Tag Archives: beginning quilt pattern

It’s a Mystery

piecing, quilting, ,

IMG_20151029_111445741Here it is.  Piles of pieces, which my local quilt club, Midland Quilters Squared, tells me will become a quilt suitable to be shown in their show next spring.  This is my first mystery quilt experience, and I have some doubts.  This could be in part because my edges aren’t exactly even.   What is this?

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And how about this?IMG_20151029_111513501

There will obviously have to be some fudging involved.  I can’t very well start fudging until I get the gist of what is to come, though.  It is called “The Cat’s Meow”, so some of you may have knowledge of the pattern.  I stuck with plain fabrics in case there are actually cats involved, thinking I can dress it up with quilting.  Now you see why I am not crazy about traditional quilting.  I’d say I may not be very good at it.

I’ll show you my vintage quilt rescue progress in my next post.  That was so badly pieced that I will again feel good about my skills.

Meanwhile, feel free to send me your best piecing tips in the comment section.

A “Simple” Quilted Wall-Hanging

Free-motion quilting, machine embroidery, quilt design, , ,

SimpleThings quilt

The second project completed while passing the winter in South Carolina, is the above quilt, inspired by the shaker tune, “Simple Gifts”, as well as by the fabric seen below.

simple fabric

“Simple Gifts”

‘Tis a gift to be simple,

‘Tis a gift to be free,

‘Tis a gift to come down where you ought to be.

And when you find yourself in a place just right,

’twill be in the valley of love and delight.

The quilt top was pieced very randomly, to demonstrate the concepts of freedom and joyfulness, using this fabric with coordinating solids.  I chose to call it “Simple Gifts from the Valley of Delight”.

After completing the top, some machine embroidery was added, to delineate fantasy flowers, and to add a different “gift” word to each of the print squares.  I wished the appearance of the words to be subtle, so that the viewer would have to seek them out, much as in life,  we need to be watching for the presence of these gifts in order to recognize them when they occur.  Below is a close-up of one of the squares, that shows the word “joy”.

IMG_201Simple Square close50130_112630

Finally, the quilt sandwich was built, and I had the pleasure of adding the free-motion quilting,  This was a fun quilt, Put together in recognition of the generosity of a brand new friend, who seems to always put the needs of others before her own, and who told me to use whatever colors inspired me, as there is no color which would not be welcome in her home.

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Teaching a Friend to Quilt

quilting, Uncategorized,

IMG_20140220_151303644 copy

Soon after becoming serious about quilting, myself, a friend asked for assistance in making a queen-size quilt for her bed. This sounded pretty daunting to a beginner, but after a little research we came up with the method shown above.

We created 10 inch squares using randomly cut strips. (No piecing to cut!) We then added a layer of batting and quilted each square in 3/4 inch lines. Using the number of squares she desired to create the size she wanted, we laid the squares out in a pleasing pattern, then stacked them up, labeling the rows for assemble. We sewed the squares into vertical rows, then began to assemble. She chose a queen-size sheet in white as her backing and we folded it in half vertically and ironed it, to find the center. We then placed the center vertical row in relation to the center line, turned it face down, and stitched from the center to the edge of the quilt in each direction, to attach it to the backing. In this manner, working from the center out, we attached each row in succession. We were then able to turn the whole thing over and do a bit of extra quilting by stitching in the ditch from the center out. (Not a lot is required, as the batting is already well attached, but at least you will want to go between the blocks horizontally.) Once again, we had to work from the center out. We finished with a traditional binding in the green polka-dot print.

My friend assembled pillowcases and decorator pillows from remnants and was pleased and excited by her very first quilting experience!