A Scrap- and Stash-Busting Finish / Beauties Pageant 79

Last week’s post, which I intended to be snarky/funny, ended up more grumpy/grumpy. Since then, I have rallied, friends. I needed a win, and I got one! In the past week, I quilted and bound my Farmhouse Chic quilt ...

This project ate up a chunk of scraps. The bits that set the palette are the peach and green floral from Rifle Paper Co.’s Les Fleurs line (see it on the left in the picture below). At a guild meeting years ago, a friend generously offered scraps of that print. I took home a lot of it, almost all in thin strips. I got serious about putting those strips to use when I found this Cluck Cluck Sew block tutorial (read my initial post here). I supplemented the Rifle Paper print with Denyse Schmidt fabrics, a few solids, and assorted low-volumes. As with all of my scrap projects, I pulled as much as I could from my scrap bin before supplementing with yardage.

The resulting quilt top skewed a little more traditional than I usually go and was asking for a simple, nonlinear quilting design. I took the opportunity to try my hand at stippling, which isn’t an option for my more modern projects, again. I stippled my first quilt top back in February. That baby quilt needed a small-scale quilting design. With Farmhouse Chic, I went a bit larger. I focused on smooth curves, clean stops and starts, and an even-ish stitch length. I grade my quilting as a solid B, even though I pulled the quilt off the machine only when something especially ugly happened.

I came to modern quilting through the Denyse Schmidt door, and I tend to keep projects that rely heavily on her fabric collections for myself. I am hoping to accumulate four or five finished quilts, however, and then give a friend her pick of the lot, so this finish isn’t automatically mine. We’ll see whether I stick to that plan. : )

That begs the question: What percentage of the quilts you make do you keep for yourself? I did a quick count of my projects since I started quilting back in 2013. I have made at least 65 quilts and have kept about a quarter of them. I hold on to almost all of those that are my original designs, especially the ones that have been shown publicly, and those that showcase my favorite designers (Basic Grey, Kate Spain, Denyse Schmidt, etc.).

What’s your best estimate? How many of your projects find their forever home at your house?

Linking up to Needle and Thread Thursday and Oh Scrap! ...

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• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

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Desperate for a Finish / Beauties Pageant 78

Buy the Warm and Cool Coin Quilt pattern here! 

The longer I stay quarantined at home with my family, the more haphazard my sewing to-do list becomes. At first I was all business, prepping tops to pass onto a longarmer and cutting new projects to sew. Six weeks into the stay-at-home advisory, however, my sewing room has become a free-for-all. With my family here all the time and me at the beck and call of two school-age sons, peace is hard to come by and I can’t seem to finish anything.

(This is no exaggeration. One day last week, my morning shower was interrupted by my fifth-grader, who barged in demanding to know whether sixty seventy-fifths equals three fourths. Can no one spare me a few moments of quiet? Do I not deserve a shower free of math problems? Was that issue so pressing it could not wait another five minutes? And no, they are not equal!)

Case in point: my twin-size Warm and Cool Coin Quilt. This is the pattern I’ve been working on. It’s been tech-edited. It’s been sewn by a group of testers. But it limps along to the finish line in a world where I don’t leave my house (for, say, a cover-photo shoot) and my family runs the show (even when I’m in the shower).

My original version, in the lap size, was sewn from a single fabric line, Kate Spain’s Canyon ...

The second is the first bed-size quilt I’ve made in years. It was fun playing with all the blue and orange fabrics, and I love the effect of the variations in value—that’s what makes this version interesting to me. Plus, sewing it wiped out good chunks of my blue and orange scraps. : )

I have to admit, though: Handling a twin-size quilt is a bigger pain than my usual lap-size quilts. Pressing it was annoying, I’m still wrestling the backing for it, and my husband could barely hold it up for an impromptu photo.

I bring this up because I haven’t been making the best decisions lately, and I set my mind to sewing a king-size quilt for my guest bedroom. (The quilt pattern is Robin Pickens’ Hopscotch Happy, which I plan to sew with Kate Spain’s Grand Canal collection.)  And I’m committed . . . I already have fabric coming from Nebraska and the UK for the project. After this twin-size project, though, the thought of working with a huge quilt top makes me want to curl up in fetal position. What advice do those of you who piece large projects have for a king-size newbie?

On a completely unrelated note . . . Did you notice the photo bomber in the picture at the top of the post? The dog won’t give me a moment’s peace, either!

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Easy-Peasy Quilt Pattern / Beauties Pageant 77

Back in 2015, I declared war on my stash of jelly rolls. Those lovely spirals of 2.5-inch strips were too much for me to resist, and I had accumulated more than I cared to admit. To use up my jelly roll of Basic Grey’s Evergreen line, I designed an easy quilt pattern and posted the corresponding tutorial here on From Bolt to Beauty.

This pattern, my Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt, quickly became the most popular page on the site and continues to be so, year after year. Maybe other quilters, like me, have a jelly roll to use up, or maybe they are pulled in by the promise of an easy quilt pattern, I don’t know!

In any event, that tutorial has been transformed into a full pattern that includes instructions for five sizes (child, lap, twin, queen, king) and two design options, as well as tips for getting the best results sewing long columns. To learn more or to purchase your own copy, visit my Etsy shop.

I know I have at least one more Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt in me, and I have my sights set on a jelly roll of Kate Spain’s Solstice collection—the last jelly roll in my stash. I may host a casual quilt-along on that front. I’ll keep you posted.

In the meantime, what have you been working on? If you can boast a quarantine-time finish, please add it to the linky below!

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The pageant rules are simple:

• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
• Point your readers back here with a text link or use the button above.
• Visit and comment on other participants’ finishes.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter