Category: Quilting and Sewing

Meet my first project of 2017!  This mini quilt was made for an annual swap held by a friend and I had a wonderful time making it.


I started with a piece of Amy Butler’s fabulous Celestial bird print from her Hapi collection.  This fabric is a treasured favorite of mine and I wanted to show it off.


Improv piecing is something I’m working at becoming more comfortable with so naturally this project was a great exercise.  I love straight line quilting and chose a peachy orange thread, and when I had quilted it I took a deep breath and decided to add some extra details, the kind I always admire in others’ work but struggle to add to my own.  I want to push myself creatively this year, so this felt like an appropriate start.


I chose coordinating perle cotton and hand stitched the quilting in several small solid areas and stitched a tiny piece of selvedge I’d saved from my 100 blocks project to the bird square.


My sister sent me some really cool tags for Christmas, the kind of detail I usually store carefully to save for the “perfect project” that never gets made.  Not this time.  I decided to add the “be your own kind of beautiful” tag and I love it so much!


A bit of Kate Spain fabric for the back and orange scallop for the binding finished this off beautifully.


I have to admit that when I finished I half wished I could keep it.  It’s true that we stitch little pieces of ourselves into our work and giving it away can be bittersweet.  That’s the beauty of creating, and I loved creating this piece.  It left me with a smile on my face and a feeling of fulfillment in my heart.

My Rosewater + Gingham quilt is finished and in use around our house.  I quilted it very simply with straight lines in the ditch around all the seams.  It’s  a quilting style I haven’t used much, simple, but also needing great attention to detail to maintain straight lines.  To be honest, I’m not sure yet how much I like it, and yet I don’t dislike it either.


I chose a second gingham for the backing and it makes my heart sing.  It’s a lovely bright blue diagonal plaid print from Jane Sassaman, and I added a strip of my favorite Jennifer Paganelli floral.  I’ll be so sad when I run out of scraps of that print!


I used my scraps from the quilt top to make a scrappy binding that continues the theme of the quilt.  This was such a fun project, made entirely from stash by combining fabrics I already had in a way I never planned to do.  This was a fun but simple creative exercise for me.


It makes me wonder what other awesome fabric combinations are hiding in my sewing room because I simply haven’t taken the time to discover them yet.  I hope to devote more time to this sort of sewing in the future.

Jennifer Relevant Post:

Rosewater + Gingham quilt top

This is the most traditional lone star quilt I’ve made to date, with twelve lone star blocks set in three rows.  I love it so much.

Piecing these stars was a fun exercise in choosing fabrics, and it never bores me to see all the different combinations that can be created (even within a fabric collection) in these stars, depending on placement of color in different orders.

This quilt was also a good lesson for me in viewing distances.  Blocks that look like they have plenty of contrast up close, can end up reading very differently at a distance, as you can see when you compare the photo at top with the following photos of individual blocks.  In this project I didn’t have a particular goal, and there was no right or wrong; I merely wanted to experiment and see what happened.  I love learning lessons from fabrics as I sew!


Rather than choosing fabrics with small scale prints for obvious color contrast ( like my sample block in the tutorial ), I decided to use prints that were larger in scale and see how these more modern prints worked in the stars.  The resulting blocks are busier and sometimes more lacking in contrast (especially from a distance), but they also have a lot of personality up close.  I really like them.

As you can see above and below, the solids really stand out and define the star.  In the star above, I like how the stripe print creates a sort of spiral in the center star.


Choosing prints similar to your background fabric will cause that round in the star to recede, as you can see below.  I love how the center star and first round are so bold, and the others disappear a little.


Below you can see how the large scale swirl print creates lots of movement between the green center and the pink solid.


The green print in this block helps balance the craziness of the center star.


This block felt like a risk to me when I made it because I was combining so many busy prints with softer backgrounds, but when finished it was one of my favorites.




The outer points on the star below make me so happy.  I love how they stand out and the second and third rows recede.


Most of these fabrics are from the Whimsy Christmas fabric collection by Pillow & Maxfield from several years ago, with a few others added.  The pink dot background fabric is from Heather Bailey’s Nicey Jane collection, and this particular print was included in the reprint earlier this year.  The quilting was done by Melissa Kelley of Sew Shabby Quilting in an edge-to-edge vine pattern.


Each of these stars are made from two inch strips , pieced according to my instructions in my Lone Star Block Tutorial.
For more information about my lone star projects, visit my Lone Star page .


I made small stars at the posts in my sashing to break up the large negative space where the corners of four blocks join.  I chose a pink and red print which adds to the “traditional Christmas + pink” color scheme of this quilt.

My favorite Whimsy print was found in two colorways which I stitched together for the backing:


Each of these blocks measure 22″ square and the sashing/border is 1.5″, making the entire quilt approximately 72 by 96 inches.


I can’t wait to see my little girls snuggled under this beauty for the holidays.


Jennifer