Traditional Design Scrap Quilt

This is another time lapse quit probably started about 15 years ago.
Originally I had intended to add 2 borders and had the fabric for them.
I realized it didn't need borders and was a great size for a blankie for ME!
I love scrap quilts. I call this a controlled scrap quilt as I selected fabrics within a broad color scheme.

I am enjoying using this.

54 x 69 inches

Through The Years

This is not the type of quilt I make. I made this for a contest where one had to use Thimbleberries fabric in 1999. It was a finalist but not a winner.
It measures 61 inches square. It has a traditional feel to it and I do like it.
The reason I am sharing it now is because at lunch Tuesday the subject of their fabrics came up in a conversation between Kathy Metallica Cray and myself.
She said she no longer has any of their fabrics and I know I still have a few of their buck bundles I have used for guild projects, etc.
It is a good quilt but not my style. They did buy the pattern from me to publish a calendar which was never created but I was paid.
I actually designed this in Corel Draw but when I made the units they didn’t work so I made some changes and made a better quilt with them.
When I am creating I really need to work with fabric and not on a computer. I also need to let the quilt talk to me and tell me what it wants to be.

Sentimental Journey

Recently I have had some wonderful experiences connecting with long lost friends and relatives I haven't see for years. The connections have been made with and without the aid of the Internet.


This is Threads Through Time. As I worked on it I felt a strong connection to my paternal grandmother. I thought about the similarities between the two of us and our differences. During the holidays I was looking through old photos and found photos of each of us at the same age. We could have been twins! I had never made that observation before. My grandmother also sewed and made quilts.
I have recently reconnected with 5 cousins who share the same grand parents. I had already had connected with several others. I now also know how my 2 surviving aunts who are 93 years old are doing.


Through The Years makes me think of friends who I had lost track of and recently made contact with. This includes high school friends, college friends, first job friends and quilting friends. These groups included friends I hadn't been in contact with for as much as 50 years. What a thrill to find them again.



For years I attended Jinny Beyer's Quilting Seminar on Hilton Head Island. For the 10th Anniversary of the seminar I designed the signature block and facilitated making this quilt top for Jinny. I made many friends through the seminar. As we all lead busy lives we lost contact over the years. I have reconnected with so many of them through Facebook.



This Lady Of The Lake quilt is significant because when I returned to Florida this year a long lost friend started talking about a lake in our area. I drove to the lake and also became interested in the history of our part of Florida. I am now reading the history of our county. We still have some "Old Florida" within a few miles but it is rapidly disappearing. Perhaps the current economy will help to slow down the disappearance of the natural beauty. We can hope.

I have so enjoyed reconnecting with everyone. Some nights after finding someone during that day or evening I am so excited I have a hard time getting to sleep. These connections are making my life much richer.


Recently I posted about the Quilt Art Altered Art Playing Card exchange I facilitated. After the post I heard from several of the participants. The cards for this puzzle are some of the ones I made for the exchange.

Traditional Quilt - final block arrangement

This is the final block arrangement for this quilt.
I clipped coupons last night to go shopping for Black Friday deals. I woke up this morning and decided to go back to sleep and forget it. I still feel I had the experience just by clipping the coupons! It was a good decision since I really don't need anything and my Christmas shopping is taken care of.
I spent the day straightening up the house and changing some of the blocks around on this quilt. There were some similar blocks that were too close together and just stood out too much on the first layout.
My goal was to have a quilt where the colors and values were somewhat evenly distributed so your eye wasn't drawn to any one particular area. I think I accomplished that. As you look at this on the computer your eye may be drawn to an area but it is because of the color and value in specific blocks, not because similar blocks are too close together.
I have taken the blocks off my design wall and they are stacked and labeled row by row. I can now sew them together when Pat and I get together on Tuesday for a sewing day.

What do you do without a design wall?

I've probably had these 63 blocks finished about a week now. I don't have space for a design wall here and was trying to figure out what to do. Yesterday I came up with the "brilliant" idea of pinning a piece of cotton batting to the large quilt I have hanging on the wall and using it for a design wall.
It worked extremely well.


This shows all 63 blocks with the orientation I expect to use for the quilt. This is the first photo just as I put them on the wall in a somewhat random arrangement. It is quite obvious that I will have to move some of them around a bit.
It is much easier for me to see that in the photo than by looking at the blocks on the wall. I will start to move them around and take more photos evaluating each arrangement as I go.
Once I am pleased with the arrangement I can take them down by row, label them and sew them any time.
I will not make a border fabric selection until they are sewn together.

I used the light bulb cut since I had such a light bulb moment with my design wall idea!

I'm back - finally!

I found this quilt block design in a quilting magazine several years ago. Even though I hadn't done traditional quilts for some time I was fascinated by it.
Two years ago I cut a lot of rectangles and squares to make this. I pieced several blocks and laid out more of the blocks until I had about 30 - not even enough for a blankie.
To lay out a block I put all the pieces in the correct arrangement between the pages of a magazine. Then I turn a few pages and lay out another block. This makes it so much easier when the time comes to sew the blocks.
Today I started sewing more of the blocks together. I have a goal when creating this project - IMPERFECTION! I am really a perfectionist when I am quilting and I think this block could benefit from a few pieces that don't match! It might make it look like it was an old quilt. However anyone who is familiar with today's fabrics will not be fooled. It won't hurt me either to become less of a perfectionist!
I like to chain piece. This block does NOT let me do that. I had pieced several blocks and realized I had probably thrown away a half of spool of thread cutting off the beginning and ending threads on each seam. I got out a scrap and sewed onto and off of that between each line of stitching. Not only did this save thread, but it kept the fabric from being pushed into the hole in the throat plate as I started each seam.
When I haven't sewn for quite some time I like to choose a project that doesn't require much thinking. This is that kind of project.

For those of you who have been experiencing puzzle withdrawal I'm back with one for you tonight.

Mystery quilt on bed

I don't think I was influenced by a particular quilt I had seen when I made this quilt. I did select fabrics that had a traditional look to them. I call this the "Mystery Quilt".

Of course this was made by sewing strips into strata and then sub cutting them with an equilateral triangle ruler. The pieced triangles alternate with plain triangles. It was a fun quilt to make.

I ended up with so many extra triangles I was able to make 7 placemats from the left overs. I have black dishes in my kitchen and they look great with them.

I also taught it as a workshop/class and it was very well received.


Here is my friend Sally building her mystery quilt on a design wall. Do you remember Sally? She has been known to stand on the counter to preview her designs but this is a much safer was to design a quilt. What a wonderful combination of fabrics she used.

This is one of those quilts that is very effective in both traditional or contemporary fabric. It relies on a balanced group of fabrics. I also found it was more effective using only prints. The ones I started using prints and solids are still in pieces in a box. I believe I put them on my rework or abandon list.

15th Anniversary Quilt

I designed this quilt block as a gift to my students for the 15th anniversary of my shop many years ago.
It was included in my newsletter and I asked people to figure out the significance of the design.

Can you figure it out?

This block is a very traditional type of design. I had heard there is no such thing as an original symetrical block of this type. I researched all my quilt books and publications and did not find anything like this block so I can say with confidence it is an original block with a very traditional look.

I choose colors that were not common at the time I designed it, but the fabrics and block do make the quilt look quite traditional.

Enjoy working this puzzle.

A, B, C's and 1, 2, 3's

Although this has a very traditional quilt look, it is not a replication nor a copy of an antique quilt. I did choose subtle color fabrics with prints that were reminiscent of old fabrics.

This is the blankie I use in Florida. I designed it to use the alphabet fabric Jinny Beyer designed quite some time ago. Each nine patch has a letter or number in the center square.
I also have included other information above and below the nine patch section.

I took this quilt to a long arm quilter and had her machine baste it for me. I don't enjoy the basting process so this was a great solution to avoid this. I don't think I know any quilters who really enjoy the basting process.

I used a cotton batting that would shrink when I washed it after it was quilted. I like the flat look it has now so I won't wash it until it needs cleaning.

I am using the Jigzone cut as letters seem so appropriate for this quilt puzzle.

Breakthrough quilt - Red and white pinwheel

This quilt was a breakthrough for me as a quilter.
I had just recieved Quilts Newsletter Magazine No. 74.
In it was an article by Barbara Johannah about how to make half square triangles by drawing them on a piece of fabric, placing it right side together with another piece of fabric, stitching on both sides of the diagonal and cutting them apart.
Voila! I was so excited and had to make something RIGHT away.
She used 1/2 inch seam allowances and I followed her directions to the letter.
I had seen this design in an old McCalls Quilting publication but they did it with smaller triangles and used a tiny yellow print, a tiny red print and cut each piece individually.
I thought I was being SO creative when I changed the size and the fabrics! I also hand quilted it 1/2 inch away from the seam lines!!!!! (Except for the one seam I missed and is still not quilted 32 years later)
This is my blankie and it is sitting on a foot stool less than 5 feet from me as I write this. It has traveled many places with me. If I want to take a nap I don't crawl into bed, I just cover myself from the tip of my toes to my neck with it and I'm sleeping in less than 5 minutes. When I travel and want to take a nap in a strange bed it also does the trick there.
One thing I didn't realize when I made this is for every square you drew you got two half square triangle squares after you sewed them together. Somewhere upstairs in a box there are enough pieces to make another quilt or do something else with them.

Once I learned how to do this there was NO stopping me. Within the week I made the quilt on the cover of that same issue of QN as a queen size quilt. I couldn't find any directions for it so I just measured it and figured out how to do it. Several years later I found out the cover quilt was only a crib size quilt but I had just doubled all their measurements!

Of course I had to use a triangle cut for this break through half square triangle quilt!

Gardens of The Grand Hotel or Lady of the Lake

A group of quilting friends got together to make half square triangles. We were each instructed to bring blue fabrics. At the time we did this blue fabrics were the fabrics that were the most popular.
We ended up staying up almost all night and piecing a gazillion blue half square triangles to make Lady of the Lake quilts.
When we started to get tired we went for a walk around the "lake" in the condo development. It was a beautiful summer evening and we came back recharged and made more of these.
We slept for a few hours when we got too tired to go on.
We each went home with about an 1/8th gazillion of them.

I lived almost an hour away so as I drove home I decided I had to add some red to my quilt. To bridge the gap between the red and blue I needed to add purple.
At the time I made this I still worked downstairs so I didn't have the large design walls I have now. I hung up a piece of batting and arranged them until I was satisfied with the placement and design.
I added a narrow navy border and then added a half square triangle to use some of the gazillion triangles that were left. The final border is a stripe fabric.

I named this Gardens of the Grand Hotel as the placement of the colors reminded me of the color placement of the lovely gardens of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan.

When you do a puzzle do you start from the center or the edge? The puzzle cut is half square triangles this itme.

75th Birthday Signature Quilt for my Dad

I have decided to continue showing you some of my more traditional quilts for several more posts.

I thought it would be a great idea for the family to make a signature quilt for my Dad for his 75th birthday almost 20 years ago.
Of course I was the only one in the family who quilted.
I sent squares to the rest of the family to sign and when they were all returned I chose this design for the quilt.
It was one of those "EASY" album quilts.
Things are easy when you follow the directions and sew them together as it should be done.
When you get too confident that's when the problems begin.
I made the top left diagonal section with no problems.
I decided it would be easier to make the other half and then sew the two together.
After completing that half I realized I had done it backwards and it looked exactly like the top half. I couldn't sew them together like that.
So I had to take apart each seam where i had joined the rows. Do you realize how long that took - even for me who considered herself the workds best seam ripper?
I added the border print as the border and machine quilted it.
He was very pleased with it.

I am sure it will be much easier for you to put this puzzle together than it was for me to piece this quilt!

Ohio Star - Historic Concepts

This is a replication of an Ohio Star quilt found in a magazine. This teaches the easy way to make quarter square triangles.
The hand quilting on this quilt covers the entire surface with no accommodation to the pieced blocks.
This quilting design can be called Baptist fans, Methodist fans or many other names.

On this Peach and green version I decided to do some intricate hand quilting. The pieced blocks are simply quilted near the seams.
The peach print areas have an intricate quilting motif. The border has a beautiful feather design.

You are probably saying "But I don't see the quilting."
The reason you are not seeing it is not poor photography. It is the busy peach print I used as the background. If you're a quilter I hope you will learn from my experience.



This photo shows the back of the quilt. You can see the quilting here. But who would hang this quilt on the wall backwards?

Let's do an easy puzzle with the Pink and Blue version.

Tree of Life - Historic Concepts

This Tree of Life quilt was not a replication of a particular quilt. It was an combined example of various Tree of Life antique quilts.

This example has a khaki background and it is a perfect fall quilt. I also made kits with a muslin background and all the same fabrics for the rest of the quilt.

I spent a lot of time coming up with the quilting pattern which I included in the kit.

With all the Historic Concepts kits I used contemporary efficient techniques in the directions. This was one of the last quilts in the series.

I hope you'll enjoy this Tree puzzle.

What's black and white and a little red all over?

This quilt is part of a series of quilt kits I did called Historic Concepts - Contemporary Systems.
I was inspired by antique quilts I found in magazines for most of the quilts. I used quick piecing instructions in the kits. I had several people who bought the kits and taught themselves to quilt by making them. Black and White Nine Patch Star is hand quilted.

I played around with a section of the quilt in Corel Photo Paint so you can see the quilting motif I designed for the elongated hexagon.

Enjoy the star cut with the star quilt!