Gingiber's Merrily Quilt / Beauties Pageant 91

Back in March, I declared 2020 the Year of the Christmas Quilt. By that point in the year, I had planned five lap-size Christmas projects for using or gifting during the 2020 holiday season. For a lady who had sewn three Christmas quilts in the previous six years, five Christmas quilts in less than one year seemed like a lot!

The first was a version of Kate Spain’s Chalet pattern in Basic Grey’s Juniper Berry collection. I’m revealing the second finish—Gingiber’s Merrily pattern—today ...

Moda kitted the fabric for this free pattern years ago, but it wasn’t until a guildmate shared her completed quilt that I fell in love with it and hunted down the panel required to sew it.

This is the only panel I’ve ever purchased, and can you see why? Stacie Bloomfield’s illustrations are the sweetest—I could not resist! The penguins alone, shown at the top of the post, made the project worth my while, but Mr. Moose is pretty darn cute, too.

With the panel in my possession, I was able to locate the coordinating Merrily fabrics, all of which went out of print a few years ago. I was determined to use up all that I had bought, as you can see in the pieced backing for this project ...

I knew these Christmas critters merited a special quilting treatment, so I passed the top onto Seventh Heaven Quilting. This panto, from Urban Elementz, is called Winterfest.

As it turns out, two Merrily quilts can be made from one panel. So although this first one is done and will live with me and my family, a second one has been cut and is ready to sew.

If you’ve indulged in some Christmas in July sewing, I would love to see it. Please share it, along with any other recent finishes, in 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

Stealing from Peter to Sew for Paul / Beauties Pageant 90

One of my sewing goals this year is to decimate my stash of Denyse Schmidt fabrics. I love Denyse’s vintage-modern take on design—in fact, she’s the reason I got into quilting—but I need some turnover in my stash. So I picked out a few patterns I wanted to make, reasoning that I would be using up some of my favorite prints in a quilt or two that I’d keep for myself.

I introduced you to my first finish dedicated to realizing this goal—a baby-size Ship’s Ladder—a few weeks ago (see it here). Today I’m unveiling Ship’s Ladder quilt in the lap size ...

This pattern is also from Denyse, and I sewed it exclusively in her New Bedford collection, a line I bought back in 2015. I don’t think I’ve ever followed a quilt pattern to a tee as I did here—I even swiped the quilting plan from the pattern. But, hey, why mess with perfection? Denyse knows what she’s doing.

The problem with sewing with these DS fabrics in multiple projects simultaneously is that I find myself stealing from Peter to sew for Paul. For example, I wanted to use more of the black solid in this quilt but had already chopped it up for a version of Stepping Stones, by Blair Stocker of Wise Craft Quilts, that’s in process. Then, of course, I wished I had more of the New Bedford oranges to use in Stepping Stone. Alas, they were pieced into my two versions Ship’s Ladder.

Admittedly, I did scour the web to make some special DS purchases for these projects. These beauties—from Washington Depot, Eastham, and more—will flesh out the various color palettes I’m working with and provide yardage to make coordinating backings.

Are you a collector of DS fabrics? If so, what is your favorite line? I am inclined to say Hope Valley—the first line of fabric I ever bought in fat quarters—but a more accurate answer is whatever DS line I am sewing with at the moment. : )

To my fellow DS fans, here are some spots on Instagram and online to find her past collections:

• New Bedford fat quarters on Instagram for a great price SOLD
  
• New Bedford yardage at QuiltHome
• Ludlow and Washington Depot yardage at Olive Juice Quilts
• Fat quarters from many DS collections at Lark Cottons
• Franklin and Eastham yardage ($6.50/yard!) at City Quilter

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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

A Huge, Scrappy Finish / Beauties Pageant 89

Buy the pattern here! 

 

I haven’t made many bed-size quilts. Medium-ish throws—say, 55 inches by 65 inches—are my happy place. But when I designed my Warm and Cool Coin Quilt pattern, I knew I needed to tackle a twin-size version of it, just to see that bold diagonal line traverse a big quilt.

My go-to complementary colors are orange and blue—I just like the way orange brightens up blue!—so that’s where I headed in my scrap bin for this project. In all, piecing the top ate up over 3 yards of orange and blue scraps.

As you can see in the picture below, I used fabric from Cotton and Steel, Carolyn Friedlander, Anna Maria Horner, Denyse Schmidt, V and Co., and more. The soft gray background is Kona Shadow, and the darker gray binding is Kona Graphite.

The owner of my local quilt shop quilted this for me with a diagonal plaid pantograph. I love how the quilting design is linear but still softens the sharp vertical and horizontal lines of the coin stacks.

If you want to make your own scrappy coin quilt, my Warm and Cool Coin Quilt pattern is available in my Etsy shop.

And if you need more proof that I’m a serial orange-and-blue-quilt maker, check out these quilts from the FBTB archives ...

• Little Man in Blue and Orange
• Birds in Blue
• Little Lady #1

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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

Blogger Stuff and Pretty Pictures / Beauties Pageant 88

I have had multiple conversations with other bloggers lately about various issues we’ve encountered posting in the new Blogger interface and commenting on other people’s blogs. If you’re not a blogger, this post may not contain any helpful information for you. In that case, I’ve added a bunch of pretty pictures of my latest finish. It’s a baby-size Ship’s Ladder quilt in New Bedford fabric. Both the pattern and fabric are from Denyse Schmidt, and I’ll go into more detail about this quilt when I post its companion, a lap-size version of Ship’s Ladder, in the next few weeks.

 

Disclaimer

 

I hate dealing with the technical part of writing and maintaining a blog. Whenever I try to research an issue, I rarely get the cut-and-dry answer I’m hoping for (if I get any answer at all). That’s why I’m writing this post. And honestly, I am not in a position to advise anyone on such technical issues. In a past life I handled the production of the website of a national magazine—so I consider myself smarter than the average bear on this topic—but truly, I’m no expert. Consider yourself warned.

Problems Commenting

 

I’ve heard from friends that they’ve had problems commenting on my blog or others’ blogs. I recently had issues commenting from my iPhone using Safari. Even though I had signed on to Google, the comment form didn’t recognize that. I wrote my comment and submitted it anyway, without the browser acknowledging that I am Michelle @ From Bolt to Beauty, and nothing happened. The comment wasn’t published, and there was no indication it went to a moderator.

I did not research this issue. I simply downloaded the Chrome app to my phone and started using that instead of Safari. It worked like a charm. That fix has worked for friends who have had comparable issues—sometimes from their desktop, sometimes from their phone, sometimes using Safari, and sometimes not.

Paragraph Spacing in Bloglovin’

 

I started using the new Blogger interface a few weeks ago. I haven’t had any problems with it. I find it pretty intuitive, and I like how it allows me to search my past posts.

But I realized that, since transitioning to the new Blogger, my text was appearing differently in Bloglovin’ than it was on my blog . (By the way, I have a love-hate relationship with Bloglovin’. I love that I can read posts from my favorite blogs in one app. I hate that I can’t block followers who hawk inappropriate content.) I always return twice at the end of paragraphs to create a blank line between them, but those breaks were not reflected in Bloglovin’, which made for difficult reading. I looked at the code of my recent posts and realized that if I had a blank space after the ending punctuation of a paragraph and then returned twice, the blank line would successfully appear in Bloglovin’. Is that the most stupid workaround or what?  (The answer is yes, yes it is.)

Disappearing Posts

 

The latest issue I encountered was a blog post that simply disappeared. It existed in the list of posts in Blogger and I could find the corresponding comments in Blogger, but there was no content on the published post other than the title. Crud.

I’d like to blame this on the new Blogger interface, but I suspect I somehow caused this mishap. I had no backup of this post, but I was able to cobble the post back together by referring to the version that existed on Bloglovin’ (so there’s another brownie point for that app). Then I did something you Blogger users should do right now: I backed up my entire blog.

To back up a blog in Blogger, go to Settings. If you edit more than one blog as I do, make sure you’ve selected the one you want to back up. Scroll down to Manage Blog and select “Back up content.” Select download, and you’re golden. This action backs up posts, pages, and comments.

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Congratulations, you’ve reached the end of a rather boring blog post! If you have any Blogger words of wisdom to share, please do so in the comments. Kind words about Ship’s Ladder are also appreciated. : )

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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