Backing for Nightingale Quilt

 

This is the Philip Jacobs print I have chosen for the back of the Nightingale Quilt.

And this is the binding I have prepared for the quilt when it comes back from being quilted.

This is another shot of the Nightingale quilt, this time in full sun. I love bright colors, and these brights on black just pop and sing! It creates such a beautiful design. You see the colors first, then you realize this is patchwork. 

It is almost embarrassingly easy to make, and it works with any fabrics with a black background. I have a couple of testers making them now and I am eager to see how they turn out. Each one will be unique, deepening on your own style, which I think makes the best quilts. 

What has been so exciting for me is that everyone I have shown this quilt to just freaks out. "OMIGOD that's GORGEOUS" has been the consistent response, which is very encouraging.

You can get the tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download, so you can get started right away.

Still going

 

I am quilting this small table runner to show as a sample in the new tutorial. 

I have received comments from some of the people I have designated as my "editors." It is so interesting. Each person notices something different. All the comments I have received and been very good. Some are corrections about my grammar, some are suggestions about better photographs and sometimes I get suggestions to reorder my logic. In each case the suggestions or comments strengthened my overall concept. It's a lot of work, and a lot of thinking. It's challenging, but I know it's worth it.

Way, WAY back in 2008 I made my son a pair of shorts, and I included a band of Seminole patchwork on them. I think they look pretty cool and classic!

Another Biast From the Past!

 

WAY BACK in 1988 or 1989, I made my son a pair of shorts and I incorporated a band of seminole patchwork, as you can see in the photo I took back then. I think my son was 8, and I'm kinda surprised he actually WORE the shorts, and not just to humor me. I have pictures of him at school wearing them.

Anyway, I have long thought Seminole patchwork was sixteen kinds of awesome, and I still do. I think the shorts were pretty stylish then, and I think any cool kid would be happy with them now. It was super easy to insert a bit of seminole patchwork into a pair of shorts.

It's always nice to see the recipient of a quilt beam with pride when they are wrapped in a gifted quilt, but quilts are a bit hard to show off in public. One of the nice things about Seminole patchwork is how easy it is to incorporate into things we make for our loved ones.

The new Seminole Patchwork tutorial is in the final draft phase. Now I get to send it to my intrepid editors, which is when the real work begins.

Stay tuned!

Seminole sampler

 

I'm working on the Seminole bands for the new tutorial. I'll sew these into a small wall hanging. I'm pretty sure I've got all my sewing done.

A New Tutorial in Progress

I'm working on a new tutorial.

It's based on the ideas from Seminole patchwork, which I have always loved.

While these elements certainly can be used in quilts of any size, they can easily be adapted as decorative elements on dresses, skirts, tote bags, pockets, pillows, potholders, table runners and placemats, pants and blouses. The photo above is a small tote bag I used to carry my tools around when I worked in IT. The patchwork above was on the pocket. I figured if I was going to carry a toolbag around all the time it was going to be pretty*.

The rows of on point squares in my sampler quilt, Letters From Home, were made using this technique.

Stay tuned!

*True story: somebody asked me once why I would bother to spend so much time MAKING a small tote bag when I could easily BUY one for much less time and effort. "WHY would I want to spend money on something UGLY," I asked her, "when I can MAKE something BEAUTIFUL?"

99.999%

The new Slashed Squares tutorial is 99.999% finished. I have to write up a description for Etsy and then I will publish it.

I'm very excited, and a little bit exhausted. It only took, I think 12 versions, before I got it to where I wanted it.

I want to give a shout out to my proofreaders and reviewers for helping get this thing into shape:
Julie Sefton, Allison Tom, Megan Fisher and Mary Lorimor.

One is an experienced quilter, one is a writer and quilter, one is a retired Anthropology professor and one a quilter and teacher. Each of them is a great friend. The ladies live in three countries - the US, Australia and Canada.

They pushed me around, challenged my ideas and my process, helped me with the flow and sequencing, corrected my grammar and punctuation, gently and sometimes not so gently, but the end result is something I think is really good.

It's an improvement over what I had before: the new tutorial includes directions for making the block in three sizes, shows several color photographs of my finished quilts, has specific cutting instructions, dimensions for the quilt in various sizes and includes the time saving hints and tricks I've learned over the years.

Coming soon.  Don't worry. I'll let you know when it's live!

Almost There, But Not Quite

My newest tutorial, Lynne's Slashed Squares is almost ready. It's going through the final edits, and then it will be available for sale in my Etsy shop as an instant download.

It has a fabric cutting layout, instructions for the block in three sizes and several time-saving tricks I've learned over the years as well as photos of my slashed squares quilts. The tutorial has everything you need to know to make one of these in one place, so you don't have to go hunting around.

As usual, it was harder to write than I expected, and it has gone through the hands of several quilters and teachers who've really pushed me to make it better, clearer and easy to understand.

I'm pretty excited about it. Coming soon. Real soon.

And then I can get back into the studio and do some real sewing!

Four by Four

Sixteen fabrics, 8 dark and 8 light, with 8 in each block, I wasn't sure the blocks would be varied enough to satisfy me, but I can live with these. These aren't sewn together yet, but with a limited number of options, I wanted to get them up on the wall so i could spot any duplicates and make sure each block had 8 different fabrics in each.

These look OK, so I will start sewing them together.

To the Selvage Fairy, who wondered if the leafy green fabric was a busy or a calm one, my answer is I am not sure. Some fabrics are shape-shifters. They can look busy when put next to some fabrics, and look calm when next to others.

All Matched Up!

Here are my light blocks matched up with the dark centers. I tried to pair a busy light print with a calmer dark print, and a calm light print with a busy dark one.

I did the same thing with the dark blocks, but I did not repeat any light/dark pair from the light blocks. I wanted them to be different.

Now I have to cut them apart. 

It's going to be interesting. There are 16 blocks in this quilt, and I have 16 fabrics. There are 8 prints in each block, and I don't like the same fabric in adjacent blocks to "touch" each other except diagonally.

Light/Dark Slashed Squares

As I am working on the new Slashed Squares tutorial, I realized I needed better photographs.  The only real way to do that was to make another quilt, so I decided to make a 4 x 4 block quilt. 

I needed 16 fabrics.

I chose 8 darks, 4 kinda busy and 4 kinda subdued,

and 8 lights, 4 busy and 4 "calm" prints.

I cut out all the pieces and matched them up. (See top photo).  I tried to pair up a busy dark with a calm light, and a busy light with a calm dark.  You'll have to wait until tomorrow to see the resulting square-inside-a-square blocks.

The new tutorial will include (as I have said before) a cutting layout, fabric requirements, size variations and lots of hints that I have learned over the years. I'm pretty excited about it, and I think the sample quilt will also be nice to have too! 



PS: Happy Anniversary to two of my most favorite couples in the whole wide world.  

Larry (the woodworker) on the left, and Julie on the right.

First, to my best pal Julie and her husband Larry who are celebrating 43 years of wedded bliss today.

Secondly, to my son Mr Karate and his wife Rubylocks, who are celebrating four years today.  Congratulations to you both!  I love you all.

Working on the New Tutorial

I may have mentioned that I am writing a more detailed and comprehensive Slashed Squares tutorial. Some of my (older) photos don't really work, so I am going to have to make a small SS quilt as a sample. Here are some of the fabrics I have chosen.

Tutorial In Progress

 

I am writing a tutorial for the Slashed Squares quilts, like Terrazzo, above. While basic instructions for making this quilt are freely available as a link from this blog, I wanted something quilters could have available if a computer wasn't nearby. The tutorial will also offer cutting diagrams and size variations.

I've got the first draft almost finished, and it has gone out to the ladies who will proofread it and tell me where it needs fixing.

After that I will write up a tutorial for the Diamonds Quilts. My tutorials for the Free Pieced Birds, Scrap Slabs Quilts and Making Your Fabrics Work For You are for sale at my Etsy shop, here.

Backing for Fruit Loops

I've been staring at this on the floor of my sewing studio for three weeks:

It's the backing fabrics I chose for the Fruit Loops quilt. It's been lying there for that long partly because I wasn't quite sure what to do with it, and partly because I've been busy.

Last night I got home from work and after dinner I decided enough was enough. I cut the pieces crosswise into 18" lengths, then paired them up, and sewed them together. Then I rearranged them and sewed those together.

Voila! The backing of Fruit Loops is compete.

Now it's time to send them off to be quilted.

And this is also a reminder that the Scrap Slab Triangle Quilts tutorial is live and for sale in my Etsy shop here.

Why Color Might Not Be a Tutorial

In the next few days I will write pages about the gnarly little topics that caused so much angst earlier this week. I need to think about what I want to say, and may need to make some samples to say it. If there is any topic you would particularly like me to discuss, please let me know in the comments. I can't promise anything.

Anything, except one topic, apparently.

Way back in 2010, I bought these fabrics at a visit to Quilted Threads. I wrote about it on the blog at the time. One reader wrote to me. "I think the fabrics you selected are beautiful, and I can understand why you say they go together, except for one. I don't understand why you picked that raspberry color. If I cover it with my finger, the selection looks lost without it, but I would never have chosen it. Why did you do that?" (What was really weird about that comment was that I was surprised she did not say the BLUE was the oddball.)

I talked to my Mom about it. Remember she's an artist too, and has made her living as an artist and art teacher for over forty years. "That," my Mom said, "you can't teach."

Which was pretty demoralizing for me, a teacher, to hear.


One of the comments yesterday, reminded me of this story. Lynne from County Durham in the UK wrote: "I'm constantly in awe of your use of colour - I have real problems with mixing colours and have several times looked at what you are doing with a quilt, thought "Ugh that's going to look awful" and then been stunned at the final fantastic result!!!! Not sure that's something that can be put in a tutorial - but if it is I reckon you could do it !!!"

Believe me, Lynne from County Durham. I'd love to be able to teach it. I have given it a great deal of thought.

Here's another example:

Way back in 2005 I made this black quilt. It's all squares, and how I did it can be found if you look in the pages tab for "My Scrap Process." I had been collecting fabrics with black backgrounds because I thought they were interesting. I'd buy half yard cuts. You can read more about the quilt here.

Many were novelties, but not all. Some were Japanese, some were florals, some were full of fun colors (colored beetles, chopsticks, circles and dots or stripes. I collected them without much thought that I would ever use them together, and then, when I decided to make a quilt out of them, I bought more.

What I wanted was to have a quilt that was a mass of color. I wanted the viewer to see color first, dancing across the surface of the quilt. THEN I wanted the viewer to realize there were dozens of different prints. THEN I wanted the viewer to realize the quilt was patchwork. (And then I wanted their mouths to fall open in astonishment. Yeah, I'm a bad woman. I know.)

As I looked over my selection, I knew I needed some blacks that didn't have as much color or pattern as the others. If you look across the quilt, you will see the black with small white circles, the black with small white boxes, the black with white squiggles and the black with white dragonflies. I needed to break up all that color with the less busy black with small white prints, but I don't know how I knew it.

About a year or so later, I showed the quilt to a professional art quilter, and said offhandedly, "There's nothing special about this, it's just made from fabrics with black backgrounds."

"OH NO," she said, "Don't say that. This is a very sophisticated concept, and not everybody could pull this off and get it to look as beautiful as this does."

The point is not that I made a pretty black quilt, my point is that I picked the fabrics and colors and prints WITHOUT GIVING IT ANY THOUGHT AT ALL. Or at least any conscious thought. I was at a fabric store once and the saleslady said, "Can you help me? I need to find something to go with this, and none of us can come up with anything good." She handed me a piece of salmon colored fabric.

"Oh sure," I said, "gimme a few minutes. How many fabrics do you want?" She told me to pick four or five. So I wandered down the aisles, pulling bolts of fabric. It was years ago, so I have no idea what I pulled, but I'm pretty sure I picked some blue green, some blue, some soft greens, and maybe a rich dark blue. I brought the stack back to the counter. She looked up, surprised. "Omigod, those are gorgeous. I would never have come up with those. How did you do that? It didn't even take you two minutes." I shrugged. I didn't know where it came from.

I still don't. To me, it's as natural as breathing.


THAT, I can't teach you. THAT, you have or you don't.

What I CAN teach you is to start with something, a color or a fabric you want to use as inspiration, and to go from there, to look at what you HAVE and to choose colors that RELATE to it (think of the selvage dots, those will always coordinate). I can teach you to think about making a range of lights and darks, a variety of scale of prints. But look at this bird! He breaks all the rules!

I can tell you to think about where the color sits on the color wheel and to venture to either side of your chosen color for colors that will work. I can tell you about warm and cool colors. Yes, there are warm blues and cold ones. Cold yellows and warm ones. You may or may not want to vary the temperature of your colors in your selection, but you should consider that option.

I can tell you to look to nature for inspiration, but also to be aware of the proportion of the zingers. Yellow green and purple and dark green are one of my favorite garden combinations, but in a quilt, using all those in equal amounts can spell disaster. It isn't just the colors that contribute to a successful combination, it's the [visual] amount of each.  Some colors are simply bigger than others.

I can teach you how to look across the color wheel for the complement, the kicker, the diva, the one color that will shake the whole thing up and make it sing.


I can teach you to look and I can teach you to think, I can teach you how to notice and pay attention. I can encourage you to break all the rules from time to time, and see where it gets you. (Look back at the bird, above.)

The rest is up to you.


And I think I just found my way.

Again, folks, have I told you how much I love your questions?

I Love My Readers

Oh dear Readers, how do I love thee?

I love you LOTS, let me tell you! You never let me down. I wanted your answers and you were wonderful enough to take the time to share them. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I've got a lot to say about them and it may be a bit disjointed, so bear with me.

I think the best answer is to set up a page on this blog and devote it to things like "Straight of the grain - why you need to pay attention," "Oh those damned seams in the back!" "Positive and Negative" "What the selvage is (and isn't) good for." Then I can simply refer readers of the tutorials to those pages, which frees me from having to repeat myself.

My niece, who, one-handed, learned to make free pieced letters faster than anybody I've ever met.

I don't like the idea of classifying my tutorials as "Beginner," or "Intermediate" or anything. I feel that if students think something is "too hard" they'll shy away from doing it. So I don't like to prejudice them. When anything you want to do or learn becomes important enough, you'll find a way to do it, come hell or high water. I WANT my students to take giant leaps into the unknown, and that takes a certain amount of courage, or just a lot of faith.

Seriously, it's not rocket science. It's not brain surgery. It's taking two pieces of fabric, slapping them together and then sewing a straight line to join them. This is not life threatening stuff. So you might waste twenty bucks of fabric. Big whoop. What is that, fancy coffee for a week?  You should go read this post, titled "If He Can Do It..."

You all know I believe in what I call "Quilting Without a Net." I would love to get rid of patterns and templates and anything paper pieced. I love to see students take risks, because I've seen how when they take them wonderful things happen. If you've been in my class you've heard me say, "Look, I'm pretty sure you all got yourselves dressed this morning without any help. You can make successful color choices on your own."

Anybody who's ever been in one of my classes knows I'm a "take-no-prisoners" kind of teacher. I will pester and cajole a student any way I can to get them to let loose and put those "little gray cells" to work. And I don't molly-coddle my students either. In my class, you WORK.

I often ask, at the beginning of a class, "Do you want me to prevent you from making a mistake, or do you want me to let you fail and learn on your own?" They always ask me to prevent them, and they claim it's due to the time restraint of a six hour class. They all know if they screw up on their own they will DEFINITELY learn that lesson, but hey, nobody wants to fail, at least in public!

The back of Snow Day, once I finally figured out how to press those seams.

 I didn't say so on the blog, but the slab triangles I made in the first two Scrap Slab Triangle quilts (Fruit Loops & Treasure Trove) had way too many pieces in them and pressing the rows of blocks was a royal pain in the butt, and frustrated the heck out of me. Treasure Trove was particularly painful, with those points matching. Even Snow Day gave me trouble, until I figured out I should press the seams between the blocks open, and we all know how much I like THAT. (Answer = Not.)

Some part of me thinks anybody who wants painstakingly detailed instructions just wants a crutch. My eyes just cross and glaze over, but then, I've read a LOT of badly written instructions.

OH! And whoever said to one commenter, "Are you a slow learner?," deserves to be shot, in my book. What a thoughtless thing to say to a student. Everybody learns differently and it's a [good] teacher's job to be able to explain it so every student can understand, even if the teacher has to explain the same thing twenty different ways. It's the TEACHER'S job to teach, dammit.

I've read that if a middle-aged woman had to learn to walk she'd never do it, that the fear is too paralyzing, and I think that sounds about right. What the hell is it that happens to us as we get older? Fear of failure? I see it all the time. Over-thinking? Damn, I see that all the time too. Sew the seam already! The faster you make your first ten thousand mistakes the faster you learn your first ten thousand things.


And ask any damn question you want, no matter what the price, no matter how silly or fearful you feel about it. When you ask questions, I learn something. I'll learn it, then I'll share it.

Ladies, and Gentlemen, Put that pattern down. Toss out that kit. Get rid of all those foundation papers. I'm here to tell you that you can make spectacular quilts, and I'm here to show you how.

Have I told you all lately how much I love you?

Now I Have Some Questions

 OK, everybody, LISTEN UP!   One of my esteemed proofreaders has asked me some very pointed questions about what quilters really know, and how much should I explain, and I need some answers from YOU!  Yup, I really do, because I don't feel the need to explain Every. Little. Thing. That most quilters know just from making quilts.

So answer these four questions for me, please. If I am wrong and you really DON'T KNOW, then I get to eat a whole lot of crow and I have to go back to the drawing board and completely, and fully explain the following concepts:

1. So if I show you this picture and I mention that all fabrics in this photo are the same color, do you believe me, or do you think I am crazy?

2. If I tell you to be careful about making slabs (that are going to be cut up later) with too many small pieces because you'll have to deal with a lot of seams, do you know why? Or do I have to explain it in painstaking detail?

3. How much to I have to explain the "straight of the grain?" Do you understand when I tell you that all these triangles, and the slab from which they have been cut are all made from strips and pieces that have been cut on the grain? (Actually the base of the triangles are all on the straight of the grain. The other two sides are on the bias.)

 

4. Do you know what "Negative Space" is? And do you understand that in THIS example, it's the black, because I've flipped the values here and the white diamonds are the "thing?"

Look, the tutorial is pretty good, and these questions are things that beginning quilters may not fully understand, but my tute isn't written for rank beginners. I'm assuming that the quilters who read my tutorial aren't hung up with perfectly 'matchy matchy' fabrics or colors; know what the straight of the grain is, and to handle triangles cut from fabric carefully so they don't get distorted. I don't think I need to explain (much) about why you should cut away the selvage before you make blocks and that you know that having lots of seams in a block means it's going to be a bitch to press so it lies flat. I assume you know the difference between Positive space and Negative space (Hint: Positive space is the thing. Negative space is the space around the thing.)

That's it.

And yeah, I guess you could say I've got my back up.

Thanks!

Scrab Slab Tute First Draft

Wow! I've finished the first draft of the new tutorial about the scrap slab quilts. It looks good to me but now it's out to my talented team of proofreaders for their review. They love to skewer me over every comma, phrase and photograph. They'll question my thought process and my sequencing. I'll change stuff because they've made good points, and I resist when I don't agree. Believe it or not, it's a lot of fun and a real learning experience for me.

When they're done with it I'll polish it up, publish it as a PDF file and put it up for sale on my Etsy shop. It'll be a downloadable file like the others. I'll let you know when it's ready.

Got Questions?

When I made the scrap slabs for my scrap triangle quilts, I didn't make enormous slabs and then cut them down. It didn't take me long to figure out that I only needed to make them taller than the triangle. But sometimes I'd make a slab it would be too small. 

So I cut some triangle shapes out of scrap fabric (the light fabric here) and moved them around on the slab to figure out the most efficient way to cut my triangles. In the example above, it looks like I can't get two full triangles without adding something to one edge.  But a little creative thinking proved me wrong.

I just flipped the triangles, and was able to cut two of them out of this slab as it was.

That's two great hints. What else do you want to know? You've all watched me make these quilts since last fall. I know what I think I want to say, but my readers always have really great questions I would never have thought to ask.

So here's your chance. What do you want to know? If you could ask me a question about how I make my quilts, what would it be? Leave it in the comments and I'll try to answer.

Thanks and have a nice weekend.

Working on the New Tute

As I promised, I am working on the tutorial for the Scrap Slab Triangle Quilts.

Since I decided to write this tutorial, I've been taking photos as I made the last two scrap slab quilts (Treasure Trove and Snow Day) and now I'm arranging the photos in sequence. When I think I've got the story told in pictures, I'll start adding words and then the fun really begins.

It will take a couple of weeks, so if I go quiet you'll know why.

I also have to do my taxes. (bleh)

Making Your Fabric Work For You

My new tutorial, "Making Your Fabric Work For You" is almost ready. It should be ready later tonight or tomorrow. In this tutorial I pinpoint the ways I use fabrics to do the "heavy lifting" in my quilts. Fabrics can enhance shapes and designs and reinforce ideas  in your quilts. Understanding the many ways fabrics can be used can help you get the most out of your fabric purchases and make your quilts more interesting and fun.

 Here's another sneak peek from the Tutorial

And oh.

I am on Instagram as quiltinglynne.  I haven't posted much, but that will change. Follow me there and keep up with what I am doing.