Yes, Another Economy Block Quilt! / Beauties Pageant 151

When I realized that my first economy block quilt (unveiled last week in this post) used more than 7 yards of stash and scraps, I started cutting a second. How could I resist? Culling through the Art Gallery fabrics I had on hand was a lot of fun. There were some fabrics I thought I would never find the right project for, but once I realized the sheer amount of eggplant, green, and peach in my Art Gallery stash, a palette quickly coalesced. And the results? Pretty, pretty, pretty!

I quilted last week’s finish with my walking foot, reasoning that it would be silly not to straight-line quilt a project whose seams offered the luxury of quilting without marking any lines. With this second project, though, I pulled out my darning foot for some stippling. The more I free-motion quilt, the more I like it—although I’d be lying if I said I were 100% satisfied with the results. (To be honest, though, I say the same about my straight-line quilting!)

I especially like the pieced back on this project. It combines some brand-new yardage with some well-aged fat quarters. That serene green, pictured above and below, is from Sharon Holland’s recent Lilliput collection. The owls, however, are from Maureen Cracknell’s Nightfall line, released in 2016. I could not bear to hack those beautiful creatures into smaller bits for piecing. They are the perfectly highlighted in this backing, though. (I actually won all of Nightfall in fat quarters. See what I made with the lion’s share from the bundle here.)

Between this quilt and last week’s finish, my stash is 15 yards lighter. I think that means it’s time to go fabric shopping. : )

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An Economy Block Finish / Beauties Pageant 150

The un-blogged-about, yet-to-be-photographed finishes are starting to pile up at From Bolt to Beauty world headquarters. It’s a good position for me, as a blogger, to be in, and I look forward to sharing a long string of finishes with you in the upcoming weeks!

Today I’m revealing an Art Gallery economy block quilt that I made as part of a guild challenge. (For details on the challenge and the tutorial I used to piece these blocks, see this post.) It’s a lovely throw-size project that busted through more than 7 yards of stash and scraps, and it is made of 100 percent Art Gallery prints and Pure Solids.

I had a lot of fun playing with these fabrics. Some of them, truth be told, were slated for destashing—I just couldn’t foresee using them in projects. In the end, however, even those questionable prints—including the hopscotch design and the tire swing fabric in the pictures above and below—were useful to the mix here.

This project is my favorite kind to sew. There are so many prints in it and no background fabric. The fun, then, is really in the fabric pull and seeing how the quilt comes together with the fabric I have on hand. (Plaid-ish is similarly fun. In fact, I hope to sew another one in the next few months.)

Although I couldn’t be happier with the results I achieved with this project, I’m pleased to send it out into the world. I’m getting to the point with quilts that I don’t feel the need to keep all of them. I mean, I have always gifted the majority of my projects, but I’m starting to realize that if I keep, say, five quilts each year, I’ll soon be bursting at the seams with quilts. A quick count tells me I have kept at least 20 quilts during my quilting career, received 3 others as gifts, and finished another 5 that will be gifted or sold in the near future. (Only one of the 20 keepers was completed this year: It’s the American flag Love Boldly I made during my quilt-along.)

This lovely is headed to a mini quilt show with my guild and then will be donated to charity. : )

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The Return of My Gypsy Wife Quilt / Beauties Pageant 149

In September, Leanne of Devoted Quilter launched a 100-day WIP challenge. There were three projects that she wanted to wrap up before the end of the year, and she decided that if she worked on them bit by bit over the course of 100 days, she’d likely accomplish her goal. After solidifying the schedule and lining up some prizes, she invited other makers—not only quilters, but anyone who stitches—to join her. 

I’m pretty good about not letting projects linger. There is one, however, that has become the crafty albatross around my neck: my Gypsy Wife quilt. I started my Gypsy Wife project back in 2018 with a group of guild mates. It’s not the most straightforward of projects—following the instructions requires more brain power than I expect to devote to a pattern, far more than I’d ever ask of people making my own patterns—and after a few focal blocks, I lost steam. Then, in 2019, I joined an online quilt-along and tackled many other blocks until the lack of a design wall, a problem that has since been remedied, hampered my ability to make smart fabric decisions. Could the last quarter of 2021 be the time I finish this beast of a project once and for all? I hope so!

One of the reasons I’d like to wrap up this quilt from my WIP list is that I’m using my stash of Bonnie and Camille fabrics to make it. B&C has a signature palette, and homing in on a subset of those colors makes the task of selecting fabrics more manageable, especially in a quilt top that requires many, many choices. I would like to make other quilts with all those B&C fabric, though. Gypsy Wife is the logjam.

As a first step in restarting this project, I arranged my completed blocks on my design wall and was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was further along than I had remembered. In fact, I started adding the long vertical strips to some of the completed blocks and already have 4 of the 10 sections fully pieced. This process has been so much fun that it’s been hard to return focus to the deadline-driven projects I have on my to-do list. Who would have guessed I’d be looking forward to chunks of time I can devote to Gypsy Wife?!

Thanks, Leanne, for the motivation to return to this project!

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An Ombre Jelly Roll Quilt / Beauties Pageant 148

Some quilts and fabrics just insist on getting together. Such was the case with my Ridiculously Easy Jelly Roll Quilt pattern and Vanessa Christenson’s Ombre Fairy Dust Metallic collection. I have zero need for a rainbow quilt in my life, but I really wanted to see how Ridiculously Easy would look in all those luscious ombre fabrics. Would I have been satisfied with mocking up the quilt in EQ7? Perhaps, but the Ombre Fairy Dust line includes 34 different fabrics. It seemed simpler just to sew the project!

I’ve made this pattern a bunch of times. This was the first time, however, that I was a super stickler for fabric placement so I could get that awesome color-gradation effect. I cut each of 29 jelly roll strips into four segments, per the pattern, which resulted in two dark and two light pieces of each color. Then I labeled those strips 1 through 29. I sometimes sew at night under artificial light, and without the labels, I would have struggled to differentiate between some of the colors.

In the top foreground chevron of my quilt top, I placed a dark rectangle of each color. The next two chevrons feature light rectangles, and the bottom one used the remaining dark segments. I also alternated the order in which I laid out the ombre fabrics. The result is that most of the warm oranges and reds live in the middle of each row, which I like. I used a dark navy as the background. I am slightly obsessed with orange and blue quilts, and with the warm colors concentrated in the center, the quilt almost seems more like a homage to that complementary combination instead of a rainbow quilt.

I chain-pieced to keep the project pieces organized. I sewed all the base units first, per the pattern. Then I added the end pieces to the tops of the base units. Next, and without cutting anything apart, I chained-pieced the end pieces to the bottoms. (Some strips didn’t require an end piece. I sewed them into the chain, too, just to keep them in the right order with everything else.) I should have taken a picture … All that fabric connected together looked like a hot mess when really the technique saved my sanity!

So, as I mentioned, I don’t need a rainbow quilt in my life, and to be honest, the dark background here, although lovely, is not practical with two Golden Retrievers in the house. I often gift quilts to friends, but I can’t think of anyone who would especially like this beauty. 

All of this is to say that I’m considering selling this quilt once it’s completed. I recently opened an Etsy shop without promoting it anywhere (I have all of two sales—I’m considering this iteration of my shop a soft opening while I get a few things straightened out!). In the past, I’ve been pretty against selling my quilts. I’m convinced the only people who would pay what a quilt is really worth is another quilter, and why pay several hundred dollars for something that you can sew yourself?

I welcome any and all advice on this front—on selling quilts in general and on selling through Etsy in particular.

PDF and print versions of Ridiculously Easy are available through my Etsy shop.

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