Galloping Through the Meadow Quilt

I finally finished piecing all of the blocks in my Galloping Through the Meadow quilt. Now I need to square up my blocks and join them.

I started this quilt way back in September at a Lizzy House workshop. I've had it all cut out for well over a month now and it has been on my design wall taunting me to work on it. So this weekend I bit the bullet and pieced all 20 blocks. Once all of the blocks are joined, I will be adding navy panels around the sides to make it large enough for a full sized bed. I've been dreaming of ways to quilt this, maybe some hoof prints will show up!

Today I'm linking up with  A Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday and Free Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday.

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

Block by Block

This is going to sound odd coming from a quilter, but piecing is not my favorite part of quilting. I prefer the design and free-motion quilting parts the best. I piece to see my design and to get something to quilt. This weekend I spent my time piecing guild blocks.

This is my design for a quilt "strip" 9"x 72". Eight others in my guild are also making a "strip". We will put them all together for the MQG/QuiltCon Charity Challenge

Here are some of the elements of my strip

The two blocks below are the last two blocks for my guild's scrap bag/block exchange. Both are enlarged variations from Tula Pink's 100 Modern Quilt Blocks. You can see how to resize a block here.

At this point I'm ready to find something to FMQ! Alas, I have more piecing to do! 

Today I'm linking up with A Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday and Free Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday.

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

Fabric Tuesday

I have been busy the last few weeks, but not much to show for it.

I did get two more guild blocks done. I have been resizing some of Tula Pink's 100 Modern Quilt Blocks from her 6"x 6" to 12"x12". I have to say that so far my resizing tool, that I posted here, has worked like a charm. I showed it to the IMQG yesterday and they seemed to love it. It takes the need to do math away.

I also received the cutest Halloween postcard from my partner at the Rochester Modern Quilt Guild, five little pumpkins. Here is a link to the postcard that I made and sent out.

The Postcard I received

 

Here is a collection of postcards from the IMQG guild meeting.

Today I'm linking up with A Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday and Free Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday.

Now, I'm off to vote!

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

Quilt Block Converter/Resizer

Yesterday I showed the math you need to use to resize a quilt block. Unfortunately, some people (who will remain nameless),don't like math, even if you lay it out with nice formulas. So I put on my thinking cap and came up with a calculator that you just have to enter in the block pieces and it will calculate the new numbers for you. Voila'!



Hopefully this works on all different devices. I got it to work on my android cell phone and on my android tablet (on the tablet I had to switch to full web version, but I didn't have to on my phone). I am interested to know if there are any blocks that this doesn't work, it has worked on the simple ones I have tested, but....there may be exceptions.

Here is a quick look-up to convert fractions to decimals, since my converter needs decimals:
1/8 = .125
1/4 = .25
3/8 = .375
1/2 = .5
5/8 = .625
3/4 = .75
7/8 = .875


Here is another block that I converted from a 6" x 6" finished block to a 12" x 12" block from Tula Pink's 100 Modern Blocks.

Please let me know if this works or doesn't work.

I'm linking up today with Linky Tuesday at Free Motion by the River and Fabric Tuesday at A Quilt Story.

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

Hand Block Printed Fabric From India....Hand Delivered!

I happen to have the most amazing family and I even mean my extended family - you know cousins and such. My cousin Cera, recently returned from India, where she had been teaching for the past three years.  Look what she brought back for me! Hand printed fabric!

The fabric is quite thin (it's hot in India). The colors are wonderful. I think I will need to pair it will some voile or lawn fabric. Maybe use some silk batting, I will need something very light and soft.

I will need to take some time to ponder what I will make, but what fun that will be. Thanks Cera, you are pretty wonderful to remember me.

I'm linking up today with A Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday and Free Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday.

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

Quilting ALong

I'm quilting in between picnics, I'm hosting four this week - two down, two to go. But, I really want to get my Modern Scottish baby quilt done before Sunday's picnic, so that I can send it on it's way to it's new owner.

I tried something new, I used some Aurifil invisible thread to stitch in the ditch. worked great.

 It ran really well through my machine. I used a 50wt grey Aurifil thread in the bobbin, I wasn't sure if I could use the invisible thread in the bobbin. Has anyone done that?

I think it turned out fine, well the thread worked great, I could use some practice at stitching a straight line. I guess I will get the practice because I plan on quilting straight lines of different colors to make it look like plaid.

 I stitched down the thistle really well. I really made it pop!

All in all, I think it's turning out okay. Now to start the plaid quilting.

Linking up with A Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday and Free Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday.

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

Should I Re-Purpose These Quilts?

When I was a little girl, I spent my summers on Keuka Lake (one of the finger lakes of NYS). The woman that took care of me quilted two identical quilts for the bunk beds in their cottage. This was sometime in the late 1960's.

 The fabric isn't really "quilt" fabric, but it really is wonderful (I would buy this in a heartbeat if I saw it in a store). She hand quilted them. They are both 55" W x 103"L. She left them to me about 11 years ago. This was a very special person in my life, but my step-daughters and grandsons have absolutely no connection with her. I would love to use them, but I don't have any twin sized beds.

She pieced both sides of the quilt to make it wider.

Simply beautiful hand stitching.

I don't think that as quilts go, they are particularly valuable, more sentimental to me. Would it be wrong to either join them together or add fabric to them to make them bigger to fit on a larger bed?

Give me your opinions!

Linking up with A Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday and Free Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday.

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

Can You See the Forest for the Trees?

You guessed it, I'm quilting more trees today! I'm really liking how this Tree quilt is turning out. Only six more trees to quilt.

The back

I like how this thread, Aurifil 5004, looks like pencil sketches. I'm planning on using this same thread for the whole quilt. Better order some more today! Who needs to hoard fabric, I much prefer to hoard Aurifil!

In other news, just look what came in the mail yesterday??? The Modern Quilt Guild Michael Miller fabric challenge. Yikes, I have to cut all this up in to fat eighths?  Maybe someone in the IMQG will take pitty on me and offer some help!

I'm linking up today with Free Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday and A Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday.

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

A Few Additional Tips and Tricks for Board Basting.

I finished my tree quilt top and back - Yippee Skippee

Front

Back

I did get it ready to baste and since my post on "board basting" is far and above the most viewed post I thought I would share a few tips and tricks on winding the quilt top and back on the boards.

I measure both ends of the board to help me center the quilt.

 When you are starting to roll up the quilt on the boards, make sure it's centered on the board. It will make it much easier to unroll and baste.

See the tape holding it to the basting board

I use a little tape to hold the quilt back on the board to start. I did measure to make sure the I had it even across the board. In this case I used duck tape because that's what I had, but you could use masking. I don't worry too much about it leaving a mark/adhesive because it always plan to trim off that part. Although, I've never had it leave a mark, but I baste my quilt pretty quickly.

Lining up the quilt back with a horizontal seam in the back to make sure I'm rolling it straight on the board

The front was even easier to keep straight by rolling it and keeping it even with the vertical strip in the design.

Once you are done rolling it up on the boards, you can use more tape or rubber bands to hold it. I don't always have the time to baste my quilts all in one go, this way I'm half way there and I don't have to leave my quilt out on the dining room table (which is the best place to baste in my house).

To see more on board basting, click here for pin basting or click here for spray basting.


I'm linking up today with Free Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday and A Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday.








Color Me Quilty!

Pat

Radiant Orchid - Pantone Color of the Year Quilt Challenge

The other day I stumbled upon the Pantone Color of the Year Quilt Challenge hosted by On the Windy Side and Play Crafts. This year's color is Radiant Orchid.

Of course, this is the actual Pantone swatch, so it doesn't exactly match my fabric, but I think it's pretty close.

My fabric is a pretty bright purple, hopefully close to the correct color.

 

 

 

Here is the start to my quilt, the first two blocks.

Each block is 28 inches square. I'm planning on six blocks.

Anyway, I'm kind of excited about this quilt - very graphic, I think.

I'm linking up with a Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday and Free-Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday.

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

The Wonder of Wonder Clips

The other day I purchased a box of Clover Wonder Clips. What a wonderful thing to use to hold your binding while sewing instead of pins - no pricks!

I'm quite pleased with how well this binding blends in with this 60-80 year old quilt. You can check out the story behind the quilt here. I think my grandmother would be thrilled to see that I'm finishing her quilt.

 I'm linking up with a Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday and Free-Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday.

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

The Start of a Casserole Carrier

A few weeks ago, when I was cleaning out my father's apartment, I came across my mom's casserole carrier. I'm not sure where she got it or if someone made it for her, but I remember her using it. It worked great. The only problem, it is seriously ugly!

So I decided that it would be easy enough to make a new one for myself in a bit more modern fabrics.  I figured that this would be a great project to practice quilting on my new machine. So I started making a prototype casserole carrier.

The back/inside of the carrier

I'm using Insul-bright and with another layer of Warm and Natural batting. If it turns out, I plan on writing up a tutorial for it and posting.

I'm linking up with a Quilt Story for Fabric Tuesday and Free-Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday.

Color Me Quilty!

Pat

QAYG - Quilt As You Go!

 On Sunday I did a little demonstration for my quilt guild (IMQG) on QAYG. I made up some samples to use to show three slightly different versions of the technique; narrow strips, wide sashing and adding borders. I didn't want to just throw the demo pieces in the scrap pile, so I'm making them into a new (and colorful) bed for my Humphrey (my corgi). Here's what the top of his bed looks like.

The orange strips are all joining strips, both the narrow and wide.

The back. The green strips are the joining strips.

I also created a PDF on each of the techniques. You can see and print a copy for yourself - click here.

I'm linking up with Stitch by Stitch for Anything Goes Monday (a day late),  and Free-Motion by the River for Linky Tuesday 

Color Me Quilty!

Pat