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exploring whole-cloth quilts
Each time I make a quilt, I spend a significant amount of time piecing the top. Depending on the size of the quilt, I spend anywhere from 2 to 13 hours rummaging through scrap bins looking for the right fabric, trimming blocks, ironing rows, and auditioning layouts on my design wall. While it takes quite a bit of time, I do love the process of creating a top. Piecing little bits of fabric together...
sunday morning low-volume throw quilt
I've really loved every quilt I've made using patterns from Sunday Morning Quilts (see: my Up, Up and Away quilt and my improv slab quilt), and this latest one is no exception. Pairing the book's namesake Sunday Morning pattern with my low-volume scraps and strings, I constructed my new go-to summer nap quilt.
I included an eclectic number of fabrics in the quilt, ranging from vintage ditsy prints to hand-printed linen to vintage sheets to digitally printed Spoonflower fabrics. There are also bits of double gauze, lawn, and shirting in there.
I really love the more muted palette of these fabrics; I think this pattern would also pair especially well with Maze and Vale's lovely fabrics.
I used a floral vintage sheet for the backing, which I found while thrifting in Maryland a few years ago. I love using vintage sheets for backings, both because they're usually super soft and also large enough that there's no need to do any extra piecing.
I stuck to quilting it with a large grid, and machine bound the quilt with a yellow-and-white binding, my current favorite color combo.
Quilt Stats
Finished dimensions: 50" x 60"
Fabrics used include: Squared Elements in Honeycomb by Art Gallery Fabrics; vintage sheet
Quilt pattern: Sunday Morning by Cheryl Arkison
do. good stitches: fieldcrossing quilt
Way, way back in November, I tasked my fellow members of the Wish Circle of do. Good Stitches with making blocks for a Fieldcrossing Quilt. I asked everyone to use the colors of the Purl Bee's Felt Alphabet as their inspiration when selecting fabrics (they always use the best color palettes for their projects!): various shades of pink, yellow, rust and mustard.
Everyone did an excellent job of making blocks within the color palette, using prints and solids from their stashes. Once I received all of the blocks, I assembled the quilt top.
For the backing, I paired a coordinating Heather Ross mermaid print with a super-soft beige Japanese bunny print.
I did lots and lots of straight-line quilting, mostly with white thread, but I stitched a few lines in light pink as well. Two brown/pink/orange floral prints were perfect for the binding.
The resulting quilt turned out to be a nice size, perfect for a twin bed, and I really love how all of the disparate fabrics came together so beautifully! Like all of the quilts our group makes, this quilt will be donated to Project Linus.
Quilt Stats
Finished dimensions: 58" x 70"
Fabrics used include: Mermaids by Heather Ross for Spoonflower (no longer available, but can be purchased in another colorway here); Brown Calico from Heather Ross's Briar Rose collection
Quilt pattern: Fieldcrossing by Elizabeth Olwen and Cloud9 Fabrics
liberty of london hexagon wall quilt
When my husband and I traveled to London in the spring of 2012, a trip to the Liberty of London flagship store was obviously a must on my to-see list. As a souvenir of my visit, I purchased a packet of precut Liberty Tana Lawn hexagons, prepped and ready for English paper piecing.
As I traveled over the next several months (and years!), I stitched together linen-cotton half hexagons, solid white...
embroidered heart mini quilt
This mini quilt started out as a simple embroidered heart, which I stitched for a class that I taught a few years ago. While I often frame my finished embroidered pieces in either hoops or on stretcher bars, I wanted to take a different approach for this piece.
I pulled a number of solid pink and red fabric strips to coordinate with the monochromatic satin stitching I'd done to fill the heart....