Donna's Scrappy Nine Patch Stars QOV

 After a busy long weekend at retreat, I had lesson's on the PCQ club's long arm this week, so I'm worn out! More about the long arm lessons later. Today I'm celebrating a make by one of my blog readers, Donna. 

After I posted about Red, White and Blue quilts on July 4, Donna sent me a photo of the quilt top she made from my Scrappy Nine Patch Stars QOV pattern. 

I love it! The crisp white makes it look so fresh and modern; it just sparkles. 

Here is the tutorial for Scrappy Nine Patch Stars. I offer it as a free pattern for donation quilts for QOV and other charitable uses. The size is 60 x 80". 

If you'd like a PDF of the pattern, please leave a comment and be sure to include your email. 

If you make a Scrappy Nine Patch Stars quilt, I'd love to see a photo of your version.

Link ups: 
Alycia Quilts,

Design Walls at Retreat

OMG, retreat is turning out to be so much fun! I'm with a great bunch of girls and I'm enjoying getting to know them better. We have all levels of experience; everyone is super helpful.  They're working on some amazing projects. 

The retreat ranch where we're at is a lovely Southwest style house in southeastern Arizona. We're at 5000 feet elevation, so the weather here is much cooler and more pleasant than in Phoenix. There are nine of us and we have a large sewing room, comfortable accommodations, fantastic meals, and happy hour out on the patio. 

Sewing room

Fine Dining

Gourmet Lunch

Cocktail hour on the patio

It's fun to see the projects everyone is working on. Here are some of the design walls. These photos were taken over three days and some projects progressed farther than this. Photos of people and projects are posted here with their permission. 

Linda L and her cactus

Linda's Loopy project

Linda S building a spiral

Donna's Christmas wall hanging

Donna's flannel donation quilt

Karen with Jean

Jean's Blocks

Karen's blocks

Nancy's trees

Robin's stained glass blocks

Me with my Snake Quilt blocks

My Star Spangled Spiral blocks

My quilted pillow cover

We had four days of sewing, friendship, and fun. I've really enjoyed getting to know these girls and I feel really welcomed by them. I hope I get to come back next year! 

Linking up with Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts

Ready for Retreat

By the time you read this I'll be on my way. My projects are packed and ready to go. Sewing machine and tools, etc.  Three project boxes, a sit-upon, and a grocery bag of snacks and wine.  Personal stuff (not shown) is all packed and ready to go, too. 

I'm bringing enough projects to keep me busy and offer variety: two of the batik pillow tops to be quilted, snake quilt blocks, Star Spangled Spiral blocks, and my project for the club's color challenge. I don't know what the WiFi situation will be like at the retreat ranch so I don't know if I'll be able to post anything while I'm there. But if I can, I'll post progress updates on whatever I work on.  

I'm so looking forward to this!!! 

More Strippy HST Blocks

On Wednesday mornings I go over to the sewing room in the Creative Arts building and sew with a group of girls and then we go out to lunch. It's been a great way to get to know a few of the quilt club members. 

I've been working on a donation quilt at Wednesday sewing. In May when we cut the strips for the Charity Committee's sew day for kids' quilts we cut more strips than we ended up needing. Many of them are pretty random fabrics, but among the light colors there were a lot of yellow and almost-yellow strips. I found a navy print in the club's charity stash that would be pretty with yellow. I'm making more Strippy HST blocks for another donation quilt. This one won't be kid-focused because the prints are more mature, but it can still benefit an adult in one of the organizations we give quilts to. 

Last week I finished the last of the blocks needed and started playing with them on the design wall. After I brought them home I played some more on the wall, and this is the layout I have up there now. 

It's a cool layout, but I'm wondering if it's too modern for these prints? Maybe I should go with a simple pinwheel layout, or maybe concentric diamonds or diagonal stripes? Let me know what you think in the comments.

When sewn, the top will be 45 x 60" which is a great size for a kid but might be a little small for an adult. I have about 7/8 yard of a yellow print in my own stash that I could use for a border. If I can squeeze out 3-1/5" borders from it to make the quilt 52 x 67" that would be a better size. If I can find something in the club's stash for a narrow inner border, 1" or less, I might try that but I didn't like anything I auditioned from my own stash. I hope to find backing and binding in the club's stash, too.

There's a possibility my turn to be trained on the club's long arm will be coming up soon so I hope to have this ready to go to practice on. 

Meanwhile, please help me decide on a layout.

Link ups: Small Quilts and Doll Quilts, Love Laugh Quilt

Listening

When a quilt tells you how it wants to be quilted, do you listen or do you go with your original plan? 

Let's back up a bit here. You remember I'm making this big batik panel. The original purpose was to make placemats for practicing new to me FMQ skills. Because I cut way too many strips, the panel turned out much bigger than anticipated. 

Placemats changed to pillow covers for on my patio chaises, with the pillow covers still to be used for FMQ practice. Here are the four pillow panels, each about 21 x 32" here. They'll end up standard bed pillow size. 

The plan was to sandwich these and use them for FMQ practice. The size of the panels is easy to handle on my domestic sewing machine, and whatever bobbles occur in my quilting, they'll hardly show anyway and it won't matter. 

But these panels are telling me how they want to be quilted. Should I listen or proceed with plan A? 

The panels are crying out for wavy channel quilting. Using a walking foot I can easily create channels about 3/4" wide in parallel wavy rows across the strips. 

But that means no FMQ practice on these. And one of my buddies that's going on retreat next week is pushing me to improve my FMQ skills and wants to coach me while we're there. 

So back to my original question: When a quilt tells you how it wants to be quilted, do you listen or do you go with your original plan? 

I consulted with friends yesterday and they agree they pay attention when a quilt tells them how it wants to be quilted. But they also reminded me that all four of these panels don't have to be alike. What I've decided to do is quilt two of the panels with wavy lines walking foot quilting and use the other two panels for FMQ practice. The pillows will have an A side and a B side but they'll be similar. I get to see how well the wavy channel concept works and I get to practice FMQ. Win-win. 

PS - my friends helped select the thread, too. We chose a Valdani variegated thread called Moose Lodge from my thread stash. Perfect! 

So even though I don't have a finish today I do have a plan. I'm linking up with Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finished (or Not) Friday at Alycia Quilts. 

Batik Race

Last week I mentioned that I'm making race-style pillow covers for some pillows for our patio chaise lounges, and I started with this pile of cut strips.

I used my die cutter for 2" strips and cut lots of strips, from my old batik stash, mostly earth tones and warm brights. The concept is to join them like a jelly roll race quilt, except that the strips are skinnier and there's way more of them. I had only the vaguest idea what this might look like, but batiks usually go well together, especially the more the merrier. 

OK, the concept is working. My long strip was somewhere between 3500 and 4000 inches long - that's over 100 yards! -  so I carefully wrangled it to avoid twists. The first long seam took me 2 hours and 22 minutes, with two bobbin changes. Three days, careful pressing and strip wrangling, and several more long seams, and I now have a chunk that's 48" wide and somewhere between 4-1/2 and 5 yards long. 

It's pretty cool, even if I say so myself. 

More photos...

The pillows will be standard bed size and the strips will run vertically as in the photo below. I'll cut panels for the fronts and backs of the pillows from the big chunk of "yardage." I'm sure there will be some left over. 

The original purpose of this was to generate something other than a muslin sandwich for FMQ practice. I'll layer these pillow panels with batting and muslin backing. I can practice FMQ all over the panels plus on whatever I make from the leftover pieces. It won't matter how skillful - or not - my FMQ is because the overall look is so busy the quilting will hardly show. 

The concept was kind of experimental, certainly unpredictable. I'm really pleased with how this is turning out. 

Link ups: Small Quilts and Doll Quilts, Love Laugh Quilt

R-W-B Retrospective for Independence Day

The topic of red, white, and blue quilts came up the other day and I thought I had made only a couple. Turns out there were a few more I forgot about. Here's a pictorial retrospective of my red, white, and blue quilts, with links to the patterns. 

Checkerboards and Dresden Plates, 2019, no pattern available

Log Cabin Triangles QOV, 2016, 

block tutorial here

Snake Quilt QOV made with friends Cherie, Dar, and Kevin, 2017-2019

Tutorial here

Star Spangled Spiral QOV made with Cherie, Dar and Kevin, 2018

Pattern available (leave a comment with your email address) 

Scrappy Nine Patch Stars QOV, 60 x 80"

Tutorial here

Because some of them were Quilts of Valor and were given away, I had forgotten about them. It's nice to revisit them! 

Happy Independence Day - 

Jan