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.

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.
 

Fourth of July Quilt Finished!

 

It's finished! The Fourth of July quilt is all bound and ready for its beauty shots. It's been raining all day and the weather tomorrow isn't promising, but Sunday looks good for me to take it out for it's beauty shots.

The back of this quilt is equally stunning. 

I think it looks great with this dark red binding.

Red White & Blue

 

This is what I am working on at the moment - yet another "Zebra" quilt, but not really. This version is not represented in the Zebra tutorial. I thought it would be fun to make a Red, White & Blue quilt, as I have never made one of those before.

Tutti Frutti in the Sun

 It's hard to see the true colors of something in a photograph, especially a quilt that's five feet wide and six feet tall from a distance of ten feet away in an enclosed space. If  you take a picture of the same quilt outside in the sun, a lot of the colors are a bit washed out. If you take a picture of the same quilt on a sunny day with the quilt in the shade, the colors will have a bluish cast because of the reflection of the blue of the sky. If you take a picture of a quilt when it is overcast, the colors are much closer to reality.

LAST WEEK, the Firebird quilt was photographed on an overcast day.  

As you can see it was sunny the day I took these pictures of Tutti Frutti. But I needed to show that this is not a dark quilt, that it is bright and fun and cheery.

I live in New England, in the northeastern US. It's very green. It's something that's easy to take for granted. So when I have an opportunity to take a picture of one of my quilts in very green New England, I do it. So yeah, if you visit me, when you are in the driveway and look up, you see this.

Tutti Frutti is a Zebra quilt. If you are interested in making a Zebra quilt, you can get the tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

Binding Tutti Frutti

 

The binding of the Tutti Frutti quilt is the same fabrics as the inner border, which is to say I used the same low-key creamish fabrics. For the inner border I cut the strips WOF and then cut those in half, sewed them all together end to end more or less randomly, then attached them to the quilt. The inner border is about 1-1/4" wide. I decided I liked that effect and decided to do the same thing for the binding.

 

I didn't have all the fabrics I used in the inner border, so I did the best I could, but I didn't add any new fabrics. If it is in the quilt, it is in the binding. 

Regular readers know I sew my binding to the back of my quilt and fold it over to the front and do my hand-stitching on the front. You can get all my binding hints in my Binding tutorial on my Etsy shop.

 

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So now as I "watch" TV, I sew the binding down.

 

 

Firebird is Finished

 

I've spent the last few evenings sewing the binding on the Firebird quilt.

 

 I love the paisley binding.

I love the quilting.

 

I love the fabrics.

 

This is a Zebra quilt. If you would like to make a Zebra quilt, you can get the tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away.

 Although it looks really nice on the back of my couch, this quilt will not be living here.

 

Yellow Ribbons Flimsy Complete

 The Yellow Ribbons flimsy is complete. The picture is a little bit dark, and the quilt is yellower than this. The flimsy is about 55-1/2" by 72"inches. The Zebra quilts tend to need a border, so that is my next trick.

If you would like to make a Zebra quilt, get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

It's A Start

 Anybody who tells you that sitting down to sew 112 strips together into 8 strip panels is easy has rocks in their head.

It's a lot of hard work. But when all my strip sets were sewn together I could cut them into big triangle and place them on the design wall. That's the fun part.

I was pretty happy with the fabrics too. This is a Zebra quilt variation. If you are interested in making your own Zebra Quilt, you can get the tutorial here, in my Etsy shop.

 

As usual I went around in circles for a bit. (Dammit I hate the new blogger. I want my pictures centered and the text left justified. I think text that is centered looks amateurish and cutesy. I hate loathe and despise "cute.")

 

 

 

After a whole day's work I had this and I was not thrilled. Oh well, such is life. Fortunately stuff like this, while it may piss me off, doesn't stress me out.

 

 

Sewing Strips

Last week was, shall we say, a very interesting week on this blog. I want to thank all my regular readers for their support, and new ones for visiting.

I have been working on a yellow-ish quilt and have a lot to tell about it, but for today, this photo of pairs of strips sewn together is going to have to do. I am making another Zebra quilt.