Ellipsis Mini Quilt - Tag Fabric Kit Possibilities

Ellipsis

18'' x 22''

Look, a mini quilt! Yes, I made a mini quilt. It isn't often.

Even better, I made a pattern for this mini quilt. You can get it as a kit too.

When I was designing the Tag fabric collection of course I was also designing quilts to use the fabric. It only made sense that one of the quilts would be rooted in writing. I chose my favourite, and too often used, punctuation mark. By that, I mean I use it too often. The ellipsis says so much, without having to say anything.

And I can't be the only one that says "dun dun duuun" in my head when reading it. Okay, maybe I am.

The ellipsis implies suspense, but does so in a lazy way. It tells the reader there is more without saying anything. It can be overused in writing, especially in my own text conversations. Despite it's laziness I still love it.

The mini itself is quite simple. Some of my favourite prints from Tag for the applique circles. Colours to minic the intention of ruled paper. Easily whipped up for you, your best student, youradmired writer.

Connecting Threads sells a complete kit to make this mini. (It's currently on sale too!)

I'm looking forward to seeing what you make with your own ellipsis. What story do you have to tell? What mysteries will you tease? Oh, the possibilities...

Lilla Quilt - a Testing Version Comes to Life

Testing, Testing

45'' x 45''

About 18 months ago I started working with Lotta Jansdotter on the Lilla quilt pattern. We wanted to time it so a pattern came out when her Lilla fabric line was launching. You can read more about the process here. Before I made anything with Lotta's fabric though I needed to test out the block designs and instructions.

How many of you have stacks of selected fabrics? Colour inspiration hits and you pull fabrics. Then the piles sit there until time or secondary inspiration suddenly appears. Well, when I needed to test the blocks I pulled one of those stacks at random. This particular one was chartreuse and navy, inspired by an outfit Lady Edith was wearing on Downton Abbey once. But as I made more blocks the chartreuse collection of fabric was clearly not going to be enough so I picked peach to play along.

As we tested I had to take pictures in greyscale so colour did not cloud our judgement. Always a useful step, no matter the project.  Once we were happy with all the blocks - some got swapped out at this point, I think I designed about 30 in total - I went straight to making them in Lotta's fabric. And the test blocks were set aside.

A few months ago I remembered the blocks and decided to put them all together. More accurately, I found the pile of blocks under a bunch of other stuff and suddenly remembered that they could be a quilt.

You see, the Lilla quilt pattern provides 25 different block patterns. The cover quilt on the pattern uses all 25 four times over. My version here uses each one once only. Queen size versus baby. Of course, you could only use a handful of the patterns instead of all of them too.

Then the quilt sat, basted, for a couple of months. I started the quilting, but it wasn't quite right. Neither was my machine. So I ripped and repaired the machine. Then, two weeks ago, I was looking at a photo of Lotta's original paper cuts that started us down this design path. Ah ha!! Quilting inspiration. A couple of Morning Make sessions later and the quilting was done.

The binding is this great Cotton and Steel. It happened to be sitting in a pile of fabric for another project, but it was too perfect here. And it matches the back perfectly, a piece of Anna Maria Horner's Loominous fabric. 

In all my years quilting I will fully admit to having a hard time following patterns. But once you start writing them you see things differently. Suddenly you get excited at the possibilities. No one says you have to make it exactly the way it was written, or the way the pattern cover shows. I think it is fantastic to see these two quilts side by side, to see the differences. And I made them both.

The Lilla pattern is a mix between improv and precision piecing. It provides guidelines for the improv work and walks you through it. If you are new to improv, this is a great introduction. There is just enough precision piecing to provide order to those who crave that too. Don't like a block design? Don't make it! Love one particular one? Make 30 of them. There is so much freedom of expression in this pattern. 

Pattern available wholesale and retail through C&T Publishing.

Tag Fabric + Improv Applique = Fun

Seriously, I might just call this quilt Fun. It's nothing precious and doesn't take itself too seriously. It was just some play time that resulted in a finished quilt top - shocking!

I started with a bundle of mini charms of my Tag fabric. It was one left over from a guild trunk show where I gave them away. I also happened to have a bundle of Kona Cotton charm squares. One day they landed on the table together. It happened that that day I was sheduled to teach Improv Applique. So I grabbed to two bundles and they became friends. And well, you know me, I don't like mini quilts all that much so I couldn't very well just sew 20 charms together and call it a day. So the solids got attacked by the scissors too and then those got sewn to more Tag Fabric.

True confession: there was intense debate with my daughter about what shapes I should cut. She said the initial shapes I cut out of the mini charms reminded her of Alberta so the other ones should have been too. I argued that it would get too meta, even for me. So now we have gems/envelopes/whatever you might see. 

That's the joy of Improv Applique. Take some scissors to the fabric and see what happens!

Improvisational Piecing For Those Afraid of Improv

Yes, this still counts as Improv. It has precisely pieced curves, all made and squared up to the same size. It has a controlled grouping of fabric. It isn't at all what I thought I would make.

I define Improvisational Piecing as this:

Starting a quilt without knowing what it will look like when you finish.

This puts the emphasis on the process, on the path, on the exploration. It makes it about the act of sewing more than the fun of figuring out how to make something beautiful from that act. 

So when I started this quilt it was just to play with the fabric and the curves. Years later, when I returned to the fabric I kept the initial play and ran with it. I simply made the blocks. There was no finished quilt in mind. Obviously, my intent was to actually make a quilt at some point and not just a pile of blocks. But I had no idea what size that quilt would end up or what the actual design was going to be. I just made blocks until I ran out of the grey fabric. (To be perfectly honest, I'd wanted it bigger, but the fabric is years old and I was too lazy to try and hunt it down. So 54'' square is the size of the quilt.)

Then I had to figure out a layout. With quarter circles you have practically infinite design possibilities. I spent a morning sketching and colouring some options. I played on the design wall. I looked at the quilts of Jen Carlton Bailly, in particular. All cool and pretty, but not what felt right with these fabrics. In the end, I remembered the movement of a quilt I made with a stack of half square triangles. The design wall play worked!

No plan, no sketch, no pattern. Just a bunch of blocks turned into a quilt top. Complete improvisation.

If the thought of wonky or irregular cut fabric freaks you out - and I know it does for some people - but you are willing to embrace the challenge of an adventure then I suggest an exercise like this. Take precisely pieced building blocks, like a quarter circle, half square triangle, equilateral triangles, or even pieced coin strips and embrace some playtime. Make them without planning out a design, then try out a million and one different options for lay outs. This is indeed improvisational piecing. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.