Category: Projects

Surely yesterday’s post makes it no surprise that I have a weakness for coastal and beachy themed fabric.  My Anchor quilt , as well as the Anchor’s Aweigh quilt are coastal in design and color scheme, and my Seaside quilt is another older favorite.  As I prepared for our annual week at the beach, I had the sudden urge to cut into all my coastal fabric.

This project comes mostly from two designers:  Lewis & Irene, who designed the Coastal bundle I had, and Sharon Holland, whose Coastline fabric I also had a nearly complete bundle of.  There are a few other designers whose work is in the mix, but the bulk comes from those two collections.  A quick sketch for a design and the cutting began.


I had high hopes for a completed quilt top to take with me for photos, but instead I managed a bunch of large half square triangles (HST) and hundreds of smaller ones that still need trimming.  My design wall is currently in my bedroom instead of my sewing room because we’ve got guests coming and going every week or two for much of the summer and I’ve taken over a small table for my sewing machine.  These happy colors greet me every time I walk in the room and I’m hopeful I’ll find a few minutes to sew again soon.

Meet my mini pineapple quilt!  I had so many squares left over from making my pineapple quilt that I decided a mini was in order.


The color combination really grew on me during these projects.  The orange/yellow with dark blue and green are so refreshing and cheery.  I quilted a small crosshatch pattern on the diagonal, and the texture of it is awesome.


For the binding I used a Denyse Schmidt print from the Flea Market Fancy reprint, with a tiny strip of orange thrown in for fun.


This was a fast finish.  Sometimes it’s nice to have those, don’t you think?  (Especially if you’re like me and you have a bunch of other projects you thought would be fast finishes that are still hanging around in one state or another.)  It’s also fun to use those extra pieces at the end of a project.

Now to work on some other finishes!

Jennifer

I’ve been trying to use more of my stash this year, and wanted to make a quilt with a lot of yellow and orange.  The pineapple quilt trend looked like a fun and fast project so I made one.  The making of it turned out to be a comedy of errors which exposed the distracted, stressed out state of mind I had at the time.  I made so many mistakes in this quilt.  Not so much in the piecing, but in the reading of instructions and cutting and so forth.

But it turned out fine.  My pineapples are a little taller than most of them out there, and even when I figured out what I’d done I somehow managed to fail to account for it when cutting my sashing, and so there are all kinds of seams where there didn’t need to be.

Still, look how cute it is!


The colors are so vibrant and happy, especially set against the denim colored Essex yarn dyed linen that I used for the background.  It gives the quilt great contrast as well as amazing texture.  I also really love the diagonal plaid quilting.  It’s the perfect pattern for pineapples, don’t you think?  Kaylene Parry did a great job of quilting it for me.


A scrappy binding was a great choice for this quilt, and I’d been saving this awesome green print for the perfect project.  I love it on the back.  It’s a design by Juliana Horner which I scored at Joann’s for $2.40/yard a while ago.  Can’t beat that!


I am pleased with this quilt, and glad it turned out well.  These cute scrappy fruit quilt blocks are fun.  I’m thinking I’ll make a strawberry one soon.  I feel grateful and lucky to have discovered quilting.  It makes me so happy!


Jennifer