Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Zen Garden

When I started quilting a few years ago, I quickly decided that Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic was my favorite fabric designer. I went on a mad hunt to try to get fabric from each of her collections, including the out-of-print ones from the days before I knew what a quilt even was.

And I succeeded ... I got a little bit of everything. One of those collections that I snagged was Juggling Summer, which is probably one of her earliest collections. However, after I got it, I realized that I had no clue what to do with it. I wasn't even sure I liked it, but it caused a great amount of stash guilt. I had to do something with it.

One day while randomly browsing, I found a quilt pattern that used Juggling Summer in a way that I actually liked! It was a pattern called Zen Garden by Color Girl Quilts. This quilt was super easy to piece, and I liked how despite the chaotic color arrangement, the zigzags that weave through the quilt bring a sense of ... structure.

Since the fabric is so busy, I kept the quilting super simple for this quilt, with just a few alternating geometric designs and straight lines.

Zen Garden is my 7th and final finish of the year, and it was a very fun, easy, and relaxing quilt to make. It helped relieve some stash guilt, and also served a reminder to me that simple quilting can be effective too!

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Ikat

Ikat is a pattern by Brigitte Heitland featuring fabric from her Fragile collection, one of my favorite fabric collections ever. I've made so many quilts with it, including Fragile, Paradox, and Critical Sunshine, and that's just the ones I've finished quilting! What can I say, I'm a sucker for black and gold.

Ikat was one of those quilts that I really wanted to have, but not necessarily to make. Piecing this quilt was a royal pain, due to the jelly rolls. But once I was done with it, I really loved the quilt top, and I knew it'd be as fun to quilt as it was a pain to piece.

Since the fabric is quite busy, I kept the quilting very simple in most of the blocks with just dot-to-dot quilting.

I decided to quilt all the white based blocks differently with some swirls. However, this was a real challenge on some of those blocks because I couldn't really see what I was doing.

I absolutely love, love, love this quilt! However, I'm done with jelly rolls. Once I get through my current stash (which will admittedly take awhile) I will probably never buy any more ... at least not from Moda. The pretty jelly roll packages are such a siren song, so I hope I can resist in the future! May this blog post serve a reminder to me, though ...

Thursday, October 27, 2022

Feathered Star

I've tried to keep up a good ratio lately, trying to quilt 2 quilts for every quilt top I finish. (So far, maybe I'm succeeding at a 1.3 : 1 ratio, but baby steps). The quilt I chose to quilt next is Feathered Star, a pattern by Rebecca Bryan using a fabric line called Geogram by Samarra Khaja.

I vaguely remembered posting about completing the quilt top for Feathered Star so I went searching for it ... and dates don't lie, this quilt top is just over 4 years old! Even though a long time has passed, I still remember it as a pretty challenging project at the time.

But even though piecing this was hard, quilting it was pretty straightforward. I kept the quilting extremely simple in the stars because the print is so busy.

In the diamonds, it was a chance to do some free-motion quilting. The original pattern had this space as black, but I knew black isn't nearly as fun to quilt, so I substituted a light gray.

I was a bit hesitant about this quilt top when I first finished it, because I wasn't sure light gray was the right call for those diamonds as opposed to the extremely striking impression that black diamonds would have made, but I do like the end result a lot!

Thursday, September 22, 2022

Periodicity

Periodicity is a quilt designed by Cheryl Brickey of Meadow Mist Design. The pattern is so graphic and the Kona solids so vibrant, the minute I saw it, I knew I had to make it!

I was quite excited to quilt this because blue background means I can use blue thread. I use a light yellow thread about 90% of the time, so it's very exciting to use another color. Another reason I pulled this quilt out is that I was just dying to use one of my favorite designs that I hadn't done in a long time: the wavy design.

Besides the waves that encompass most of the quilt, I also used a Greek tile design and a ribbon candy.

I didn't want to quilt all over the foreground stripes, so I echoed them minimally and echoed that same effect in the background.

Sometimes a quilt asks to be quilted, and sometimes I just really want to do a design and picked the quilt best suited for it. This is the latter case, and I really love the final look!

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Linking up with: Meadow Mist Designs

Thursday, September 1, 2022

Insignia

I keep a spreadsheet of all my quilting projects so I can keep track of where they are, when I finished them, etc, but Insignia predated all that, and I have no idea how old this quilt top is! I barely remembered what it looked like, so when I pulled it out of the pile to finish it, it looked ... well, like all the colors of the rainbow dumped into a quilt. It is bright.

The pattern is Alternative by Alison Glass, and the fabric I used is a combination of Insignia (hence the name of the quilt) and some fabrics from her other lines. It's a big mish-mash of colors, but for some reason it works.

I had a really hard time figuring out how to quilt this, which is part of the reason it stayed on the shelves for years. But I realized I was never going to come up with something without forcing myself to, so I loaded it and then just drew out a design. I used a combination of plume feathers and a geometric design in the blocks, and tied it together by using one of my favorite designs in long strips: just straight lines.

I used to be possessed by the need to quilt every quilt to death, but in the last few years I've definitely felt that weight lift and now I let the quilt tell me whether it wants to be simple or intricate. This quilt chose something in-between, and I'm very happy with how it looks.

When I look at this quilt, it's just so bright that it raises my spirits! I'm thrilled to have finished this "oldie" and I'm excited to quilt more of them in the months to come.

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Linking up with My Quilt Infatuation.

Thursday, August 11, 2022

Crescent

About 2 years ago, I participated in Christa Watson's Block Chain Quilt Along and made an adorable top using a charm pack of Crescent by Sarah Watts. After taking a long break from quilting this year, I decided it's finally time to finish this quilt.

I really love this quilt because the Crescent fabric is so cute with its owls, yet it's not juvenile at all. The chain link look is very graphic and this pattern is just perfect to show off a charm pack!

Using alternate designs is one of my favorite things to do, because it lessens the workload and keeps things interesting. Here, in the background space I alternated between dot-to-dot geometric designs (very quick to execute) and swirls (not as quick but the texture is so lovely).

I kept the quilting in the focal fabric bare minimal, especially as in this case they are basically like framed photos. A simple geometric frame design makes the fabric stand out while not obscuring the beautiful print.

And of course, I love to show the back of the quilt! For block quilts like this, the back can be as pretty as the front.

I enjoyed using this Crescent charm pack so much that I ended up buying a fat quarter bundle of Crescent ... but as it was the only one I had, I now realize I don't want to cut it up ever! And so that is another one for the fabric museum I've got, aka lovely bundles that I know I will probably never use.

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Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation.

Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Circuit

After the holidays last year, I was feeling lethargic and decided to take a break. However, I didn't expect the break to last half a year! To be honest, with everything that's going on in my life and beyond, quilting just isn't at the top of my list at the moment.

But I did recently finish a quilt, a quilt I've been longarming on and off for 5 months. I finished the quilt top for Circuit several years ago, and it's been one of my favorite quilt tops in my stash. The pattern is by Sylvia Schaefer.

I'm very attracted to the sci-fi, cyberpunk style, so that's probably why I love this pattern so much. I also adore the fabrics, which is a mix of chartreuse and black with a lot of metallics thrown in.

For the quilting design, I decided to use a bright green thread with a tiled design, but filling it with echoing straight lines so it emulates the look of circuits.

I wanted the circuits in the foreground to really jump out, so I kept the quilting very simple there, with just some light echoes.

Although I was stuck for a long time on how to quilt this, and then stuck for a long time not wanting to quilt anything at all, I'm very happy with the end product. This is one I hope I'll always have.

***

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation and Meadow Mist Designs.
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