Happy Friday! I hope you had a great week. I felt very productive and finished a quilt to give to the kids’ ski instructor. I used a layer cake that I had been hoarding for quite some time – Desert Bloom by Amanda Herring. I paired it up with Horizon, my favorite Bella Solid and a pattern I purchased a while ago from Cluck Cluck Sew.

I was hoping to keep this layer cake all to myself but I’m glad that I finally got it out and used it! I love how the intensity of the Horizon highlights the beauty of both the lower volume fabrics as well standing up to the saturated reds and grays.

The pattern is a fantastic choice both for quick quilts but also for those times when you want to focus on the fabrics. The squares are 5 1/2″ finished and in this case capture the beauty of the large scale designs while also allowing the smaller fabrics to shine. The back and binding are both Grunge and I love them both! Somehow one of the kids got mud from their ski pants on the back of the quilt – I don’t think it’s going to come off with spot cleaning so I’m contemplating washing the quilt before I gift it. Have any of you ever had to do that? In some ways I’m horrified, but as a recipient I think I might be relieved that someone else took the risk of washing it first.

With this much saturated color in my own quilting, I felt like the Free Pattern Friday had to step up and match it. Where do you go if you want some serious color saturation in your quilts? Amy Butler, of course!

This beauty is called Zen Garden, but I’m not sure about that…. maybe Patches of Baldness Due to Pulling Out Your Hair? I’ve previously put out some curved quilts that I thought were challenging but this one puts them all to shame. There are several pieces (most of which have curves) that are required to build up three separate curved pieces that comprise each block.

While I love Amy Butler’s use of color, some of the florals compete a little too heavily in this block making it difficult to appreciate the complexity of the construction. I might like to throw in a few solids or perhaps more highly contrasting fabrics to showcase the square within a square secondary pattern.

This is definitely not a quilt to whip up in a weekend. The pattern suggests that it’s a longer term commitment. No kidding! Let me know if you give this one a try – I’d love to see any color variations.

Zan Garden

Have a great weekend!

Becky

Happy Friday to you! We’ve had a busy week of election excitement (my own upcoming contest as well as the county primaries), quilting, and finishing both personal and business taxes. Whew! I think I need a break that includes more quilting.

I love this week’s Free Pattern Friday quilt mostly because I love paper piecing, but I also really appreciate its unexpected construction style and scale which result in a very unique quilt.

It’s called Papillion and was designed by Lynne Goldsworthy of Lily’s Quilts.

Of course I’d like to have a more saturated colors in the wheel, but I also wonder about experimenting with non-symmetrical, or perhaps mirror image patterns.  This quilt is constructed (via paper piecing) in wedge shapes which are then joined together in a wheel and thus there are options to adjust the segments to achieve interesting variations.

You know what would also be beautiful? V&Co’s Confetti Metallic Ombre as the rings of triangles, getting lighter as the radius increases. I love, love, love that fabric, don’t you? I might own a yard or two of my favorite colors.

Papillion

Have a great weekend and try something new!
Becky

How in the world is it already March? It’s definitely spring in Texas and we are enjoying the blooming redbud trees and anticipating a huge crop of Lady Banks roses from our neighbor’s bush. It’s the best season in Texas!

This quilt, called Racetrack, makes me think of spring. The Tula Pink colors are so fresh and vibrant that it makes you want to get outside!

I don’t love the construction method, which has you doing the HSTs two at a time. Get online and find yourself a 4 or more at a time method so that you can knock this out much more quickly. I mean, what’s the point of spring if you aren’t outside enjoying it???

Leah Day has been blogging a series on walking foot quilting and I think her super wobble would look great with this quilt – with the wobble centered on a different part of the quilt. A fun, organic finish to a very linear piecing.

Racetrack

Have a great weekend!

Becky

Happy Friday! Hope you had a wonderful week and are ready to WORK this weekend! For the most part, FPF patterns have been quilts that you could whip up in a fairly short period of time without breaking a sweat (perhaps excepting the curved piecing).  Today’s pattern breaks that mold with a crafting time that is subtly described as “Longer Term”. Check out Garden Mosaic.

It finishes at 96×96 and I can hardly begin to describe what is included. The construction itself is not particularly complicated but the volume is astronomical. 2,048 HSTs. Once you have constructed your HSTs, you then mix them up with squares to form four patches and put everything together to create the amazing secondary pattern.

The only thing that would make this remotely doable is if you have a foolproof way of making HSTs where you don’t have to trim each one. There are several ways to do this, mostly using a paper template.

I might not be starting this pattern any time soon. I have my own quixotic quilt in progress. A few bee-mates and I are embarking on a log cabin/flying geese project that will hopefully be done in one year.

As shown, this quilt is 64 log cabin blocks, 144 flying geese blocks, and 81 four X blocks. Whew. Two epic quilts in one post. I’m exhausted!

Enjoy the pattern for the Garden Mosaic quilt and have a great weekend.

Garden Mosaic

Becky

Happy Friday! I had a very busy week – starting with a very successful grand opening of Montgomery Quilt Company‘s new location. It was so fun to meet a lot of new quilters and be involved in the decisions the every small business has to make as it grows. Plus I was allowed to do merchandising and quilt hanging – neither of which I’m very good at, so it was nice to have an opportunity to practice (although I know that there were a lot of changes made after I left!)

There was also the big news of FreeSpirit/Westminster closing the doors on its fabric business. I’m not sure how they’ve not managed to be successful with their line-up of popular and prolific designers, nor why they didn’t sell their business to a competitor who had a more successful distribution network in place. But, I guess that’s why I’m just a small designer and they’re the head of a large…. well….. unsuccessful company. Anyway, I hope that we will shortly find out where the likes of Joel Dewberry, Kaffe Fassett, Tula Pink and several can’t-live-without designers will land.

I also finally finished a quilt that I had been working on since sometime before Christmas. I purchased the fabric during my Black Friday binge and quickly decided to go for a quick and easy pattern that I found on Moda Bakeshop. I love the Bonnie & Camille Good Life fabric and was intrigued with the idea of two quilts with three jelly rolls. Was it too good to be true??? Turns out that the answer is no! Three jelly rolls makes two magnificent quilts – or it does, if one puts in the effort. So far, I have one fantastic quilt.

I was able to quilt it at our January quilt bee – we all brought UFOs to work on – but it took me a further month to sew on the binding (how embarrassing!). I love everything about the quilt. The royal blue against the Good Life aquas, reds and whites. The flannel dot on the back. The Bella solid in Christmas Red for the binding.

Since this quilt pattern comes from the Bakeshop, it’s this week’s Free Pattern Friday! Despite my procrastination on the binding, it’s a very easy sew – there aren’t any matching seams and the whole thing comes together very quickly. I quilted it in an all-over stipple with clear poly thread with my domestic machine. It was a breeze and I love it! I can’t wait to make the other half.

Lawn Chair Quilts

Have a wonderful weekend!

Becky

Happy Friday! Hope your week has been a good one.  I’ve been working hard helping my friend move Montgomery Quilt Company to it’s new location! So far I’ve only been trusted with the painting – and after seeing how well I’ve done with that, I can see why!  hahaha. The new store is about twice as big as the old one so I’m excited to see all of the new fabrics.

There will be an open house on Tuesday, February 13 to celebrate the move! Come check it out at 301 Prairie St in Montgomery TX, starting at 10. There will be a huge sale, a make ‘n take activity, refreshments, and lots of socialization. I can’t wait!

Since I’ve been working hard, I’m in the mood for an easy quilt pattern. I found the perfect one from Andover Fabric. Meet Hothouse Flowers. It’s fat quarter friendly and is a great 76×76 size.

I love that it is fat quarter friendly and the pieces are pretty large – sometimes I get a fat quarter and really struggle to cut it up because I love the fabric in it’s large size. The construction of this quilt is columns of flying geese with a sliver of sashing along the long side. If you wished to make the quilt larger, you would merely increase the size of the geese (you are only limited by the size of your fat quarter).

Whip this quilt up and brighten up someone’s dreary February (or your own!)

Hothouse Flowers

Have a great weekend!
Becky

Yet another week has just flown by! I’ve been working on a bunch of different quilting projects, plus a couple of life projects too.

For quilting projects, I’m in the middle of the Southern Stars quilt pattern by She Quilts A Lot. As you can see, it’s a cute and fairly straightforward pattern. If only there weren’t 288 stitch and flips to make for the little stars!!!

I’m also trying out Anna Graham’s Maker Tote. I’ve made quite a few of her other bags and loved them all, so I’m anticipating that this will be as enjoyable as the other projects. Right now I’ve picked out fabric for a couple of totes and am waiting on my separating zippers to arrive. I’ve never sewed with a separating zipper before but don’t anticipate any issues. In March, I’ll be leading a class on this project, so if you’ve ever wanted to get into bag making but are intimidated by the zippers, handles, and hardware this is a great opportunity to learn those skills. There’s a huge variety of bag and totes (even free patterns) out there and once you are confident about the fundamentals, you can make any bag.

This week’s free pattern is a beauty from Ella Blue. If you’re not familiar with this fabric line, it’s a family-owned business out of Australia and the fabrics are printed in Japan. I love their basics, but don’t see the fabric very often here.

As you can see, there’s nothing terribly complicated about this pattern – it’s pairs of HSTs arranged in a chevron-style pattern. The quilt finishes at 60×60″, but if you wanted something larger, you could make your HSTs larger than the called-for 6.5″. The pattern is 10×10 HSTs – so 100 total. Nothing too traumatic and totally doable if you’re whipping up a quilt on short notice. However, the impact of this baby is impressive and I also love the potential for using SCRAPS, although it would take some careful planning to get the rainbow effect.

Firecracker

Have a great weekend!

Becky

In the continuing spirit of the upcoming holiday, I thought I’d post another Valentine’s quilt. This quilt was brought to my attention by Nicolette, who writes on the blog Dutch Comfort. How sweet is this? If you’ve never checked out her blog, you should definitely head on over. She’s got lots of great work!

This pattern is a free one by Cloud 9 Fabrics and is called Sweethearts. It is a generous 48×60″ and is fat quarter friendly – hurray!!!

The construction method is not terribly complicated – you start with a rectangle of color and use a stitch and flip method to take slices off the corners to create each half of the heart. This is very conducive to chain piecing and is definitely a weekend quilt. You could also easily upsize the colored rectangles to get larger hearts and/or increase the number of hearts per row or the number of rows to get a larger quilt.

A handmade quilt definitely tells someone how you feel about them – but in case that wasn’t enough, a heart motif should definitely get the message across!

Sweethearts-Quilt

Have a great weekend!

Becky

After a 5 day weekend due to snow (ice) days, Friday has arrived very quickly! Not that I’m complaining – it’s always nice to be pleasantly surprised by a weekend.

This week’s free pattern is from Art Gallery Fabric.

It’s called Acoustic and features AGF’s Raise the Volume fabric line. I particularly like the Measured Tempo and Waves of Echo fabrics. What I’m not a huge fan of are the Y-seams that come with this pattern. I’d probably take the plunge and do it with English Paper Piecing in order to make sure that I got those beautiful corners correctly nestled. However, part of the quilting journey has to be about trying something new and stretching boundaries, and this quilt isn’t outrageously large or complicated – so maybe I should try the new technique!

Acoustic_instructions

Have a great weekend!

Becky