Author: jennifer

I’m so happy to be here today!  It’s release day for my Gleaned Quilt Pattern.  Last week I wrote about my love for the biblical story of Ruth.  Her story fills deep places in my heart, and I have loved thinking of her as I made this quilt.  Coincidentally, I ended up at the BYU MOA last weekend and saw a lovely series of works based on Ruth by American painter Brian Kershisnik, which included this painting of her gleaning.  I love his portrayal of her as being strong and able. My quilt top is now all quilted and bound, and the pattern is ready.  So here it is, my Gleaned Quilt + Pattern.  Keep reading to get your free copy of the pattern!

This quilt measures 60″ x 72″ and is made with scraps both old and new.  I enjoyed hunting through years of scraps to find more favorites as I sewed the blocks.  Gleaned is also written with two block size options.  This quilt requires 2.5″ strips, and the second option calls for 1.5″ strips.   It’s fun to make and even more fun to smile at once finished.

I played with a free motion quilting pattern for this quilt.  It features three circles (smaller grains?) inside the center strip, with arcs on the outer strips and simple orange peel arcs in the black and white triangles.  It’s simple, imperfectly done, and feels fitting to me.  I enjoyed quilting as it gave me opportunity to revisit all these fun prints.

I pulled a favorite Kaffe print from his Artisan collection years ago to use on the back, and supplemented with an Amy Butler print leftover from my Raspberry Applique quilt back.

The scraps made me want stripes for a binding, but black and white was too distracting.  I settled on this fun rectangular print that mostly reads as stripes for binding.

Speaking of Ruth, I have gleaned SO MUCH, over and over again, from the quilting community.  What a special group of artists and makers we are!  Therefore, I am offering my Gleaned Quilt Pattern free to all newsletter subscribers.  It’s a simple email I send once a month, all about quilting.  To subscribe and receive your free pattern, click here.

I hope you enjoy making a Gleaned quilt of your own!

Happy Sewing,

Jennifer

I paired some softer colors with a favorite green floral to make a dainty Show Up quilt top.  It was fun to make something for a little girl.

Show Up is a 48″ version of my 72″ Serve Quilt Pattern, and the smaller size is included in the pattern.  My first version of Show Up was bold:

I toned down the color in this new one and made it more feminine.  I love the way the corner stars look like little white flowers, or a crown of daisies around the star.

The Serve and Show Up quilts are a fun pattern to make – a great way to master half rectangle triangles WITHOUT a special ruler.  Learn a simple trimming technique and you’re on your way!

I’m revisiting the Serve pattern next month. I’ll teach how to make this pattern at The Quilted Beehive, a darling quilt shop in Ogden Utah.  Their new classroom space is awesome. If you will be in Utah on September 21st, I would love for you to join us!  You can make whichever size you prefer.

But, back to my dainty show up quilt top.  I’ll quilt it and send it off to a sweet baby girl born recently.  Hopefully she, as well as her lovely mom, will enjoy it.

Some stories weave their way into our hearts, never to leave.  The account of Ruth, in the Bible, is such a story for me.  She inspires me in so many ways.  But it’s the gleaning that twists my heart.  Gleaning in a field means following the harvesters and going through the leftover grains on the ground or the plant in order to obtain food.  It’s literally searching for something of use in the leftovers of life.  How often do we find ourselves dealing with plan B, or even plan X?  Nothing about her life had gone the way she expected, and suddenly she is gleaning in the fields so she and her mother-in-law won’t starve.

There is grit in this.  I could go on and on.  Needless to say, I’ve spent countless hours pondering Ruth gleaning in the fields, and what it means to glean in my life.  So it isn’t surprising that I sketched a quilt block and named it “Gleaned”.  It’s lived in my sketchbook for a year or two, and this summer I finally made time to sew it up.  So, here she is, my Gleaned quilt top!

This Gleaned quilt top is made from scraps.  I went through years of “leftovers” to gather them.  It makes me smile to see decades old fabrics mingling with recent ones.  Some projects gifted me lots of 2.5″ scraps, such as my Arise quilt (pattern here) and Listen quilt (pattern here).

What pulls it all together are the black and white corner pieces.  I turned to Art Gallery Pure Solids for these, and used Crisp Linen and Slate.  Slate is actually a rich, dark gray that reads as a black.  The crisp linen is slightly creamy, but not too much.  Gleaned is my first project with these two colors, and I’m happy with them.  (I already know that I love working with Art Gallery pure solids, which I happily used in my Rainbow Serve Quilt and my Candy Shop Listen Quilt.)

Would you like to start a new scrap quilt?  Good news!  I’m writing the pattern now, and will release it as a free pattern to all newsletter subscribers next week.  And what’s even better?  I’m writing it for two different sized blocks.  I wasn’t ready to be done gleaning scraps, I guess, because I started another version with 1.5″ strips.

I’m off to baste my gleaned quilt top, because this is a quilt I can’t WAIT to snuggle under.  I’m tenderhearted lately, and need a little extra beauty.   Like I said, gleaning.  Always gleaning.