Quilting Styles Can Change, Maybe.

As time continues to go by,

I'm sure we've all noticed  

how our quilting preferences have changed.

Our color choices change,

 different styles come and go, 

one technique over another or

even how we might use quilts.

One fabric designer that I enjoyed

in the past was Lynn Hagmeier, 

of Kansas Trouble Quilters.

Her rich dark colors and 

low contrast classical small prints

 were new and different 20 years ago.

I bought a lot of her different lines from Moda,

Log Cabin

2004

and taught and made several of her

block of the month patterns.

Liberated Ladies

2002

I even had the opportunity to travel

to Bennington, Kansas twice to enjoy a

weekend of sewing with friends and Lynn.

But time has moved on and other

favorites have taken KTQ's place.

It wasn't too long ago I realized how much 

Kansas Trouble fabric I still had!

Actually, an embarrassingly huge stack. 

In my quest to use up, I began searching for

a pattern that would be motivating and easy

to make a dent in  these long forgotten fabric pieces.

 I found a Miss Rosie, Carrie Nelson,

design that seemed appropriate.

Log Cabin Under the Stars

75" x 75"

The pattern can be found in Carrie's book

Miss Rosie's Spice of Life Quilts

It's a combination of log cabin blocks

and sawtooth star blocks and 

were easy to chain piece on my 

little feather weight machine.

I'm happy to say,

I used up tons of fabrics

and another 6yards for a pieced backing and binding.

 With the holiday season

quickly approaching, it's a quilt top

 that will have to wait

to be finished. 

But that's okay.

The fabrics have waited a long time

just to be sewn.

Well, I have to make a confession. 

The warm cozy colors of these fabrics 

have rekindled an renewed affection. 

Maybe my quilting preferences 

haven't veered to far from the home roots after all.

Until Next Time-

Kyle

Let's Hear It For The Stash

 I've never felt like I've had to justify

having a fabric stash.

It's important to have a readily available resource

for your creativity.

I do use my stash.

I don't horde it (too much) or

buy excessive amounts (too often).

I buy what I like and

enjoy the pleasure of creating 

something tangible from it.

There are times when having a stash

is super important.

 How about when you need

a particular style of fabric

and a shop, even a good shop,

doesn't have anything close to

what you were hoping for.

Or that particular color just isn't popular 

right now.

Having a good resource of reproduction fabric

came in handy last

year as I stitched along with

Barbara Brackman's 

Stars in a Time Warp Sew A long.

Barbara discussed
so many different types of
historical fabrics.
Without a good stash,
I doubt that you could have
found all the different examples.

 
 I finished machine quilting and binding
my Stars in a Time Warp.

 
It was a fantastic study.

I made 72 star blocks
and didn't buy one piece of fabric.
Thank you stash!

Until Next Time-

It's Charming

 Despite the fact that

I just got my Roseville applique going again,

and I've been embroidering on a Halloween project,

I wanted to do some simple sewing at the machine.

Using basically 2 Moda Charm packs and
1 Mini Charm pack,
it was time to "just sew".

I wanted to make scrappy nine patches, but
I wanted to make them quickly and without much effort.
I came up with a plan
to eliminate some extra cutting.

This isn't probably new, but it
worked for me.

I used a long 2.5" strip of white
and sewed

halved charm squares along the edge.

Then I added other halves to the
other side.

But I needed to careful and stop and think.

The second row needed to
be dropped 2 1/2 inches, so

when I went to cut strips

the cutting would line up perfectly.

 Top and bottom rows done.

I did the same thing with the middle row of the
nine patch.
But this time the sewing was easier.
No calculating.

And I used lots of those mini charms here.

Pressed towards the center and

Voila!

Perfect nine patch blocks.
That was FUN!

Until Next Time-

Shoo-Fly

In January, I followed along with

Lori's quilt-along, from Humble Quilts,

 making a small 

antique quilt which she has called

Pink Lemonade.

It immediately appealed to be because of the

colors, pinks, browns, chrome yellows and dark blues.  It looked

like a little turn of the century piece using the shoo fly block.

I finally got mine done.

 Kyle's Pink Lemonade

17" x 22"

I love the fact that it didn't have any borders

but parts of blocks out on the edge.

I machine pieced it and even 

took the time to hand quilt it. 

The original quilt had been tied.

It felt good to be poking my fingers once again!

It became a stashbuster's quilt.

Every fabric came from my stash.

I even pulled out some antique fabric

to incorporate into the blocks.

A friend had given me some vintage fabrics and

these old blocks had just the right pink.

The blocks were pretty cut up so

it felt like a good place to save what was left.

The fabric is very thin so I had to be careful.

But it worked up fine, even with the hand quilting.

Pink lemondade reminded me of my favorite drink last summer.

Freckled Strawberry Lemonade

I need to get the ingredients.

It looks so good.

If you don't have this recipe, link back to my

old post.  You'll be glad you did.

Thanks Lori for your quilt-along. 

Your directions were terrific and

I love how my little quilt turned out.

Until Next Time-