Dance in Paris

Dance in Paris, designed by Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic, with fabric also designed by her, is one of those quilts you just enjoy from beginning to end. The original pattern name is Spring in Paris, but the fabric I used is her Dance in Paris collection.

I really love piecing hexagons made of 60 degree triangles, and this one is no exception! When I think about what makes a quilt fun to piece, two things come to mind: how much I like the fabric, and how fun the pattern is. Happily, both are true for this quilt.

I wanted to keep the quilting design very simple in the colored fabrics, just some simple geometrics. This is my go-to option for prints.

I am usually a bit intimidated when encountering large swaths of negative space, because they represent so much potential. For this quilt I did something I don't usually do: marking. I marked up all the hexagons so that I could quilt them into the white space as a series of ghost blocks.

I had 3 different quilting designs for this quilt and I actually stared at them for weeks, unsure which one to pick. I finally picked this design because it made the quilt feel the most balanced, and I'm glad I did, because I think the end result is quite beautiful!

Postcard Row

I went through a phase a few years ago where I was obsessed with house quilts. I made quite a few during that time, but my favorite of those is probably Postcard Row. That's mostly because it features some of my favorite fabrics by Natalie Barnes!

The original pattern is called Painted Ladies by Eye Candy Quilts. I absolutely hated the name though! I know the pattern was inspired by the famous row houses in San Francisco that's named Painted Ladies, but I did some quick Googling and discovered another name for those houses is called Postcard Row, and so that's what I named my quilt.

I like to add a little something extra to each quilt if I can, and for this quilt, it's to add a little whimsy to each of the houses by giving them different roof designs.

I kept the quilting consistent otherwise, with just vertical lines for the house walls to simulate sidings, and in the open space I switched up swirls and wavy lines.

And at last, another one of my favorite quilt tops is done. I loved everything about this quilt, from the super fun piecing, to the quilting. The only problem is, I actually made another quilt top using the same pattern because it was so fun, and now I will have to come up with a new quilting design! Oh well, that's a problem for another day.

Solstice

I almost couldn't believe it, but apparently I made the quilt top for Solstice more than 5 years ago! It felt like I had made it much more recently than that, so that's kind of crazy.

Solstice is designed by Rebecca Bryan, and this was part of a quilt-along that I joined. I was enamored by the color scheme, which looked like a sunset explosion.

I knew for a long time how I wanted to quilt this, so there was no hesitation once I started, and it was just a matter of actually doing it. I wanted the star in the center to be highlighted by geometric designs and lots of straight-line designs.

The solid background space of course has to be filled by swirls. I didn't want the background to take any attention away from the star in the center.

My opinion has always been that print fabric quilts have the soul in the prints, but solid pattern quilts don't have soul (no matter how beautiful) until the quilting is added. I haven't changed my mind about that, but I'm happy that now the soul has been added to Solstice! I really love it.

North Star

I originally intended to quilt North Star last year, but December was such a busy month for me that I did not end up having time, and in a way I'm glad, North Star is one of my absolutely favorite quilts (a 5-star for sure) that I would not want to rush!

Both the fabric and pattern is by Libs Elliott, featuring one of my favorite collections ever by her, Tattooed North. This was a very easy and pleasant sew because it's basically a quilt consisting of half-square triangles. I absolutely love the pops of the gold fabric, it makes this quilt truly shine!

My vision for the quilt is simple: keep to simple geometric designs in the stars, and quilt pockets of more dense swirls for some added texture and specialness.

I assigned a design to each block and executed it consistently, but the quad-star blocks definitely made things more interesting!

I really love the effect of the pockets of swirls I added! I use swirls on 95% of my quilts, and they're without a doubt my favorite filler.

While the metallic fabric definitely caused some issues while quilting, when I look at the end result, I completely forget all the pain. I'm very much in love with the finished quilt, and I'm so happy to start the year with a 5-star quilt top!

Arcade Game

When I first saw Arcade Game by Jaybird Quilts, I thought the quilt was absolutely adorable and definitely had the 3D effect it was going for. I waited to make this until I had a kit though, because I knew color placement was absolutely critical.

Piecing this quilt was very fun because I like any excuse to use a specialty ruler, and Jaybird's rulers are so fun to use! Piecing was easy, and the only part I had to be careful of was to make sure I didn't mess up the color placement, or the effect would be ruined.

Although the quilt had fun jaggedy edges, I wasn't in the mood to use bias binding to finish this, so I chickened out and added black filler triangles to make it a rectangular quilt. Maybe next time!

I had an idea in quilting this to make sure the 3D effect stands out, and I quilted the top "panel" of every cubes the same with echoing lines, but switched up the designs on the sides. It was fun to pick different designs for every block!

Since I only wanted to use a single color of thread, I quilted more densely on lighter colored blocks and less densely on darker colored blocks.

I meant to finish this quilt in October, but I got so busy with other things that I didn't touch the longarm for nearly a month. (I was also very wrapped up in piecing another quilt by Jaybird Quilts, and her quilts are downright addictive.) Once I started this however, it went fairly quickly, and I love the finished quilt!

I rarely take staged photos anymore because ... actually I don't have a good reason. But this quilt demanded to be hung from some railing and taken a photo of! So, I had to follow that call.

Polaris

I went through a phase a few years ago where I was completely obsessed with star quilts, so naturally when I saw the pattern Faded by Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic, I was intrigued. It was a star quilt, but modern, and the sample was made using her lovely fabrics.

However, when I went through my fabric collection, I found something else I decided to use instead ... a collection I picked up from my local quilt shop (back when it existed) that I didn't know the name of. It had lovely greens and blues with whites, and mixed with a near-solid black, I knew it'd be perfect for this quilt.

Since the pattern is basically half-square triangles, this was a super easy quilt to put together. What made it so fun was the pattern itself, as it's called Faded, so parts of the star "faded" away in random locations, making it look like it's missing pieces.

With blocks like these that are "missing" sections, I always like to use the quilting to give those sections back. I used a similar quilting technique in Dawn Star that I finished earlier this year.

This is a really special quilt to me and I wanted to put in the work, so I filled the background of the stars with swirls, but since I'm using a darker thread to match the background, I absolutely kept the quilting minimal on the foreground blocks, as I've never liked the look of dark thread on lighter fabrics.

Half of this quilt is negative space, so I decided to draw a big intricate star, and then surround it with wavy lines. I named this quilt Polaris because the star I drew reminded me a bit of the North Star.

And wow, I love this quilt! I already named a favorite for the year (Star-Crossed) but I'm starting to wonder if this quilt is a close second place.

City Fusion

City Fusion is a free quilt pattern, originally named Shutters, by Art Gallery Fabrics. AGF created this pattern to promote the City Loft Fusion fabric line, and as soon as I saw the pattern, I fell in love with it. After all, I've never met a striped black / white quilt I didn't love. In order to make sure the stripes are absolutely perfect, I actually used paper piecing to make the striped units.

I enjoyed piecing this quilt a lot because of the beautiful fabrics, but the real fun in this quilt is the quilting.

I split the entire quilt into triangle units, and treated the background as such. At times I quilted them separately, and at times I fused them together. I really loved designing this ahead of time, and I just had to execute it once I got onto the machine.

One concept I had from the beginning of quilting is to extend the striped units to some of the background, and I did some dense back / forth quilting to simulate the stripes. I really love the way that looks!

I kept the quilting a bit simpler in the foreground fabrics so that it doesn't overwhelm the fabric.

This has been another 5-star off my pile of quilt tops, and it's been such a joy to finally work through so many of my favorite quilt tops!

Star-Crossed

Is it too early to call it? I'll do it anyway: Star-Crossed is my favorite finish of the year! I know the year is not even half-done, but I just have a feeling about this one.

The pattern is Star Plus and the pattern designer is Quiet Play. But perhaps one of the reasons this quilt is so precious to me is because it is absolutely non-repeatable. I have no idea what fabric line I used for this, so there's just no way I can make another one just like it. I know, however, that I purchased this fabric bundle quite awhile ago, before I learned that I should buy multiples of what I love, so this is it ... and I have no idea what it is.

I call my blog Savor Every Stitch but let's face it, sometimes it's hard to do that. But not this quilt, I know I enjoyed every part of putting it together, from the piecing to the quilting. The star attraction of this quilt is the fabrics, so the quilting is really minimal in comparison. I mostly did geometric dot-to-dot design that is quick to execute.

Since the scrappy nature of this quilt is the reason it shines, the quilting is consistent in every block to tie it together. I couldn't resist however quilting a little dense swirly design in the Grunge white fabrics. I had to quilt the swirls blind as it's virtually impossible to see the quilting when I'm doing it.

So here's a happy coincidence ... I named this quilt Star-Crossed because I like the phrase "star-crossed lovers", and the original name is Star Plus. It wasn't until I was almost done quilting it that I realized Star-Crossed is a very fitting name because the blocks are a bunch of colored crosses. Wow, I can't believe I never saw that the whole time I was piecing!

Just like last year, I hope to turn out one quilt a month this year, and so far I'm still on track for the year. Although my summer and fall seasons are quite busy usually so we'll see. I'm quite excited about the lineup for the year though, but as I said in the beginning ... I do think this is my favorite for the year, the unicorn nature of the fabric makes it kind of hard to top, and to me, fabric is king.

Modern Fans

Modern Fans is a pattern by Suzy Quilts, who masterfully combines modern improv elements and more traditional piecing in her designs.

I was immediately attracted to the quilt due to its graphic quality. I've never been able to resist a black and white quilt, and though I am really stressed by the fabric picking process in general, at least for this quilt I just had to pick one fabric to go with the black / white. I ended up choosing this icy blue fabric I got from a trip to Hawaii.

I knew I wanted to fill the background with a wavy design, but I wanted to add just a few visual elements in the background to break it up. This is a rare time that I actually marked the points and connected them with rulers, because I wanted them to look perfectly symmetrical.

The fan blocks are quilted very simply with just some straight lines and a simple geometric design. It doesn't really show, but then again, it's not supposed to.

This is one of those quilts where I could have just done horizontal lines across the quilt and it would have looked great too. But I also saw it as an opportunity to practice the wavy design over a large background space, something I've always wanted to do and haven't tried yet.

I'm really happy with how this quilt turned out. I used to be terrified of doing the wavy design, but it seems after More Fishies and now Modern Fans, I've finally gotten comfortable with it!

Dawn Star

I was walking through QuiltCon a few years ago when I wandered into the booth of Jennifer Sampou. She had Dawn Star displayed in her booth, and I fell in love with that quilt. I bought the pattern and fabric right then and there.

But it took me a few years to actually make the quilt because I was scared. Despite it being a "kit", because of the ombre nature of the fabric, there's a level of improvisation in the piecing, something that has always scared me.

But what doesn't scare me is the quilting process, as I had the idea of how I was going to quilt it before I even finished piecing it. Dawn Star had some fully complete double stars but also quite a few "incomplete" blocks, which is what makes it fun and surprising. I quilted it as if every star is complete, creating the ghost block outlines where necessary.

The quilting is mostly straight lines, geometric designs that emphasize the stars, with just a few patches of spaces where I couldn't resist but add a few swirls.

By a stroke of good luck, I figured out an efficient quilt path early on, making this a quick and fun quilting experience. The piecing was very stressful because of my tendency to cast doubts on my fabric choices at every turn, but the quilting was so enjoyable and relaxing!