Tuesday, April 22, 2025

Square Up Quilt


Fat Quarter Shop has released a new pattern called Square Up! I was excited when they asked if I would like to make a sample quilt. (All the information on the pattern will be on the FQS blog.)

The fabric is from Ruby Star Society - Salutations! Precuts and yardage ship in May and I was lucky to get a layer cake to play with for this quilt. The pattern itself it written for fat quarters so there was a bit of (easy) math to adopt it for a layer cake.

The blocks were quite fun to assemble. I deviated slightly from the pattern by making the sashing between rows bigger and increasing the size of the border. The quilt finished at ~ 50" x 70".


Love, love the fabrics I got to play with. The quilt top went together quickly.


For the quilting, I did a simple 3" grid which finishes quickly. 


I plan to donate the quilt to my guild's community giving project. Thanks Fat Quarter Shop for asking me to make this quilt and supplying the fabric!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Friday, April 18, 2025

Orange Overload - My Pantone Challenge Quilt




I've entered the Pantone challenge for the last two years but wasn't so certain that I would do so once I learned that the Pantone Color of the year is Mocha Mousse. (Read about this year's challenge.)

But once I organized my solids into three color families, I found I liked the browns I had - Paintbrush Studios Old Gold, Golden Brown and Toast - with yellows and oranges! So I decided to play with color that is nothing like combinations that I've used before. This quilt is also an experiment playing with the double wedding ring block (see this post) before I tackle one queen sized. As a result, I've scaled down my design for the queen sized quilt - more on that soon.

Thankfully there is an opportunity to link up just the top because I won't have time to get this quilted before the link-up closes. This was true for my prior two entries - they also went into the top only category. The quilt top is 35" x 35".

My 2023 entry for Viva Magenta was my Echo quilt, which hung in QuiltCon and was in QuiltCon magazine. My 2024 entry for Peach Fuzz was Peachy Kean was in Make Modern magazine!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Transforming a Shirt


My sister wanted to create two vests - although initially it was two shirts - from a NY Yankee shirt that belonged to her husband. While I have made quilt coats, I don't consider myself a garment sewer and sewing with jersey fabric is not something I felt comfortable taking on. Plus, there really wasn't enough fabric in one shirt to create two kid sized - size 2 and size 4 - shirts.


After much discussion, she decided two vests would work just fine. She purchased some jersey knit that matched the blue perfectly for the back and lining of the vests along with a vest pattern.


While I used the pattern to cut out the pieces, I made up the remainder of the assembly process! Everything was lined with interfacing and I made a full lining for the vests. The armholes and shoulder seams were left open so I turned the vest/lining inside out and then did some binding around the armholes (see top photo) and covered the shoulder seams.

My sister was thrilled with the finish and my nephews look quite adorable in them. All in all, the project was a fun kind of challenge but it took 8 hours to do, start to finish, which is about twice as much as I expected.

Have a wonderful day! Patty