My Liberated Garden

These are photos of the completed quilt that I made with last january's liberated stacks (or a portion of them). Because of their bright colors and some floral elements, they struck me as being a garden path, so I used some Kaffe Fassett and other large florals to make snowballs, and then surrounded the whole thing with some Michael Miller fern fabric. The very nice quilting was done by Maria Davis. Thank you fellow Block Lotto participants for the beautiful blocks. The backing is K Fassett Millefiori, which means thousand flowers (the Venetian glass technique). I love this fabric. Our local guild show this year has a them of "quilts in bloom" so I am taking the liberty of entering the quilt in the group category; I don't expect any ribbons, but our show chair encouraged the entry of some easier quilts and I think it's good to show off some liberated quilting too.

I'm keeping this one!

6 more...

This will put my total at 7. I actually made 8, but trimmed one too small.

The lights look white, but they really do have color.

While sewing these up, I had an idea.

What if I take the scraps and use them??

This is what I came up with. I was going to have a circle in the middle and at the last minute changed it so they were all half circles. It is raw edge applique and I really should have spent more time sewing the arcs down. They are a little hairy on the edges. tsk tsk

Inspired Eclipse

I played with this month's block and pieced the arc.

  I made a doll blanket for my niece.

 

You can read more at my blog - here.

 - Kristin

Better Photos of your wonderful gift

I will come back later and add information about all the blocks and who made them (thanks to the wonderful list that was enclosed with the quilt), but here is the quilt, on my design wall:

 

 

The photos still aren't perfectly square--though the quilt DEFINITELY IS--but you can see how all the wonderful blocks look together. 

a combination of blocks...

The hearts were won in February, the flowers are made from the violet flower block last summer. I love the way they work together.

I have more hearts! I am making a sister quilt like this one, only a little different.

I am really looking forward to a January block. Julie P.

My scrappy trip top

I just finished sewing the border on a scrappy trip I've been working on for awhile now, and although I've posted it on my own blog (BrooklynQuilter) I thought I'd post it here also to inspire the lucky winners of the scrappy trip blocks this month. This block is fun because there are so many different layouts you can create with it. I was worried that it looked unfinished as just scrappy trip blocks, so I made the zig zag border to pull it together. Congratulations again to the winners. And Sophie, I hope you are having a nice and well-deserved month off!

Tic-tac-toe baby quilt

In January 2010, the block lotto made tic-tac-toe blocks with bright fabrics in a white background. In February, I met up with Julie when she visited London and she gave me a handful (three or four - I can't remember for sure) of these tic-tac-toe blocks, which are made the same way, but with the white crossing and the brights as background. The rest, as they say, is history. The quilt is now finished (except see I haven't sewn the binding all the way down in this photo?) and will be going to its new home with a friend who is having a baby, later this week (the baby isn't due for a few more weeks!). Thanks, block lotto, for another brilliant Lotto-Inspired Quilt...

Block Loto

Hello, These are my nine blocks for the Oct Block Lotto. I had so much fun making all of them.

Also look at what the curved rails inspired me to do for my granddaughter.

Have fun sewing, Debra

Lotto inspired

A couple of years ago my partner's great-aunt died. He was close to her as a child and remembered fondly the bright floral print polyester blouses she always wore. When he helped his mother clean out his aunt's home, he asked if he could keep the blouses. So he brought home this pile of shiny floral polyester blouses and asked me to make something out of them. I thought he was nuts at the time and I put the clothes in a bag in a closet. I'm fairly new to quilting and didn't think it would be possible to cut and sew together that slick, shiny, slightly stretchy fabric. But then in February we did the string hearts. And I had a EUREKA! moment. I made string blocks from the blouses on muslin squares. Then I made stacks similar to the squares we made in January and was pleasantly surprised with the results. I just had to share it with the group since it wouldn't have happened without you!

Tipped Heart

This quilt for AAQI was inspired by the block lotto block for February. It is 7.5" x 9.0". I used one set of the cutoff part of the string-pieced heart to make the heart in this quilt:


Laura

Playing with African violets

Today I did my block for the July (!) Bee I am in. One of the requirement for the block was to make a flower in the block so I thought I would use the African violet block from the blocklotto last month that I DIDN'T win as I loved that block so much and Sophie had nicely provided instructions for different sizes of blocks. I followed Ellie's example of a pansy block but modified it slightly when I realised I made a mistake in the cutting!

I used the triangles off-cuts of my pansy to make the tiny pinwheel blocks

You can see the finished block on my blog.
Although this is slightly off-topic, I hope it is OK to post this here, otherwise please let me know and I'll delete this post.
Celine

African Violet crib quilt

 Hi everyone,  here are a couple pictures of a crib quilt I've made from this month's pattern.  I was thinking of adding a border of white or black to the quilt, but now I'm leaning toward no additional border and just binding the quilt in black.

Any thought or suggestions?  Without the extra border the quilt measures approx 34" x 44".

My finished Pineapple Blossom

Hi Ladies
With some encouragement from our lovely leader, Sophie, I am posting a picture of my completed Pineapple Blossom.
Several months ago when this was the block of the month, I went wild over the scrappiness of it.
I did the blocks on the machine and then did hand quilting doing it in my own QAYG style.

Below is a pic of 4 blocks quilted ready to add to another set of 4

Below is the finished quilt.

Thanks to Sophie for having this wonderful blog group and to all you talented ladies for being inspirational.

Inspired by Violets!

I loved this block when making it for the lotto, so I've chosen to do it again (and again) in a variety of sizes for a quilt I need to make as a gift. The largest block is 12" (how convenient was it that Sophie did a wide variety of sizes in her instructions!), working down through 9, 8, 6, 4 and yes - even 3" (for which I admit, I hard to figure the sizes out myself) inch blocks. Verdict - the 3" blocks are kinda fiddly & I don't really recommend them, though they are certainly do-able. The centres in particular are hard to match without losing some precision. On the whole, though, I'm really pleased with the way this works and may even do the variegated size blocks in another piece someday...

How would you quilt these violets? (one block for Kim H.)

I'm going out of town this week and loved this month's pattern so much that I tried to make a table topper for my host, who loves flowers. Sadly, my back started giving me trouble, so there is only ONE block for Black Lotto (Kim H.) and four 12" blocks for me. At least I got in for the sneak peek deadline.

But this does give me some time to think about how to quilt the top. I had thought to follow the outline of the flower and do stippling in the black, but would be interested in any suggestions!

Thanks Sophie for another great pattern and color combination.

A couple of Lotto-Inspired Finishes

I made my "super rectangle" table topper my Friday Night Sew In project and managed to quilt 28 different designs, inspired by Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project, into the 27 rectangles.

It was fun to play with the different designs ... and discover that I'm better at free-motion-quilting circles than I would have imagined. I'm sure some of these designs will find their way into other quilt projects.

Over the weekend, I added the binding and also finished work on the pillow cover that is made from three liberated basket blocks (like those we made last summer).  It's sitting on the kitties' window seat because the purpose of the project was to cover a worn pillow that both cats adore.

I suppose the moral of this story is that you don't need a whole bunch of blocks to make something interesting ;-)

The Three-Hour Challenge

When Michelle posted her quilt top, 42 x 54 inches, made from our 3-patch Rectangles using 4 fabrics, finished from cutting to finished top in 3 hours 15 minutes . . . I wondered if a completely scrappy version would go as quickly.  The super rectangle table topper I planned to make started to feel like The Three-Hour Challenge.

My little 18 x 27 inch table topper is made from nine 3-patch blocks cut from 27 fabrics (no fabric repeated.)

 

Michelle inspired me to time my effort tonight:

25 minutes to cut fabrics-one rectangle from each of the 27 fabrics.

25 minutes to sew the blocks . . . including ripping out one of the blocks because I sewed a fabric that looks like a batik but isn't wrong side up.

30 minutes arranging and re-arranging the blocks.

10 minutes to sew the 9 blocks together, 3 rows of 2 short blocks and 1 row of 3 tall blocks

90 minutes from cutting to ready to layer and quilt.  I plan to try a bunch of Leah Day's FMQ filler designs, maybe even a different one in each small rectangle.  I haven't decided yet about thread color? (or thread colors?) What do you think?

Edited to add, I blogged about it on my blog here: A rectangle for my table.

3 hours and 15 minutes

That's how long it took to make this quilt using 4 fabrics and this month's block pattern to make 42 blocks. Top size is 42" X 54" and the time included cutting and sewing. Half of the blocks have yellow polka dots, half have blue with stars and swirls for the 4.5" x 6.5". I used the same two fabrics and placement for the smaller patches in all the blocks. I did not use strip piecing, but it easily could have been used for the smaller 2 patches. I think this pattern would make a great baby gift done in the right fabrics....

Now looking at the picture again I think maybe I should have oriented a few of the blocks differently but I'm not sure and I'm not going to change it, just keep it in mind for the next time.
Maybe I should have pondered the block arrangement longer.

Little Dresses for Africa (or in this case, Ecuador)

Quilt block swapping slid to the back burner in May when it finally stopped raining and I could get out in the garden. Also, an acquaintance takes "little dresses" to Ecuador a few times a year so I whipped up a few to send along.  I'm mentioning them here because the pocket decoration came straight out of Sophie's Junction "Free-Style Trees".  Another quilting connection was realizing I could make super-wicked-easy triangle headscarves to go with the dresses with two fat-quarter-sized pieces by applying the half-square triangle technique.  The two larger dresses have the scarves; the size 3 one has a tiny stuffed kitten toy in its pocket.

Itty-bitty red and white d4p...

I made this little (8.5" x 10.5") quilt for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (AAQI) project using a lot of the same fabrics I used for the blocklotto blocks last month. These blocks are 2" finished.


Laura