Hopeful Homemaker

With all fourteen rows appliqued and sewn together, my Catenary quilt top is finished.


I have enjoyed and grown to love the art of hand applique over the last six months.  This is the third applique quilt top I’ve finished this year (all patterns by Carolyn Friedlander) and I think I’ll always have a hand sewing project going from now on.  This particular project was especially fun to plan as I auditioned and selected fabrics.


I really wanted to try one of Carolyn’s patterns with fabrics that are larger in scale and bold in color/pattern.  It’s been such a fun project and I can’t tell you how much I love the blues in this quilt.  It’s like the colors of my soul have spilled onto fabric.  I also enjoyed mixing some Bonnie Christine, Jennifer Paganelli and Violet Craft fabrics in, as well as a bit of lawn.  For the borders along each side of the panels I chose a low volume floral print from Erin Michael’s Purebred collection for Moda.  Somehow it’s just perfect.




Naturally I’ve already begun a new applique project.  My hands were itching to stitch in the car for a few days so I quickly started prepping again.  I’ll share more soon!  I also need to figure out how I want to quilt this beauty.


Thanks for visiting!

Related Posts:

Catenary – A New Project Catenary Progress Botanics Quilt top Aerial Grove quilt top

Anna Maria Horner’s Field Study was the first AMH collection I ever purchased.  I’d never seen her fabric in person and I ordered it online.  When it arrived, I was amazed by the beauty and color.  I loved it.  I chose a pattern and cut all my fabric before making a test block…. only to hate the pattern.  My beautiful stack of fabric went in a bag because it was all cut up and I didn’t know what to do with it.


A few years later I saw the Cheerio pattern in Love Patchwork & Quilting and was happy to discover that the fabric requirement was exactly the size my old Field Study prints were cut to.  I pulled them out and had my girls help me go through my solid scraps and pair them all up.  The exercise in choosing fabrics was fun for all of us and the quilt top came together quickly.


Unfortunately, I often finish a quilt top and let it hang in the closet for a while, either because I don’t have time/interest in quilting it myself or because I’m not ready to pay for longarm quilting.  Such was the case with this top, and it hung for more than a year until I finally gave it to Nicole Christoffersen and had her quilt it for me.  I’m so happy that it’s done, for it’s full of color and I’m glad to have a quilt with these favorite prints instead of a stack of unwisely cut squares.


I was lucky enough to score some yardage for a backing, and a black and white stripe binding frames it all beautifully!


All of a  sudden what’s old and forgotten is new and beautiful again.  We’ve got a beautiful “new” quilt to use and a neglected project is completed.  I love these prints!


Size:  approx 68″ x 77″ Pattern:  Cheerio by Thimbleblossoms Fabrics:  Field Study by Anna Maria Horner, with a few other prints thrown in, solids from my stash

My sisters and I have decided to make traveling quilts together this year.  We each made a center and swapped them last month.  For the longest time I couldn’t decide what I wanted to make for my starting block, and then inspiration struck.

I loved seeing Kathy Doughty’s Diamond Dollies quilt last year when she taught in Utah , and so the pattern had been on my to-do list for a while.  I decided this was the perfect chance to try it out and make three sisters to start things off.




Originally I had planned to try the diamond setting, but when I made the dollies I increased their size just a bit and ended up liking them as they were.  The pattern for making them is in Kathy’s book, Adding Layers.


I couldn’t find flesh colored fabric anywhere so I used a soft brown.  The dolls came together pretty quickly, and I appliqued their round hats on before assembling the blocks.

It was kind of funny how long it took me to find fabrics I liked for the borders; I auditioned so many prints and ended with a big pile on the floor before I pulled out that purple print.  When I added the Kaffe mirage stripe the whole thing said YES and I went with it.  It’s funny how many fabrics you can try before you get that yes, but I love waiting for it anyway.  So worth it.


The hourglass blocks on the sides were left over from my Dream Catcher quilt top , also a pattern by Kathy.  They were the perfect size and added some whimsy so I happily used them.

I told my sisters that I want this quilt to celebrate sisterhood.  I’m so excited to see how it changes as they add to it, and so excited to work on this project together.  I think it will be really fun for each of us to have a quilt we all worked on, that reminds us how great it is to have sisters.

It’s pretty great to have a cute seven year old, too.  Love her smile.

Jennifer