilt Alliance last year BEFORE I realized that most of the other quilters were WAY better known than I am! It turned out pretty well, because the ladies who won first place were local and not all that famous (at least until they won)! And my quilt did sell in the auction, so it’s all good.

IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN! The Quilt Alliance has just announced the 2014 contest, and I hope you’ll consider making a quilt for them. You can see the contest announcement and a link to the rules on the Quilt Alliance website. (You can see last year’s donation quilts here–mine is #29 if you’re interested.) The theme this year is “Inspired by” and your entry must be inspired by one of the quilts in the Alliance’s Quilt Index or their Quilters’ S.O.S.- Save Our Stories (Q.S.O.S.) project.

: Sunbonnet Sue

: by Mary Lee Ownbey Kimsey

: of Asheville, NC

I already have my project in mind and here’s a hint: it’s based on Sunbonnet Sue. I searched the QSOS project files for Asheville, since that’s the nearest town of any size, and one of the first quilts I saw was a Sunbonnet Sue–you can see it if you click the link but I think it would be a copyright violation for me to reproduce it here. I was immediately drawn to it because I have a Sunbonnet Sue quilt made by my Grandmother (Mary Lee Ownbey Kimsey, who lived in Asheville) and it hangs in my studio much of the time.

I also made Eleanor Burns’ Sunbonnet Sue and Overall Sam a few years ago; that is the quilt at the top of this post. The contest quilt is going to be “inspired by” Sunbonnet Sue, but you’d have to know Sue to “get it”. You’ll see later!

Sunbonnet Sue by my Grandmother

Meanwhile, come on: STICK OUT YOUR NECK WITH ME! Even if you’ve never entered a contest, I’m pretty sure you regularly make donation quilts. Design a donation quilt and send it in to the Quilt Alliance Contest. Here are the TOP 3 REASONS to make a quilt for this contest:

1. DO SOMETHING NEW! TAKE A RISK! If I can do it, you can do it.

2. You’ll have to spend time browsing the Quilt Index or the Q.S.O.S.–either could be hours of fun!

3. It’s just a LITTLE quilt–16 x 16 this year! Just do it! Here’s the link again: Quilt Alliance

Zippy Quilts

Modern Quilts With A Twist

Tag Archives: donation quilt

10 Quilty Secrets

6 Orphan Blocks, 1 Donation Quilt

Excitement x 3!!!

The year so far…

10 Donation Quilts!

Two Favorite Quilt Patterns

Personal labels 3 ways

Quilt Alliance Challenge

Stash smash: 8 inch squares

Stick your neck out with me!

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