Monthly Archives: October 2018
Wonderland – Finished
Doesn’t it feel good to finish a quilt you’ve had sitting around for a long time? This Wonderland quilt, named for its Alice in Wonderland vibes, had been sitting in a pile of unfinished quilt tops for three years. It wasn’t until the beginning of this year that I finally decided to tackle it.
My Wonderland quilt uses Denyse Schmidt New Bedford fabric surrounded by a black and white checkboard pattern, which is what reminds me so much of Alice in Wonderland.
I mentioned in an earlier blog postthat I started with the New Bedford fabric centerpieces and the quilt kept growing from there. To get the New Bedford fabric and the checkerboard all looking centered and evenly distributed, the quilt kept getting bigger and bigger. It’s not the size I planned on but I’ll take it. I rarely make quilts this big so I think it’s good to have some larger quilts in my collection.
The reason this quilt took so long to finish is because the large size made me take longer than normal to choose the right quilt back.
I had the main piece of fabric I wanted to use for the back – a large cut of Liberty of London pink floral – but I knew I needed something more.
After digging through my stash, I realized that Sleeping Porch fabric by Heather Ross would work well.
Now the back has a little corner of Sleeping Porch fabric that I quite like.
The binding on this quilt is also Denyse Schmidt and is from one of her old collections she did with Joann Fabric.
It feels pretty satisfying to have this quilt finally done. And I like it so much I’m even using it on my own bed.
Now I’m just working on getting the right pink shams to make the bed complete.
County Fair
Confession: My favorite part about going to the fair is the food. I should probably say I like going to the quilt exhibit to see all the entries and who won, but let’s be honest. Those mini donuts that come out greasy and hot and covered in cinnamon and sugar…to die for.
But anyway, back to quilts.
Today’s quilt is aptly named County Fair for the photo location, and because it is made with Kinder fabric by Heather Ross. And kids + the fair go hand-in-hand.
I was at my parents’ house in Iowa recently and skipped on over to the county fairgrounds to snap some pictures. Sadly, I wasn’t there during the fair so I couldn’t get any of those mini donuts, but it did offer some good photo options.
This quilt pattern is super easy. As I was making the blocks I posted the below picture to Instagramand someone asked what the block pattern was. All it is are nine squares-in-squares sewn together to make a block. Easy breezy.
I was a bit hesitant to use the Kinder fabric for this pattern because Kinder has some larger-scale prints and once you cut them up you lose them, but I had this specific pattern idea for Kinder in my head and couldn’t shake it. So I did what I wanted and made it!
I was able to make this quilt using a fat quarter bundle, but it can easily be scaled up or down.
I spent quite a bit of time laying out my fabrics and deciding which ones to pair together and where to put the blocks so that the color was evenly distributed.
I even went so far as to use an Excel document to fill squares in with color so I could easily visualize how it would look. If you don’t have any fancy design programs, Excel can get the job done if you just want to see color placement.
The back of this quilt is scrappy, like most of my quilt backs are.
It uses the limited edition strawberry print from Heather along with some Kona Cotton Baby Pink and a small piece of Windham’s Artisan Cotton in green. I have a lot of yardage of that strawberry print so you can expect to see that again.
This quilt is perfect for a kid, or a kid at heart. But that’s kind of how I feel about most of Heather’s fabrics.
P.S. In case you missed it, I made a Kinder quilt for Heather’s look book last year. You can check it out here. It’s a crib quilt and kind of improv with a lot of curves and even some applique.
Eastham – Finished
After a summer off from blogging, I’m back with some new projects I’ve been working on the past few months. I’ve finished quite a few quilts this summer and I’m excited to finally share all of them.
First up is my Eastham quilt, named for the Denyse Schmidt fabric used in it.
I’ve been hanging onto this quilt top since 2016 trying to decide/wait for the perfect backing fabric to match with it. I finally found it in Anna Maria Horner’s Little Folks voile. I love this fabric so much and the color goes so well with Eastham.
This is my first time using voile fabric for a quilt back and I am 100 percent on-board. It is so silky smooth and lightweight, and was a dream to quilt with.
If you look closely at the picture, you can see that I did circles in a variety of sizes for the quilting. I was kind of stumped on how to quilt it, and I had never done circles, so circles it was!
The binding on this quilt is some very old Amy Butler Midwest Modern I had in my stash. It goes perfectly with both Eastham and Little Folks, and I am so happy that I was able to use fabric from three of my favorite fabric designers in one quilt.
By the way, a note about the photo location of this quilt since it’s obviously not taken in Brooklyn: These pictures were taken in North Dakota and that’s the Missouri River in the background. I was there spending some time with family last week and I never miss an opportunity to bring a quilt along when I travel for some new photo locations.
That’s a wrap on this quilt. Stay tuned to the blog for lots more new projects. Or, you can always find me on Instagram, where I try to post more frequently about stuff I’m doing and working on.
