Quilt Retreat Success / Beauties Pageant 217

Earlier this month, I traveled to Kennebunk, Maine, to retreat with the New Hampshire Modern Quilt Guild, a group I’ve been a member of since 2014. We try to retreat twice a year, once in the spring and once in the fall, and although we’ve had fun sewing in middle-of-nowhere New Hampshire and Cape Cod, the Maine coastline is my favorite retreat location. We spent the weekend sewing in a huge gymnasium with tons of natural light, only breaking to grab some food or walk down to the beach. 

 

 

I had cut and organized six different projects in preparation for the trip to Maine and, in the end, touched only three of them. That was fine with me—it’s always better to have too much than too little to do when you’re sewing away from home.

 

I dedicated the bulk of my time sewing Pineberry, a pattern by Pen and Paper Patterns. Ignoring my own advice to read patterns through carefully before leaving for retreat, I managed to make several silly mistakes right off the bat. But I pushed through, unsewing and resewing when necessary. I’ll share some Pineberry blocks once I have a few fully sewn.

 

The rest of my weekend was spent finishing my Brightly top (pattern by Cluck Cluck Sew; see the second picture above) and snowballing star points for Patchwork Sky (pattern by Thimble Blossoms; see the first picture above and the one below). The momentum I had built with Patchwork Sky served me well, and I’ve nearly completed the top since returning from Maine.

 

All in all, it was a fun weekend away with friends—we shopped for fabric, caught up with friends, drew inspiration from the projects being sewn around us. I look forward to finishing these projects up and showing you the bound quilts!

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My Secrets to a Fast Finish / Beauties Pageant 216

I am perfectly capable of sewing complicated quilt patterns (anyone remember my Gypsy Wife?!), but there is a special place in my heart for the fast finish. Sometimes the thrill of a particular project is in the challenge of learning a new technique or pushing myself out of my comfort zone. More often than not, however, I find joy in the initial fabric pull. And the more fast finishes I have, the more projects I can sew, and the more fabric pulls I need, right?

My own Irish Twist pattern has become one of my go-to designs when I’m seeking a fast finish. In essence, this pattern is an Irish chain quilt, but thoughtful fabric placement, a whole-composition design, and accommodations for directional fabric bring this beauty into the 21st century.

I made the quilt-making process speedier by sending the project to a longarmer. At 63 inches by 78 inches, this quilt top was bigger than what I like to tackle with my domestic. Plus, the piecing is all squares, and the swirly pantograph I selected softens those lines. (I especially like how the swaths of solid fabric accentuate the quilting design.) And then I machine-finished the binding, because it’s faster than finishing by hand! (Click here for my technique for binding quilts.)

The majority of this quilt top—and every inch of the back—is Heirloom, an old collection by Joel Dewberry for Free Spirit. The back, in particular, was a triumph in using up yardage and scraps. My approach to piecing backs is cut and insert: First, I squared up what remained of that large-scale floral and cut it length-wise. Then I inserted the paisley fabric. The resulting back wasn’t long enough, so I cut it horizontally and inserted that row of squares. (For more on my standard recipe for quilt backs, click here.)

I really enjoyed sewing with Heirloom after all these years of admiring it from afar. And often, that’s enough for me. I got to play with those vibrant colors and transform them into a practical item; I don’t need to keep this quilt for myself. In fact, it’s being donated as part of my guild’s charity efforts. : )

Psst ... A Free Pattern

Meet my Double-Sided Diamond Quilt, a beauty that debuted on Moda Bake Shop forever ago. From one layer cake (and some background and accent fabric), I sewed the big diamonds on the front and the cascade of diamonds on the back.

A newly designed PDF pattern of the Double-Sided Diamond Quilt will go out free to newsletter subscribers later this month. Want to join in? Sign up here. 

If you’re not into newsletters, no worries! The pattern will become part of the Almost Free For Charity series in my Etsy shop. That means you’ll be able to buy it for a too-good-to-be-true price, with proceeds going to charity. No newsletter subscription necessary.

Linking up to Favorite Finish at Meadow Mist Designs ...

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Quilty Retreat Prep / Beauties Pageant 215

My guild’s annual spring retreat happens next week in Maine, and I’ve been getting ready for the event for the past few weeks. I approach retreats as more guild socials/sweat shops. I do a lot of catching up with friends and go out for all my meals. When I’m at my machine, I’m go-go-go—it’s more of a time to make progress on many projects and less about tapping into the collective creativity around me.

That being said, I pack several projects, knowing full well I won’t touch them all—the variety helps me make the most of my away-from-home sewing time. My retreat projects generally fall into one of three categories: fast finishes, marathons, and challenges.

Fast finishes are projects that I can bang out in less than a day (think baby quilt tops) or those that are far enough along that I can wrap them up quickly. Checking a fast finish off my list helps propel me into another project. For example, my Brightly blocks (pictured at the start of the post) are completely pieced; I just have to assemble the rows and then sew them into the top. Brightly will come together quickly at the retreat. And my Patchwork Sky (pictured below) is well on its way. I still have to do some piecing, but then it will be smooth run to the finish line.

Marathons are those that require a lot of mindless chain piecing. I won’t start and complete one at retreat, but I can make good progress on several. So, when I’m bored of snowballing a hundred pieces for one project, I can move on to sewing the nine-patches for another. I have three of these ready to go: Legendary (by Elizabeth Hartman), Pineberry (by Pen and Paper Patterns), and my own Irish Twist.

A challenge or two helps keep things interesting. I have prepared many blocks from the Bonnie and Camille Quilt Bee Sampler to that end. It’s not that these are hard blocks; they’re all different and will require some effort from me to sew. I cut everything and bagged the components for each block in a separate plastic bag. When I want to work on something interesting while on retreat, this is the project I’ll reach for.

All of that aside, I think the most important thing for me to do in preparation is to read through each pattern, make sure I will have everything I need on hand, and cut out all the fabric in advance. After a few days of socializing and staying up later than I should, it’s best—for me and for my projects—that I steer clear of my rotary blade!

Do you have any advice from your own retreat experiences? I welcome the wisdom!

 

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My First Quilt / Beauties Pageant 214

Leanne Parsons, over at Devoted Quilter, launched a blog series where she interviews quilters about the first quilt they made. I was honored to be asked to participate! 

My story of how I came to modern quilting (through the Denyse Schmidt door!) is detailed on her site today. Check it out here, and then read the story of Leanne’s own first quilt, plus that of Laura Piland (Slice of Pi Quilts).

I wish you all a fabulous weekend, friends. Spring is in full swing here in New England, and it’s getting harder to stay inside and sew. May you end the week with a little fun inside and outside. : )

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Putting Free Fabric to Good Use / Beauties Pageant 213

I entered a guild meeting one month last year to find the tables covered in free fabric. A fellow guildmate was destashing boxes and boxes from her collection, and she thought it would be fun to let the guild take what it wanted.

I felt as if I were 10 years old again and walking into Christmas morning! My guildmates and I dug through the piles, discovering treasures and encouraging each other to take more and more fabric. I left with an armful of yardage, including Joel Dewberry’s Heirloom line in a beautiful citrusy palette. (Heirloom is long out of print, but I found it on Etsy, FeelGood Fibers, and Lark Cottons.)

When it came time to sew these prints into a quilt, I quickly homed in on Irish Twist, my take on a traditional Irish chain quilt. Most of the Heirloom I had was in half-yards, but I also had two larger cuts, and between the quilt top and back, I thought I could bust through almost all of it.

Irish Twist is a whole-composition design, and the larger sizes are made by cutting the pieces bigger, not by adding more blocks. This means I needed a plan for fabric placement before I started sewing, and I chose a fun way to audition the prints ...

The design requires cutting two sizes of squares. Before cutting all the fabric, I cut enough of the smaller size squares and laid them out on point to mimic what the quilt top would look like.

There is a coloring page in the pattern, but I’m not much of a coloring page girl. And this method is more effective, I think. Plus, because I cut the squares in the size I’ll use for the quilt top, I’m not wasting anything, just putting those squares to good use before I sew them up!

I made a few tweaks, cut out the remaining fabric, and started sewing. This project is at the longarmer right now. I expect to get it back soon and can’t wait to show you the finished quilt and pieced back! 

I am a fan of variations on Irish chain quilts. If you’ve encountered an interesting version, let me know!

And by the way, I am a member of the New Hampshire Modern Quilt Guild. We’re a super welcoming crowd, love fun monthly programming, and retreat together twice a year. If you’re in southern New Hampshire (or, like me, northern Massachusetts), come visit us!

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Another Plaid-ish Quilt / Beauties Pageant 212

I am always on the lookout for scrap-busting quilt patterns, and perhaps the best one I’ve found is Erica Jackman’s Plaid-ish design. This pattern, free on her website, is brilliant both in its simplicity and in the amount of fabric it uses. Plaid-ish requires no background fabric—just scraps sorted into light, mid, and dark values—and finishes at 64 inches by 82 inches.

The challenge to tackling a Plaid-ish quilt starts with determining a palette. (Erica has a less-structured approach to pulling fabric for this design. Check out her corresponding highlight on Instagram to learn more.) Because the largest cut piece in Plaid-ish is a 5-inch square and because Kate Spain is a master of color, I opened up a charm pack of her long-out-of-print Sunnyside as the basis for my quilt.

I took a stack of light and mid tones from Sunnyside and built from there. No orange was deep enough to be considered a dark value, but I uncovered plenty of purples, teals, and grays from my scraps and stash that fit the bill.

I did this initial fabric pull about a year ago and then set it aside, mainly because I had other priorities and wasn’t in a rush to finish the project. Plus, I couldn’t find enough of my chosen palette to make this large throw, and sometimes just waiting, and working through other quilts, creates more usable scraps. 

When I picked up this project again last month, I still didn’t have enough of the colors I needed. The solution was not to run to the fabric store and buy more—I simply enlarged the palette! And if you look closely at the picture at the top of the post, you’ll see my additions. They’re all mid and dark tones of raspberry that infuse the quilt top with a vibrant color other than orange. I think the quilt is better with them in it.

You can snag your own copy of Plaid-ish on Erica’s site (Kitchen Table Quilting) here. If you have other recommendations for patterns that similarly bust through fabric without relying on a background fabric, please share them in the comments below. Heaven knows I have the scraps and stash to use up! : )

P.S. This is my second Plaid-ish! Check out my original version here.

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Pageant Highlight Reel / Beauties Pageant 211

There’s nothing like the promise of a new project to get me through my current one. And since returning from QuiltCon, I’ve been chipping away at my WIPs, making such good progress that I’m considering what may be next.

I’ve long wanted to make a Pen and Paper Patterns quilt. (Right now, I’m eyeing Sparrow, Pineberry, and Book Nook. A new one—Hello Spring—releases later this month!) But past Beauties Pageants are influencing my to-make list, too ...

Anne-Marie, at Stories from the Sewing Room, recently finished her Chalk quilt. The two-color design, created by Cheryl Brickey, is one I was already familiar with. Seeing Anne-Marie’s completed project, with its made-for-this-project backing fabric, however, has me eyeing the larger cuts in my stash that I need to use up. If you have 4.25 yards of a solid on hand, this pattern may be up your alley, too!

A storm at sea quilt doesn’t appear on my quilty bucket list, but when I saw Karen’s Court Jester, a project that combines this traditional motif with a scrappy approach, I had to reconsider my position. I’ve seen other quilters rely on color gradations to achieve movement with storm at sea projects. The variations of color and value in Karen’s scrappy version (including those borders!) up the ante, making her creation something special. Head to Karen’s Quilts Etc. to see more of this project.

What from previous Beauties Pageants has your creative juices flowing? Let us know in the comments below!

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Diary of a Quilter's Square Deal / Beauties Pageant 210

Years ago, I bought a copy of Amy Smart’s Fabulously Fast Quilts. The book features 12 patterns that all use slick shortcuts to get to a finished quilt top faster. Although I’ve paged through the designs many times over the years, I only recently made one: the baby size version of Square Deal pictured here.

I love the bundle of Spectacle, by Christian Robinson for Cotton and Steel, that I picked up second-hand on Instagram, and its busy prints were the perfect foil for Square Deal’s simple piecing. Following Amy’s instructions, I stacked up fat quarters, cut them up into the required pieces, and mixed them up before sewing them together.

Originally, I used low-volume prints throughout the quilt top but, deciding the result was too busy for my taste, ripped them out of every other block and replaced them with a cream solid. Ah, yes—that’s much better. (See the quilt top before this fix here.)

I’m never sure what to do with fabrics like this hexagon print (would you consider it a panel?). I made the most of it, though, by framing it out with the fish fabric and using it on the back of the project. In the end, that use-it-up print has created a something-special quilt back. I love that! 

Fabulously Fast Quilts is long out of print, and now that its publisher, That Patchwork Place (an imprint of Martingale), has decided to close, that will not change. I’m happy to have it in my library, though: There aren’t any must-make designs in it, but its patterns are simple and timeless. I am sure to need it again in the future.

Do you have any quilting books like that on hand? I have some I have never made anything out of but still deserve a spot in my collection.

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The Extra X / Beauties Pageant 209

 

As many of you know, I have the privilege of raising a son with Down syndrome. This past week, on March 21, my family and I celebrated our special guy, along with the rest of the DS community, for World Down Syndrome Day.

I introduced the quilting community to my personal experience raising a child with special needs back in 2018, when I shared my 47XY+21 project. And, really, I thought that was the only quilt I would make on the subject. When I was designing the PDF pattern for my Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt, however, I realized that the blocks could be arranged to form an X, and that sparked an idea for a second quilt.

Down syndrome is caused by a genetic anomaly at conception (or very soon thereafter) that causes an extra chromosome on the 21st pair of a person’s chromosomes. Chromosomes are often depicted as Xs because they take on that shape during mitosis, so this quilt and the large X on it pay tribute to my son’s bonus chromosome.

I suspect that’s what many people who meet him first see: his disability and how that plays out in his life. But the message of this project is found in the quilting. In a process detailed here, I FMQed 20 different words and phrases over this 62-inch by 70-inch quilt:

• Son
• Brother
• Grandson
• Nephew
• Friend
• Neighbor
• Student
• Classmate
• Reader
  
• Explorer
• Comedian
• Animal lover
• Music lover
• Dancer
• Basketball player
• Bowler
• Mini-golfer
• Train aficionado
• Trick-show enthusiast
• Child of God
  

The quilting was my way of telling the world that you don’t have to look too hard to see that there’s much more to my son than his diagnosis. He’s a son, a brother, a friend, a student, and many other things that enrich both his life and the lives of those around him.

It’s important to me to shed light on what it’s like raising a child with special needs. I never would have self-selected for this challenge, but my son’s birth and diagnosis have been some of the best things to happen to me. Raising this child has changed me as a wife, a mother, and a person. And the world is a better place with my son in it. 

Related links:

• 47XY+21 (my first project about DS)
• Still Pretty Simple Jelly Roll Quilt pattern (a $2 almost-free-for-charity pattern with proceeds to support DS)
• A Free-Motion Quilting Success! (on how I FMQed the words on this quilt)

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