Wednesday, July 26, 2023

More Fishies ~ Just Two Charm Pack Quilts Blog Hop

I've been a lot less active in the quilting community over the last few years, choosing to let quilting become just a hobby for myself, and instead focusing most of my attention and efforts on other endeavors. However, when Cheryl Brickey asked me to participate in a blog hop to promote her latest book, Just Two Charm Pack Quilts, I was excited to do it.

I've made a lot of Cheryl's patterns over the years so I knew it was going to be a good time. Her patterns are always clear, well-written, and the end results are always great.

I fell in love with More Fishies as soon as I saw it because it was so adorable. Even though it was assembled on the bias and I'm not generally a fan of that, I really wanted to make it. The only "new" fabric I used is a single charm pack, True Blue from Zen Chic, and the rest of the fabric is from my scraps. I had a lot of Kona turqoise due to frequently using it as a backing fabric, so that was the perfect background for the ocean for my fishies.

I knew I wanted a wavy design for the background, but I didn't want to do it over the entire background as it would be boring and my machine would hate me. (It really doesn't like this design.) So I sort of gave the fishies their own little swirl bubbles, and filled the rest of the background space with the wavy design.

The fishies themselves asked for minimal quilting, so I did just a simple geometric design to nail the fabric down, but I didn't want to make it too literal by quilting fish features or anything.

The wavy design is one of my favorites, but I had trouble with it for a long time because I just didn't really know what to do. After this quilt though, I can finally say I'm quite comfortable with this design! Unfortunately my machine still doesn't like it, so in the future when I use it I will still have to be judicious about it.

I really love everything about this quilt, from the fabric, to the quilting design, and even the binding was exciting. This one is definitely a keeper.

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The rest of the quilts in Cheryl's book are gorgeous also, so be sure to check out the other stops on the blog hop!

15 comments:

  1. Your quilting is nothing short of amazing. The whole quilt is beautiful.

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  2. This is absolutely spectacular, Liz. When you say your machine doesn't like the wavy design, is it because of the right to left traveling?

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  3. Wonderful quilt, Liz!!! I love the True Blue!!! And your quilting with the combo of waves, bubbles and swirls is adorable!!!

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  4. Beautiful quilting

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  5. Beautiful quilting, they are swimming!

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  6. Wonderful quilting! I love custom quilting. I want to do this one too...already have the charm packs!

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  7. Thank you so so much Liz for being a part of the hop! Your quilts are always stunning and this one took my breath away! You are an amazing artist.

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  8. Absolutely wonderful & the quilting totally makes it!

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  9. That quilting 💖

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  10. What a great idea for the quilting, the fishes seem to swim in the water !

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  11. The quilting raises this to a new level. Beautiful.

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  12. Cheryl was luck to have you do this - beautiful quilt.

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  13. Amazing how such basic shapes can result in a gorgeous quilt --- quilting is so much fun. The placement of the fish and their swimming directions is whimsical. Thank you for sharing --- Kay

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  14. The bubbles just make me smile, and they work so well with the rest of the quilting design. A cute finish! I might need that book!

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