Quilt Blocks

Saturday Quilting Bring and Share (99)

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Happy International Quilters Day and welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring Share. Bring along your project(s) and share in some of the encouragement and inspiration being put out there by the Worldwide Quilting Community. Do add your thoughts and any links you’ve found helpful in the comments box at the bottom of the page. Thank you! 🙂

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Quilter’s Color Quest: 1. Temperature

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Last week Rachel Hauser posted the first in her series Quilter’s Color Quest to accompany her recent book, A Quilter’s Field Guide to Color. I used some Christmas gift money to buy a copy of the book. Rachel uses colour (I just can’t help reverting to the English spelling!) to very good effect in all her quilt designs. She deliberately doesn’t begin the book with an explanation of the colour wheel – that comes later. In the first section she directs her readers to explore colour through the subjective lenses of temperature, the seasons and our emotions. The Field Guide is designed to be a practical book. There are 150 colour swatches to cut out, these can be used to complete the challenges dotted throughout the book and also to select fabrics to make the Bear Paw blocks Rachel suggests we make to test our choices.

And so to the temperature challenge: shuffle the card swatches, select warm and cool shades of purple and green.

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Saturday Quilting Bring and Share (97)

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Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share. Bring along your project(s) and share in the inspiration to be found via the Worldwide Quilting Community. Do add your thoughts and ideas using the comments box at the bottom of this page. Thank you!

I spent much of the past week preparing for the Two Ways to Build a Log Cabin workshop. It was a meeting of friends for me as I knew four of the ladies taking part. As always it is fascinating to see the variety of colour schemes  chosen. Sadly one friend had to leave before the end of the day due to a family emergency. Here are some of the partially constructed blocks made by the other three:

Read moreSaturday Quilting Bring and Share (97)

Patchwork Mug Rugs – a quick tutorial

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In preparation for the Two Ways to Build a Log Cabin workshop I thought I’d have a go at a third Log Cabin technique: Wonky Log Cabin blocks.

Guided by Jackie White’s instructions in her chapter of the book ‘I love Log Cabins‘ I set to; diving into my boxes of fabric strips (I know! More scrap fabrics!). The boxes were stuffed so full that taking the lids off was like activating a Jack-In-The-Box 😀

It took about twelve strips of fabrics ranging from 1″ to 3″ wide to make each of the blocks. Here they are before I trimmed them……

….. and after I trimmed them to 6¼” square…

I used the no-binding method to make the blocks into mug rugs:

First layer a quilt sandwich:

  • Place the batting on a flat surface. (I used two pieces of cotton batting so the mug rugs would give a bit of protection to table tops, you could of course use an insulating batting).
  • Onto the batting lay the backing fabric, right side facing up (I found some cotton flannel to use as backing).
  • Then lay the patchwork block on top of the backing, right side facing down.
  • Smooth the fabrics flat and use a few basting pins to stop the layers shifting as you sew.

Next stitch the layers together:

  • Using good quality thread stitch a seam ¼” inside the edge of the patchwork block.
  • Leave a gap in the seam about 2½” wide. Strengthen the seam either side of the gap with backing stitches.
Sorry it’s a bit hard to see.. The seam is stitched on the light blue fabric and the threads show the gap in the seam.
  • Cut away the excess backing and wadding fabrics up to the edge of the patchwork block. Tip: I leave about ¼” of excess fabric alongside the gap in the seam – this makes it easier to tuck the fabrics in when it comes to stitching the gap closed. Cut across the corners being careful not to snip the stitching.

  • Use the gap in the seam to turn the Mug Rug layers inside out. Push out the corners with a blunt tool.

Finishing the Mug Rug:

  • Close the gap in the seam by hand stitching or by machine.
  • Roll the edges of the Mug Rug with your fingers to flatten them and then pin.
  • Stitch a line of quilting stitches about ¼” – ½” from the edge of the Mug Rug to keep the layers in place.
  • Add further quilting as desired.

I had time to test out a Mug Rug before packing it and the other four along with my class notes and demonstration materials ready for the workshop tomorrow. 🙂

Linking with Susan for Midweek Makers and Kelly for Needle and Thread Thursday.

Allison