Waves

Waves

72'' by 72''

The 36 patch that I started as stress relief is now finished. Thank-you to Amanda Jean for the inspiration and instructions. It stayed a project that caused me no stress. I worked on it when I felt like it, I played around with the quilting, and the colours always brought me calm. Aside from the, ahem... challenge of basting it.

I had a lot of fun playing with fabrics for this one. All blues, greens, greys, and beiges. Half were from a pile I'd just finished with and the other half I pulled from stash as I needed it. Only one was used twice, and that was by accident. It was with intention that I pushed the boundaries of value work in some blocks. As you can see, some blocks are high contrast, and others barely register a contrast. In one block the colour is used as a light, in the next as a dark. This will always be a quilt with a lot of dance, regardless of what you choose, but this one really jumps around, even with the calm colours.

The back also came from stash. Actually, most of the fabrics in the back were ones I'd held aside for the Water quilt I was working on forever (and have since put aside permanently). I love that big dot!

Can you see the quilting pattern here? It's all wavy and I did it with my walking foot. It was an experiment to see how tight I could make curves with the walking foot. Each "wave" takes two of the 2'' squares in a block. That's pretty tight. You could do it free-motion too.

This is one of my favourite blocks in the quilt. I matched fabrics as I went, with no overall plan. Without trying I put two gorgeous organic fabrics together. One from Birch and one from Daisy Janie.

Once I get a label on this it will be popped in the mail. In the end I've decided to give it as a wedding gift. We went to the wedding over a year ago! And yes, I am always that bad at giving gifts.

The colours match their living room perfectly. It's the living room in a stunning old house in an old community on the East Coast. The couple is stunning and their eyes are bluer than the ocean. I think it will be hard to live up to all that beauty with this quilt, but hopefully it can blend in.

And hopefully they have less snow on the quilt when they cuddle.

T Quilt

See what you can do with just one little block?

This is the To a T block from Modern Blocks: 99 Quilt Blocks from Your Favourite Designers. Flip flopping the blocks gives you some secondary designs and a whole lot of movement in the finished top.

I think this is a great block to showcase some favourite fabrics, without resorting to simple squares. Play around with the scale of the fabrics for maximum impact - some large prints with some small ones too. Change up the colours to great effect, like rainbows or checkerboards. Stick with a single background to make the T pattern pop. Flip the values around - make the T pattern a light fabric and the background a dark.

This, I believe, is the best part about a block book. It's a starting point. And it's up to you to individualize the quilt. There is no walking into a quilt store, pointing at a picture, and saying, "I want to make THAT quilt." For those of you only venturing into their own quilt designs a block book is a great place to begin. You still have a pattern for instructional purposes, but you get to decide how to put it all together.

Find the book at a local quilt store near you or online.

And remember my need for warmth? Just in time for a dump of snow I finished this top in the oranges and beiges. It actually is perfect for my living room, but I think it will be a while before it gets basted and quilted. That Christmas thing is going to get in the way.

Modern Blocks Giveaway

* Contest closed*

There's a new, not-so-little book out these days. Modern Blocks: 99 Blocks from Your Favorite Designers is full of incredible block designs. Some seem simple and even a bit more traditional, others are so phenomenally unique and representative of modern quilt design. All are pretty cool.

This book is going to be a well used resource in my library. Yes, even for me, a girl who doesn't like to follow patterns. There is just so much inspiration in here.

Oh, and I'm one of those favorite/favourite designers. See, that's my name on the back of the book there. And that orange and turquoise T block there is one of two of mine in the book.

Later this week I'm going to share a quilt top I made using that block, but for now I want to offer the chance to win one of these books.

All I ask is that you leave a comment below telling me how long you've been quilting and how you learned to quilt. That's it. If you are hoping to win the book for someone else, then tell me about them or a fun fact about you. Just make sure you have an email attached to the comment so I can get a hold of the winner. International entries welcome.

Entries open until December 1, 9:30 am MST.

Round

Egg meets up with a gaggle of sperm in the dark hallway of my fallopian tube and one brave sperm steps forward with a, "Hey, how you doin'?" And about three seconds late my uterus doubles in size.

This belly of mine is round and full of flutters and kicks these days. The Monster says it looks like I ate 39 hotdogs and 50 apples. It's okay, my ass balances it out.

But those 39 hotdogs and 50 apples make it extraordinarily hard to baste a quilt on my living room floor. Alone, just me and my belly. It took me an hour longer than usual for this lap size quilt. And Hubby isn't even home to help.