Last month, I posted that all my double wedding rings blocks were done. (See that post).

Now I am happy to share that all my done blocks are all assembled together..... however, I decided to make more blocks.

The quilt top measures ~70" x 90".  The quilt top is actually laying sideways on the bed so you can tell that it isn't really hanging off the side edges.

I'll be adding 2 more rows to get it ~90" x 90". Originally, I was going to just put a strip of background fabric across the top and bottom. It looks fine in the photo and is fine if you want a quilt that is 108" long. But practically speaking, the way I use the quilt, 90-92" long would be perfect.

I am really happy with my sashing between the blocks. I think it makes the quilt more modern looking. It also avoided a lot of bulk at the seams and covers up the fact that ring dimensions can be slightly different than their neighbor.

My goal this week is to make the additional blocks - fingers crossed I have enough fabric - and then order what I need for backing fabric.

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Granny Square Update - My Beach Project

Last fall, I taught myself how to crochet. (Actually, I knew how to crochet as a teen but this was a long forgotten skill.) I bought a lots of 25g balls of cotton yarn and went on to make 169 granny squares.

We had our annual beach vacation in May. Typically, I bring along my sewing machine but this year, I decided to start the assembly process. It was a bit of a trial and error process for me but I am finally sort-of figured it out.

And I'm loving the way it looks. I've got 28 different colors to play with. Right now, I'm busy attaching the 7th row.

Having a handwork project at the beach turned out to be just perfect. I could sit on the deck and enjoy the view and still create.

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Small Projects - A Bag and A Name tag

I had the chance to spend a sew day with friends last week and I worked on two small projects.

The first was this Harry Potter themed zip bag for a sweet neighbor turning 8. Pattern is from SewHooked. The bag is 7" x 10".

Next up is a new name tag for guild meetings. I scored the letters at the Ruby Star booth in QuiltCon. They are from an upcoming fabric line. The nametag itself is ~ 4.5" x 5.5". My last nametag was from 2017 - here is that post. One of the main reasons why I have a blog is to be able to remind myself what I've made and when.

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Sarah Hibbert Workshop

Sunday I had a blast in a workshop with Sarah Hibbert. The workshop - Freestyle Patchwork - was all about play. In the morning, I worked on the piece Sarah and I are holding. the idea was to start sewing together squares and rectangles, choosing the pieces somewhat blindly, and see what develops. I want to make the piece a bit bigger and hope it will eventually live on a wall in my bedroom. Since I am working on a new quilt for that bed - see those blocks - I used scraps of blue.

In the afternoon we worked on a different piece where you started with a odd sized scrap - i.e. not a perfect square or rectangle - and then built the piece up from there. I used many of the same scraps as the first piece but ran out of time to make the piece larger.

Sarah is a wonderful teacher - I would highly recommend taking one of her workshops. She told a whole bunch of fun stories and shared lots of tips. She also brought some linen scraps and generously shared them with us. (There are some of her linen scraps in the first piece.)

Sarah will be back in Raleigh for QuiltCon and I look forward to seeing her again!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Shine Improv Blocks

I am a new member of the @unscriptedquiltsbee. 

This block for May was requested by Ellyn @ellynz. We were asked to make improv blocks that represent the work Shine using a specific color palette. Ellyn sent us Kona Lagoon to include in our blocks to help unify them.

My two larger blocks are roughly 10" x 10" and there is a 6"x 10" and 5" x 5".

You can see the March block  and the April block.

There are a total of eleven members of the bee. My month is June and I am so excited to send out my prompt.

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Double Wedding Ring Blocks are done!

I am very excited that all 63 of my double wedding ring blocks are done!

I started these blocks during a guild retreat with the expectation that I could finish them during the actual retreat. That didn't happen - no real surprise there! - but I methodically worked through them and they are now done.

I used these templates and overcut the blocks to allow for better accuracy after trimming. Fabric placement was tricky but the plan is to have different fabrics come together in the 4-patch.

My plan is to actually set these with sashing to remove all those bulky seams coming together. This will be a queen sized bed quilt when complete.

For now, I am putting the quilt aside to work on another project. The next step for these blocks is a really good pressing and trimming.

Before I started on these blocks, I practiced with my Pantone challenge entry - Orange Overload!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Guild Retreat 2025

My guild - Triangle MQG - tried something new last weekend - a 'sleep in your own bed retreat'. In the past, we rented a room at a hotel at the beach about a 2 hr drive away. This year, we rented a large space associated with a fabric store and held our retreat there. (That's me standing up on the bottom right.)

Everything went so well - even with a 90 minute power outage after a large storm blew through! We had pizza Friday night, ice cream Saturday afternoon and plenty of junk food all the rest of the time!

My goal for the weekend was to get 63 double wedding ring blocks pieced. Turns out, this was far too optimistic - isn't that always the way with retreat sewing? Instead of 63 complete blocks, I managed to sew 39 partial blocks - leaving the last seam which required some accuracy to line up seams for home.

It took awhile to get in the grove but one I started laying out the block pieces for a row ahead of time I was able to speed up the process. That said, I got too confident towards the end and started piecing the blocks without pinning. That just meant there were some misaligned blocks to fix when I got home!

In addition to the blocks, I finished the last bits of my tchotchke block requested by bee mate @feltlikesweets - read more.

 Besides the sewing, there was much laughter and new friendships formed. And, as I said, there was ice cream!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Tchotchkes

I am a new member of the @unscriptedquiltsbee. I was very excited to join - there are a total of 11 members. (My first bee block was for the Illusions prompt - you can see it here.)

April, my second bee block, was requested by Charles @feltlikesweets. He asked us to imagine the closet floor of a child in middle school cluttered with tchotchkes. He sent along fabric - reminiscent perhaps of orange shag carpet from when he was a kid? - along with a bag filled with fun items shown above.

We were welcome to make as few or as many as we wanted. We could add items from our own homes as well.

The panel is 14.5” x 28.5” and was a lot of fun to put together. I am particularly proud of the Barbie shoe and the chess piece. Probably the most difficult part for me was letting go on what the right scale was. 

Charles and I are both members of the Triangle MQG and I used time at our retreat last weekend to finish up the panel and hand deliver my block!

Such fun. I'm now ready for the May challenge!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

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

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

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

Block Granny Squares

I am new to crochet and, as I've shared before, am busy making a whole bunch of granny squares for a blanket. (Read about the project.) Needless to say that I've not mastered consistent tension so I'm dealing with a bunch of slightly different sizing and a tendency for the squares to roll up.

So I decided to block them!

There are boards you can buy specifically for blocking granny squares but I decided to start with some T pins and use the foam mats that I use for quilt blocking.

I used painters tape to block off squares. Squares are pinned down, spritzed with water and then left to dry overnight. It is working so well!  I am loving these beautiful stacks of squares all sized up!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Experiments with the Double Wedding Ring Block

Way back in 2018, I finished a hand pieced, hand quilted double-wedding ring quilt (see the quilt!) This is one of my all time favorites and hangs on the wall in my sewing room. The ring templates were from a class with Tara Faughnan. 

Now I want to make another, this time bed sized.

After experimenting with cardboard templates drawn in Eq8 and the resulting inaccurate blocks, I purchased these templates and have set about making some practice blocks using a a beautiful palette of oranges and yellows. (Contrast colors will be added!) This palette is an usual one for me and, as such, fits my guilds challenge for this year to make a quilt that takes you out of your color comfort zone!

Not sure how big my orange experiment will be because my ultimate goal is to make a new quilt for my queen sized bed. I purchased a bolt (i.e. 10 yards) of a solid blue with the objective of using some of these yummy fabrics for the rings and other random parts of the block.

Once my practice blocks are done, I will start the cutting and then create kits for myself in preparation for an upcoming guild retreat. Can't wait to play with these fabrics!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Low Volume Scrap Bag

When I was working on upgrading my denim jacket, I created a couple of panels that I ended up not using so I made a bag! I just love it! 

The size of this bag is just perfect. I started with 2 quilted pieces 7.5" tall and 10.5" wide with 1.5" corners cut out before I sewed.

It went together fast and easy and although I have no immediate use for the bag, I am confident that it will get used often. It is so fun!

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Blocks and Backs

I enjoy making bright simple pattern quilts to donate to my guilds community giving project. I just got a fun layer cake from Fat Quarter Shop - Ruby Star Salutations! Such fun fabric to work with. The quilt is part of a new FQS pattern release so I look forward to sharing the final quilt in April.

Sorting through my stash and unfinished quilt tops, I came across one I made last year also intended for a donation for our community giving project. 

In addition, I found some large scraps and some smaller quilt tops - perfect for assembling them into a quilt backing! Since these quilts are going to young kids and teens, I like the backing to be colorful.

Have a wonderful day! Patty

Granny Square Update

Last fall, I taught myself to crochet - thanks youtube! - and I started making little granny squares using the beautiful 32 color pack of Cotton Chirps from Purl Soho (pictured below). My goal is a blanket - for me! - and I am making great progress on my granny squares. 

Each 25 gram ball makes 5- 6 small granny squares. There were 31 usable colors (the 32nd color is what I am using to outline each square.

Although my original plan was to join them together without the white, I decided it really balances everything out.

I've got squares in 3 different stages. 52 of them are all ready to be joined, all yarn tails buried except for the final one. 58 are awaiting the (tedious) yarn tail burying process. 44 are waiting for their white border.

Then, there are a bunch still to be made from these skeins.

Each square is 4" x 4". Depending how many I add of the gray/black ones, I could end up with a 13 x 13 layout or a 52" square blanket. Giving this was a learning project, some of the my squares are not quite the same size so I may need to block before assembly.

Making these little squares bring me such joy. I am already planning what I will work on next once I get this blanket assembled.

Have a wonderful day! Patty

My Bee Block - Illusions

I've recently joined my very first bee - the unscripted quilts bee @unscriptedquiltsbee. There are a total of 11 members and what a thrill it was to receive an invite to join.

March was the first month I participated and the prompt was to make an optical illusions block - any size, any fabric colors.

I drafted the FPP pattern with a combination of EQ8 and drawing lines by hand. The pattern was the hard part - once completed, this was a fun and easy sew. 

The block is on its way to E.A. @eacox24.

Have a wonderful day! Patty

The Trail Tote - My Latest Bag!

I really enjoy making bags using patterns from Noodle-head and jumped on making a Trail Tote as soon as the bag was available. The bag was made with faux-leather purchased at QuiltCon from Sallie Tomato (similar to this.)

I made the small size which is just perfect for holding my wallet, sunglass case and my phone. For the lining, I used some pretty fabric my son picked up for me in Japan. I also added a zipped pocket on the inside using netting. 

The idea was to have a pocket to corral small items that might otherwise fall out since the bag has only a magnetic closure. For the pocket on the outside, I carefully cut a rectangle in the outer fabric and lined up the zipper pocket. Since pins would leave marks, I used some painters tape to hold things in place.

I've used it many times so far and it is just perfect!

This is actually the third bag I've made this year - I used the Explorer Tote at QuiltCon and it was perfect for carrying snacks and purchases. I also made the Compass Bag.

Have a wonderful day! Patty

QuiltCon 2025 - The Best Bits

It has been fun to capture my experiences at QuiltCon Phoenix in a series of blog posts. If you missed them, read about My Quilts, The Workshop, and All the Quilts. Today's post is my final post - all the best bits! 

I also have a post of QuiltCon memories from year's past. Phoenix was my fifth in-person show - the others were Savanah, Nashville, Austin, Atlanta, and Raleigh.

Friends - new and old - are what I look forward to each year. For the 3rd year in a row, I shared an AirBnB with my buddies Frances, Kristen, and Jenn. It  is a real treat to hang out at and after the show with them.

I exchanged hugs with people chat with all year on-line and look forward to seeing in person - Yvonne @quiltingjetgirl being one of my favorites! I also got to meet Veruschka @prideandjoyquilting whose quilt Dignity won Best In Show. She is one of the warmest people I've ever met and greeted me genuinely and said she enjoyed my work. Nancy, one of my sisters, joined me Thursday morning and we enjoyed clowning around together in photos. Finally, I recently joined the  @quiltsunscriptedbee and enjoyed meeting everyone at dinner. 

Left top: Members of quiltsunscripted bee - Elizabeth, Sarah, Sarah, Chris, Emily, me, and Charles
Left bottom: Nancy and me
Right top to bottom, Yvonne, Veruschka, and Ellyn (another quiltsunscripted bee member)

QuiltCon fashion is a real thing. There were so many amazing outfits, quilt coats, jackets and bags on display. (I made myself a new bag and wore a jean jacket that I have been busy dressing up!) One of the most unique outfits was worn by Lorelai @pigs.in.a.blanket.quilting and her mom. Lorelai is 15 and won first prize in the youth category with her quilt Magnetized. The MQG captured lots of fashion on their IG - check it out.

Volunteering is something I look forward to every year and this time did not disappoint. I was able to only work one shirt - Wednesday during registration. At first, I was a greater along with Heather @fire4hairlady. Then I got 'promoted' to photographer and assisted with the selfie station!

Being fortunate enough to have two quilts in the show, I enjoyed a bit of quilt stalking.... essentially standing back from the quilt and watch people's reaction. I did not do this as much as I've done in prior shows but it was still fun!

And then there is always the shopping. I was not searching for anything particular but have fallen in love with the Ruby Star bear so sought out the fabric in different colorways. I also got some vegan leather (not pictured) which I've already made into a bag that I will share soon.

A series of four blog posts doesn't really adequately cover the show but the posts at least give me an opportunity to capture some highlights. I do want to thank the amazing MQG staff for their work in pulling off this show every year. They are the best!

QuiltCon will be in Raleigh (!!!!) in 2026 and then return to Atlanta in 2027.

You can read wrap-up posts from prior years - Raleigh 2024, Atlanta 2023, QuiltCon Together 2021, Austin 2020, Nashville 2019, and Savanah 2017.

Have a wonderful day! Patty