I made a quilt for the April Showers blog hop. A list of all of the participants are in my last blog hop. Be sure to look at them after you are done admiring my quilt.
After making a few bigger quilts, I am back yet again making a smaller quilt. It is a fun applique pattern that adds to my collection of elephant quilts. Doesn't everyone have one?
I ran out of time making this quilt so I didn't finish it, but it wasn't from lack of effort. I even made it during my lunch and breaks from my job. But it is a great quilt and all I have left to do is to bind it. I want to take the time to make it right, so I added all the spokes on the umbrella, the eye and head piece of the elephant as well as the blanket.
I echo quilted around the shapes with some big stitch free motion quilting.
These pictures were taken at night so they may be dark, but I will take better photos when it is bound.
Here's the schedule for the April Showers blog hop. Be sure to check everyone out to see what wonderful projects they have made for you! Come back tomorrow for my quilt!
This is a pajamas doll quilt I already showed you. When Project Quilting announced the challenge to make a quilt out of clothing, I decided to make one out of my old pajamas. I also decided to make a YouTube tutorial about how to make an on point quilt while I was making this quilt, and it was difficult to move pieces around easily on a design wall. I started with big pieces so I could make it quickly but I decided that a big lap quilt is not something I could make in a week on my work schedule.
So I finished this doll quilt for the challenge. Then I started putting the video together, but my microphone did not work on so many of the videos. I recorded the video clips again after replacing the battery but again they didn't have sound. I could do voice-overs on a lot of the videos, but not all of them worked with that, and I hadn't finished all of the questions I wanted to answer, so I cut up more scraps to be able to experiment and show something.
Instead of using pajama scraps, which I wanted to save in case I needed it for the big pajamas quilt, I used bright colors from the last two quilt tops I made.
The end result of all this is that I got through the video even though I had to spend a lot of time editing this video and that took away from sewing time. Since this is a tutorial, I wanted it to be the best it could be since it is a search based video.
I also created a chart for this video. It tells you the measurements to cut the square for more measurements than I have seen in other charts online. It goes up in quarter inch increments from 1 to 30 inches finished size of blocks. Here's the direct link to the free Triangle Measurements for On Point Quilts Chart by Quilt and Color: https://ko-fi.com/s/be9453f507
And finally, it means that I started three quilts and finished one. I can argue that the scrap squares I cut up would be for the video and not a quilt I was actually starting, but I really like the way they look and have decided I am going to go ahead and sew it up.
15 Minutes to Stitch 2024
This week, I broke my streak of quilting every day this year.
Hello everyone! Welcome to my blog, High Road Quilter. It is my day to post my progress on my Pinwheel Quilt as a part of a blog hop hosted by Carol Swift.
Like the last quilt I made for a blog hop, I decided that since I have limited time to finish a quilt with my job and YouTube channel, I would rather make a big quilt top that I can quilt later rather than a small finished quilt. I have been making a lot of small projects for the Project Quilting challenges so I was due for a bigger quilt.
Dreaming about which quilt to make for this Give It a Whirl challenge was a lot of fun for me since there were so many wonderful choices.
I settled on a pattern called Warm Breeze on allpeoplequilt.com which is run by the people who make American Patchwork & Quilting. This website has a lot of free patterns that you can download and all you have to give them is your email address.
I have a neighbor who has pinwheels in their garden, and when the sun is shining, the light makes the pinwheels sparkle and with the breeze it makes it seem like the pinwheels are spreading their sparkle throughout the neighborhood. The little squares around the pinwheel makes me think of those sparkles.
This pattern is inspired by a quilt called Cartwheels from Gudrun Erla of GE Designs. In her quilt, the little squares in the outer border didn't go all the way around and I really like that because it looks like you can go through the spaces in the centers and go to the next gardening space. Since this is my neighbor, the space could lead to my garden.
I wanted a nice spring look for my pinwheels and have a couple of fat quarter packs I wanted to use so the decision making was pretty easy. I did add some more purple. Last year, I made quilts following the rainbow colors, red, orange, yellow, and teal, so I thought purple would help round that out.
I made this quilt as a four patch. This means that besides making four pinwheels, I also added the inner border and the outer border in sections so in the end, I only had one long seam to sew.
This quilt was a lot of fun to make. It is too big for my design wall which is in the corner of my sewing room between a door and a window, so I can't give you a complete view, but I will definitely give it a better glamor shot when it is done quilted.
As a bonus for sticking through this post, I am showing you a pinwheel quilt that I have finished.
There are a lot of people who are participating in the blog hop. They are listed in my last post, so be sure to check them out as well to see their Give It a Whirl submissions. Thank you Carol, for hosting this blog hop.
The "Give it a Whirl" blog hop, hosted by Carol Swift starts on Monday. There is a big group of participants and we have been spinning around getting
our projects done to share with all of you.
Check it out, I'm sure your head will be spinning from all the fun! The pinwheels are sprinkling happiness throughout blogland.
On YouTube this week, I recorded videos for both quilts. For the pajamas quilt, I made a tutorial for how to make a quilt with blocks that are on point, but my microphone has malfunctioned, and I didn't check it since it generally works, so I have many videos without sound. I thought I had forgotten to turn on the microphone so I recorded it again. But apparently it is the microphone's fault. Replacing the battery didn't help.
I was getting so frustrated and running out of time so I switched tracks and recorded a video about quilts that are already finished. I am hoping to have some videos ready to go for these types of situations, but so far I haven't been able to get that far ahead.
In today's video, I showed my two Drunkard's Path quilts. I had lots of photos and videos already ready for these quilts so that worked out much better.
It's time for another Project Quilting reveal! The challenge of this week is Wearables.
Your project must be wearable, or have been made from previously worn items, or have another connection to clothes, shoes and fashion accessories.
I gave myself two choices:
Make a blouse that I have been planning to make for a very long time. I already have the pattern and the fabric chosen.
Make a quilt out of all the pajamas I have been saving to make a quilt.
Since I hadn't made a blouse since high school, I didn't think I could handle the pressure of making it in a week, even though the pattern says it is easy to make. I am keeping it downstairs and hope to make it this year.
Making the pajamas quilt will help me reduce clutter in the sewing room since these flannel pajamas take up a more room than flat fabric would.
I had seen a quilt in a show I watched recently that was a scrap quilt made entirely out of squares but it was set on point, which added a nice interest to the squares. I decided to do that.
So I cut up the pieces and laid out the blocks on the design wall. I am trying to use up all the fabric as I can and make a nice big lap quilt. Even though these girly fabrics would make a good gift for a girl, I don't feel comfortable giving a gift with my used clothes so I will have to use it or maybe I can give it to my dog Zoey.
I recorded videos as I was making this quilt to give instructions on how to make a quilt on point. I need to learn to be better about taking photographs as well as videos.
Cutting pieces out of clothing, even simple squares, takes longer than cutting them from a flat fold of fabric. Some of it is stretchy, and some of it is faded and I had to decide which part of the fabric to use. I soon realized that there was no way I was going to be able to make a big lap quilt, quilted and bound, by the Project Quilting challenge deadline, so I decided to make a small one out of the fabric I saved in case I needed to piece a block.
The smaller quilt also makes it easier to show in a video as I move pieces around for a tutorial. The squares finish at 1".
I pieced the smaller quilt, and then somebody stole an hour from me. Daylight Savings Time.
This meant I had only 15 minutes to finish it, so I quickly trimmed it and the backing, and sewed around the edges. I turned it right side out and didn't really take the time to carefully poke out the corners. I secured the edges and called it done.
The teal fabric in the photo above in the top left corner is the start of the Pinwheel quilt I will show you on March 21.
It's time for the annual Dust Off An Old Quilt Book Blog Hop! I have been participating the last few years and have always enjoyed it.
I have been participating the last few years and have always enjoyed it.
For this hop, I dusted off my Red & White Quilts Infinite Variety book. The book features all the red and white quilts that had been in an exhibit at a museum. I had seen the quilt on the cover before the exhibit and the book and had already been fascinated by it.
My friends and I had done some calculations on how to make this quilt. I had done some research and had even found some instructions about how to make the quilt. I bought a 9 degree ruler. The quilt can be strip cut, but you have to cut the triangles in one direction. The smaller triangles are in the center and the larger triangles are on the outside. This means you waste half of the triangles. I wondered what the other half would look like if sewn together.
My first worry was whether I am capable of making a checkerboard like that neatly, the regular "squares" much less the tiny points in the center. I decided to make a sample block. In this one, I decided to make it so that I can use all the triangles. I made a strip set with a light on one side and a dark on the other side. I then cut triangles, moving the ruler up or down depending on what color I wanted to be the smallest.
This won't help me reduce waste on the optical illusion quilt, but it does give me a good idea about how difficult this quilt might be if I make it on a bigger scale.
This block may look familiar to you. I started it a long time ago, in 2010. I then added a backing to hide the raw edges. I added it to a gray background, but I didn't like the way it looked, so I abandoned it. I hadn't put it on my list of quilts because I was just playing and hadn't started the Optical Illusion quilt.
During the 15 Minutes to Quilt Challenge in December, I took off the gray background and made a quilt sandwich with a white background. I then had to leave the quilt alone and move on to my next UFO for the next day's video.
But since it was so close to completion, I didn't put it away, and worked on it in the spare bits of time I could find.
I decided that instead of centering the spiderweb to the rectangular quilt, I wanted to have the spiderweb be a little bit higher and add something else to the bottom.
I traced out a design from another book of quilting patterns. I appliqued the spiderweb and the designs to the quilt sandwich, and decided to add a word.
What word? Web of Intrigue? Web of Lies? Web of Deception? I looked it up, and the first word I found was Web of Life. Sounded good to me. It was late at night by that time and Life is a nice short word and therefore easy to applique, so I decided to choose that. I found a font I liked and traced out the letters.
Man did not weave the web of life; we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we also do to ourselves. Adapted from Chief Seattle
Then I fused the letters on and quilted them down.
I hope you enjoyed seeing this quilt finished. You've waited a long time for it! The video for this quilt should be out on Sunday on my YouTube channel, Quilt and Color.
Here are the people who are participating in the blog hop this time.
