Weaving together my life as a maker and other spheres of life: Best of October, experimenting with EQ8 quilt design software, sharing a modern scrap quilt tutorial, celebrating Ingrid’s Starbright quilt and feeling chock full of sewjo.
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I need an easy scrap quilt. You know the kind: fun to sew, no brainer, happy-scrappy palette. I want to be able to just sew and not think about a thing besides how the colors and shapes make me feel. Not even color order this time! I have gathered a few options for my next quilt. Will you help me choose?
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Is it the end of October already? Boy does time fly when you’re having fun! I hope that you have been enjoying these cozy, fall quilt-making days if you also find yourself in the northern hemisphere. I have had the pleasure of helping my European clients finish off a fresh batch of their beautiful quilts. Here are several that I am lucky to share with you this month.
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It was the birds that did it! Once I started cutting up that bird print and putting it up on the design wall, I knew I had arrived in my happy patchwork place. Before long I had a delightful rainbow quilt top: happy scrappy rainbow kaleidoscope blocks and pastel rainbow cornerstones, nestled in a bed of black and gray. Very urban-cool, yes?
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Today I took a break from my Kaleidoscope project to sew some fast and fun log cabin blocks. These are the bee block for October in my circle of do. Good Stitches, an online charity quilting bee. Our group has been asked to make quarter log cabin blocks, using lots of bright colors and in a wonky style.
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Politics?!?! Yikes. Let us all first take a deep breath. I won’t be writing a treatise on Dutch politics, only sharing a few stark differences that I notice from my American perspective. Political Parties, Elections, Collaboration and How the Government Steps Down.
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Honestly, I love my Kaleidoscope Groove quilt design, but bringing the concept to life in cloth has proved trickier than I thought. In this post, I’ve captured my evolving design process. I know that half of you are going to disagree with the choices I made, haha, so that’s also a lesson for us all. There really are no wrong choices!
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English paper pieced quilts are so WOW. All those tiny pieces, irregular shapes and fussy cuts can be quite impressive. So, how do you go from novice to EPP-maker extraordinaire? Here is how to gradually build up your EPP skills.
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Confession: lately I have been feeling stumped with my kaleidoscope blocks. I know that I want to set them in an irregular grid, but I also want to make a rainbow blend. One concept requires order while the other suggests freedom. Sometimes it is hard to know what to do next in order to move in the right direction.
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It’s finished! The quilt I made during the Starbright Stars Sew-Along has had her day in the sun at the beautiful Hoge Veluwe park, a nature preserve in The Netherlands. It’s a place that feels wild. The skies are wide and the forests are peaceful, the silence interrupted only by the calling of birds or the whirring of bicycles along the paths.
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So! You guys have been really keeping me busy with the longarm quilting service! Customers keep bringing me three or four quilts at a time, which is such a great compliment and very efficient of course. Today I share a new batch of digital quilting designs and info about my new batting brand of choice.
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It’s not everyday that I get to sew. I know, isn’t that funny since this is my job? Ironically, my workday doesn’t always include patchwork, and I can honestly go weeks without sitting down behind my machine if I am busy with producing patterns and/or longarm quilting.
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There is a point during the making of most of my quilts where I second-guess my design choices. With this quilt the wheaty-brown backgrounds felt like a quiet gamble. But now that it’s all sewn together it has exactly that autumn wheat field flavor for which I was aiming. Phew. And yay!
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Weaving together my life as a maker and other spheres of life: Best of September, reading How to Fall in Love with Anyone, anticipating going to the ballet, celebrating this perfectly fall quilt by Robin and bracing myself for a rough string of months ahead.
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I did consider making another heart backpack, because that was quite a success, but my curiosity to try something new won out. That’s when I was struck with the idea to look through my orphan blocks. I found this English paper pieced block languishing in my orphan block bin. It totally deserves to become something real, something loved.
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Wow, am I love-love-loving your Starbright Stars quilts! This week I am featuring some of YOUR quilts in progress on my blog. Thank you for sharing and spreading the happy patchwork inspiration far and wide!
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I am so, so happy with how Pastelly turned out! This couldn’t have happened if I had forced myself to finish the project before I was ready and before my mood matched the energy and colors of the work. These days I am feeling so much lighter, and this quilt is a manifestation of that joy.
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Yesterday I got to start a new quilt. Yay for fabric scraps! I guess it’s been since May that I worked with them? That’s a bit too long in my book. I am even following the siren song of rainbow order scraps. Here we go again!
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