Pivot! Pivot! / Beauties Pageant 328

I can’t use the word "pivot" without thinking of the episode of Friends when Ross convinces Rachel and Chandler to carry a couch up flights of stairs to his apartment. (Spoiler alert: Things do not end well for the couch.) The story I’m about to tell you about pivoting, however, features neither furniture nor nineties TV-show plot lines ...

 

I started a new project! After finishing four baby quilts for charity, I thought I deserved to embark on something new, despite the small pile of WIPs staring me down each day. I chose Stara, a pattern by Taralee Quiltery because I had already purchased the corresponding acrylic templates from Cut Once Quilts back in 2025. 

 

I planned to use some black Starry scraps for the spiky triangles (see them in the full design here), leftover Ruby Star basics for the nine-patches, and white-on-white Punch Hole Dots from my stash. Are you picking up on the theme here? All the fabric was from my stash or scrap bin, and everything was Ruby Star. What could go wrong?

 

I started with piecing the white background with spiky Starry triangles and, after an hour or two of sewing, realized Something Very Bad was happening. Because of my light background and the sharp angles of the triangles, the black Starry would show through my pressed seams. 

 

In the past, I haven’t realized comparable shadowing issues until the project at hand was quilted. In other words, it was too late to address the issue. I knew I wouldn’t be pleased with my finished Stara, so I pivoted. My order for different background fabrics should arrive on Monday.

 

Often a snafu like this one would call for a time-out—I would need a break from the problematic project. The issue with placing a quilt top in process into time-out, though, is that it will most likely become just another WIP. To maintain the momentum I had built up for Stara, I persevered with the nine-patches. Playing with colorful fabrics did my heart good, and I made good progress while waiting for the new background options to arrive. Phew—background-fabric crisis and potential WIP averted!

 

Are you able to pivot mid-project like that, or are you more of a time-out kind of quilter?

 

Also, something else I’m curious about ... The Starry scraps were from wideback yardage. I know that fabric manufacturers use different gray goods to produce widebacks and that widebacks tend to shrink more than standard-width quilting cottons, so I treated these scraps with Retayne, a color fixative, and dried them on high. Have you ever used wideback for piecing? Please share your insight in the comments!

 

As for the other quilt of mine with shadowing issues, it was my own design: Set to Spin. I was able to come up with a workaround for that particular pattern, but I noticed the problem too late in the process to save my sample. Of course, you don’t notice the shadowing unless you’re curled up with the quilt ...

 

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One Weekend, Two Quilt Shows / Beauties Pageant 327

In general, there are not that many big quilt shows in New England. This is disappointing on many levels—first, because this area was once a hub for textile production and, second, because I live in Massachusetts and it’s nice not to have to trek states away to hang out with a quilty crowd! Last weekend, however, there were two quilt shows happening simultaneously. 

On Wednesday, American Quilt Society (AQS) opened its first-ever show in Hartford, CT. By the time the show started, however, I was already beat! I had trekked down the day before to help my friend Taz set up her Camberville Threads booth in the vendor hall. I cannot express how much physical labor this was. We pushed and pulled and lifted so many bins of fabric, and man, fabric is heavy.

But the effort was well worth it. It was a joy to hang out with Taz and watch quilters interact with the collection of fabric and notions she has curated. (Camberville Threads is an online retail shop, so seeing it as a physical store was a treat that happens only at shows like this.) From Bolt to Beauty was well represented in the booth, too. Five of my designs were displayed, alongside my book, Not-Your-Typical Jelly Roll Quilts, and the complete line of printed FBTB patterns.

There were also, of course, quilts hanging at the AQS show. I had time to visit some of them. The modern section was QuiltCon in miniature, and I was delighted to see work by Audrey Esarey, Betsy Vinegrad, and Susan Braverman displayed at the show with ribbons. (The full list of winners can be found here.)

Then I headed back to Massachusetts for a day to recuperate before venturing north to the New England Quilt Expo in Manchester, NH. There I taught Five-Star Experience, the cover quilt from my book, as a three-hour workshop. 

It was a great teaching experience! Because students received their books the day of the class, I started our time together with a mini trunk show, looking at many of the book projects and explaining how my take on jelly rolls differs from other patterns out there. Then we segued to the talking about the challenges of working with jelly rolls—including those annoying pinked edges—and how to overcome them. Finally, we started on our own throw- or baby-size version of Five-Star Experience.   

Would you believe that I headed back to Connecticut on Saturday for another day of vending with Taz and then breaking down the booth? It’s true!

A big thank-you to everyone who made the effort to seek me out at either show. I saw guildmates I didn’t expect to run into and quilty friends from way back when. I even got to meet one blog friend—Kathleen from Kathleen McMusing—in real life! 

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A Happy (Patriotic) Accident / Beauties Pageant 326

Ideas for my quilt designs spring out of all sorts of situations. Sometimes, I see something—in nature or architecture—and immediately identify the kernel of a quilt project. So I take a picture and file the idea away for a future design session. Other times, I sit down with a particular objective in mind—I want to use up a bundle of fabric or create a project with a specific theme—and that gets my brain going in one direction or another. 

On two occasions, however, I have set out to design an American flag quilt, and both times I failed. I chased multiple ideas in these sessions, but the results were not compelling enough for me to pursue. There are a lot of great patterns for American flag quilts already, and the ideas I came up with didn’t bring anything new to the table.

Both times, however, I realize that I had already designed an American flag quilt. Here are the details ...

Accidental Patriotic Quilt: Love Boldly

Years ago, inspired by one of my older son’s t-shirts and motivated by a QuiltCon stripes challenge, I designed Love Boldly. I love Love Boldly’s bright, oversize hearts sitting against a white background. I finished my sample quilt by quilting a giant X through the center of the quilt top and then echoed in each of those quadrants. 

You can imagine my surprise when I looked at the pattern a few weeks before its scheduled release and saw the stripes of the American flags in its lines. A quick mock-up in EQ8 verified my suspicion: There was a flag hiding in those hearts!

At first, this patriotic flag heart existed as a bonus block to the Love Boldly pattern. But over time, it became more popular than the original, so I spun it off into its own pattern, calling it Patriotic Love Boldly. There may not be a huge market for heart quilts, but there is definitely demand for patriotic hearts on quilts.

Accidental Patriotic Quilt: Twin-Star Cabins

I was certain this accidental-design phenomenon was a fluke. Then it happened a second time.

With the 250th anniversary of the ratification of the Declaration of Independence coming this summer, I was once again thinking of patriotic quilts. I played around with a paper and pencil but couldn’t develop anything unique.

Then, once again, I considered an existing pattern: Twin-Star Cabins. This design, released earlier this year, is built upon stars. All it took was a blue-and-red fabric collection—I chose Sweetwater’s Independence Day—to transform Twin-Star Cabins’ Ruby Star-studded original ...

into a patriotic quilt ... 

I have heard quilters talk about the upcoming 250th anniversary and express an interest in patriotic quilts. Have you heard any buzz along those lines? I’m going to compile a list of patriotic quilt patterns. If you have a favorite—something you’ve already sewn or have on your quilty bucket list—let me know!

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• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
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Click here to enter