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 $3 almost-free-for-charity pattern with proceeds to support DS)
• A Free-Motion Quilting Success! (on how I FMQed the words on this quilt)

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

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• Post your finish in the linky tool. (No links to your own giveaway or linky, please!)
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MMM Quilts' Pop Star Quilt / Beauties Pageant 208

Quilty friends, it’s been a while! When I last posted, QuiltCon was in full swing. It was the third time I attended the Modern Quilt Guild's annual event, and the experience lived up to my expectations. Over the course of four days, I listened to some lectures, greeted quilters at the Quilt Pattern Mart booth, and caught up with friends from all over the world. 

And I came home, exhausted and on the brink of illness. : /

I was happy, then, to have this baby quilt, from MMM Quilts’ Pop Star, all basted and ready for some straight-line quilting. It was the perfect easy project to while away the time when I wasn’t feeling up to life as usual.

Pop Star is one of those rare star patterns that immediately catch my eye—I think it’s super unique! I also love that it’s a whole-composition quilt, as opposed to a block-based project, and that it comes together quickly with just a handful of fabrics. 

The trick here is to consider directionality and value: I steered away from fabrics with a strong sense of direction and made sure there was adequate contrast between the fabrics I used. It sounds like an easy order to fill, but the only fabrics from stash were the coral ladybugs and center-star polka dots. Everything else, including the looks-like-it-was-made-for-this-quilt binding fabric, came from my local quilt shop.

I’m always looking for baby quilt patterns to add to my repertoire. Needless to say, I will be making Pop Star again in the future! Do you have any thoughts on how I can change things up next time? My inclination is to repeat my approach with a white/off-white background, a midtone print for the large star, and darker tones for the middle star and exploding stars, but I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thank you in advance!

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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.

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Click here to enter