It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! Or, maybe not here in Texas – I’m actually having my air conditioning worked on today, which was decidedly not part of the holiday tradition when I was growing up!

Fortunately there’s plenty to distract me from CFM, BTUs and $$$s. I’ve started to cut into the fabric I purchased during my Black Friday binge, I’ve unrolled the jelly roll for the sample quilt I’m making out of Vanessa Christenson’s Confetti Metallic Ombre, and I’m kicking around an idea for a snowflake appliqué quilt.

How gorgeous is this confetti fabric? I can’t wait for the yardage to come out in February.

Today’s free pattern is one from Amy Butler‘s website. I love her fabrics – they are so rich and amazing.

This quilt is rich, amazing, and just plain over the top! Yo-yos! Ruffles! Saturated colors! I just don’t see how you could go wrong, unless you gave up part way through and let it languish in your pile of UFOs.

The yo-yos are a great hand-work project for the holiday season. You can put a few supplies into a needle case or even a plastic baggie and take it with you pretty much anywhere. If you’ve never made yo-yos, you’re in for a treat. You don’t have to stop after this quilt – they can be attached to pretty much any project that you can imagine. I have a friend who is undisputed yo-yo queen – she has made one quilt entirely of yo-yos but now uses them a bit more sparingly, such as on this bunco card that she made earlier this year.

Here’s the pattern – the yo-yo instructions come towards the end, but I would start there and only make the quilt and ruffles once the yo-yos were complete.

Bloom_Quilt

Enjoy your weekend!

Becky

In previous years, I would assume that no one would be reading my post because they would all be out shopping in a Black Friday frenzy. I’m so happy that the internet and early Black Friday sales have completely changed the nature of post-Thanksgiving shopping binges. For fabric lovers, there are many more options if you stay at home and shop online from quilt shops near and far (although I usually find better deals closer to the new year). While you’re waiting for the deals to come to you, check out this week’s Free Pattern Friday.

Last week’s FPF was all about an easy way to get your Christmas quilt started and finished using a panel. This week’s FPF is NOT a project to start at the last minute for a fundraiser, teacher gift or to impress your mother-in-law. In fact, I would put this one on your list of New Year’s resolutions – a new skill to learn in 2018. I think I might have made a resolution to try curved seams before – so maybe 2018 will be the year.

This free pattern is by Beth Studley for Makower UK. It does have extra instructions for those who are new to curved piecing and relies heavily on pinning. My experiences with pinning have been somewhat demoralizing and I have used other techniques, but I’m open to trying again with different techniques. The curves at the lantern centers are much more gentle and easier to sew than those at the outer edges of the lantern, so piece the blocks in stages rather than block by block.

I think that I would also choose to incorporate more solids into the lanterns to highlight the fabric patterns as well as the shape of the lanterns. If you’re going to the trouble of making the lanterns, they should definitely stand out!

If you’re intimidated by the thought of making so many curved pieces, there’s always the option of making 4 lanterns and creating a pillow or wall hanging. That’s a great way to convince yourself to start an intimidating project and have a finish to be proud of.

Henna

Happy curved piecing!

Becky

 

How in the world did it get to be the Friday before Thanksgiving?? I am definitely not prepared for the holiday, and I haven’t even started to hit the grocery stores to snap up the great food deals that are available at this time of year.

If Thanksgiving is next week, then obviously Christmas is right around the corner. Plenty of people start their Christmas quilts in July and have them bound and finished by September. I’m not one of those people! Last year I started my Christmas quilt in the second week of December and still had it finished, wrapped, and delivered in time for Christmas. But that might have been cutting it a bit too close. This year, I might go with a short cut. Have you seen the super cute panels by gingiber (Moda). Montgomery Quilt Company has them here.

I’ve never been that interested in panels, but I have to admit that I do love these winter animals and when paired up with the trees and houses in this week’s free pattern, I think you end up with a cute and unique mix of piecing and panels.

Now that I’ve saved you so much time on your Christmas quilting, you’ll have plenty of time to get your shopping done too.

merrily

Have a great weekend.
Becky

 

 

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Happy Friday, my friends! Fall has finally come to Texas and it feels wonderful – of course I’d rather be outside enjoying the weather than inside quilting, but there’s inspiration everywhere so I still feel like I’m being creative.

This week’s free pattern is from Riley Blake and just jumped out at me. It’s called Ocean Waves.

Unfortunately, upon inspection of the pattern instructions, all of those HSTs appear to be part of Riley Blake’s half square triangle fabric, so in order to make it you would have to go out and buy their fabric. Of course, you will never find an easier method of creating so many HSTs, so perhaps that’s not a bad thing about this pattern!

The ocean waves quilt block is not something that was dreamed up by Riley Blake, so there are lots of quilts for you to see on pinterest where the basic block has been faithfully executed or modified. Each block is 12 HSTs plus 4 squares – the size of the finished block should be partly a function of the ultimate size of the quilt you want to make, but should also reflect the number of blocks that will be necessary to create the secondary pattern that shows up so beautifully in the quilt above.

As you can see in the block above, the layout of the traditional ocean waves block is simple but it does not quite achieve the same look as the free pattern. Instead, you get two secondary patterns as shown below.

What to do if you like the look of the Riley Blake pattern?  Easy! Instead of going with the traditional ocean waves block design, you do a 4×4 HST pattern, as shown below.

Then you take a square of your desired contrast fabric that is equal in size to 1/4 of your HST block and lay it over one corner of your HST block. Sew along the diagonal, as seen in the diagram below, trim excess, and press open.

It’s definitely easier to buy the HST fabric, but I like to use my own fabric and you definitely have a lot more color and size options if you’re willing to do it your own way! That’s what I like about being able to look at a pattern or a block and then tossing it aside to make the idea work for my own goals or fabrics on hand.

Of course this would be an amazing option for a scrap project with friends. Due to the differences in everyone’s quarter inch seam allowance, fabric choices, and other issues that come up when doing group projects, it would definitely be best to trade pieces – agree that everyone contribute sets of 16 HSTs (one for each person in your group). That way, once you get all of the pieces, you can put them together in the way you like best – and you can use the corner triangle as the unifying color/theme that brings all of the scrappiness together.

Here’s the original pattern, just in case you want to see how the quilt was created with the cool HST fabric.

OceanWavesFreePattern

Have a great weekend!

Becky

 

 

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Welcome to Friday! This week is feeling particularly festive in Houston – it’s the weekend of the Quilt Festival. And the Houston Astros have made the rest of the city even more giddy.

Can I do some bragging? The A+B booth is looking super cute and is full of patterns and kits. Look at all of the pillows on the bright ladder! I do love the variety of looks that you can get from changing up fabrics in a pillow. I only made 4 Texas pillows, but could have easily done a dozen more. And that stripe fabric – I might have to buy a whole bolt of that Bonnie & Camille deliciousness! We are at Booth 1222, so come visit if you can.

 

For the free pattern, I looked to Northcott who presents us with a quick and easy, fat quarter friendly quilt.

I would be tempted to go with a jelly roll and skip the cutting from the fat quarters, but the cutting calls for 3.5″ strips and the visual difference from 50% more fabric would be worth the extra work, I think. The beauty of this is that there are only two different strip sets and no matching seams. This could go together in hours! A quick but beautiful charity project or teacher gift.

StaxPattern

Have a great weekend

Becky

 

Another busy week has slipped through my fingers – how about yours? This weekend’s sewing promises to be all about Halloween costumes – a pumpkin and a penguin. Thank goodness for Pinterest and my Bernina!

This week’s Free Pattern Friday is a little bit of a departure – not the easiest of quilts to make, but such a unique result that it’s worth the effort.

This masterpiece was created by Beverly McCullough over at Flamingo Toes and was featured on Fabric.com’s blog in June 2016. It does require quite a bit of cutting and appliqué, but the conclusion is so delightful. It would be a perfect gift for an RV traveller who could embroider routes and place French knots at destinations. Or for you to keep and use for your own travel memories.

The pattern comes in two parts – the instructions and the template. This one is definitely on my To Do list – I hope to see it on yours!

US-Map-Quilt-Pattern

U.S. Map Quilt Tutorial

Have a great weekend

Becky

Whew! Another week has just flown by! Last weekend we went Cub Scout camping and then I spent the beginning part of the week cleaning up and recovering from all of that fun. Additionally, it’s getting close to the start of the Houston Quilt Festival, so there are lots of things that need to be done to prepare for that (more below).

In case you’re here for the free pattern, this week’s beauty is a plus quilt from Katarina Roccella and Art Gallery Fabrics.

The pieces are nice and big and the space in between the plusses is a solid square, so the need to precisely match seams is fairly limited. The resultant quilt is a wonderful 74″ x 95″, so well worth making!  They also have a diagram with a darker background option, which I greatly prefer.

I recently completed a sample plus quilt that used Zen Chic’s new Fragile line and pattern… and something like 528 pieces! I much prefer this construction method and ultimate size, although I do love Zen Chic.

Back to the Houston Quilt Festival…. My pattern company – A + B Designs – has taken a booth and we will be there selling patterns and kits. We have an amazing space – booth # 1222, which is right in the middle of the middle, so I hope you will stop by!  I haven’t shared any of the patterns yet, because they were still in production and testing, but now I’m ready. The first quilt is called All My Xs and this one is a throw size (there is a much larger version as well). The kit is made with Andover chambray background fabric and Bonnie & Camille Good Life Charms.

It was a lot of fun to make and not too complicated so I hope that other people will enjoy making it too.

Here’s the pattern for the Free Pattern Friday, and I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

madcrosser_instructions

Becky

We are heading out on a Cub Scout campout, so it’s only fitting that today’s Free Pattern Friday is short and sweet.

Blooming Fields, by Dana Willard for Art Gallery Fabrics features her Blush fabric line. This pattern is perfect when you want to show off beautiful, larger scale fabrics and is almost fat quarter friendly.

Blooming Fields instructions

Have a great weekend!

Becky

 

 

Today’s Free Pattern Friday is another quilt that uses Washington Depot fabric by Denyse Schmidt.

This “planned scrappy” quilt is another beauty designed by Erica Jackman from Kitchen Table Quilting. I love her style! The quilt is a great size at 61″x81″ and is perfect for the confident beginner. Although it looks like a complicated quilt, if you turn your head you can se that the blocks are actually made from squares and rectangles. You only have a few triangles that come into play around the edges, and you can pretend that those are squares until you go to put the binding on.

Hashtag Quilt

I hope you have an excellent weekend!

Becky

How can it possibly be Friday already? The good news about being surprised about the early arrival of every Friday is that it also means that I’m surprised by the approach of the weekend as well. On balance it’s definitely making lemonade out of lemons!

Today’s free pattern is designed by Erica Jackman of Kitchen Table Quilting. I follow her blog and love her work. The fabric is Ann Kelle and I actually have this quilt kit in my stash. I think I bought it last year on Craftsy during their year end sale. Hopefully I will have time to work on it soon because I love flying geese and the fun mix of this fabric. Of course, this pattern uses mostly fat quarters so you could use any bundle or pull together a bunch of fabrics from your stash to make it uniquely your own.

When I make geese, I often create my own paper piecing template just so that I won’t lose any of the crisp points. It takes a little extra time to rip all of the paper, but the results are definitely worth the effort!!

RemixedGeeseQuiltPattern

I hope you enjoy your weekend!

Becky