more tutorials than you can shake a stick at
Link to Valori Wells: Solé pattern
Link to Lady Harvatine: In the True Spirit of Whiplash
Thorough and well-illustrated tutorial on English Paper Piecing at Sunshine’s Creations.
Other tutorials at her site:
This is my first quilt ever, based on a pattern by Jan Mullen. My mom taught me some of the basics of quilting in the two weeks I spent with her after my grandmother’s death. It was very healing for both of us. I was able to finish this and give it to mom before I went home.
The backing fabric is my favorite fabric ever, and sadly, long out of print.
At our favorite quilt store, if you go in on your birthday, you get a discount equal to 1/2 your age. Mom got a 31% discount today–you do the math.
Mom bought me this lovely fabric by Valori Wells (whose name I always have to delete an ‘e’ from.) It’s pre-cut as a kit to make this quilt, but we couldn’t afford the pattern too, so I’ll have to wing it.
I found another, free pattern downloadable from Free Spirit Fabric (the same fabric manufacturer) that may do the trick.
As I said in the last post, I was really drawn to the colors used for the yoyos. Here is a small hawaiian wall hanging I made several years ago as proof:
A close look will reveal I never finished the breadfruit leaves, but I bound it anyway. Maybe one day I’ll finish it.
OK, I’m gonna have to become friends with Liz (aka Lady Harvatine), as she makes be-yoo-ti-ful quilts for the people she likes. This design was inspired by a quilt by Denyse Schmidt.
Lady Harvatine: Done and done.
The design takes full advantage of the two things I love most about
DSQ: #1, irregularity and the appearance of randomness in shapes and
placement and #2, the use of a neutral color as a background as opposed
to an all over design. And now that I’m on the subject I’ve thought of
another: #3, choosing a very high percentage of solid fabrics over
patterned ones. I really love the clean, modern look that you can
achieve this way. It makes the design really prominent and also makes
the few patterns that you do use really stand out. For this quilt I
used all solids except for one plaid for some of the stripes and a
flowered vintage-looking print for the backing.The design isn’t
totally random. I tried to work out how many stripes of each color I
would need and in which widths and lengths to keep it somewhat
balanced. I used the same number of each on either side and simply laid
them out randomly on the floor along with white strips of different
widths. I rearranged one or two stripes but was quite happy with my
initial “random” layouts.
this pretty quilt top using amy butler fabrics was recently posted on flickr by rose (is red). lovely.
Originally uploaded by rose (is red).
Here is my mom with a quilt top she made from a class with Maura Grogan at the Quilter’s Market. It’s part of a set of four, three of which we have given as gifts. (‘We’ meaning, I did a little bit of the quilting and all of the binding.)
This was a kit we got from Quilter’s Market–our favorite local quilt store –at their monthly ‘strippers club’. It’s called Gypsy Rose. (The kit is for sale here.)
This quilt and the one before it (and my very first quilt, picture to come) are all loosely based on a pattern from Cut Loose Quilts by Jan Mullens of Stargazey Quilts. Jan has some wonderful free patterns here, and is well known for her wacky, wonky style, and forgiving piecing methods.
My second quilt ever:
I’ve taken some bad pictures of a few of my quilts, thinking that at this point bad pictures are better than no pictures. This is one of my early quilts, and is called: “Am I Blue?” This was my first attempt at hand quilting–before this I had only tied quilts.
Mango Mood–Hand dyed cottons, fused, hand and machine quilted. 8.75″x19.5″
by Melody Johnson at Fibermania
It doesn’t get much more spectacular than this!
Material Obsession: Circling Swallows
This is just the prettiest, most feminine quilt I’ve seen in a long time. So different than the colors or patterns I would use, but absolutely wonderful! It’s very tempting to step outside the box and make something like this.
I’ve become a daily reader of the wonderful women over at Material Obsession… Fabulous job Sarah!
