I had a vision for this quilt – something light, airy and fresh looking that had fabrics that reminded me of the ocean, sky and beach. I am so pleased with how it turned out and it has exactly the look I was going for.  Of  course, I had to make a rope bowl to go with it – my new fun thing to make.

I had so much fun picking out these fabrics.  I got a lot of help from Hawthorne Threads, which has their own fabric designs that are printed digitally.  This enables them to offer them in a very wide variety of colors.  I selected water and sky colors:  Skipping Stones in Sky, Doodle in Powder Blue, Watercolor in Robin’s Egg, Stardust in Sky, Multi Dot in Fair Isle Glacier,  and for the binding Rogue Stripe in Cornflower.

The other fabrics in this quilt were Seaside Blue Waves Anchors, Reef Sky Dots by Robert Kaufman, Laura Gunn Painter’s Canvas, and Timeless Treasures Sand Dollar Beach, which I love and was so lucky to find – I love the delicate little sand dollars.

The backing fabric was a real find, too – Indigo Coastal Words in Blue from Studio e Fabrics.  It’s a perfect beach/ocean fabric and gave some interesting punch to the backing.

I thought about the design of this quilt for a while – I wanted to use larger pieces of fabric.  I really didn’t want to do a lot of cutting up fabric and making blocks – I really wanted these fabrics to be the star.  So I decided to just sew strips of various widths together into sets and then subcut those sets into strips.  I laid out the strips into a design I liked then sewed them into rows – since all the strips’ widths were different, there were no seams to match up!

Here you can see the completed strips that were sewn together:

I really loved the design of this quilt and since there are no blocks to assemble, it goes really fast!  I am working on a pattern now and hope to have it available soon.

I used my new favorite thicker batting, Quilter’s Dream Supreme.  It makes such a nice hefty quilt.

I love this binding because I love bias binding.  And now you don’t have to cut diagonal strips to get bias binding – Hawthorne Threads has a wide selection of colors of stripes on the diagonal, called Rogue Stripe.  This one is Cornflower.  Makes it so simple when you can cut crossgrain strips and get bias binding!

When you use a Stripology ruler, cutting same size strips is even faster.  Like really fast:

You don’t have to lift up the ruler to measure each strip. You make your cuts, lift up the ruler and they are all done.

I quilted this using Aurifil cotton thread, a natural white on the top and a light blue color in the bobbin.  I used a 4.0 stitch length and a walking foot.  The vertical quilting cut across the strips and the horizontal quilting was all in the ditch.

Thanks for coming by,
Elaine

(Note:  After many requests, I have now written a PDF pattern for this quilt!  You can find it here.)

This is my last quilt for 2017 and I wanted to get it posted before the holidays!  I photograph my quilts outside and so this was a real challenge because it was 17° and we were going to get 6 inches of snow that day.  I sort of had one shot to get some pictures. The rest of the week would have too much snow to be able to shoot.  I was freezing, but managed to get decent photos.   I’ve had a few inquiries asking if there is a pattern – no, there isn’t but I’m going to give you my cutting instructions and hope that helps.

I can’t help myself with mustard and greys together – I just love that color combination.  The big reason for making this quilt, though, was that I wanted to experiment with a new type of batting.  I wanted a bigger, heavier quilt but still wanted to machine quilt.  I have used two layers of Warm and Natural in the past, but found that too stiff.  A woman in a quilt shop suggested Quilter’s Dream.  They make several different lofts and I wanted to see if I could use the heaviest loft, Supreme,  and still machine quilt successfully.  The answer was yes, although it takes a little muscle to manipulate the quilt as you are quilting it!  The quilt ended up having a very nice heft to it without being bulky and is perfect for curling up with on the sofa.  Also, I believe the Quilter’s Dream is less stiff than Warm and Natural.  It is more expensive, but worth it if a little more suppleness is important to you.

The fabrics were all from my stash. Some of the mustard fabrics were from one of my all time favorite lines, Magnolia,  from Camelot Fabrics.  Some of the greys were from Zen Chic for Moda, Robert Kaufman Basketweave and Light and Shade.  Many of these fabrics are no longer available but you can find some from Etsy sellers.

My background color for this was Robert Kaufman Kona Cotton Solid in Snow.

The quilt ended up being 48″ x 60″, which I consider about the perfect throw size.  I played around with the arrow blocks and how to lay them out – there were so many good patterns they could make.  I made 80 arrow blocks total.  I used 20 different print fabrics and made 4 arrow blocks for each fabric.

Each arrow block requires:   (1) 3.5″ square print,  (1) 3.5″ square background and (2) Half Square Triangles of the print and the background.

Here is how I did my cutting:
For each different print fabric, I cut (4) 3.5″ squares  (80 print squares total)
I cut (80) 3.5″ squares of the background fabric
I made (8) HSTs of each print fabric  (160 HSTs total)

This is all you need to make the top.  I made the HSTs by doing the eight-at-a-time method, which is fast and perfect for this top, because each different print fabric took just that many HSTs.   I cut (1) 8.25″ square of each print fabric and (1) 8.25″ square of the background fabric.  Then follow the eight-at-a-time method.

For the binding, I used my favorite gingham  – Robert Kaufman Carolina Gingham in silver. This gingham comes in many colors and I love keeping it in my binding stash drawer.  It was also one of the prints in the quilt.   I made 2.5″ binding and used this method to attach it. I keep my walking foot on when I attach the binding now.

For the backing fabric, I used an old favorite from the Maker Line by Art Gallery called “Make and Pin”.  I love this fabric and it makes a great backing fabric because of the random pattern.  I used this method to make the backing, avoiding the dreaded cutting and piecing of the backing, which I hate.

I machine quilted using Aurifil 40 wt thread in Muslin.  It’s a little heavier than the 50 wt and I like the way it looks on the quilt.  I used a 4.0″ stitch length with a walking foot.

I love the way this quilt turned out and I made it just for us, so I’m looking forward to curling up with it in the years to come.

I hope these cutting instructions are helpful to you.  If you have any questions, just e-mail me.

Have a great holiday season and a wonderful New Year.  See you in 2018!
Elaine

I’ve been getting in as much sewing possible before good weather hits here in Michigan, so I’ve really been putting in the hours on my machine.  Soon there will be lots of yard work and other outdoor activities.  I have so many quilt designs drawn out in my notebook that I want to make – there’s just not enough hours in a day.   I’ve wanted to do this pinwheel quilt for a while and knew I was going to make pinwheels popping out on a white background.  I wasn’t sure about the color scheme at first, but it evolved to become a very colorful quilt!  Stay tuned because I am writing a full pattern for this quilt and hope to have it ready soon.   There’s so many color possibilities for this quilt – I would love to make a navy and white one, too.

This quilt was made of mostly of Kona solids – White, Orange, Pear, Baby Pink and Bright Pink.  The dotted pinwheels on the front is a fabric I really love – it’s called “Sunkissed” by Michele D’Amore for Benartex Fabrics.  So fun!  I used it as the backing fabric, also. Unfortunately, this is a hard to find fabric now.  I’ve been hoarding it for a while.

I pondered how to quilt this and in the end I ended up doing modern diagonal lines, going in just one direction.  It was tempting to quilt it both ways, but I restrained myself!  Because I followed the pinwheels and went right down the diagonal corner of the squares,  I did not need to mark my quilting lines in any way.   I used a 4.0 inch stitch length on my machine.   The batting was Warm & White from the Warm Company.

The binding is a fabric I’ve had in my stash for a while, just waiting for the perfect quilt and this was it!  It’s a pink stripe from the Hi De Ho Collection from Moda.  I made 2.5″ binding and did my usual machine binding method.

\

This quilt finished at 40″ x 47″.  It’s a great size for a child to snuggle with or as a great design accent for a room.

I’m listing this quilt in the shop.

Thanks for dropping in – I hope you’re making something!

Elaine

Save

I love this quilt.  I so enjoyed making this quilt and watching it come together.  I love high contrast fabrics so much and putting them together with white solid fabric is so eye catching.  After I finished the Zuzu quilt, I really wanted to do something similar, only with squares.  I knew I wanted patchwork, but I didn’t want the whole quilt to be patterned fabrics, so I broke it up with blocks of white and I think the design is bold because of it.

I have lots of gorgeous blue fabrics from a block of the month club I joined and decided I did not like.  I didn’t like the blocks, but I loved the fabrics – gorgeous Cotton & Steel, Robert Kaufman, Art Gallery, Carolyn Friedlander, etc.  These were so fun to sort through and select for the quilt.

For the construction of this quilt, I made nine-patch blocks by cutting 3″ strips of fabrics from the width of fabric and then cutting those down to 3″ x 10″ strips.  I sewed three strips together, randomly, and then subcut these into 3 strip sets.  Then after I had sewed multiple strip sets, I sewed these randomly together to get nine-patch blocks.  I pressed all the seams one way on all my strip sets, so I could nest the seams together when I did the nine-patch blocks.  Make sure all the seams are pressed the same way on your finished blocks so that you can alternate seams on your rows and nest them together.

After your blocks are sewn, trim them to 8″ square.

After I had all my nine-patch blocks finished, I cut  8″ squares of solid white.  Then I laid out the quilt randomly, alternating nine-patch blocks and white blocks.  I made 46 nine-patch blocks and cut 17 squares of solid white.

I was going to do a scrappy binding, but then decided to use a tiny navy blue and white dress stripe from Dear Stella that I thought went nicely with the quilt.  I did my usual machine binding for extra durability.

I stitched in the ditch for the quilting, because I felt I didn’t want the quilting to interfere with the beautiful patterns in all the fabrics.

I also used TWO layers of Warm and Natural Warm and White cotton batting again. This makes the quilt extra heavy and extra warm and it has become my favorite way to make a quilt now.  I just love the extra heft and weight that it gives a quilt.  I actually gently prewash my batting because I don’t want it to shrink much when it’s in the quilt and laundered in the future.  Warm and Natural batting actually holds up well in a gently prewash, but other battings I’ve used do not.  I think that shows how well the batting will hold up once it’s in the quilt and going to be washed for years to come.

The backing fabric is an absolute favorite of mine – 108″ wide quiltback “Language of Colors” by Windham Fabrics.  I  just love this fabric and the punch it adds to a quilt, without competing with the front of the quilt.

The finished quilt is 52″ x 67″, a great size to snuggle up with.

This quilt is for sale and I’m listing this in the Shop.

Have a wonderful week!
Elaine

Save