Modern Quilts
Black Eyed Susan Commissioned Quilt Finish
Hi, I am very happy to share one of my first fully commissioned quilt finishes. After delivering my Patriotic Midnight Mystery quilt to our Aunt and Uncle’s Anniversary party, I was asked by their Son inlaw if I would be interesting in creating a special quilt for his Mom for Christmas. Of course I said Yes, as this entire family is very supportive of my quilting. I was given the suggestions of a theme of wild flowers like Black Eyed Susan or Wild Rose with palette of spring yellows, light green and light gray as those are the colors in her home decor.
I will have to say that I get very lucky working on this commissioned quilt in that it was very easy to come up with a design they loved. I searched on Pinterest for Black Eyed Susan quilt blocks and the one design that stood out the most that I thought would be fun to make, I shared a photo of it with my cousins and they liked my choice. There was a tutorial on how to make a single block and I drew out the block in Electric Quilt 8 software and choose different fabric coloring options.
This is Black Eyed Susan by Wendy Russell. She has a website called Patchwork Square where she has numerous quilt block patterns.
The Black Eyed Susans will be made with 4 different yellow/gold prints, use 2 greens as leaves, a black tonal print as centers and have a white 1.5 inch border, light green 2.5 inch border and a 3.5 inch gray tonal print border. This makes a 88 inch quilt.
I purchased all my fabrics except the gray border fabric from Fabric dot com. They had the best price on Kona Cotton solids even beating JoAnn Fabrics sale at the time and I didn’t have to order an odd minimum amount of yardage. The gray border fabric was purchased from a shop on Etsy, apparently it must have been popular as it was the only place I could find online that had any left.
These are all the pieces cut for my queen size Black Eyed Susan quilt. There were 1325 pieces in this quilt.
Here is my first test block and have started sewing the small components of the blocks together. Anything that could be chain pieced was for ease and speed. The Black Eyed Susan block is not difficult in any way just has lots of pieces and many diagonal seams (flip and stitch to be sewn). I hand drew them all out for my accuracy.
Here are all the small components of the flower block sewn.
Here is a blown apart view of the assembly of the Black Eyed Susan block.
Here is all 25 flower blocks pieced and laid out awaiting being sewn into a top.
Here is the completed flimsy. The light colors of the borders isn’t easily seen on the hard wood flooring.
Here is a closeup of the corner of the quilt showing a more true showing of the colors of fabrics.
To quilt this quilt, I just did lots and lots of straightline quilting. This quilt was so heavy. I used a lovely gray and white quarterfoil design printed king size sheet as backing. I ended up purchasing a complete king size set of sheets in order to use the flat sheet as the backing. I think the fitted sheet will work nicely as backing for another one of my quilt tops.
Here is another view of the completed Black Eyed Susan quilt. We finally had some sun appear the day I finished the quilt so it kind of just glows.
The final quilt stats for making this quilt that my cousins shared with their Mom.
Black Eyed Susan
A Commissioned Quilt Design created and quilted by Shelley Folkerts, The Carpenters Daughter who Quilts
Based on the Black Eyed Susan block by Wendy Russell of Patchwork Square
25 (15 inch) blocks
53 pieces per block
1325 pieces in quilt
24 diagonals per block
600 diagonals (stitch and flip) in quilt
200 blocks created from 3 triangles sewn together
55 seams per block and 36 seams to make quilt = 1435 seams
6300 inches of quilting
How’s that for some crazy quilty math??? I may not use Algebra in my quilts other than in making the Variegated Squares quilt I shared earlier this week. Creating the 600 diagonals was the most time consuming part of the quilt and I am very thankful that the directions for the block didn’t have them made as Half Square Triangles that then would have needed to be trimmed to size. I did a small amount of trimming to the blocks made from 3 triangles.
My Cousin’s Husband sent me a cute video of his Mom opening the quilt on Christmas morning. She loved it!
I really enjoyed working on this quilt. I am open to taking on more commissioned quilts in 2019. I have a cousin interested in maybe having a memory quilt made for their Mom from my Uncle’s shirts and another cousin interested in having a graduation quilt made from her son’s team jerseys. I plan on using Electric Quilt 8 to help me utilize what shirts they give me in the best way to create a quilt for them before I ever think of taking a scissors or rotary cutter to their special shirts.
Thank you for stopping by my blog. I am now finally caught up with blogging about my quilts from 2018.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
John Deere Greased Chain Links: A Modern Fan Quilt Finish
Hi, I am happy to share another of my original spin quilt idea using Suzy Quilts Modern Fans quilt pattern and templates. I am calling my version John Deere Greased Chain Links. This quilt is built around a John Deere Kids Story Book print that I have had in my stash since maybe 1996 or so. I only had one yard of it. I found a fun Men’s John Deere authorized plaid cotton long sleeved shirt on Ebay to add as an accent print. I found as close as I could to matching yellow and green solids at JoAnn Fabrics and purchased 2 yards of each. I always have a bolt of white solid in my stash to work from.
This quilt design is so different from what I am used to making and working with. I used to run from curved piecing but now seem to want to find more curved piecing projects. This quilt went to our little cousin who turned 1 in December. His two sisters have received my Puppy (Sea) Stars, Katie’s Compass and I-Spy Chevron quilts. Their grandparents received the patriotic Midnight Mystery quilt.
With this quilt design I also used Electric Quilt 8 software to plan out how to use my fabrics. I only had the yard of John Deere print and there was only so much plaid in the men’s shirt to work with. I actually miscut my men’s shirt pieces but was able to salvage what I had to make it work for me. I came up with 6 different layouts using the EQ8.
This first design is one of the basic used from the first Modern Fans and the last one is what I ended up choosing to go with.
This shows my main fabrics and the templates from Modern Fans pattern. I used all the templates when creating this version of Modern Fans.
This would be all my cut pieces. Sorry for the blurred photo.
Here is my first photo of assembling the curved pie wedges as I like to call them. It seemed a little strange to have to piece white to white but it is how to create the ring design I was looking for.
Here are all my blocks pieced and ready to be assembled into a top.
Here is my finished flimsy. This would look great on it’s own but I think that a finished top of 56 inches square is kind of small for a throw. Yes, this is going to a 1 year old but his sisters received larger quilts. I have put a big dent in what was left of the John Deere tractor print and the John Deere plaid shirt. To expand the design, I would need to build outwards to make a creative border. I used the printout from EQ 8 that I had for this quilt and used pencils and markers to draw out a border idea.
I am going to be continuing out the design and using the Drunkards Patch blocks to create clam shells.
I also added an additional gray border to make the clam shells float. I think what ended up to be 3.5 inches.
Here is my completed John Deere Greased Chain Links flimsy laid out on the top of our king size mattress.
Here is my finished quilted and bound John Deere Greased Chain Links quilt displayed on the front gate on our farm.
I created a pieced backing using up what was left of the John Deere kid’s print and the yellow and green solids. It was cutting it a little close with fabric and had to add a gray strip to top and bottom to have enough length.
I love this quilt and how it turned out. It was alot of fun to make. As our little cousin gets bigger, he can drive his little toy tractors around on the quilt. This will not be the last of curved pieced quilts that you see me making. I have purchased other curved piecing templates and rulers and other designer’s patterns and books. I do need to get to quilting up all my memory quilts but every now and then, I will need a creative break and am likely to get out some curves to play with.
I have one more quilt finish to blog about and then I am all caught up sharing my quilts from 2018. The family that received this quilt commissioned a special quilt for their Mother inlaw for Christmas.
Thank you for stopping by my blog. If I owe you a reply to your comments, they will be coming soon. Many thanks!
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
Modern Fans Quilt in Cotton and Steel: QAL and Finish
Hi, I am happy to share a fun quilt finish today. Back in September through the first weeks of November, Suzy Quilts held a sewalong for her Modern Fans quilt pattern. I have been sewing for close to 40 years and quilting for almost 30 years and I will admit sewing curves and those pesky Y seams are something that I haven’t mastered. I jumped in fully to sewing curves with the Suzy Quilts sewalong and with Evie Jespersen of Evquilts on Instagram as my inspiration and final push to try curve piecing.
This is my first finished Modern Fans made in Cotton and Steel prints leftover from my Tribal Plus quilt. As with many quilt patterns I have to make them mine, and I added a creative border to make it larger.
This is one of Suzy Quilts original Modern Fans quilts that she shared on her QAL.
I started learning how to use Electric Quilt 8 software last fall and I uploaded the Modern Fans design into the program to decide how I wanted to place my fabrics since I had a limited amount left from my previous quilting project. I ended up becoming quite proficient at drawing the curves as I was having a trouble getting it to save in a fashion that I could pull it back up to work with. I designed another quilt while making this one and will blog about it later. That quilt I came up with 5 different layouts on how to use my fabrics so had LOTS of practice drawing curves with EQ8.
This is my fabric pull selection.
Here are all the block components all cut out and the striped pie wedges pieced. Suzy provides paper templates you can print and cut out. I traced mine on to a clear vinyl cutting board sheet that comes in a package of 3 at the Dollar Tree for $1.00. I was able to carefully cut all my curves out with my 60 mm Olfa cutter. Suzy recommended the small 35 mm one for easy of control. I hope to have my husband cut me out a more permanent set of the matching templates from a sheet of plexiglass.
All my curved pie wedges sewn together and ready for assembling the top.
My first row assembled and things are matching up well.
This is my completed Modern Fans flimsy without borders in the original pattern size of 56 inches square. I wanted a larger top but did not have any extra of the Cotton and Steel fabrics to make more blocks. So I needed to come up with a creative border to enlarge the design and chose to continue the design outward by finishing the gray diamonds around the outside of the quilt.
This is a low light indoor shot of the completed quilt.
Here is Modern Fans in Cotton and Steel out on the back gate blowing in the wind.
Hopefully you can see how I chose to quilt this quilt in this photo.
Prebinding shot of all the quilting, well actually I added more quilting to the individual wedges in the larger circles after this photo.
The quiltalong was for 9 weeks and at the end of the QAL if you had a least a throw top completed then you could be entered into a contest to win a new Bernina sewing machine. I had finished my top early as I needed to start on a commissioned quilt for Christmas delivery. I managed to get my commissioned quilt top pieced and started another Modern Fans that I would be gifting to a little cousin for his first birthday. I was down to finishing up sewing the last rows together of the second Modern Fans when the official deadline time to have photos posted passed. I sewed a row on upside down and had to take it apart. No problem. I will share the second quilt in another post.
Thank you all for the kind words about my memory quilt project in the last blog post.
Thank you for your continued support on reading my blog posts.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
Chandelier 2 : Dad’s Shirts Memory Quilt Top Finish
Hi, I am happy to share another completed memory quilt top made from our Dad’s plaid shirts. This one is made from the Chandeliers 2 pattern by Lella Boutique. It will be given to our grandson.
I was able to pull strips from 20 different plaid shirts and added 5 duplicate striped blocks. Charcoal gray solid as the chain pieces with navy solid setting triangles.
This is Lella Boutique’s photo of the pattern cover art from Instagram. I really like the soft blue setting triangles.
Here are all my fabrics cut with two of the first blocks pieced. They assemble quite quickly.
Here are all the pieced blocks before laying out the setting triangles. Apparently Smokey needs to be in the photo as well. I was up on a stool attempting to take photos not paying attention and there he was. I had someone ask how he did this without messing up the blocks? I guess he was light on his feet until he got up to move and then he just moved that block he was sitting on.
Here is the planned layout with the setting triangles. I am really enjoying our new floors.
Here is the completed Chandeliers 2 flimsy. I really enjoyed making it and it is a new favorite. Maybe my grandson will be willing to share his quilt with Grandma??
This makes 18 memory quilts that I have blogged about. I do have 19 tops made but apparently have missed photos of the extra one. I need to make one more top for our daughter. I had no idea that I would be able to create 20 quilts from a stack of 30 shirts and they all range from twin to queen size. One is a king size that I used one shirt in entirety in and one was the quilt made from scraps using improv piecing that includes all the name brand patches from Dad’s shirts.
I started making the first memory quilt in November 2016 and I finished piecing the Chandeliers 2 quilt in July 2018. I made the first 15 in 18 months. One of the big accomplishments was creating the three Swoon memory quilt tops along with a Swoon made from Denyse Schmidt’s Hope Valley fabric line while doing the Swoon Quiltalong on Instagram. It got the designer Camille Roskelly’s attention that I made 4 Swoons in 2.5 months. (all need quilting yet…) Forgot to add in the middle of these in October 2017, my Mom’s sewing machine that I inherited from her when she passed away in 2013 literally went up in smoke. It was getting loud while binding the Woodruff memory quilt and when I was down to the last foot of stitching, there was a loud pop and lots of gray smoke. (I made 45 quilts in the last 4 years with that machine.)
Thank you to everyone who has continued to follow my memory quilt project progress.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
Variegated Squares : A baby quilt for our new granddaughter
Hi, I am happy to share a completed quilt that I made for our new granddaughter. I always make larger than normal baby sized quilts as I usually do not get the quilts to the new recipients while they still are little babies. I managed to get this quilt made and finished by the time she was a week old.
This is Variegated Squares by Tiffany Horn of Village Bound Quilts. The story that Tiffany tells behind how she came up with how this quilt is made seemed very fitting for our Daughter inlaw who is my website designer. This quilt uses 4 main colors or print combinations and Tiffany used Algebra permutations to figure out how many different block combinations using only 3 of the 4 colors she could create and not have any duplications.
This funny Alegbra meme was very fitting up until I made this quilt.
These were my fabric choices and my first time making a quilt in entirety with Kona Cotton Solids. (Kona White, Bluegrass, Pool, Coral and Punch in order)
These two floral fabrics are what my DIL chose to decorate the baby’s room in. I just had a photo on my phone when purchasing the matching Kona colors from JoAnn’s. She purchased fabrics and items made from them off Etsy. I think they both are fabrics that could be found sold on Spoonflower.
Tiffany includes a coloring page for making the quilt and it was essential in keeping it going together smoothly.
I ended up cutting my page into individual blocks and arranging all cut fabric strips in order and clipping the drawn square to them with a Wonder Clip. I stacked all the block piles in order and used a foil pan to hold them while I worked on them.
Of course my trusty Quilt Helper and Inspector Smokey had to find my foil Lasagna pan that I had my fabric pieces in.
Here is all my strips cut and the start of my block assembly line.
More block assembly and always trying to keep the clips on the blocks so I always know where to place them.
All variegated blocks completed and needing white sashing strips.
This is the completed flimsy. I chose to do an allover gridded quilting like Tiffany shows using on her quilts.
Here is another shot of the completed Variegated Squares quilt. I used leftover strips in all colors to make a matching binding. I carefully laid them all out in order to match the coordinating blocks and then discovered that I attached the two long sides on the opposite sides. I decided to leave it as is. I really enjoyed making this quilt and have thoughts of making it larger than a twin size with maybe 6 color choices instead of 4. We did the Alegbra all ready and it could give you upwards of 720 block combinations. Please check out Village Bound Quilts for this fun pattern.
Thanks for stopping by my blog.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
Cross Stitch: Dad’s Shirts Memory Quilt Top Finish
Hi, I am happy to be able to share another memory quilt top made from our Dad’s plaid shirts. This one is called Cross Stitch and was made using Coriander Quilts by Corey Yoder’s pattern Cross Stitch. This actually makes my 18th quilt made from that pile of 30 shirts. My count was off when I posted the Cross Roads quilt.
I really like how this quilt turned out. I was able to use 13 different plaid shirts and I chose a denim colored solid cotton to coordinate as the cross stitch blocks and charcoal gray as parts of the chains.
This is Corey Yoder’s original design for her Cross Stitch quilt pattern.
Here is some starting work in progress. I find it easiest to complete components of my blocks that lend themselves to chain piecing first.
The main parts of these blocks go together quite quickly.
Here are the finished X blocks laid out. I think they could make a neat quilt themselves.
Here are all the pieced rows laid out on the king size mattress for size and planned layout.
Here is my finished Cross Stitch memory quilt top. The pattern was originally published in American Patchwork and Quilting named as Star Crossed. The magazine quilt was approximately 60 inches square and the published pattern makes a 80 inch square quilt. This will go to my husband’s Uncle. He is the stitching that helps keep our family together after we lost Dad and he lost his brother.
Thank you for stopping by my blog. I greatly appreciate hearing from you all who have taken the time to comment.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
Cross Roads: Dad’s Shirts Memory Quilt Top Finish
Hi, I am happy to share another memory quilt top finish made from our Dad’s plaid shirts. This one is called Cross Roads and was made using Sherri McConnell’s (A Quilting Life) pattern Cross Roads.
This quilt will go to one of our Nieces.
Here is Sherri’s original version of the Cross Roads quilt.
To start this quilt, I had a bag of 320 HSTs in 20 colors from many of my previous memory quilts that I had been saving and I was able to use a 2.5 inch Bloc-Loc ruler to trim them to the size I needed for this quilt.
Here is a sample layout of two Cross Roads blocks. I was able to cut the needed blue strips for the plus centers from a single leftover chambray work shirt.
I love to be able to do as much chainpiecing as possible when constructing a quilt.
This is my assembled top without borders.
This is my completed Cross Roads flimsy. It was a good use of leftover HSTs from making other memory quilts. I did enlarge the white borders but otherwise followed how Sherri made her quilt. This makes 16 memory quilts.
Thank you for stopping by my blog.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
Patriotic Midnight Mystery Quilt Finish
Hi, Thank you for stopping by my blog. I hope your 2019 New Year is off to a good start. I am catching up on some blogging of quilts finished in 2018.
First up, I am happy to share the finish of my patriotic version of the Midnight Mystery quilt that was a quilt along using the pattern by Meadow Mist Designs. I finished the top in January of 2016 and quilted and bound the quilt in July 2018. It was a gift for our Aunt and Uncle’s 50th wedding anniversary. Since they were married on July 7th and he is also a Viet Nam Veteran, I thought it would be fitting for them to receive this quilt.
Here are a few more photos:
I really enjoyed participating in the Midnight Mystery quiltalong. This quilt has been one of my favorites for a long while and it is well loved by the recipients. You should still be able to find the instructions for this quilt on the Meadow Mist Designs website. It is a beautiful quilt made in about any combination of fabrics.
WordPress has changed how I am used to writing and formatting my blog posts. I will most likely come back to this post and edit it for more content.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
Detour Quilt: Stash Statement Book Blog Tour
(Edited on 5/27/18 with finished photos) New photos are at the bottom of the original blog post.
Hi, my quilting friend Kelly Young has published her first quilting book called Stash Statement. She asked me if I would be willing to make a quilt from the book for the book blog tour. She designed three techniques for improv piecing that she calls Structured Improv. She shows you how to use up the smallest of your fabric scraps and create twelve different and original scrappy quilts.
I will admit that I probably don’t have the usual scrap fabric bins. I have been working on making memory quilts from my Father inlaw’s plaid shirts for the last year. I do own fabrics which are not plaids but I do not have a stash of scraps. Kelly asked me to use up my plaid shirt scraps. My original inspiration to make these plaid memory quilts came from the quilts that Kelly made for her family from her Grandfather’s plaid shirts. This is my 18th quilt from the same pile of 30 plaid shirts.
Kelly got her inspiration for the Detour quilt from old city maps. I thought this was quite fitting for a quilt from Dad’s shirts as maps and map making were important to our family as my husband and Father inlaw were in the crop consulting business and made soils and field maps for their customers. The layout of the quilt is alot like aerial view of a soil county plat map.
I built my blocks around the various shirt brand patches that were sewn into the yokes of Dad’s shirts. He wore denim or chambray work shirts for his crop consulting and I found one of the company embroidered patches. My Mom actually embroidered this one for him as we got the logo digitized so she could embroider the guys’ shirts and I also saved one of his embroidered name patches.
This was my stash of plaid fabric that I still have to use for quilt making. I ended up with one large pile that I made my blocks from. 
This pile really didn’t change much in size after making 38 quilt blocks. The scraps just became smaller.
These two photos show the progress from the first patches to the first couple of rounds of piecing strips.
This is the first pieced block segment. Kelly teaches you how to improv piece creating panels, strips or blocks. The Detour quilt is made from pieced panels cut down to the sizes that you need for your blocks. I started out making one of the required panels and soon discovered that I was going to have to take another route as I didn’t want to cut across any of my shirt patches. I ended up using the block piecing technique for most of the quilt and when I was down to the last couple blocks I used the panel technique. I ended up using all of Kelly’s techniques in this one quilt.
I was going to be short 4 shirt patches for the required amount of blocks. My scrap pile was producing smaller and smaller pieces. I decided to dig in the bag of denim shirts and cut 2 of the small and 2 of the larger pieced blocks. I first had the idea to applique random plaid squares to the denim shirts. I did like how they turned out but I was not sure how they would look in the design so I dug further in the bag and cut new denim pieces that had shirt patches on them all ready.
I got the idea to sew the denim strips together and I had extra red background fabric and I am going to use this striped piece as the center of my backing. I think I will use navy solid as the rest of the backing.
Here is another view of the Detour flimsy. I apologize for the poor lighting, as it is after Midnight when the photo was taken. I promise to get better photos when it is quilted and bound. I plan to have this done by midweek and will write another post and link the finish with this one.
Laura at Slice of Pi Quilts is also sharing her version of the Detour quilt today. Be sure to check out all the lovely quilts on the book blog tour. You can find a list of all the stops below.
4/16- Grand Bazaar Shelley @ Cora’s Quilts
Connie @ Freemotion by the River
4/23- Louvered Lindsey @ Primrose Cottage Quilts
4/30- Precarious Jess @ Quilty Habit
5/7- Beach Retreat Sarah @ Sarah Goer Quilts
5/14- Fire Pit Alison @ Little Bunny Quilts
5/21- Detour Laura @ Slice of Pi Quilts
Shelley @ The Carpenter’s Daughter Who Quilts
5/28- Murrina Yvonne @ Quilting Jetgirl
6/4- Scattered Jayne @ Twiggy and Opal
Christine @ Triangles and Squares
6/11- Bloom Chicka Boom Chris @ made by ChrissieD
Michelle @ From Bolt to Beauty
6/18- Regatta Susan @ Quilt Fabrication
6/25- Catch a Falling Star Cynthia @ Quilting is More Fun Than Housework
7/2- College Prep Hilary @ by Hilary Jordan
7/9- Take Flight (free bonus pattern) Kelli @ Seriously, I Think It Needs Stitches
You can pick up a signed copy of Stash Statement in Kelly Young’s Etsy shop HERE, which comes with the Take Flight (angel wings) bonus pattern. Or, you can get the book on Amazon, Connecting Threads, or even in your local quilt shop!
Thank you for stopping by my blog and checking out my Detour quilt. I really enjoyed making it and have plans to try out some more patterns from the Stash Statement book. I have my eye on the Scattered quilt next.
UPDATE with Detour Quilting Completed:
Each of my memory quilts will have one of these embroidered patches on it. There are some with Dad, Lee and Grandpa on them, depends on which family member’s quilt it goes on. I asked my Sister inlaw for more patches recently and this was an extra one as the embroiderer forgot to change thread to navy blue like my first batch. I didn’t want it to go to waste so it is sewn on to the Detour quilt, which is an extra quilt. I did sew it on by machine at an angle or on point so it wouldn’t show up on the front as it blends in with the diagonal plaid quilting. I used the denim variegated thread on top and in bobbin.
I made a mini quilt from one leftover improv panel that I cut in half and sewed back together to make a square. I drew out an allover plaid design with my hera marker and ruler. I did the same stitching on the full size quilt but I had to start a little differently since my quilt was a rectangle and not a square. I made a big X and then went out like 7.5 inches from either direction. I added fill in lines at 2.5, 1.5 and 2 inches in both directions. I really like how it turned out and the quilting helped correct a wavy outer border.
I do hope to take some more personal quilt photos at a later date, like with Dad’s 56 Belair or with his Fairmont Speeder Car (railroad maintenance car). Sorry for the delay. It’s been a wild week. Monday was chilly enough that I had to turn the space heater on again in the living room. Saturday and Sunday we are setting records in the 90s. My husband and I took an impromptu 9 hour roundtrip road trip on Saturday and drove over to Nebraska to buy him a pickup. It was 97 degrees. No sightseeing or side trips. First time that I drove that long and that far of a distance by myself. Thank God Dad’s pickup has good AC and a good radio. I had a heck of a time keeping my husband in sight and my GPS wasn’t working on my phone on the ride home (1 X instead of 4G….lol) My quilting was complete on Thursday but I didn’t get binding done until Sunday afternoon. My projects this week is to paint my living room (hope it cools down) and then Friday, our son will be here to help lay laminate flooring in the living room.
I plan on trying more quilting designs made with a ruler and hera marker. I have one of those bendable curve rulers that I can make a design with too. I am thinking I will likely do a similar pattern to this on the two memory quilts that are made from the HST scrap pieces from the Scrappy Patchwork Swoon quilts.
I hope everyone had a great extended holiday weekend.
Happy Sewing,,
Shelley
Stash Statement Book Blog Hop Starts Today
Hi, Today is the first day of the new book blog hop for the book Stash Statement, which is written by Kelly Young who blogs over at My Quilt Fascination. Stash Statement is a wonderful collection of 13 new scrappy quilt patterns. Kelly teaches you how to sew from your stash and use the tiniest of scraps to make new yardage to create some amazing improv quilt designs. She teaches you three different techniques to use what she calls structured improv. This is improv piecing with a pattern. I will admit I have never made an improv and this makes it an easy less scary way to attempt it for the first time.
The book blog hop tour will run from April 16th through July 9th, with a new quilt highlighted each week. Kelly asked a group of her fellow quilting friends to make up a quilt for her book. I will be sharing my quilt on the blog hop on May 21st.
I have been a long time follower of Kelly’s blog. She was part of my inspiration to start my memory quilt project. She made a set of memory quilts from her loved one’s plaid shirts. She asked me to try and use my plaid scraps to make my chosen quilt from her book. I started with 30 shirts and have made 15 quilts so far. I need to get at least 3 more made. I wasn’t sure if I was going to have enough fabrics to make what I needed. Today, I drug out all my fabric shirt pieces and piles and photographed them. It appears that I have more left than I thought.
I have a pile from cutting the first Swoon quilt from shirt backs. I have piles of single long sleeves, single short sleeves (Dog in Sweaters was cut from single shirt sleeves), single shirt fronts and piles of extra parts of shirt backs. I have an entire bag full of yokes, plackets and cuffs. There is a stack of yokes that have the shirt brand patches sewn on them still. I will be incorporating them into the improv blocks for my book quilt. I have no real idea what to do with the plackets, most have snaps. I cut off all the buttons from the button down shirts. Maybe fold them and use in some fabric weaving project??
During the blog hop, there will be multiple chances to win a copy of the book. You can enter on Kelly’s blog and the Martingale publisher site. Please check out the weekly stops on this hop and be prepared to be inspired on how you can use up your fabric scraps and create a lovely quilt.
Here is the scheduled book tour:
Stash Statement Blog Tour Schedule-
4/16- Grand Bazaar Shelley @ Cora’s Quilts
Connie @ Freemotion by the River
4/23- Louvered Lindsey @ Primrose Cottage Quilts
4/30- Precarious Jess @ Quilty Habit
5/7- Beach Retreat Sarah @ Sarah Goer Quilts
5/14- Fire Pit Alison @ Little Bunny Quilts
5/21- Detour Laura @ Slice of Pi Quilts
Shelley @ The Carpenter’s Daughter Who Quilts
5/28- Murrina Yvonne @ Quilting Jetgirl
6/4- Scattered Jayne @ Twiggy and Opal
Christine @ Triangles and Squares
6/11- Bloom Chicka Boom Chris @ made by ChrissieD
Michelle @ From Bolt to Beauty
6/18- Regatta Susan @ Quilt Fabrication
6/25- Catch a Falling Star Cynthia @ Quilting is More Fun Than Housework
7/2- College Prep Hilary @ by Hilary Jordan
7/9- Take Flight (bonus digital pattern) Kelli @ Seriously, I Think It Needs Stitches
Get yourself a copy of Stash Statement which is available from the following:
- Kelly Young’s Shop – buying it here will get you a signed copy!
- Martingale – Stash Statement by Kelly Young
- Amazon – Stash Statement by Kelly Young
Thanks for stopping by and please come back to check out my quilt on May 21st. I am sure I will have more memory quilts to share before then and working on some non-plaid quilts for fun.
Happy Sewing,
Shelley
