I love me a good all solids quilt, and I knew once I saw Heather Ross and Annabel Wrigley’s new solids line, Ruby & Bee, that I had to order some to see them in person. The colors are just beautiful! Such a great mix of bright colors (lots of pinks, my favorite!) but also some darker colors to balance it all out. I knew I had to see what I could make with this selection.

I ended up ordering a few additional cuts of some of my favorites, and I removed 3 of the yellows. Then I was challenged to find a design to show off these lovely colors. I struggled and tried several different options before ending up with this. I hate to say it was a struggle, but I felt like I wasn’t doing the fabric justice. And then I was frustrated feeling like I was wasting the fabric while trying to come up with a design. I’m glad I kept at it though, because I’m so happy with how this turned out. I can’t wait to get this one quilted so I can put it to use!

Originally the plan was for the triangles to be oriented the other direction, but I failed in my measuring and the quilt top ended up wider than it was long (oops!). I thought about making more of the blocks to get it to size, but then realized that I quite liked it going the other direction. And there you have it!

I used up most of the remaining fabrics on a fun scrappy backing, so hopefully this one will be finished in the near future!

Happy Spring!

Well hello! It’s funny how you can stop blogging for a few days and then suddenly find that it’s been months… or a year or more! You know what though, I still love having this record of my projects online, so I’m going to attempt to be better about posting them here.

This quilt came about suddenly – I hadn’t had much motivation to do any quilting… possibly due to too much mask-making all summer, or perhaps just feeling burnt out and unmotivated. I kind of missed it though, and kept trying to find some easy way to ease back into it. One day I remembered all the bags of solid scraps I found stored in the basement. I decided to challenge myself to create something, anything!, out of them.

After pulling them all out, I realized that most were longish strips, so I just started piecing them into pairs. Then I pieced those pairs together. I found that many were long enough to allow me to trim them down into large 16″ blocks. And when I came up short, I just pieced in extra solids.

Since it was basically just piecing strips together, these blocks came together quite quickly and it made for a very satisfying project!

For the backing, I found several yards of this old Amy Butler print I had been hoarding, and it seemed perfect. I always love having the chance to actually use something I’ve been holding onto for so long!

I quilted it with double straight lines on the diagonal, and bound it in a dark solid I had on hand. I can honestly say it felt good to make something again. Hopefully this will be what I need to feel like starting another project… sometimes that’s all it takes, right?

Happy Friday! Today I finally have photos of this finished quilt! I loved this one from the start, but I must say, quilting has really changed it for the better. You may remember when I posted about this quilt top (here, if you’d like to take a look). It’s made out of fabrics from the Outback Wife collection by Cathi of gertrudemade. These fabrics are inspired by vintage barkcloths and have such a wonderful texture.

The fabric base is heavier than typical quilting cotton, so I knew from the start that this was one I wasn’t going to want to attempt to quilt on my own. I’ve had Rachel of Stitched in Color long arm quilt a couple of my other quilts, so when she announced that she was moving with her family overseas and had a couple spaces left for long arm quilting, I jumped at the chance to have her work on this one.

Once again, I let her take a look at the quilt top and give me her suggestion on a quilting pattern to complement, and once again, she nailed it with her first suggestion! This is crystal ball, quilted vertically, and I just love the way it looks on this quilt.

Just look at it on the mostly solid chambray backing!

I’m sad that I won’t be able to send any other quilts Rachel’s way, but luckily for those in Europe, she will soon be accepting quilts again. You can sign up to be notified when quilting services will be available.

I added an olive green solid for binding and ta da! It feels good to have this one finished! Thanks to Rachel for making that happen!

I’ve been wanting to show you this quilt for some time now! Finally the grass turned green and I was able to snap a few quick photos.

You all know I can’t resist me some Heather Ross, so of course I had to buy some of her new line, Trixie. I’m a total sucker for those strawberries! At the same time, I had purchased a vintage quilt on ebay with this kind of diamond shape, so I thought it would be fun to do my take on that vintage quilt.

These diamonds are larger than those in the vintage quilt I purchased, but similar in shape, in that the sides are not all the same length (does that make it a parallelogram rather than a rhombus?)

I had my fingers crossed that I’d actually be able to sew these together and have it all line up, so I was pleasantly surprised that it went together quite easily!

At the last minute I decided to add to it to make it queen sized – I think it’ll make a perfect bed quilt for Hazel!

Try it with a different colored sashing (or even a patterned sashing paired with solids), add more or less white space, use printed fabrics for the triangles, sew a scrappy version… so many possibilities!

I’ll show you how to construct the block, then it’s just a matter of making a whole bunch more and sashing them with some skinny sashing.

A few notes:
*All seams are sewn with a 1/4″ seam allowance
*Block size is 6″ unfinished (please note that the block size could easily be adjusted up or down as you’d like!)
*Blocks are foundation pieced (because that’s my preference), but certainly could be made without the paper foundation
*I’m not providing fabric requirements, but to give you an idea, for my 63″ x 75″ quilt I used 1/4 yard cuts of 20 colored solids** plus about 2 1/2 yards of solid white.

[**I used a lot of different solids in this one to get a nice variety of shades, and had a lot left over which I used on the backing. My previous version of this quilt used about 12 different solids.]

Materials needed:
*fabric for sashing
*fabric for triangles (I used 1/4 yard cuts of 20 solids – see note above)
*paper for foundation piecing
*glue stick

For each block, cut a square of paper that measures 6″ square. From each of your fabrics for the triangles cut squares that measure 6 1/4″. Cut each 6 1/4″ square in half diagonally (2 different colored triangles needed for each block). From sashing, cut 1 1/2″ strips and then subcut into 9 1/2″ lengths (1 piece needed for each block). [additional sashing will be required later on once all your blocks are complete – see below for info on those sashing measurements]

On the paper square, use your ruler to draw a line diagonally through the center. Then move your ruler to either side and mark a line 3/4″ from the diagonal line (or just line up the 3/4″ markings on your ruler along the diagonal center line as I did above and skip drawing the center diagonal line).

Using a glue stick, adhere your sashing piece to the paper aligning the long sides with the markings you made 3/4″ from the center line, right side facing up (this will ensure your sashing is centered).

Take one triangle and line up the long edge (bias edge) with one side of your sashing strip, right sides together. Make sure it’s centered on the paper, so you have approximately the same amount of paper showing on each side. Reduce your stitch length (I adjust mine down from 2.5 to a 1.5), and sew along this edge.

Flip fabric to cover the paper area and finger press (or not, you’ll press the entire block at the end). Repeat for the other side.

Press block, ensuring that fabric covers the paper entirely.

Flip block over so paper faces up, and trim edges, using paper as a guide.

Remove paper pieces by folding along the stitch line and tearing off. The reduced stitch length will allow the paper to be removed easily.

Repeat until you have your desired number of blocks. Once blocks are complete, arrange into your desired layout. Insert a 1 1/2″ x 6″ strip of sashing fabric between each block along the horizontal row.

Once rows are sewn together, determine length and cut strips of sashing that measure 1 1/2″ x your length (you may have to piece these strips to make them long enough). Insert one sashing strip between each row and sew together.

And now, in case you want a simplified version, here’s a quick video Max took (please excuse the quality, he’s new to this!) of me making this block.

I hope you’ll enjoy making this one! Any questions? Let me know and I’ll try to answer! Feel free to tag your work with #twotriangleblock or #twotrianglequilt on IG so I can see it!

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I’ve had this quilt top finished for a while now, and even had taken the time to snap a few photos, but was planning on writing a tutorial for this one and wanted to share when I had it written… Each weekend I say I’m going to get it done, and each weekend goes by filled with all kinds of things that don’t include sitting down at my computer. So I thought maybe I’d first show you this quilt top, and then perhaps the fact that I’ve posted about it will encourage me to get on that tutorial!

I made an earlier version of this quilt last year, mainly just so I could photograph it in front of this apple wall. It has since gone to live with a friend, and as soon as she took it home I missed it and knew I’d want to make another. My colors for this one are based off colors in a pillow that I cut out of a magazine, and I love it. It’s cheerful and sunny after a long winter.

I think maybe I’ll get to work making a backing for this one this morning while Henry’s at preschool. Now that I’m seeing it again, I’d love nothing more than to have it finished!

And hopefully soon I’ll have a quick tutorial posted here for you so you can make one of your own if you’re so inclined! I can see this one made up in so many different color combos, and I hope once I get this tutorial written you all want to make one so I can see it in a variety of colors!

So mindless, perhaps that I went about blithely sewing these blocks, all the while kind of noticing that the strips weren’t covering the paper in exactly the same way each time, but not caring enough to do anything about it. After making 168 blocks (which should put this in the twin size range, I hope!), I started sewing them together and then realized what I should have realized earlier… being off that tiny bit was causing a big problem in getting the strips to line up when sewn in this manner.

It took some pulling and, ahem, shall we say persuading? to get things to kinda line up (at least lined up enough for my liking!). Consequently the entire top is a bit wonky and distorted, but I’m really hoping that it all works out in the end. Fingers crossed, cause I’m quite in love with this one, and really wouldn’t want to have to take it apart at this point!

I don’t typically make quilts following patterns. Something to do, perhaps, with my inability to show up prepared? I like to procrastinate, to kind of just hope that things will work out, so reading through a quilt pattern with lists of needed items and all those pieces to cut ahead of time always puts me off. I prefer to hope I’ll have enough fabric rather than measuring, to hope that when I put the pieces together I’ll end up with something I like. Maybe not knowing the outcome keeps it interesting? Or perhaps I secretly enjoy having to improvise when I nearly always end up running out of a key fabric. I have a feeling I could learn a few tricks and shortcuts by following patterns, but being stubborn, I insist on figuring it out on my own (and often taking a convoluted route to get there). Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned here?

I digress…

Back to this quilt. This is Anna Maria Horner’s free Feather Bed quilt pattern, which I started way back in 2014. I actually enjoyed making this one, despite taking so long to finish it! The feathers come together quite quickly. (I didn’t follow the pattern as it was written though, and ended up wasting a bunch of fabric. Lesson learned)

I was going to tell you that the colors were based on that great Liberty of London floral, but I just now read through my old posts about this quilt and discovered that was not the case. I’m not sure how the color scheme came about then, as these colors are not my usual picks — something I found myself thinking as I was quilting it!

I decided to quilt it with double straight lines on the diagonal. I wish there was a faster way to quilt double straight lines… I love the look, but hate that it takes twice as long!

We went down to the waterfront last weekend to try to get some photos. I didn’t realize that the lake was partially frozen (some years it freezes, sometimes it does not), so I was surprised to see a few people out there skating. I called out to ask how thick the ice was and they replied nonchalantly “oh, about 3 inches”. I don’t know about you, but that just doesn’t seem thick enough for me! (Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t… I just know that I don’t want to take a chance!)

So despite my love of ice photos (here, here and here and here on solid ice), I opted for ‘in front of the ice’ photos for this one. No one wants to fall into ice cold lake water in February.

Any Heather Ross fans out there? (Ha! What kind of a question is that?!) If you’ve been reading for a while, you know that I’ve long had a love affair for Heather’s designs. Her Lightning Bugs & other mysteries line was nearly gone when I first started sewing, and I quickly snagged whatever I could find. They still hold a special spot in my heart as being some of the fabrics that initially drew me into quilting (and also into the thrill of chasing down hard to find fabrics!)

Luckily, I didn’t have to chase down these prints for this quilt. The kind people at Windham fabrics were so nice to send me a bundle of Heather’s Kinder line right before it was available and I quickly got to work making something with it (earlier post about this quilt here).

After pulling out my favorites, I noticed how nicely they paired with my favorite prints from Heather’s Briar Rose line so I decided this quilt should be a combination of all my favorites. I just love the colors together, and then the prints themselves… apples and roses and frogs… bumblebees and strawberries and paperdolls.

I decided to back this one in the frog print from the Kinder line, but oops, failed to buy quite enough, so improvised with some left over scraps for one corner. A bit of straight line quilting and this one was done!

I had trouble finding a binding – I couldn’t find a solid that worked, and another print from one of these lines seemed like it would be too busy. I finally found a purple print by Denyse Schmidt in my stash that I think worked well. Plus, Denyse and Heather always seem to go together somehow.

And finally, after carrying this quilt around in the car with me for weeks, Morgan spotted this barn/sugarhouse/store? that appeared closed (nothing worse than people staring while I’m trying to take quilt photos!) on our way to take the kids skiing this past weekend.

Yay! I can finally show it to you. Photographing quilts used to be the easy part, but lately it’s the part that’s holding me up from getting these online. I suppose a backlog of projects is a good problem to have though…

Today I have another old quilt to show you — I pulled this quilt top from the depths of the closet, where it’s hung since 2012. I had even already made a backing to go with it, so I’m not sure why it took so long to actually quilt it.

I don’t even remember actually piecing these improv sections together – you can read my original post here which talks a bit about it – but I do remember not having enough of any one solid for the background, and being quite pleased with myself when I was able to come up with enough of four different colors to use one in each corner. I like the way it turned out – probably more so than if I had used one color for the whole background.

Once again I decided to quilt this one with straight lines about 1″ -ish apart. The majority of the backing is an Essex linen, and the simple straight lines keeps it nice and soft. It’s bound in a pretty pale pink stripe.

And just for a laugh –

Here’s the first time I attempted to get photos of this quilt, also in the snow, but also on perhaps the coldest, windiest day possible. Morgan’s being a good sport, but I think he was pretty happy when I called it quits!