It's Blogger's Quilt Festival Time - Cherry Blossom Quilt

Once again a huge thank you to Amy of Amy's Creative Side for organizing the Fall 2014 Blogger's Quilt Festival. You can submit nominations for two of your own quilts. It is a great way to share your work with others and to be eligible for some lovely prizes. Take a look at all of the registered quilts and then select three for Viewers' Choice category.  Nominations are open now and they close on October 31. You can start voting for your favourite quilts in all categories starting November 1. Voting closes on November 7 and the winners will be announced on November 8th!

I've entered two quilts and this is the second, Cherry Blossom. I wrote the pattern for my quilt and it is available free-of-charge under the tab Patterns by Karen H.  Cherry Blossom is entered in the Original Design Quilts category. The pinks and reds reminded me of cherry blossoms hence the name! 

This is a scrap quilt. Whenever I have some leftover 1 1/2" squares I use them as leaders and enders when I'm sewing. They get stitched into nine patches that finish at 3". When they are done I give them a press and store them in a box. When I decided to make Cherry Blossom I fished out all of the 3" pink nine patches from the box. When I ran out of pink I added some yellows and oranges. These would be stitched together to make larger nine patches. I also pulled 12 red nine patches along with small scraps of all sorts of colours. I used these scraps to make half square triangles that bordered the little red nine patches. 

Here you can see the two blocks in the quilt; the pink nine patches are stitched together with white squares to make larger nine patches and the red nine patches are bordered with white, half square triangles and the background fabric!

I added a nice wide border because I wanted to fill it with a feather and a stippled background.

This is such a summery quilt and it is one of my favourites. If you like it too why not make your own using my pattern! 

Cherry Blossom Quilt is Finished!

Thanks for all the nice emails and comments on yesterday's 100th post! And now I continue with the first of the next 100 posts!

Cherry Blossom Quilt is now finished! I just love it! Hope you do too and that you are looking forward to the pattern!

It is such a summery quilt and it was made with nine patches from my stash.

I don't like wasting thread or fabric. I cut up my scraps to make nine patches and I keep the sets beside my machine ready to be sewn. When I sew, rather than cutting lengths of thread I sew onto my nine patch pieces and then continue sewing what ever it is I am working on. When I get to the end of the seam rather than draw out a length of thread and cut it I sew off onto another part of my nine patch. You can read about my process here. This means I have a big stash of nine patches! I didn't have to make any extra nine patches for this quilt. I pulled out 100 mainly pink nine patches (that is nine patches that had pink in the corners and in the centre) and also some orange, some gold and some with a touch of yellow to add some sparkle. I also pulled 12 red nine patches. All of the nine patches finished at 3" (with seam allowances they were 3  1/2").

I am working on a free pattern for this quilt. I'll get it up as soon as I can. If you want to make your own version you can get a head start on the half square triangles. You are going to need 240 of them. Use your scraps, that's what I did! They should measure 1 1/2" with the seam allowance - they will finish at 1". I wrote about making small half square triangles here.

I made do with what I had when making Cherry Blossom. The first thing I did was make the nine patch blocks of nine patches. The white is actually a white tone on tone. I made 20 of these blocks and set them on point. My original plan was to alternate these blocks with a solid fabric or a large soft print but both looked boring.

I popped a red nine patch in the centre of the alternating blocks and it popped! I decided to border the red nine patch with a white border so that there was continuity between the two blocks.

My next decision was to add a border of half square triangles that used print scraps and the same white fabric but I didn't have any left so I substituted another tone on tone print that I thought was white but it was a little creamier. In the end I like the subtle change!

I thought I would have enough of that fabric for the half square triangles and one more border but I was wrong! I didn't even have enough for the half square triangles so I added similar fabrics for the half square triangles. This meant I needed yet a third fabric for the last border around this block so I added a third fabric, a very creamy fabric with a small black dot. And I had yardage of that fabric so I knew I would have enough. I used this same fabric for the setting triangles on the sides and corners and also for the border.

I've told you I learn something with every quilt I make and the lesson learned here? Plan to run out of a fabric - introducing another similar fabric can add depth and complexity.

And now for a few pix from the garden! Zebra girls showed up and wanted their picture taken on the bench with Cherry Blossom! Like me, they love this quilt!

All of a sudden someone showed up in the garden. Never saw HIM before! He's one snappy dresser!

Hello, hello Zebra Fellow! Want to have your picture taken by herself?

What a happy bunch! I feel a story line developing. We'll have to wait to see what happens. Maybe tomorrow there will be an update!

Borage pretty and delicious to eat!

Very little brown bug

Bergamot (bee balm)

Black-eyed susans

Until I post again, happy sewing!

Perfection is over-rated, Baskets and Nine Patches and the next quilt

I don’t sweat “perfection”. I just do the best that I can. If there’s a mistake or something not quite right AND it bothers me I fix it. If I can live with it…..I live with it! For example in the Baskets and Nine Patches quilt there were some spots where the nine patches didn’t quite line up. Some I fixed and others I’ll just live with. Here’s one I decided to live with (the two patches don't line up on the bottom row just above the pin).

Baskets and Nine Patches is now finished and although it's not perfect I don’t care - I love it! There’s so much going on that the little imperfections are not really noticeable and if they are, my next line of defence is “they add charm”! When I look at the quilt I see the whole, not the individual bits! And here it is!

 

 

Would you like a pattern for this quilt? If there's enough interest I'll prepare and post a pattern. It is a quilt for using small scraps. It would even be fun to get a group of friends together for a nine patch block swap!

TIP! One of the things I do is prepare the binding when I’m adding the border to a quilt; I'm already cutting and sewing so might as make the binding too! Once the strips of binding are sewn together and pressed I wrap them around a piece of cardboard and pin the loose end. I keep this with the quilt top until it is ready to be quilted. If the quilt doesn't get quilted for months (or years) I don't have to scramble looking for fabric to bind the quilt once I'm ready to quilt it.  This is the binding I prepared for Baskets and Nine Patches and the next quilt (Alex's quilt) that is now pinned and going under the machine as we speak.

I have a friend with two children, a boy and a girl. This little family has gone through some really difficult, life-changing events over the past few years so I decided that I wanted to make a quilt for each of the kids. Christina’s quilt is almost quilted and today I got started on Alex’s quilt. I didn’t want juvenile quilts – I wanted quilts that the kids could use and enjoy for many years to come.

 

Christina's quilt being pinned

Christina's quilt, close-up

 

Alex's quilt

 

Alex's quilt pinned for quilting

The quilting is underway

Alex likes guitars so this is the backing fabric

 

I leave you with a close-up shot of Flora and Fauna, Parts of the Garden. It is entered in Quilting Gallery's Show and Tell. PIctures of the entries will be posted tomorrow and voting runs from Friday to Monday at 6:00pm EDT! I think the little grasshoppers are my favourite critters in the quilt and I love the mushrooms!

 

 

Until I post again, happy sewing!

A great marking tool, quilting baskets & nine patches and chickadees!

Marking dark fabrics is challenging but this tool solves that problem! It is a mechanical chalk pencil made by a French company, Bohin. The pencil comes with a little package of six refill chalks. The chalk makes a lovely fine line. It was expensive (I think it was $15 Canadian) but it works so well that it was worth the investment. I especially like the fact that I use it with a stencil and the chalk does not come near the stencil because it is protected by the silver cap. When I use a chalk pencil I find that the edge of the stencil rubs the chalk and makes problems for me. The Bohin mechanical chalk pencil solves that problem!



I’m mking progress quilting my baskets and nine patches quilt.

 

 

The quilt is anchored vertically and horizontally with stitch in the ditch. I discussed this technique in my April 23 post, machine quilt a big quilt on a domestic machine my way. The solid squares have feathered wreaths quilted but haven’t decided what motif I will quilt in the centre. Maybe I’ll just stipple but I'm open to suggestions! I have some really pretty gold Bottom Line thread (made by Superior) which I think I will use.

I envy quilters who know exactly how they are going to quilt their piece in advance. I am more of a “fly by the seat of my pants” kind of quilter. I like to let the quilting evolve organically which generally means I don’t have a clue what I will do but just hope that I’ll know when I get to the point where I have to make a decision! And that is what happened with the baskets. I figured out what to do with the setting triangles and am quite pleased with the result.

 

BUT I still had no idea about the baskets. The solution for me is to set the quilt aside for a few days and do nothing. At some point I just start doodling on paper to see what happens and the answer eventuall comes to me.

 

The quilting design gradually evolved from the doodling. I am satisfied with the result. I think it has just the right flourish! I could have quilted more but the white fabric has a finish that makes it very difficult to quilt so I think that I will stick with this simple design.

 

Once I've finished quilting the baskets (I'm about a third of the way done) I'll bind the quilt and then I’ll go back and finish the centre and that includes quilting all of those nine patches. I did a few with a neutral colour Bottom Line thread. This is what they will all look like when quilted. I have my work cut out for me!

 

I leave you with a picture of a little embroidery done by my sweet little Mummsie!  You may recall that I appliqued four of them in my quilt Flora and Fauna, Parts of the Garden. Looks like Mom also loves these little birds! This little chickadee measures a tiny 2 ½”! My Mom does such lovely embroidery. I'll be showing you much more of her work in the coming weeks.

 

 

If you haven't visited Quilting Gallery's Show and Tell please do so. There are some really interesting wall hangings to see - there's loads of inspiration to be found. Mine is titled Flying Fish School. So pop on over and vote for your favourites before Monday at 6:00pm EDT.

 

Flying Fish School

 

Until I post again, happy sewing!