Monthly Archives: February 2017

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I'm happy to be participating in the fourth week of Project QUILTING. (You can find me at #110 if you'd like to vote for my project.) This week's theme is Brighter the Better. We were asked to crank up the saturation in our projects. Let me just say, my stash was made for this challenge. My initial pull of bright, vibrant fabrics resulted in a variety of bold stripes.

I was inspired on the morning of Valentine's Day by the heart blocks being posted on Instagram. I decided to go with fully saturated hearts for my project and chose one of my stripes to inspire the color palette.

I settled on the 5" finished size of the Simple Heart Block by Cluck Cluck Sew. I had a limited amount of the striped fabric and this size seemed to maximize the number of blocks I could create – seven. I cut a variety of background fabrics for these striped hearts. Then I went on to make additional pairings for more heart blocks. I decided early on I would include some square blocks interspersed with the heart blocks. In the end, I stopped sewing heart blocks when I got tired of making them. ;-) Inadvertently, I sewed 14 heart blocks on February 14th.

The next morning I filled in the remaining spots with squares and began work on a final layout. I could have spent days rearranging blocks on the design wall. I didn't want like fabrics to touch on an edge (corners were okay) and I wanted hearts (and more specifically striped hearts) in each row and column, and I wanted some balance.

I added the grey border so I wouldn't lose my points when I added my binding. I machine bind and it's not a perfect 1/4". I should probably do some work to figure out how to plan that my machine binding land in the right place by adding a little space around the quilt top when I trim it after quilting.

I thought I would walking food quilt crosshatch spaced 1 1/2", but when I started my quilting after 10pm last night I decided on 2 1/4". Two hours of quilting later, I finished that step at 12:40am. After I slept, my 4 year old daughter supervised my work attach the binding and then helped with my photo shoot. ;-) I had planned to bind it in grey to match the border, but decided in the vein of "Brighter the Better" I would use one of my blue fabrics. I had the perfect amount of this print! The backing fabric (also from my stash) was purchased a while ago to back a project that I recently gave away (in WIP status). I thought it was the perfect combination for this quilt.

My quilt finished at 34" x 34" which I think means it's the perfect size to go to a NICU.

I'm linking up to Persimmon Dreams for the Project QUILTING Brighter the Better Challenge and to TGIFF at A Quarter Inch from the Edge.

Thanks for visiting! Voting for Project QUILTING is open! You get to vote for your ten favorite projects. Mine is #110. Voting has ended. :-)

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Inspired by a quilt that my friend Mary shared with me from Pinterest, I decided to design an Ombré HST quilt mathematically. This was the result.

I chose to use a gradient of eight different values, numbered 1-8 from lightest to darkest. I began by drawing a 7 by 9 rectangle in my graph notebook and randomly adding diagonal lines in each square. 63 squares meant 126 triangles, so dividing that by 8 different values, there should be 15.75 triangles of each value. I used six of my values 16 times each, and two of them 15 times each, filling in the triangles somewhat randomly while using the lower numbers more frequently at the top of the quilt and the higher numbers more frequently at the bottom of the quilt. The last numbers I filled in were 4 and 5.

Knowing that it would be easiest to make HSTs two at a time, I counted up my pairings and found that seventeen combinations were used an odd number of times (meaning that two at a time HSTs would not be very efficient). Seventeen was the perfect number of squares to add one extra row and one extra column to my design, so my design became 10 rows of 8 HSTs. My final adjustment was to make sure that I had used each value an equal number of times. Then I converted my numbers to the graphic above.

Make Your Own Quilt

This design can be made by choosing eight solids (or blenders or prints if you wish) in a variety of values. Tip: Use the black and white option on your camera phone to view the values of your fabrics; this way you can ensure contrast and verify that you have a range of values. Cut out ten squares of each of the eight fabrics. Choose your finished size of HSTs and cut the squares one inch larger. Create two at a time HSTs and trim to 1/2" larger than your finished size. Want a baby quilt? Use a fat quarter of each fabric*. Cut 5" squares and trim HSTs to 4 1/2" for a 32" x 40" finished quilt. Want a throw quilt? Use a half yard of each fabric. Cut 8" squares and trim HSTs to 7 1/2" for a 56" x 70" finished quilt. (Scroll to the bottom of this post for a calculator to make any size quilt.) Use the list below for cutting and piecing and the diagram that follows for block placement to create your version of my design. Or go random and use your design wall to audition the layout of your design. Have fun!

(*One option for creating this quilt in a baby quilt size is to choose a Kona fat quarter bundle. I like these color options: Lush Lagoon, Sky Gazer, Powder Room, and Lavender Fields. You could  use the extra fat quarters as part of the backing.)

Label swatches of your fabrics #1-8, in order by value, lightest to darkest. Cut ten squares from each of your eight fabrics. Make the following 80 HSTs.

using 1 square of each value, create 2 HSTs (24 total from this section)
1-5 (example, use one value 1 square and one value 5 square to make 2 HSTs)
1-6
1-7
2-5
2-6
2-7
3-4
3-6
3-7
4-6
4-7
6-8

using 2 squares of each value, create 4 HSTs (32 total from this section)
1-2 (example, use two value 1 squares and two value 2 square to make 4 HSTs)
1-3
2-4
3-8
4-8
5-7
6-7
7-8

using 3 squares of each value, create 6 HSTs (24 total from this section)
1-4 (example, use three value 1 squares and three value 4 squares to make 6 HSTs)
2-3
5-6
5-8

Like it in grey? Try these Kona solids: (1) Silver, (2) Ash, (3) Iron, (4) Pewter, (5) Steel, (6) Coal, (7) Charcoal, (8) Black.

Make Your Version Any Size
Use the handy slider below to choose what size you'll cut your initial squares. Trim to the size indicated for a finished quilt in the indicated size.

Cut 4" squares. Trim HSTs to 3.5" squares.

Finished quilt will be 24.5" by 30.5”. Finished blocks will be 3" squares.

My February 8th newsletter has four great palettes to use with this pattern.

I'm linking up to:
Tips and Tutorials Tuesday
Linky Tuesday
Tips and Tutorials Festival

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This week our challenge was to create a project inspired by a pattern or texture found "in the wild." True to form, it took me a few days before I started paying attention for inspiration. After snapping a few pictures while I was out, I became fixated on my son's plastic faceted gems. I chose to focus on this one.

I loved the geometry of it, and the dart shape you can see in the reflection above.

My initial sketch included the edges around the perimeter, but I edited those out in favor of a more simple design. My finished quilt is 24" x 24".

Here are a few close up shots of the quilting. My pink quilting motifs came from Angela Walters' Shape by Shape books and were stitched with coordinating 50wt Aurifil thread.

 

I'm linking up to Project Quilting 8.3.

Project QUILTING online voting will begin Sunday 2/5 around 11am PST.  There are over 75 projects linked up so far. (Mine is #78.)

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