Tag: curvedpiecing

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

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