A Couple Random Quilt Finishes

Although I've been busy making quilts, I can't show them on my blog yet. They are for a variety of quilting magazines and I need to wait until the issues are published. But I did get two small quilts finished.

The first quilt top is from a book of star quilts by Alex Anderson. I probably made the quilt top in about 2005 or 2006. I made it on a whim, completely from scraps and fat quarters in my stash. Even the backing was pulled from my stash. But it never warranted paying a longarm quilter to quilt it.

Flash forward about ten years when I had a Handi Quilter HQ Avante equipped with Pro-Stitcher for computerized quilting. This became the perfect quilt top to practice digital quilting with Pro-Stitcher. It was the first top I quilted with Pro-Stitcher.

There were a few missteps and boo-boos, but when I looked at it a few weeks ago, I realized the mistakes aren't all that obvious. So I decided to bind it and call it DONE!

My other finish was a Schnibble pattern by Carrie Nelson (aka Miss Rosie's Quilt Co.).

I had previously used this fabric to make a baby quilt for a nephew's new baby (she's now about 10 years' old). I had enough leftover fabric to take it to the Winter Quilt Fest several years ago where I was taking classes from Carrie Nelson. (NOTE: I try to NOT buy new fabric for retreat classes since unfortunately there's often no guarantee that I'll finish the quilt when I get home.)

But, I did finish this one -- at least the quilt top. Then last fall, probably six or seven years after finishing the quilt top, I decided to quilt it. I knew that there would be baby girls born to nieces and nephews that would need a new quilt. (And three babies are due this spring -- one of which we know for sure will be a girl.) So, last week I finally got the binding on the quilt and my mom happily hand-stitched it to the back of the quilt.

Add these two random finishes to the three quilts for magazines I've finished, and my year-to-date quilts number five. Not too bad for the first six weeks of 2018.

Seven Shades of Gray

I’m so intrigued by modern quilts. They aren’t my typical style, but I love them nonetheless. I think what I like the best is the simplicity of design (usually), the pure use of color (often), and the negative space that is crying out for a lot of unique quilting (always).

I think the cover quilt from my book Triple-Play Scrap Quilting (coming out on Tuesday!!!) qualifies as a modern quilt – although I didn’t realize it at the time I designed and made it.

Here’s my next attempt at a modern quilt.



I knew I wanted to use a variety of gray solids – from very dark to very light. Finding the various gradations of gray fabrics was actually the hardest part of this quilt. I wanted cool grays – not warm grays. You’d think the fabric manufacturers would have grays in all 10 standard values – but, alas, they don’t. They have three or four cool grays, and then three or four warm grays, and then a couple purplish grays, etc. So I ended up buying nearly every cool gray I could find the right set of grays for the quilt.



I have also been wanting to make a rainbow quilt – using pure colors in the same order they appear in the rainbow. So I combined the rainbow colors with the grays, and this is the result.

So the quilt center is done. I’m still figuring out what to do with the borders. I think it needs borders, but I need to figure out how to make them work with the rainbow and shades of gray concept. Thinking cap is still on trying to figure it all out.

Have a great day!