Posts Tagged ‘original quilt designs’

Scrappy Sundays is tomorrow!

Written by Diane Harris on . Posted in Blog, Classes, Inspiration, Open Classes for Everyone

We are just 24 hours away from a new edition of Scrappy Sundays with Stash Bandit. I hope you will join me tomorrow!

The featured quilt is called Surround Sound, and it presents a bunch of opportunities for learning. I’m looking forward to sharing helpful ideas for this quilt and others made from scraps or a scrappy vibe.

Tickets are just $12 and they include the pattern, more design ideas and a recording to watch at your convenience. Save your seat! 

I had a great time playing with this concept and I will share many other ideas in addition to the featured quilt. And the “hangout” time at the end is always enjoyable because we all just want to share about making scrappy quilts. I hope you’ll join me and I’ll look forward to seeing you there.

Get a ticket now.

I wish you loads of happy quilting!

April’s Scrappy Sundays with Stash Bandit: 4/19

Written by Diane Harris on . Posted in Blog, Classes, How-tos and Ideas, Open Classes for Everyone, Quilt Lifestyle

Please join me for the April edition of Scrappy Sundays with Stash Bandit, Sunday, 4/19 at 1 pm Central on Zoom. Tickets are $12 and the featured quilt is Wild Romp, a new design I’ve had in my back pocket for a while. It is throw size, roughly 55″ x 70″.

Wild Romp by Diane Harris, an EQ rendering

Each Scrappy Sunday session includes a quilt pattern plus my demos and tips for making it work with lots of different fabrics. This quilt is much easier to make than it looks—a real bonus!

Your ticket also includes a bonus scrappy quilt pattern because I want to give you a lot of bang for your buck. The bonus pattern will be a surprise. And there’s time to interact with me and others in attendance if you like.

Wild Romp in blues and golds

Each session is recorded so you can attend live or you can take in the recording for two weeks afterwards.

You can make Wild Romp less scrappy if you like this look better. Here’s another version:

I will have a supply list and yardage for the scrappy version (below)

in an email sometime after you get your ticket.

This quilt does take scraps that are a little bigger. You will need a variety of colored pieces that are about 6″ square. You don’t need to have the fabric or even cut anything before the Sunday session. I would wait to shop until you hear the tips because there are several important things to consider. And you might be able to just shop your stash!

This quilt is throw size, about 55″ x 70″. Throws are my favorite size because they don’t take me a year to make and they are easily quilted on a domestic machine. And they’re useful!

If this sounds good, reserve your seat right here.

And please invite your friends! Word of mouth is an important way of getting this info out. Thank you!

I will look forward to spending time with you on Sunday, April 19. We’ll all be in the comfort of our own homes!

Until then, happy quilting!

Quilters Paradise summit March 9 to 13

Written by Diane Harris on . Posted in Blog, Complimentary, How-tos and Ideas, Open Classes for Everyone, Quilt Lifestyle

Next week I’m giving a talk on bricks during the Quilters Paradise summit and you’re invited.

The Quilters Paradise summit is a complimentary online event from March 9 to 13, in which 26 instructors will share on a variety of topics of interest to quilters. There’s a little something for everyone!

Framework is one of the first brick quilts I made. It started me on a journey and I see no end in sight.

There are so many things you can do with bricks! I’m going to tell you how I define a brick and what makes it special. You’ll get a handout that shows a boatload of brick ideas.

This gorgeous brick quilt by Marcia was part of show and tell when I visited a quilt guild in Houston. She started it during a Stash Bandit online workshop. It makes me so happy when people bring their quilts to share with me and others. It never fails to blow me away!

My Break of Dawn quilt design is based on bricks. There’s no end to the fun!

Let me tell you more about the Quilters Paradise summit.

This is a new style of event in the past several years. A group of instructors present material over a period of days and registrants can watch all of the talks at no charge for a limited time.

If attendees want to upgrade to a paid ticket, they get extended access to watch the talks and a bunch of bonus content. But it’s totally optional and you’ll get a lot out of it whether or not you choose to upgrade.

Sunday, March 8 is the last day to register for your free ticket.
Click right here to get it now! 

I can’t wait to share all the best info about bricks with you!

 

Unify diverse fabrics in scrap quilts

Written by Diane Harris on . Posted in Blog, How-tos and Ideas, Inspiration

One of the tricks to making cohesive scrap quilts is finding a way to unify diverse fabrics.

In my Make Extraordinary Scrap Quilts trunk show, I talk about using “glue”—something to hold all those fabrics together. Today I’m sharing a few types of glue along with examples where they’re used.

Color

Using a single color for a scrap quilt is an easy way to achieve unity. That one color automatically holds everything together quite nicely. It’s such a simple idea but I think it’s true.

Scarlet Spin by Diane Harris for Quiltmaker. Photo by Mellisa Karlin Mahoney. Used with permission.

Scarlet Spin came together easily because “all reds clash well,” according to the late Mary Ellen Hopkins. If you’re brave and you use all the reds together, it will work. You truly can’t mess it up.

Introducing Father & Farmer

Written by Diane Harris on . Posted in How-tos and Ideas

My latest design for Fons & Porter’s Quick + Easy Quilts was inspired by two things.

Father & Farmer, designed and made by Diane Harris, quilted by Julie Lechner.
Appears in Fons & Porter’s Quick + Easy Quilts Feb/March 2021

The first was a vintage quilt I saw on the auction site eBay. Tiny red triangles sparkled against dusty old tones, and I was smitten.

The second inspiration was my father.

John Volk

His name was John Volk and he was a farmer here in Nebraska. He loved agriculture and he loved us. I could write a book about him, but for now let me tell you about his everyday attire.

My dad with two of his great-granddaughters

My dad wore denim overalls and a blue chambray shirt. And he carried a bandana-patterned handkerchief in either bright red or navy blue. For all or our lives, day in and day out, we could count on this one thing. (Unless it was Sunday, but that’s another post.)

John Volk with one of his great-grandsons

He died in 2011 at age 91, but I still have a pair of his overalls. I’d like to make something from them, but in the meantime, there is this quilt:

Father & Farmer

Father & Farmer, designed and made by Diane Harris, quilted by Julie Lechner.
Appears in Fons & Porter’s Quick + Easy Quilts Feb/March 2021

All of the blues and creams are from my stash, and they echo the colors I associate with Dad. And sewing from what I already have? That’s significant too, because my father was a child of the Depression. Born in 1920, he lived through some very lean times in the ’30s.

There’s a story about one of my brothers chiding him for saving what seemed like an excess of scrap wood behind a small building on the farm. And Dad went on a little rant about that, declaring that until we had lived through a time when you could not get the things you needed, we’d better zip it.

My parents and my four brothers several years before I was born.
Same overalls and blue shirt. 😍

So I like to think that he’d approve of me pulling fabrics from my stash to make a quilt in his honor.

I made the quilt for a king-size bed, which is why it has a wider border at the bottom. Another row of blocks would have made it too large; this border brought it to just the size I wanted.

This issue is on newsstands now so I hope you’ll pick it up when you see it. I love the cover quilt by Nancy Mahoney called Weaving Stars. There’s an easy veteran-appropriate Quilt of Valor pattern, a nice baby quilt, a fabulous modern design called Tweens by Dodi Poulsen and much more.

If you prefer a digital issue (save the trees!) you can order it from Quilting Daily for $7.99. I’m always amazed by what a great value a magazine is. When a pattern costs at least $10 or $12, less than eight for a dozen projects is a steal.

Thank you for letting me think happy thoughts about my father today. He was a keeper.

Quilt on,

EQ Giveaway! EQ Video!

Written by Diane Harris on . Posted in Blog, Giveaways, How-tos and Ideas, Quilt Lifestyle

I use and love EQ8 quilt design software. I came on board around 2006 or 2007 with EQ5 or so. I was not computer-savvy but EQ was user-friendly and easy to learn, and it’s even more so now.

I’m partnering with The Electric Quilt Company over a few months’ time to show how powerful EQ8 really is. Lately I’ve been playing with one particular design and yesterday I learned how to record what’s happening on my computer screen. This makes it possible to show you much more about EQ and how I use it.

President’s Blocks, Part 3

Written by Diane Harris on . Posted in Blog, How-tos and Ideas, Quilt Lifestyle, Trunk Shows

Hello and welcome to Stash Bandit! I’m Diane Harris and it’s nice to have you here. 

I’ve been telling the story of some blocks I received in the late ’80s.

Read Part 1.

Read Part 2. 

 

 

 

 

This takes us up to The Rest of the Story, in the words of Paul Harvey.

When the quilt top was finished, I still had the other half of the Nine Patches left over. It seemed a shame to throw them away.

All of those fabrics had been cut into patches for me. The stitches had been taken for me. The blocks had been gifted to me. I just couldn’t pitch them.

I brainstormed for what to do. Making another quilt wasn’t sensible, but using them in this quilt was. I toyed with creating a border but decided to sew the halves together into wonky Nine Patches.

Only one of these has a signature. It belongs to Lorena, my renegade friend who had to sign one name in each white patch, of course. Two of her names are on the quilt front and two landed here, on what will become the back. (If you knew Lorena, you’re laughing.)

For the quilt back, I set the new wonky Nine Patches into columns with scrappy pink setting triangles and sewed the columns together. Lengths of two more pink prints went down each side to make it big enough. And now we are ready to quilt.

While this is no masterpiece, I had so much fun making it! It brought back memories of so many people and our happy times together. There’s even a block from one person whom I didn’t really care for, but I’m glad she’s on the quilt. Funny how time softens the edges.

These blocks have stayed with me for around 32 years as a UFO of sorts and as soon as the quilting is done, they’ll be an FO instead! What a victory! I guess it’s never too late.

In case you’re wondering, these are the names found on the quilt.

Kathleen Ernesti, Donna Rector, Ellen Boyle, Gloria Nelsen, Penny White, Velesta Halbur, Sandra Renli, Wilma Amen, BJS, Doris Volk, Joyce Pick, Shirley Anderson, Maxine Kraemaer, Sue Sindelar, Sandy Eckert, Inger Hansen, Lavonne Hornik, Mattie Niewohner, Daytime Friendship Quilters, Mary Goetsch, Lila Brown, Marilynn Heller, Julie Deering, Carol Monk, Elsie Acklie, Joan Waldman, Lorena Edna Marie Kouba, Peggy Haas, Genelle Trowbridge, Shirley Hassler. There’s an unsigned block from Sherry Stuifbergen. 

I can’t wait to reimagine another long-stored project, but right now I have my mind on Dresden Plate quilts. My next two programs will feature my Dresden collection and I want to have some new things to show. All of that upcoming. Until then, keep on scrappin’!

I’m a quilter who loves everything about the process and I enjoy sharing it with others. My energetic trunk shows are lively entertainment for your quilt guild. I’d love to come to your city so give me a call and Let’s Talk Quilts! 

Briar Rose Quilt Pattern

Written by Diane Harris on . Posted in Blog, How-tos and Ideas, Quilt Lifestyle, Uncategorized

Designing quilts for publication is a funny thing. Magazines work so far ahead that sometimes, if you’re not the one making the quilt, you forget all about a design until it appears on the printed page. And even then you might not recognize it as your own. That’s what happened with Briar Rose in the Jan/Feb issue of Quiltmaker.

I first imagined this design in monochrome, i.e. just one color. I thought it would be great in reds and pinks, and I named it Strawberry Sundae.