So it’s been a while (almost 4 years) since my last post. I have been thinking about starting up again and wonder if anyone is still keeping track of me. I’d kind of like to share pictures of my quilts. I have quite a few now and really like making them.
This is the latest thing on my design wall. It is a Kaleidoscope or One Block Wonder quilt in progress. All of the little hexes were cut from six repeats of the center panel. I love the autumn colors.
I had these little triangle squares leftovers and they kept asking me to make them into something. Eventually I sewed them into a rectangle and practices some thin line quilting on them. For several days they laid around just like that and I wondered what to do with them next. When I happened across a tutorial on inserting zippers into quilted things, I knew they would be happy as a little zippered bag.
Here are a couple big shells I made for our master bedroom. The pieces are fused and machine stitched.
I made these little wall quilts for church. This is the first time I tried facing the edges instead of sewing on binding. I think it works well.
Here they are installed. 
The first two quilts are both made with a block called ‘scrappy trip’ that I saw on Bonnie Hunter’s site, Quiltville.com. I love this block. It is quick and easy but looks complex. I used up almost all of my fruit and veggie fat quarters in the first one and blended a lot of ‘odds-and-ends’ fat quarters in the second one. These show just two of the many layout possibilities. I am thinking of red white and blue in the next one.
Scrappy Trip – Juicy
Scrappy Trip
Modern scraps
Doctor Who quilt for my grandson Joe
Here are the few quilts I finished last year for Quilts of Valor. I also sewed the binding on several others that were pieced and quilted by others.
[Note: this post has been gathering dust as a draft since July 2016]
I guess I took a vacation from posting. It always seems like I never get much accomplished, but when you look at everything all at once it looks like a lot. Here is a summary.
From the leftover pieces of Still Life on Caffeine I made these little quilts. I sewed casings around the edges and inserted elastic so they could snugly fit on top of our TV trays.
I also added some beautiful mango colored fabric to the rest of the leftovers and made this little quilt. Once it gets quilted it will look great on the sofa in the living room.
A Quilt of Valor:
A pretty peacock for my sister:
Two more Quilts of Valor:
A yard sale find we (and when I say we, I mean Raymond) painted.
And a wall quilt for my sister’s windowless office.
The next post should start catching up.
I looked back through my pictures and found this arraignment of the fractured flowers with one set of flowers before all the cutting and sewing. The daisies show the original size of all the flower squares. Maybe that helps demonstrate the size difference from beginning to end.
I finally cut into my watermelon fabric and made some new pot holders for the kitchen. These are made just like those square coasters that everyone has been making for quite a while, except I start out with larger squares of fabric. These finish at about 6″ and are just big enough to grab the side of a hot dish coming out of the oven or the handle of a cast iron pan. We also use them a lot under a hot bowl of soup or oatmeal or a cold dish of ice cream. The colors are not quite as bright as the picture.
The second watermelon project was a new runner for the dining room table. I really like this, although I would make a few changes if I did it again. There will be lots more watermelon items turning up here shortly.
And to make one table runner do double duty, I put valentine fabric on the back.
And just like that, March’s productivity concludes.
Thanks to Jean Larson for introducing me to this technique detailed by Brenda Esslinger in her books, Fracture Frenzy and Fabulous Fractures. And thanks to my sister, Laura Knowles, for finding these lovely panels for me to experiment with.
Now for a summary of the technique as I interpreted it.
My first attempt was with smaller flower pictures. I think I may have mentioned them before, but here is a reminder:
Each of these started out as four identical pictures, then got cut up and sewn back together a couple times and ended up looking as if you were seeing them through a faceted crystal. They all started out as 6″ blocks and finished between 9″ and 10″. I think the difference has something to do with my inaccurate 1/8″ seams. I am still thinking about what to make out of them – maybe place mats.
To make a fractured quilt you need to start with four identical fabric panels. The ones I used this time were about 23″ wide by the width of fabric high.
Carefully cut them into strips vertically
Alternate strips from each panel
Carefully sew them together. See how the flowers almost double in width?
Repeat that process with the third and fourth panels.
Now you have two larger panels. This is where the fun starts.
Cut the panels into strips again – this time horizontally.
Alternate the strips as before – This step would not fit on my design wall so I separated it. The top is on the left and the bottom is on the right.
Sew all these strips together and you are almost done.
I didn’t sew the last few rows on because that would have made the finished quilt way too tall. Add borders and quilt it up. I tried several different colors for the inner border and decided the blue was best. Then I was fortunate to find some matching fabric at my local quilt shop, The Quilt Place in Rockledge FL, to use around the outside. I quilted it simply with vertical serpentine stitch down the middle of each strip and then sewed some pieces of extra border fabric together to make the binding. The finished quilt is about 50″ by 70″ – larger than I had expected – but luckily I have just the right sized wall to hang it on in our living room. The sunflowers, poppies and lilies in the side borders are the original size of the ones in the center.
I took a few days in the middle of working on the fracture quilt to put together a Quilt of Valor for March. This is from a kit my friend Karen Downer sent me — a disappearing nine patch. It was pretty quick to assemble.
That’s all for now. Happy Day!
Here is the Quilt of Valor I made for February. It is the same pattern that I used last July except this time I tried to use fewer fabrics. I liked the scrappy look of the first one, but this one is very nice too. The pattern is called ‘Falling Stars’ and is in the Spring 2015 issue of Easy Quilts.
And that is about all I finished that month. The rest of the time was spent on a really fun quilt that starts with four panels (approximately 23″ by 42″) just like this. I will show all the steps involved in this quilt, which I have decided to call “Still Life on Caffeine”, in the March post. More about that later.
Towanda 