Step Down Patchwork Piecing

step down piecing
step down piecing

Happy October!
This was a fun project I’ve been working on, in those spare moments when my hands were idle but time was limited. A mini-quilt (17 1/2″ x 21), done in step-down piecing, a fun patchwork technique to learn. It is clearly explained in Sarah Fielke’s book Quilting From Little Things… As the name implies, there isn’t really any way to piece this pattern straight across or straight up and down, so you “step down” piece by leaving a seam half sewn until you fit the next piece in. Sarah explains it much better than that. A fun project if you enjoy any kind of puzzles (and I do). I hand quilted the X’s with various colors of perle cotton.
The larger squares came from a charm pack of Denyse Schmidt’s Chicopee line, I love the light and dark contrasts in this line. The smaller squares are from Carolyn Friedlander’s Architextures line.
As I was working on this, I have-jokingly referred to it as “the state of my desk”.
Actually that’s not really a joke at all.
 
Please notice my razor sharp binding corners…
step down piecing

Day of the Dead Quilt

Day of the Dead Quilt
Please pardon the lapse in regular postings while I get two kids ready for new schools (middle and high school, people!) in just a matter of days. We are back to school shopping, cleaning out closets, going to orientations, and trying to get the last bits out of our summer.
But in the midst of it all I did finish a quilt!
 
Don’t ask me why I had this idea…to make some sort of Halloween-inspired quilt…for years. But I have. I’m not even all that crazy about Halloween. I could actually take it or leave it. I know so many that live for Halloween. Maybe that’s why I wanted to do a quilt. Decorating for a holiday like Halloween is the best part of it for me. So I made a Day of the Dead quilt.
Anyway, all the Halloween fabric currently out in the market didn’t feel quite right, and I didn’t want to do just solids, so I’ve put it off for a long time. And then I came across Alexander Henry’s Midnight Pastoral. I suddenly dropped everything I was working on and began furiously searching the internet to find enough of the black/cream to make something, anything (local shops didn’t seem to have it). I go weak for a good toile, in most of its forms. But this. THIS!


I wanted the quilt to feel a little formal, with consistent structure to the blocks, and still feature the toile pattern as much as possible. And be fairly quick to go together too! This is just a very simple snowball block. The toile was cut into 6 1/2 ” squares, a size which featured most of the pastoral scenes wells. At first, I fussy cut (carefully cut out specific areas of the print) to keep the images in the center of the block, but later gave up on that to save fabric I later and just started to cut across the width, not thinking about where the print fell within each block. Because of that, there are blocks with lots more of the cream ground and I like the movement it gives throughout the quilt top.

But even within it’s structure, this quilt needed some lightness too; Day of the Dead/Dia de los Muertos is a celebration, after all. And that’s where the Kona solids in Halloween/Fall/Day of the Dead-inspired colors came in. I drew a simple graph to color in and used it to distribute the colors throughout the quilt. (Those Kona color cards are so handy.)
 

I made the back out of what I had left over. I had purchased a bit of Cartas Marcadas in black and white, also from Alexander Henry, and wanted to use it up, so I ran it across the middle back with some of the leftover Kona. The photo below is a better view of the quilting, straight lines across, using my walking foot’s edge as a guide, and carefully stitching around the colored diamonds instead of through them.

Sewing Machine Cover

 
Sewing Machine Cover
I decided that my desk/sewing table would not be clean clean until I made a sewing machine cover. I had been eyeing the Spool Quilt in Alexia Abegg’s Liberty Love: 25 Projects to Quilt & Sew Featuring Liberty of London Fabrics ever since I got it. While everyone was drooling over the Marcelle Quilt in that book (which is gorgeous, don’t get me wrong), the spools were always the ones that caught my eye. Not having the time to make a full quilt, I could definitely make enough blocks for a sewing machine dust cover. Each block is 4 spools/14″ x 14″, and after taking loose measurements over and across my machine, I knew I needed exactly 2 blocks. Boom…READ MORE

Cocktails On The Beach Quilt

 
Beach Quilt
Fresh from the dryer.
The Cocktails On The Beach quilt was a long time coming. Inspired by the peak season weekly cocktail meet ups on little Useppa Island, where we spend our Spring Break vacations. Actually, I’ve only attended these cocktails meet ups on the beach once, maybe twice. It’s more the idea of cocktails on the beach, that inspired this quilt.
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Friday Favorites: Deconstructed Piecing and Round Robin Quilt

I am inspired by so many things, I decided that every Friday, I will highlight a favorite person, thing, or idea. Maybe you will be inspired too! See all past Friday Favorites here.

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Round Robin Quilt

On this lovely Friday, let’s enter a world where paper piecing sharp angles, exact 1/4″ seams, and precise cuts in our quilts don’t exist. A world where you compose as you work, best laid plans (or any plans!) aren’t welcome.
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DIY Quilt or Blanket Display Ladder

 
blanket ladder
I’ve been bumping into a stack of my quilts in my studio for a few months now, that is until I asked my really nice husband to make a quilt ladder (also called a blanket ladder). Quilts that are not to be used right away, or given as a gift, what to do with them? After some thinking, I decided it would do my creative soul a lot of good to be able to have them out and see them each day.READ MORE

Toile Four Patch Quilt

 
Four Patch
After taking Joe Cunningham’s Pattern Free Quiltmaking class on Craftsy and vowing to make time, whenever possible, to “play” in the studio, I made this little quilt, based on Joe’s “Fantasy Four Patch” formula. The idea is quite simple, really just a play on the four patch, a pattern that’s been around for a bazillion years. But making a series of measured cuts and pairings, the four patch pattern is turned on its head, into something different. Without the added twists and turns this quilt is, in fact, a simple four patch pattern.READ MORE

A New Floral Quilt

floral quilt
During our April spring break trip to Florida, I read 15 Minutes of Play by Victoria Findlay Wolfe. This quilt book intrigued me because it isn’t so much about the process and precise technique of making a quilt, or recipes for specific projects. Really it’s more about the concept of quiltmaking and relating it back to the idea of play to spark creativity. Not about practicing a skill, but composing as you sew, raiding your scraps, and creatively letting go- the perfect book to read on vacation, right?READ MORE

Sliced Swoon Quilt

Swoon Quilt
My niece in North Carolina is getting married in June. It’s the first wedding in our family in quite a while, and I am plenty excited. I love weddings. And isn’t a wedding gift a great excuse to make a quilt? I think yes!
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Friday Favorites: Favorite Quilting Books

I am inspired by so many things, I decided that every Friday, I will highlight a favorite person, thing, or idea. Maybe you will be inspired too! See all past Friday Favorites here.

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I have a special bookshelf in my studio that is filled with favorite quilting books. The ones I pull out to look through when I feel in a creative rut. Each of them inspire me in different ways (some for color, some for pattern, some for symmetry of design) and they are the ones I turn to again and again. In my eyes, these books represent quiltmaking as an artform, not simply craft. I thought I’d share a few of them.
Anna Williams: Her Quilts & Their Influences by Katherine Watts
quilting book
This book was published by the American Quilter’s Society in 1995, so not really vintage, but the quilts of Anna Williams span a lifetime of instinctual, brilliant color patchwork piecing, a lifetime of honing a skill she described as “what I do to take my mind off my troubles”. The copies of this book left in circulation are not cheap, and it is shockingly thin (a mere 25 pages), but it is truly inspiring. As Denyse said in her workshop where I first learned of Anna, “you can’t fake” what Anna did with color, pattern, and quilting. Sadly, Anna passed away in June of 2012. I love having this book of her work to inspired me.
Quilts by Roderick Kiracofe.
quilting book
 
This book was a gift from Erin and I absolutely love it. Not an old book at all, quite new in fact, available as a self-published book on Blurb.The colors, the patterns, the entire collection of quilts in this book is completely inspiring on so many levels. Some of these quilts were shown at QuiltCon recently (another reason I should have gone!) and it must have been wonderful to see these in person. Great fabric and color reference on these pages. And something about seeing beautifully colored quilts on a stark white background really appeals to me.
 
Abstract Design in American Quilts: A Biography of an Exhibition by Jonathan Holstein
quilting book
 
This book is the story of an exhibition that opened in 1971 at the Whitney Museum in New York. This book reminds and inspires me to remember the art of quiltmaking. There is an entire story within the pages of this book of how the exhibit came to exist, along with full pages of the quilts themselves with information about each one. There is page after page of graphic inspiration and use of color and pattern. This is a beautiful book for any quiltmaker to have in their collection.
 
Patchwork Simplified by Alice Timmins
quilting book
 
This is a well-used old library copy with a copyright of 1973. I love the mod, geometric feel of the patchwork in this book. Look at those wonderful quilted skirts above (although I’m sure she is beating her head against the wall on the right, wondering why she didn’t just make that fabulous patchwork into a full quilt instead of a skirt).
 
Patchcraft by Elsie Svennas
quilting book
 
Another treasure, beautiful use of color and shapes within quilts. Gives great examples of applique and embroidery used in quiltmaking, although many of the images are black and white. Still…
 
The Perfect Patchwork Primer by Beth Gutcheon
quilting book
 
This book is just a great reference book for so many techniques, standards, and really just the whole idea of quilting’s place in a creative life. A must-have for any vintage quilt library.
I would love to hear what quilting books you have to inspire you!
Happy Friday!

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