Green Deco

 

I decided to make a Green Deco quilt to match the Spring Birds quilt of the birds with the light green backgrounds. 

The quilt is from Amy Walsh & Janine Burke's book, "Colorful Quilts for Fabric Lovers," and has two very simple blocks. I needed a lot of strips, so I cut a collection of lightish light greens.

Here are some of my first blocks, thrown on the design wall in no particular order. I already know I am going to like this, but it will look a lot better once I have a lot more blocks.

For the last day of school, my granddaughter decided to wear her "very best favorite dress" - the dress I made for her using Seminole Patchwork. You can click the link for my tutorial on basic Seminole patchwork.

Needless to say her description of the dress made my day!

The Table Quilts & A Few Ideas

When I visited my pal Julie in 2013 I was surprised to see a quilt covering the table in her kitchen. I thought it was a good idea to protect the table and a nice way to show off a quilt. I inherited my grandmother's mahogany dining room table, and I have to keep it covered to protect the surface. A quilt would do that quite nicely.  Over the years I have made seven.

I use the rail fence quilt, Picnic Table in January.

I wanted a red and white quilt for February. This is Peppermint Swirl.

I made a black and white Slashed Squares quilt for the month of March. I call it Terrazzo.

I like using "Hidden Treasure," the quilt Julie made for me using my leftover bits for April.

The Tumblers quilt, Easter Basket, is the one I use for the month of May.

I like using the Blue Deco quilt for June, and the rest of the summer.

The Fall House Top quilt is the one I use for November and the big Thanksgiving Feast.

The Christmas Random Plank is the quilt for December.

I like having different quilts for each month, but if I do that, I am missing quilts for July, August, September and October.  So I had to think about that. Do I really want to have a quilt for each month of the year?  YES! What would I do for those? My birthday is in July, so I knew that would have to be something special.

The quilts I have tend to be seasonal colors, so according to that August should be hot colors or red orange and yellow. September is probably my favorite month of the year - the weather is perfect, and October is peak fall foliage season, so that means reds, yellows and oranges with some greens and blues. Well, ok, but August and October aren't anything alike, and I don't want them to have the same colors. Maybe August could be beach colors - sandy tans for the beach, light blues for the sky and blue greens for the ocean...

I like that idea for August, so that's a go.

When I started looking at fabric shops online the idea for July came to me like a thunderbolt.  

I like Pink, and although it isn't necessarily my favorite color, I wear a lot of it because I look good in it.

 So the quilt for July will be Pink. (Then I bought about 13 yards of 28 different pinks!)

I like the quilts to be different designs too. I want to make a scrap slab quilt for one of these, and when the Wavelength quilt showed signs of looking three-dimensional, I got out my little notebook and did this drawing. It looks like a honeycomb, and as soon as that word popped into my head I knew that would be the theme of this quilt and that it would be the quilt for October.

And for that quilt, I may very well use White on Black fabrics for the dark side triangles instead of just darker Black on Whites. I'll experiment, of course, and see. I've got plenty of time.

That leaves September, but I'm not going to worry about that at all. I only have color ideas for July and August, and that's never stopped me in the past, but I do have a very specific idea for October, so that's where I'll start.

The next quilt is: Honeycomb, in Golds, Oranges, and Yellows for October!

Pinks @ Seven

Since the "A" block of the Deco quilt is three six inch strips sewn together, I went through my stack of strips and cut many of them down to 7". Why 7" and not 6-1/2"? Heck, I'm a free-piecer. I don't like being limited. I would rather have something a bit bigger I can trim down to perfection rather than sew some blocks that might be a smidge too small. Call me persnickety if you want.

You won't hurt my feelings.

Pink Deco & Herself

The idea for the Blue (and now Pink) Deco quilts came from this book:

Colorful Quilts for Fabric Lovers

There are two blocks, and each finish out at six inches square. So, the first block is three strips 2-1/2" x 6-1/2" sewn together with a 1/4" seam.  The second block has a 2-1/2" square sewn to a 2-1/2" x 4-1/2" strip and this is sewn between two 2-1/2" x 6-1/2" strips. 

The two blocks are alternated throughout the quilt. The quilt is most effective with a lot of fabrics. Blue Deco has something like 50 - 80 different fabrics.The pink version will be a smaller quilt, obviously, although I haven't decided how big (or small) yet, and I haven't counted the different fabrics.

And this is the lady herself, napping comfortably in her (other) grandmother's arms.

Blue Deco for Summer

Now that the weather is warming up, it's time for the summer quilt to cover the dining room table. This is "Blue Deco."

You can go to this post: http://patcherymenagerie.blogspot.com/2015/03/blue-deco.html to see how it went together.

Blue Deco Done!

I added the binding to the Blue Deco quilt. As you can see I use pins, and I use a lot of them. I prefer them over the binding clips. I can simply sew over the pins, which makes it a lot easier than the clips.

So here's the "official" photo of Blue Deco. Looks good, but I've long been an admirer of Julie's "beauty shots" of her quilts, so I have been trying my hand at it.

This sculpture of a moose is in a recreation area of the community I live in.

He's on a little peninsula that's surrounded by a pond. I like the reflection of the quilt in the water, and the shape of this metal crane in the foreground.

At the other end of the pond is this little bridge.  You all know I'm not a fan of "cute" but this works.

I also took a picture of "Lightning in the Night Sky" from the other side. This angle had the added advantage of a purple Rhododendron in bloom in the background.

Of course, a fence shot is always good too.

Julie's rationale is that a quilt is more interesting to look at when it's slightly crumpled, so you can see the quilting. It's taken me six years to realize she's right.

Of course, living in an area where there are lots of interesting places to show off a quilt doesn't hurt, either.

Blue Deco, Quilted

The Blue Deco quilt is back from being quilted. I always let Chris decide how to quilt my quilts. She knows what to do. The Blue Deco will be used primarily as a tablecloth, so it needed to be durable, but it didn't need anything over the top. I love this regular swirl design.

As usual, Millie has to do her own QA check.

Blue Deco Iris

Here is the backing for the Blue Deco Quilt.

It's from the Free Spirit collection from Westminster Fabrics. Each iris is about six to eight inches across.

 I wanted something summery.

When I spoke to the Amoskeag Quilter's Guild in February, one of the members was looking at the back of one of my quilts.

 "You like busy backs," she said.

"No," I replied, "I think the backs are so big they need a fabric with a big scale to carry it off. I think a tiny all over print looks plain and boring." We all know how much I like plain and boring (NOT!)

All the backings of my quilts are chosen with the front in mind. They all coordinate.  Like Chris said, when she saw the backing I had prepared for my sampler quilt, Letters From Home, "I like that you didn't drop the ball on the back."

So I work hard not to "drop the ball" on the backing. I never, ever, pick something just because it's in my stash and I have a lot of it.



PS, Marei, the chairs may look red, but they are actually cherry wood, varnished but unpainted.

Blue Deco Flimsy!

W00t!  It's a flimsy, and damn, does it look good on the table!  It's 54" x 90".

Happy April Fool's Day!

The Blue Deco quilt has grown, and now I only have four more rows to sew to finish the top.

I counted, and there are at least eighty fabrics in the top. That's no April Fool joke.
 

I've already selected the backing and binding fabric. The backing will be a large Jane Sassaman print. It's due in the next couple of days. Can't wait to show you.

Blue Deco Grows

I made all the blue deco blocks, and arranged them on the floor.  They looked OK, so I started sewing them together into rows. As soon as I had a row sewn up, I sewed the rows together.

This is a detail of the first 8 rows.  The blocks finish out at 6" square, and the quilt will be 15 rows of 9 blocks each.

I have no clue how many different fabrics there are in the quilt, but there are a lot.

Deco Block Construction

When I first saw the rotary cutter in the early 1980's, I could see its potential right away and I knew I'd never make a quilt using templates ever again, and I never have. (I don't do paper-piecing either.)

So when I had to add a 2-1/2" square on the end of a 4-1/2" strip, there wasn't any way I was going to cut either 2-1/2" squares or 2-1/2" x 4-1/2" rectangles. Since the exact location of the square at the end of the strip didn't need to be precise, I came up with a different way of doing it. The other reason was I was using a LOT of different fabrics. If I had wanted a group of these exactly the same, I would have sewn a 2-1/2" strip to a 4-1/2" one and then cut them crosswise. (See one of my earliest blog posts for an explanation*.)

 Instead I sewed the ends of my blue strips to a long colored strip that would be the square...

 Cut them apart,

And them trimmed them down to size.

Then I made all the blocks. I confess I did need to cut a few more strips (about 10) to finish the blocks, but as I trimmed them I set them out on the floor to see what they might look like. This is by no means a final layout.

I should have the blocks done tomorrow (well, if I ignore the housework I can), and I may start sewing rows together.

This is kinda wild. I'm not used to making a quilt in less than two weeks.




*The black quilt in that post is still on my bed, btw.

Am I Blue?

I cut up a bunch of blueish strips for the Blue Deco quilt. Mostly they are light and cool blues and some lean towards light blue green (aka "teal").

Most of the strips are only 20" or so long, cut from fat quarters, but some are WOF. I cut one strip of each fabric for most of them, but I did cut a few pairs of stuff that struck my fancy.

I am pretty sure I have enough. (snicker)

Blue Deco

Take some of these

and mix them with some of these

and you get something like this

or, what I'm calling Blue Deco.

It'll be my "summer" table cover.  It's comprised of two blocks, each finishing out at 6" square. Block A has three 2" x 6" strips sewn together, block B has a 4" x 2" rectangle sewn to a 2" square, sandwiched between two 2" x 6" rectangles. (All dimensions are finished sizes.)  Couldn't be simpler and I'll be using the littlest pieces in my medium to light blue and blue-green stash along with little pops of color for the 2" squares.

I'll need about 117 blocks to make something to cover the table and hang down about 6" on all four sides. It should go pretty quick. I've made 20 blocks already, and I was just goofing around. I found the inspiration in this book, Colorful Quilts for Fabric Lovers.