I’ve been working on a new quilt design to add to the Windy Wonders trunk show. That program is booked for Omaha Quilters’ Guild next week and I want to give them lots of eye candy. I thought a few more quilts would be nice, and since my sketchbook is overflowing, it wasn’t hard to do.
I grew up near a little town called Battle Creek here in Nebraska. Our colors were purple and gold so I spent many days in those colors.
Some three decades ago, Jo Morton was just beginning to teach in our home state of Nebraska. She came to our fledgling guild and taught us to make Log Cabin blocks with strips that finished at 1/2″.
There weren’t any reproduction fabrics in those days, so Jo was inventing ways to make new fabrics look old. One of the secrets she shared with us was this:
Transparency is a great trick, and it’s especially effective in quilt design. My recent X Marks the Spot for McCall’s Quick Quilts makes good use of transparency to create interest in an otherwise ordinary design.
X Marks the Spot appears in McCall’s Quick Quilts June/July ’17. Photo by Mellisa Karlin Mahoney. Used with permission.
This series will help to expand your color skills so you can make more beautiful, more interesting and more successful quilts.
If there were a Patchwork Bible, it would contain a book on color, and one of the unshakeable truths would be this:
My small quilt group issued a half-square quilt challenge earlier this year. The rules were pretty simple: The finished quilt should be about 24″ x 24″ and feature mainly half-square triangles. If you’re a new to quilting, that’s a commonly-used shape and it looks like this:
A square is cut in half on the diagonal, and the two resulting triangles are called half-square triangles, often abbreviated as HST.
I love teaching quilters. A day in the classroom with like-minded souls brings out the best in me. We learn, we laugh and we have fun.
I love teaching quilters. This was one of QM’s Block Party events.
But occasionally a student will say something that baffles me. It’s usually about combining quilt fabrics. Let me give you a little background.
You can use 10″ squares—precuts or cut-by-you from stash—to create an easy quilt while you learn about combining fabrics boldly. I discovered this recently by accident when I mis-cut for a project that turned into a dead end. Meet The Accidental Quilt.
It’s very simple, but you can make it interesting by combining fabrics in unexpected ways. It doesn’t take a lot of fabric or a lot of time. It can be a great charity quilt, a baby quilt or a dorm room quilt. Perfect for the car or the camper.