Tag Archives: Free Quilt Pattern

Floral Lattice and a Fun Addition

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The fun addition first: I found these little “PS I love you” tags at Studio Stitch and bought a bunch of them to add to quilts I’ve made for our daughter’s family. After some debate about how to attach them, I decided on having them stick out a little over the binding, like this.

I love these tags! Now I’m going to attach them as I put on the binding when I make quilts for special people.

I seem unable to resist floral print fabric, so in a recent attempt to use some of it I made another floral lattice quilt. You can find my instructions here if you want the pattern.

One of the fun things about this iteration of the quilt is that the cream-background fabric shown below is scrap from a dress I made for myself years ago. That dress, along with several others, was given to a visiting psychologist from Russia whom I met at a conference. Again, many years ago. I like to think of those dresses travelling to another country and being enjoyed there.

Quilt Stats

Name: Floral Lattice

Finished size: 57″ x 73″

Designed and made by: me

Quilted by: Elisabeth Pugh

 

Teaching Again!

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Hooray! The pandemic is finally well enough controlled around here for Studio Stitch to start offering classes again!  We’ll still all wear masks, which means classes will be scheduled for half days so we won’t have to figure out lunch.  But it is SO encouraging to have the opportunity to be with other quilters again and feel a little bit normal.  Most of us have now been vaccinated, so it feels much safer, though we will continue to take care!

Here’s what I’ll be teaching in the next couple of months.

Better Binding Painlessly, May 11. This is a basic binding class that teaches techniques and answers common questions about how to bind a quilt without going crazy doing it.

Little Landscapes, June 1 in the afternoon and June 2 in the morning.  This is an introduction to landscape quilting.  We make little landscapes in class to learn the basics so you’ll be ready to make landscape quilts of any size on your own.

This pine tree has green flannel for foliage and lots of free motion quilting for texture
I made this after reading Happy Villages by Karen Eckmeier

Plaidish, June 10 afternoon and June 11 morning. This is a free pattern available from Kitchen Table Quilting. It’s a great way to learn about color, value, and matching the corners on tiny pieces.There’s more information about all of these classes, plus many others, on the Studio Stitch website.  If you’re near Greensboro, I hope to see you 🙂

Two Finishes with Kaffe Fabrics

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As sometimes happens, I bought a fat quarter bundle of Kaffe fabrics for something else entirely but changed my mind.

If you’ve ever tried making a quilt with fabrics designed by Kaffe Fassett, you know that you have to choose the pattern verrrry carefully if you don’t want a hot mess.  The fabrics are beautiful in their own way, but they don’t play very well with traditional patterns or patterns requiring good contrast between pieces. Therefore, I found a pattern written specifically for Kaffe fabrics.

The pattern made a larger quilt than I wanted, so I sorted the blocks into Kaffe 1 and Kaffe 2.  Here’s the larger one:

Quilt Name:  Kaffe 1

Pattern Source:  Free Spirit Fabrics (see link at bottom of post)

Finished Size:  58″ x 70″

Quilted by: Julia Madison

And here’s the smaller one made with “leftovers”:

Quilt name: Kaffe 2

Pattern source:  Free Spirit Fabrics (see link below)

Finished size:  48″ x 60″

Quilted by: Julia Madison

It was fun working with those wild fabrics, and the pattern was fairly easy.  Here’s the source for the free pattern if you’re interested: Carnival of Color

 

Some Quarantine Fun

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I’m happy to report that at least one person used the pattern I designed for Studio Stitch and then sent me a picture of her quilt! Thanks, Judi! And here it is:

Photo courtesy of Judi Bastion

I’m always happy when readers send me pictures of what they’ve made from my patterns or classes, and Judi even found a typo for me as an extra help!  Thanks again!

Meanwhile, one of my nieces sent me a picture of a “quarantine quilt” made from this pattern:

Photo courtesy of Java House Quilts

Photo courtesy of Java House Quilts

Now seriously, people, this is the quilt to make in memory of 2020!  The pattern is available here, and they are donating part of the proceeds. 

If you don’t want to make an entire quilt, this Japanese lady has a free paper-pieced pattern for a single block:

Photo courtesy of MisoQuilty.com

Of course COVID is a serious situation, but a little laughter helps offset all the worries! 

And by the way, I’m out of elastic for masks.

Thanks for reading, and I’d love to see what you make!

2020–Yikes!

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My blogging friend Velda at Freckled Fox Quiltery  posted a while back that she is making a temperature quilt for 2020 because–what a year!  I liked that idea. I certainly feel that this year deserves to be memorialized in a quilt, but I do not want to paper piece a picture of the COVID virus, or make the quilt I designed to represent the ICU, or quilt anything else directly COVID related.  Making and wearing masks is a sufficient reminder, thanks!

In addition, Velda linked to a free pattern that I liked the looks of.

Here’s a link to the free pattern.

Any temperature quilt will require a lot of research (high and low temps for every day of the year for your location) and organization.  Here are a couple of things I learned along the way.  This pattern is clearly written and she has some good suggestions regarding fabric choice.

First, of course, I pulled fabric from my stash.  I was happy to see that I had everything I needed, since quilt shops were closed for browsing and I thought it might be difficult to order by phone. 

The colored blocks in the pattern are cut 2″ square (yikes!) so I decided to try something new to cut down on fraying.  I recently purchased a product called “Terial Magic” at A Stitch in Time.  It is a “fabric stabilizer” and has several uses.  It kind of glues the fibers in the fabric together to decrease fraying and also makes the fabric stiff.

After talking with the lady at the shop, I mixed the Terial Magic 1:3 with water and put it in a spray bottle. I will say that I was happy to have to prepare only fat quarters of the fabric, as the process was kind of time intensive.  However, the fabric came out very crisp and wrinkle free and did not fray at all when I cut it.  Actually it was easier to cut than usual.  The stuff is supposed to wash right out once the quilt is finished, and I’m trusting that it will 🙂

When I got the squares all cut and started sewing, I discovered that I had somehow tricked myself into believing there was enough contrast between these two shades of green!

Luckily there was an adequate substitute in the stash!  Here are the strips for the first quarter.  Each strip is sewn together, but I have not joined them yet.

One final hint: I cut up the January calendar page and pinned the numbers on the blocks to keep them in order until they were sewn together. 🙂

Are you making a temperature quilt?  Another quilt to commemorate 2020?

 

Lattice Quilt

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This design has been around forever and I’ve seen many versions of it, some even published as patterns.Anyway, I decided to teach it as a design-your-own quilt class, since I think the size of the center squares really should depend on the size of the prints you are using.  I made a handout to help each person design his/her own blocks, so I’m sharing the details with you.  All these drawings were made using Electric Quilt 8, which allows for easy export of the picture.

Here is the basic block:

The only trick is to make the block square.  The center is a rectangle, and the size of the side strips has to make the block square.  So, for example, if you cut a center rectangle 3.5″ x 5.5″ (to finish 3″ x 5″), your side strips need to be cut 5.5″ x 1.5″ each so the block (unfinished) will measure 5.5″ x 5.5″ and the finished block will be 5″ square.  Whew!

Actually, it’s easy.  We all drew our blocks (finished size) out on graph paper and remembered to add 0.5″ seam allowance in each direction before cutting each piece!

When the blocks are made, lay them out in a row, alternating directions. This forms the lattice. Two rows look like this:

And when a border is added, all the blocks are “closed” and you have a complete lattice.

And yes, the outer edge will vary in width after the addition of the border.  That’s all part of the fun. The blocks appear to float as they alternate directions.

You can vary the look of the quilt considerably by changing the proportions of the lattice and the central rectangles:

I think this design works especially well with a collection of related fabrics, and one woman brought Christmas fabrics to class:

Another brought fabrics with a camping theme:

This is an easy quilt.  It can be chain pieced easily and the blocks can be trimmed before joining if necessary.

Now, go make one and send me a picture of it!

Little Green Man Quilt

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This block has been floating around on Pinterest for some time, and I really like it so It’s been on my to-do list.

This is a copy from Pinterest, where the block has been widely shared without attribution

I don’t like to borrow things without attribution, so I went in search of just who designed this.  Luckily, my friend Elizabeth was in a bee that used this block, so I learned from her blog that the block was designed by Kylie Kelsheimer.  A friend of Elizabeth’s located the original post for her through the wayback machine.  You can find Elizabeth’s post about all this here (you’ll have to scroll down quite a bit) and the original pattern here.  I see from Elizabeth’s latest post that the pattern is now available through PayHip, but that was not the case when I first investigated it a year ago and started this project.

Which brings me to why I changed it all up.  The original block is small and paper pieced–not my style!  I wanted to make it big and make the stars wonky.  Therefore, the instructions here are NOT for Kylie’s block, though the idea is based on her original block as noted above.  In fact, the block as shown on Pinterest is really 4 blocks, each rotated so that they fit together as shown in the pin.

I drew the block with Electric Quilt so that it finishes 18″ square.  Here it is showing fabrics.

My wonky star block, drawn with Electric Quilt 8

And here is the base block in case you want to make it yourself:

Star base block, drawn with Electric Quilt 8

Here is my tutorial on making sew-and-flip stars, in case you’ve never done it before.

As you can see, I substituted my Little Green Man for 4 of the blocks–those would be the 4 in the lower right-hand corner looking at my layout above.  You will see that I rotated the blocks various ways, which is how Little Green Man ended up in the lower left corner after I substituted him in the lower right.

You can find my instructions for making the LIttle Green Man here.

And here is one of the finished wonky star blocks.

The finished quilt:

QUILT DETAILS

Little Green Man

Finished size: 54” x 72”

A variety of fabrics from different manufacturers

The pattern is outlined in the blog above, but is not available commercially

Quilted by Julia Madison, except for the Little Green Man block, which she left for me because I wanted to avoid any extra holes in the Kraft-Tex I used for applique.

Now, does anyone else recall the “Little Green Man” song from the 1950s?

Six Finishes!

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Last year I pledged (and made) 12 quilts for Ronald McDonald House.  That was a little overwhelming, so I decided on 6 quilts this year.  I’ve now finished the last one, and here they are!  All are about 40 inches square.

The first was made from a pattern called Ribbon Box, available free from Cloud 9 Fabrics.donation-6

The next was from the last of the many wonky 9-patch blocks.  I made these for a quilt, but didn’t like the way they looked all together.  Luckily they look just fine with alternate solid blocks.donation-4

The next two were to use fabric with vehicles, since sometimes we run short on “boy” quilts.

This one was made to use some of my stash of charm squares:donation-2And finally, I just had to make one using a lot of the cute modern prints I’ve been collecting:donation-1These were fun, as always.  I used them to try a few new things, and now they’re ready to go 🙂

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