Can you find the invisible dog? If it weren't for the black nose and the long pink tongue, I think he blends into the forest floor pretty well! This is Buddy, and he is 5. Best dog ever! We love to go hiking in the state forest that is near us. I'm waiting for fall when the weather isn't so dang hot, humid, and oppressive! 

I am a junkie for trying new techniques and styles with my quilting. I needed a practice piece to try this all over freehand swirling feathers design, so I chose the green 9 patch quilt top I finished a few weeks ago. The jist of the design is that you start somewhere not too close to an edge, quilt a question mark, feather around it....letting the feathers fill the area, then take off, quilt another question mark, feather back, etc....supposed to be called "A flurry of angels". This thing stumped me so much and I found myself quilting myself into dead ends! So..I am calling this one Broken Wings instead of "flurry of angels!" I do like how it turned out, thank heavens the piecing is busy enough not to show any speed bumps that I hit along the way! It's trimmed, I just need to put the binding on, probably start on that tonight.

Cose up and side-lit view of the "broken wings" quilting! My main problem was trying to not make the machine stitches too big when doing the bigger plumes....I tend to get smoother results wtih wide sweeping movements, and I was outrunning the stitch regulator on the machine :c/

Does anyone realise that this drives me crazy that my posts are in reverse order? Are you scrolling down the page and reading UP? The red calico in the borders is deteriorating, the brown for the cornerstones I think was a home dyed fabric. Whatever the dye was, it was caustic and the brown fabrics are shattering worse than any...but the greens, other reds, and blues are just as bright and vibrant as they were 100 years ago. I wish I knew who this maverick quilter was, and what others thought about her one blue maverick block in this very intricately pieced red and green quilt! Maybe someone will wonder about my funky quilts some day....who knows..... :c)

Green framing the star. Isn't this an interesting block? I have never seen another one like it. I've called it Little Mountain Star because I found the quilt in Little Mountain SC 

Why was only one block blue and red? Did she run out of green? Some of the blocks have green framing the star, some of them have red framing the star...but there was only the ONE corner block that had BLUE. And why was that one placed distinctly in that corner? :c) The world may never know!

The poor quilt was falling apart in places....but it was the traditional reds and greens and chrome yellows of the mid 1800's. My heart was pounding! My nose was also scrunched up because of the old old smell! I don't know where this was stored, but it was bad..*LOL* Unfolding the quilt brought a bigger smile to my face...amongst all the red and green blocks (and the piecing is quite good, and the quilting stitches small and precise) was ONE lone blue and red MAVERICK BLOCK! Oh quilter-long-gone...I don't know who you are, but I like you already! 

Thunder is rumbling outside, it's 7:30 pm on a thursday evening. I've had an 'airing of the quilt' here for the past couple days, and before I brought the quilt in, I thought I'd take some pics, and write about it's story.

Up the road from me about 20 miles is the tiny little town of Little Mountain, SC. I don't know why they even call it Little Mountain, because there IS no mountain there. However, there is a great antique mall and I love to wander the aisles and touch history. Not alot comes home with me, but one day I did happen up on this quilt....folded under a stack, all I saw was a bit of red and green calico and I had to dig further. 

No Picture, just words...

I've been cranking on customer quilts which has left me.....cranky! Big exam in school tomorrow, should be studying. I have been binding on a couple things, and I did get the baby quilt sent off to my sister Mary, who's baby is due any day now. Sometimes I have so many things going on at once I feel like I'm just bailing out a leaky boat...not making much progress as it keeps filling back up again!

I did take some time to do a search for other quilt blogs. I seem to have missed the blog-trend by about 2 years according to the inactivity on most of them. And.....there weren't many that caught my eye. There seems to be a TON of knitting blogs, and quite a few art quilt blogs....but they just aren't me. So who am I? As a quilter?

Oh here we go, let's get deep! I feel a great connection to antique quilts and the women's hands who created them in the past. I look at the fabrics, trace the hand stitches....and wonder what their lives were like 150 years or so ago. I bet they never thought their quilt would travel this far this long into my hands.

I love making traditional quilts, but they have to have a ZINGER to get me to stay with them. I think that is why I like scrap quilts so much, lots of options to keep me from getting bored. I quilted a quilt for a customer that was 110X110 and contained only 3 fabrics. It was beautiful, but it looked preprinted it was so organized, know what I mean? Repeat, repeat, repeat...It was so HARD to force myself to keep quilting on it. It's GORGEOUS....but lifeless.

I like things a bit wonky, a bit crazy, a bit primitive, a bit outside the lines, and a bit maverick! But still recognizable as a QUILT and that is why I don't fall into the art quilt category. So out here in the midlands between traditional quilt making and art quilts....can be a lonely place to be...not quite a square peg, and not quite a round hole.

Are you this kind of quilter..if so, let me know I'm not alone out here! If you have a blog, invite me to come over. I'd love to see what else is out there!

Bonnie

The laminate flooring is DONE! All that is left is the trim and then we can put the furniture back Yehaww! While the boys were working, I retreated to a distant corner and finished the quilting and binding on Whirlygig Logs. I like it! I think it will have an 'older' feel after I wash it, but for now it is DONE DONE DONE! 

The flooring project downstairs has expanded into the familyroom! It's looking great, but there is no place to sit, all the furniture is crammed into the other living room, and the construction noise is pretty horrific so I am retreating to my quilting room! A Few weeks earlier I posted a pic of 1/2 log cabin quilt top that I had finished. I decided it would be a good candidate for quilting with an all over feathered frenzy. I've quilted whirly-gig feathers in the dark pinwheel areas, and butterfly shaped feathers in the lights. So far so good..lots of texture! I still am not happy with this quilt and how all the logs don't line up with eachother. I need to let that go and be more liberated, but that said...when it comes to log cabins, I think I'll stick with the purposely wonky ones, or regular ones where the logs go all the way around the center. 1/2 log cabins may be easy to construct, but they are not easy when it comes putting them together right! 

Errata

~ Errata~
er⋅ra⋅ta
[i-rah-tuh, ] –noun
1. pl. of erratum.
2.a list of errors and their corrections inserted, usually on a separate page or slip of paper, in a book or other publication; corrigenda.
Origin: 1625–35

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Here you will find little corrections to the patterns found in my book patterns. Sometimes it happens and mistakes are made, even with several people going over every detail, working on the book and patterns together.

We hope you forgive us and understand that things happen! We admit we are not perfect and hope you will continue to enjoy our patterns - even though we overlooked a typo or misread the final draft before printing.

Please note that errors are corrected in subsequent printings and not all books contain these errors.

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Scraps & Shirttails
Shirttails Pattern, page77:

• The center square for the Union Square block should be cut 4-1/2", not 4". 4" is the finished size.

Perkiomen Daydreams Pattern, page 93:

• 400 blocks are required for the diagram as shown on page 96. It only says 100! (oops!) You can tell by the pic that the quilt is set 20X20, not 10X10.

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Adventures With Leaders & Enders
Scrap User's System, page 11:

• The page says to cut bricks 2.5" X 3.5" and it should read cut bricks 2" X 3.5". The second size 2.5" X 4.5" is correct.

Hopscotch, Butterscotch, Page 67:

• The strip set strips for the rectangle rail units should be cut at 14.5" instead of 13". The extra 1/2 inch is to give you enough to square up your strip set before cutting your rail units.
• The 74 short border rectangles should be cut 2"X 5". The pattern says 2" X 4.5". The 2" squares are added to these short rectangles to make them equal to the size of the large rectangle which is cut 2" X 6.5".

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Scraps & shirttails II
Goose In the Puddle, Page 12-13:

• The Panel 1 and Panel 2 diagrams on the "Directions At A Glance" on page 13 are correct! But the paragraphs describing them on page 12 should read as follows:
• A should read Dark/Light/Dark
• B Should read Light/Dark Light
• The 9 patches should look like those in Diagram C with the darks in the corners!

Oregon Or Bust, Page 74:

• The 6 cornerstone (small) triangles for the outside edge of the quilt should be cut as 3 1/2"squares instead of 2 3/4" squares. Cut the 6-3 1/2" squares twice on the diagonal with an X to yield 24 sashing triangles.

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String Fling
Pineapple Crazy, Page 50:

• Not sure how this happened, but the numbers on the pineapple foundation block are scrambled. I started in the center and worked out in rounds. Center/Corners/Sides/Corners/Sides, etc.

Talkin' Turkey Page 69:

• The flying geese method shown will make FOUR geese units, not 2, so less cutting is needed.
• Please note that the border diagram on page 73 and the photo on page 68 show the units colored the opposite of the geese units in the block, so you will need 216 units with RED large triangles and NEUTRAL corners to complete the border as shown.
• If you have already pieced your geese with larger neutral triangles and small red wing triangles, never fear --sew them end to end --and it will just be your reds that have the seams in them instead of the neutral ones. It will not alter the quilt greatly at all.

Liberated Shooflies! Digging through that drawer of snipped off triangles and small pieces, I made a handful of free-form shooflies and let them be as unsquare as unsquare could be, chopped off points and all! I wanted the shooflies to be 'child like' in construction. Sometimes I think things are so purposely wonky, that it looses it's effect...so these aren't WAY off, just enough to make you go, hmmmm.... :c) I framed them with 2 rows of 1.5" cut scrap strips log cabin style....when it came time to add the borders it just didn't have it! I've had so much fun quilting on the "best things" quilt with the letters in the border, and being inspired by my friend Tonya who is the word-queen of quilts....I decided to do words in the border. At first I was going to just do "shoo fly, shoo"...but it looked so unbalanced that I had to add the "flies in the buttermilk" to the upper corner.

Just a little peek at the quilting on the "best things" quilt. This is the first quilt where I have hand drawn feathers to fit an area, just freeform without templates, and then quilted what I drew. I like it! There is no way that this quilt shouts out "stencil!" at you. The diagonals in the border are only 1/2" apart. They are a bit wonky, but that's okay, the whole quilt is wonky. The two narrow borders, red and black, have zig zag lines, and the center has baptist fans. Everything is with purple thread and I'm loving how it is turning out. I need to spend more time on this project. I started quilting on the outside edge because of the way that the fans need to be quilted around and around. Thank heavens for machine basting! I can start at an edge and work either way without having to worry about puckers or fullness in the middle when I get there. I have two borders and their corresponding inner border areas and one row of the fans around two sides of the quilt center done so far! 

Just a little quilt (27"X32") that I've called Lil'bit Crazy. There may be a whole series of these the way I'm feeling about my life lately! I have a drawer for little snips and pieces that are too big to toss, too small to categorize (smaller than 2.5" square, short strips and odd pieces) and I like to pull from these pieces and make crazy free form blocks. The triangles are snippings from joining bindings and borders on the diagonal...not trimmed to any specific size, just sewn 'wonky'. I made this in an afternoon after an excruciatingly mind numbing day at school. Brainlessly piecing is very liberating! I squared my little blocks up using a 5" ruler, so they finish at 4.5" square, 4 rows across, 5 rows down, slap on some borders and voila! I want to hand quilt this, but it will have to wait, I'm still hand quilting on "the best things" quilt.

What makes an art quilt an art quilt?

There is something in the quilt world in the works that has bothered me for some time. It seems wherever I go, be it a guild meeting, a quilt show, a quilt shop, a quilt list.....There is a rift, a division. There are definate cliques. There is this attitude that says "While we enjoy and admire more traditional quilts, this list, group, webring is not intended for quilters that focus on traditional quilting."

Frankly, I feel some quilt racism going on! Traditional quilt discrimination. Is there such a thing?

Maybe I should come up with a list guideline that says "While we enjoy and admire artsy fartsy quilts, this list, group, webring is not intended for quilters that focus on your so called artsy fartsy quilting if you can even call them quilts."

The quilt world is a strange section of society. There are groups for gay quilters, lesbian quilters, man quilters, wiccan quilters but one group that was the MOST discriminatory was a group of "conservative christian" quilters who would not let me join their group because my denomination was not christian enough, nor conservative enough for their likings. I was spammed with bible verses to supposedly set me straight, get me to repent, give up wearing pants and find the true way of conservative christian quilters. Good grief!

You know, I love quilting down to it's roots. Down to when people would share patterns, have quilting bees with potluck food, share fabric, life's stories, joys and sorrows...when things were not so divided. When quilts were made to cover people and beds, no matter how traditional or maverick they were (Just look at Ghee's Bend quilts and some of the other african american influences in quilts and tell me if they are not ART!) and copyrights were not to be feared nor claimed.

When did quilters start having to fit in to this category or that one? And what about those of us who are caught between more than one definition by the quilts that inspire us? What is the quilt world coming to anyway?

Bonnie

Sometimes ideas for big quilts end up as small ones when you lose the energy to keep going on them! A friend sent me a pic of a 9 patch quilt made in the 1870's and it had this poison green background and lots of madder browns in it. I loved it! I really wanted to make a bed sized quilt, but these 9 patches are only 3" and I got either bored with them, or intrigued by something else. They sat in a box for a year....I pulled them out yesterday after coming across that 1870's pic again and decided to just make them into whatever I could make them into and call it done. I think the small inner black border really frames it and the outter madder colored border warms the whole thing and tones down that green! 

Close up of border fabrics for house quilt. I think I'll use more of the blackcheck for the binding....And for what it's worth, I've never put black, blue and yellow together before, but I kinda like it! :c) 

Borders are on! This is what I decided to do. I liked the blocks laid without sashings, but I didn't leave enough floating space from squaring up the blocks to put them next to eachother. Next time I will twist and turn them with deeper triangles so that when I square them up there will be more than 1/4" from the edge of the center block. I found the black-on-black checked sashing fabric at Joann's yesterday and it was 30% off and worked perfect. The blue cornerstones came from my stash, as did the yellow inner border. The outter border is a black/blue check with stars on it..daisy kingdom! I thought it was pretty horrid when I bought it, but walmart was closing it out at $1.00 a yard. I was using it on the back of neonatal intensive care quilts...They wanted dark backs to make the incubators darker when they covered them with the baby quilts. Long story short...I never thought this fabric would be perfect to show on the FRONT of anything! *LOL* Who knows when this will get quilted, but I'm thinking of what kind of quilting to do on it...

Fourth Of July!

Let your patriotism shine with this scrappy red, white, and blue lap quilt. The use of simple 4-patch blocks and those with stitch-and-trim corners make it an easy quilt, but one that will dazzle the eye and warm the heart. Get ready to snuggle under the fireworks!

Quilt Size: 60” x 72”

((Click HERE for printer friendly version!))

The large lap quilt shown here is made using 80 blocks set 8 blocks across by 10 blocks down.

Two bold color families, medium to dark reds and blues, and a common white or light fabric will make this a spectacular quilt. Because it uses scrappy fabrics, it’s the perfect project for a collection of red and blue fat quarters.

BLOCK A (make 40)
Make four-patch blocks using (2) different red and (2) different blue 3 ½”
squares. For easy matching, press seams in alternating directions.
Completed 4-patch blocks should each measure 6 ½” square.

Block B Block B & Block C

BLOCK B (make 38, 1 red & 1 blue triangle) and BLOCK C (make 2, both triangles are red)
You will use the stitch-and-trim technique to make triangle in two corners of the B and C blocks.

On the back of the 3 ½” squares, draw a diagonal pencil line from one corner to the other. This will be your stitching line.

With right sides together, place a red 3 ½” square in the corner of the large 6 ½” square, lining up the edges and outside corner. Sew on the pencil line from corner to corner as illustrated. Trim off the corner, leaving a ¼” seam allowance. Press toward the triangle.

Repeat in the opposite corner using a blue 3 ½” square. Trim and press toward triangle. Blocks should each measure 6 ½” square. For Block C, use 3 ½” red fabric squares in both corners.

Assembling the Quilt :
Finish your quilt by arranging the A, B, and C blocks 8 blocks across by 10 blocks down (arranging blocks as illustrated at the top of this page—watch position of red and blue fabrics—the two C blocks are positioned in the center as shown here).

Borders and Finishing:

Border #1 is made by cutting (6) 2 ½” x width of fabric strips
Border #2 is made by cutting (6) 4 ½” x width of fabric strips

Click here for more border attaching hints!

Quilt as desired and bind using (8) 2 ½” x width of fabric strips to make French-fold binding.

Click here for a tutorial on applying binding!

Have spent a good part of the day putting the 'twist and turn' sashes around the house blocks. Oscar found this a perfect place to take a nap! All of the blocks have their sashes now with 1/2 going up hill and 1/2 going down hill...now to decide if I want to set them block to block or put sashings between? (thinking black??) 

A closer pic of the two houses I"ve slanted with twist and turn triangles. These houses were fun and used scrap 2" squares and bricks, with the house and roof rectangles being cut from 2" scrap strips. 

4th of July Weekend....in the middle of an 'online retreat' with a group I belong to called "stashbusters". I had 34 houses done and needed 8 more to set them 6 X 7 so I thought this would be a good project for this weekend.

When I got the houses laid out, they looked SO uniform...boring. I was thinking of just regular sashes and maybe 9-patch cornerstones, but that didn't quite do it for me either. So...I decided to add 'twist and turn' triangles to the edges of the blocks. I think I like it. The two upper blocks are the 'test' ones I have added the triangles to so far. I like the idea of having 1/2 the blocks uphill, half down hill, and I still may use a sashing to contain the blocks. Much better than setting them straight!

Yesterday I got a 98 on my anatomy/physiology exam on the anterior lower extremity compartment! I tell you I was so brain fried when I got home that I wanted something easy and small to throw together. This is the result. I have a bin of solid color 'amishy' strips and pieces all in different sizes...these all started as 'something in the center' and were brought to 6.5" size by courthouse stepping with strips around the centers. I was inspired by a quilt I saw in a book called "Kinder Komforts" by Bettina Havig, a book filled with antique doll and small (some hired man size, long and skinny) amish quilts. This quilt is about 39" square.

My big question or dilemma is now....how do I get all these things that I have pieced and want to hand quilt.....hand quilted? Some things are just not meant for machine quilting, and that includes anything amish to me. In the last few months I have pieced 4 amish type tops! And I am currently hand quilting on my "best things" quilt, but it seems that other things like bindings always take up my hand work time and the quilting doesn't get done as I dream it to.

I don't know what it is, but I can sit for hours at the sewing machine piecing away, but I can't seem to make myself sit for hours on the couch hand-quilting. It is just as important, and just as productive. Why can't I do it? I piece to music, and it is soothing to me, but I can't hand quilt to music, and the TV is too attention grabbing to be really productive quilting while that is on either. I'm thinking books on tape or CD might be the way to go. I need to check out the library.

I suppose I could always just give up physical fitness all together...maybe that hour a day I spend jog/walking with the dog could be better spent on my butt on the couch hand quilting? At least I'd have something to show for the limited free hours I have a day! :c)

Picture from farther back, and it still doesn't fit completely in the camera view!