Hopeful Homemaker

This quilt is a big one!  It’s my City Sampler Quilt , quilted and bound and making me smile.  It’s made of 100 different blocks, all of them different.  And although it sounds like a lot, it never felt like too much, because I did it as part of a sew-along.

I chose to make all my blocks in blue fabrics.  Seriously, give me all the blues!  A rainbow of them.  I love blue so much, and always have.  So it felt right to make an entire quilt of blue blocks.

I went through all my fabrics, all my scraps, and used as many different pieces as I could.  It was incredibly fun to put pieces together until I found combinations I loved for each block design.  And Tula Pink did an amazing job of making an incredible pattern.  I would definitely make this again.

It didn’t take long for me to include aqua and a few greens in my color scheme.  I particularly enjoyed making the butterfly block below, mimicking the little triangles in the print in the checkered border around it.  In fact, this quilt was an early part of personal storytelling in fabric for me.

I found myself putting together fabrics and colors that reflected my day, my experiences, my feelings.  The tiger block below still makes me laugh.  You see these hungry tigers, not looking particularly happy, with bow ties on the right and a knife and fork on the left.  This block was my representation of my then 16 year old son when he came home from football practice, looking for food to eat.  I love it!  Now he’s a responsible, handsome adult, I’m even happier I have this block to remind me of that stage.

When I first saw the striped sashing fabric, I was in love.  Seriously, it’s the greatest print (made by Andover) so I immediately chose it for sashing.  The trick was to keep the stripe running consistently across the quilt from left to right.  This involved hours and special cutting, but I accomplished my goal.  It feels like the running dialogue of life weaving through the quilt, making it a perfect sashing.

The wavy/swirly quilting is a great compliment to the quilt blocks.  My final layout was simply a random placement of blocks that I didn’t overthink.

I found a gorgeous Japanese bird print for the back, and used a Lizzy House blue to bind it.  The City Sampler Quilt is a favorite of mine, large and happy and FULL of colors/fabrics I love.  Really, there are SO many treasures in this one!

Sometimes I feel like I’ll never catch up on all the things I’m inching forward in my life.  These blocks were made in 2016, and sharing the quilt with you today reminds me that the joy of finishing is a great feeling anytime.  So I’ll go get to work on another!  

I hope your October is off to a great start.  I love the crisp air, blue sky, and feeling like so much is happening!  Happy sewing!

-Jennifer

Hey there!  I’m here today with some blocks from a project I haven’t talked about since 2017.  Oops!  I have more long-term projects, especially hand sewing projects, than I probably should.  But if they keep moving forward, that’s ok, right?  I’m here today with my second ever update on Ice Cream Soda blocks.  This one includes 14 blocks.

English Paper Piecing could become a real passion of mine, if I let it.  Fussy cutting is fun!  Putting together all these shapes in symmetrical designs teaches me more about fabric, design, and color.  It’s a great way to showcase special prints.

Most of these blocks include some fussy cutting.  It showcases motifs, like the strawberries above, or creates movement and symmetry.  The bottom two blocks above are both examples of that.  And in some cases, it just makes for fun little images in the blocks like the mice in the top right photo below.

I also included bits of fabrics I like, just to include them in this quilt.  If you haven’t seen this pattern before, the Ice Cream Soda quilt is designed by Jodi at Tales of Cloth .  She’s an Australian quilter and I ordered the paper pieces from her.  They’re made from recycled paper and are, admittedly, a lot thinner than the pieces I get from Paper Pieces.  I am hoping they’re sturdy enough for a second make.  We’ll see!  She also designed the Mandolin Quilt, which I just finished and am SO excited to show you.

I have a few favorites in this group. Those tiny crowns remind me of Queen Elizabeth.  (Side note:  does anyone else want to make a quilt that honors her?  I’ve got plans there!)  And the storks are a precious print I’ve saved for years.

The center star in this block has my heart.  It’s not an amazing print on its own, but repeated like this makes the coolest flower.  Also, that blue remains a favorite of mine.

I have 24 ice cream soda blocks finished now, and I think I need 68.  So I’m roughly 1/3 of the way there, and these are fun to stitch.  Like I’ve said before, my obstacle is always prepping the pieces, and I don’t have any more ready.  I do, however, have a big stack of fabric I’d like to fussy-cut!  Hopefully I can prep some soon.  But right now, at least I’m stitching a few pieces every day on my Homage quilt.  I’m sure I’ll finish eventually!

Happy sewing!

This is the story of a vintage fabric that chose it’s own quilt design.  I remember looking at it, this little square on my phone.  The photo showed a bunch of little chess pieces in a cool vintage color scheme and I was sold.  Literally.  It’s one of the gems I found while browsing the dangerous “great fabric destash” hashtag on Instagram.  Is that still a thing?  Gratefully (for my wallet, at least) I quit looking a long time ago.  But this piece found its way to my house, and that’s where the Chess Quilt began.

I opened the package and was shocked to discover that the chess pieces were large.  Like, very large.  Tall and long and thin.  Not a cute little vintage print I could cut up and include in other quilts ( like this scale ).  My plans flew out the window as I quickly realized that this fabric could NOT be cut.  It had to remain in one piece.  But what to do with it?  I hung it on my design wall and we looked at each other for a while.

Slowly, an idea formed.  The pieces could stay as they are, and I could design a chess board around them. So like the Dream Catcher quilt , the Chess quilt is one where the fabric chose the design.  Not me.  And I LOVE where it went.

I planned a grid of checkered squares for the left and right sides, but didn’t want it to be boring.   In the white squares I made a center square featuring four of the colors in the chess pieces (though it’s awfully difficult to match 70’s colors to today’s solids!).  This let me pull color from the center into the sides of the quilt. I also didn’t want to overpower the center panel with too much black.  I fixed that problem by using a dark gray instead, and I also dropped some hunter’s star blocks in.  All that makes the game board more interesting.  It’s pretending to keep up with the epic vintage chess pieces!

Do you see the color difference between the panel and the white?  I put the panel in the sun to clean and bleach it before sewing, but it has yellowed a little more since I finished the quilt.  It doesn’t bother me.  I might as well enjoy the contrast for what it is.

But here are the two best elements in this quilt design:  the black and white stripe, and the half square triangles.  That stripe pulls it all together.  I was so excited when I put it between the sections.  And of course it deserved a place as binding, too.  The hst border on top and bottom is the final piece to pull the quilt together as a composition.

And look at the pawns!

Melissa dropped them in the gray blocks and they’re the perfect addition.  I love the custom quilting she added to this one of a kind quilt.

I backed the quilt with two different prints, both geometric.  It’s a large quilt and someday I hope one of my kids treasures it.  Making the chess quilt was a marvelous creative experience for me.

I hope you’re making something that really excites you and makes you feel more alive.

Happy sewing!

Jennifer