The Updated Zebra

 

I love taking an idea and pushing it around, seeing where I can go with it. 

When I made my son a chessboard out of fabric way back in 2000 (can it really be 24 years ago?) I never expected to make a quilt out of the leftovers, or that I'd be selling a tutorial about making them 20 years later.

At any rate, I have made nine of the so-called "Zebra" quilts, and since I published the tutorial in 2020 I have made three more quilts, which have taught me things I didn't know when I wrote the tutorial.

I have been working on updating the Zebra tute with those things, and have added ten pages of information. I've figured out how to fix a triangle if you have cut the wrong one (there are four different triangles and they aren't easily interchangeable); a more efficient way of cutting them out, and I've included instructions on how to make the Fourth of July quilt.

The new Zebra tutorial is live!

You can get all my tutorials here, at my Etsy shop.

Happy Birthday Darling!

 Happy Birthday to my darling granddaughter,

Somebody is 8 years old today! And as. you can see she loves the PRIZM quilt, so now it lives in California.

The cat loves it too. He hasn't stopped cuddling with it since it came out of the box. (The soft frisbee is a gift from Mémère as well.)

yeah, those two are definitely connected....

PRIZM Beauty Shots

 

This is the PRIZM quilt. It's a Zebra quilt in the Ribbons version. I just love the way the bright colors sashay across the quilt.

Here's another shot.

And you thought this was easy!

This is a Zebra quilt. You can get the tutorial here, in my Etsy shop. 

PRIZM Finished

The PRIZM quilt is all finished. I really like this one. I think every quilter makes at least one rainbow quilt. I think this is my fourth, or fifth. 

Or sixth. 

Might be my seventh.

This is a Zebra quilt. If you want to make one, you can get my tutorial here.
 

Oh Christmas!

 

I have been working on the bits and pieces for a new Holiday quilt. I plan to make it narrow and long. I like the boxes. The asterisks are okay. The birds are too big and the trees are too small. The star is miserable. So I tried making another one.

But this wasn't right either. I thought I could rip the pieces out and replace them

Obviously I wasn't thinking right. This one is just as bad.

So I will go back to the drawing board, as it were.

So I switched gears and sat down to sew the binding on the PRIZM quilt.

Quilts, Quilted!

Over the weekend I picked up three quilts from my longer quilter, Janet-Lee. Here is Greensleeves, a Zebra quilt.

and this is Prizm, another Zebra quilt. Check out the quilting on this one. I don't usually go in for fancy detailed quilting, but I am coming around. On a pretty plain quilt like this one, it's fun to have some detailed quilting in it. The quilting thread is lime green, which is pretty cool too.

The third quilt was Not Paper Pieced, which I made W-A-Y back in 2019. In the end we decided not to custom quilt it, but to give it a subtle all over design that would not detract from the message in the quilt itself.

I'm happy with all three of them and I have a lot of binding in my future.

You can get the tutorial for the Zebra quilts and a tutorial for my improvisationally pieced letters here, at my Etsy shop.

 

PRIZM Flimsy Complete

 

If you're paying attention (that's a theoretical you, not you, you) a border fabric is obvious.

But that often means clearing the clutter that was in your head first. Sigh.

Yup, this Tula Pink fabric was really the only choice for a border around the PRIZM quilt. The border could not have been any of the brights in this quilt or they would have "stuck" to the border sunk back and let the big triangular sail shapes take over. Not. Going. To. Happen.

So here it is, in all it's brilliant colorful glory.

This is a Zebra Quilt. You can get the tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

Whizzing Along

 

I'm sewing the Prism quilt together. Here the top row is complete.

I really like this quilt. I think I have finally figured out how to make this version consistently successful. I also think this is very "user friendly." 

And I found the perfect backing!

I think the cats are fun! I love their triangular markings. AND it was on sale!