Snowflake Quilt Top

Unequivocally, I am a winter girl. When it looked like this last week I texted my two best friends and said we had to get out in that fresh snow for a walk. It ended up being a slippery walk. I neglected to wear snow pants and that was a mistake as I kept wiping out on the ice under the foot of powder. I was wet through to my skin yet I couldn’t help but smile. It was just so beautiful. And I had good company. It was all too good to resist.

That’s how I felt when I saw Nicole’s Snowflake quilt. Modern, bold, and the kind of thing - if I’m being honest - I wish I had designed. I tried to resist, but it is too good. So I slid into my stash and picked fabrics to carry this love of winter year round in a quilt. Her pattern is fantastic.

The pattern provides options for a scrappy look like I did, a four colour version like the cover, and even a really bold two colour one. If you’ve seen anything I’ve ever done you know I went for scrappy. Oh, and low volume. Shocker.

We had fresh snow again this week. I can’t wait to go out for a walk and to come home and quilt this so it is ready for snuggles all winter. It is Calgary, after all, I have many more months of winter left to enjoy both.

Thank you to Nicole Daksiewicz of Modern Handcraft for generously providing me with her pattern.

Solid Scraps Make a Quilt Party

Take one bin of solid scraps, sort them by size, sew them together. See what happens.

In prepping for those doodles I pulled out my solid scrap bin. I dug through it for the first few blocks, picking any oranges or darks for the project while the rest of the fabric looked on forlornly. After the first two doodles I realized that there were going to be a lot of stops and starts and I might as well be efficient. The solid scraps stepped up and volunteered for duty.

Sorted by size they sat patiently until their turn came up. Bit by bit, pair by pair, I sewed them together. The party grew with each seam. Pairs became four, sometimes three. Then four became eight, and so on. Not so much duty as celebration.

Eventually, the party required a little organization. I didn’t want anyone to feel left out while, at the same time, I had to make sure they all fit together. So what start out as nothing but sewing two pieces of fabric together at the end of a seam on an entirely different project required a bit of dedicated attention. I puzzled the groups together to make the most effective shaker. This is a party to end all parties!

Well, it was supposed to be a party to end all scraps, but that never actually happened. That’s because we all know that scraps multiply when you aren’t looking! Not so much party crashers, more like the condensation rings left on the wood furniture - they never quite go away. But nearly all the scraps made it in. And the bin is much, much lighter.

I wasn’t intending to start another quilt. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I have. My original thought was to float this piece in another fabric to serve as a quilt back.

Or I could make that idea into a quilt top?

Or I could turn what it is already into a stand alone quilt, a wall hanging?

Or I could wait until the solid scrap bin fills up a bit more and add to the party?

Or this could become pillows?

Or…

So many options. Right now, however, I have no clue and need a different leader and ender project while I sew my doodles. So this party is going into the stack of quilt tops to reflect upon its awesomeness.

More on this sewing machine next week…

Neutral Values Quilt Top

Woah! Major back pain/sciatic flare up here. I spent last weekend either laying on the floor or rocking on my feet - in between ballet recitals and year end parties. I needed a creative boost. And, frankly, something to do that was distracting. Since I needed to stand a lot I spent some time on the design wall.

You see, this is the nice thing about so many quilts under construction. I needed a set of blocks for some design wall play and was able to pick from a few stacks. I chose a bunch of half square triangles. They started life as sample blocks in my Values class. Always make samples that coordinate and eventually you have enough for a quilt!

It was just a stack of random blocks. I asked my sick, bored kid to count the blocks, then I played around with an idea until I could make it work with the blocks I had. In my time on the floor I lay below the design wall to contemplate options. While standing I could move things around and eventually sew here and there. I’m really happy with the way it worked out. It isn’t that big - only 55” square - but for now I’m adding it to the list of quilt tops. But if I teach that class again this coming year I might have more blocks to add to it!

Firefly Quilt Top in Solids

All 15 fireflies taking flight!

After finishing up my epic scrap quilt last week I needed a break. Not from sewing, mind you. Only a break from little pieces and all those scraps. Like a sorbet course in a very fancy meal I thus turned to my palate cleanser - precision piecing.

Thanks to my handy dandy list of Quilts Under Construction it was easy to pick and locate a project to play with. And when I took out the blocks I had already made I realized I only needed 3 more to finish my top. A few Morning Make sessions and the blocks were all done. A quiet Sunday and the top was assembled!

There is a reason I only made 15 fireflies and left a block blank, I will share that later. If, and when, I get this quilted.

Each firefly is unique. I played around with my small stash of solids, going with colour combinations that felt right. There was no regard for colour theory or even a colour story, to be perfectly honest. I would pick three fabrics for the body, sometimes a gradient, sometimes not. Then I would pick a dark for the head and back and a light for the wings. The only really conscious decision was trying not to repeat combinations or colours in each part. For example, in the photo above the two top fireflies have a pale pink and a pale peach for their wings, they aren’t the same colour.

Do you want to hear something else? I’ve never actually seen a firefly before. They aren’t native to around here and I’ve never been somewhere else during firefly season.

That didn’t stop me from trying to have a little glow in each precious bug. The highlight around their bodies is actually Metallic Essex by Robert Kaufman. It almost blends into the regular Essex background, almost. Just enough of a sparkle to me. And I liked the idea of the metallic being woven in as I find most metallic prints fade quite a bit with regular washing.

A few things to note:

- The combination of solids and the Essex linens mean there are A LOT of loose threads on the back of the quilt. It will require a thorough going over but I will do this right before I baste it so no more appear in the night.

- It is extraordinarily hard to get a full shot of this quilt when you are taking selfies in the back alley. But hey, at least the lilacs smelled nice.

For those of you wondering, the pattern itself is by Pen and Paper Patterns. It is one of the most detailed patterns I’ve read, I don’t think she forgot a thing! As I am not generally a pattern follower I truly appreciate it when it is so clear, no questions for my improv brain! You can buy it from Pattern Drop, Lindsey Neill designed it exclusively for them. (I was a Pattern Drop designer myself last year.) Here I thought I would make one or two blocks to help promote the pattern and now I have a whole top!