From the Strawberry Patch...: one-patch quilts

Showing posts with label one-patch quilts. Show all posts

20 November, 2013

29 February, 2012

06 September, 2007

The French language makes even the most mundane sound fancy and exotic. "Les Échantillons", the title given to this one-patch quilt, simply means "samples" in English! Yep, that's what this quilt is made from entirely, collected fabric samples! I belonged for years to the Cotton Club's fabric samples by mail plan. Every few months I received a fat envelope of four inch squares of the newest fabrics along with a newsletter; this was heaven when I lived overseas. I had both fabric to touch and felt current and abreast of the quiltmaking trends that were happening stateside. These squares accumulated! At one point I began sewing them together, no rhyme or reason; random rows. After spending the appropriate amount of time "curing" as a top-only (years!) I began quilting it this past weekend. (This may have been what prompted the long-arm query)! It's big, 76" X 86". I settled on a simple idea, very simple-- straight lines 1/4" from the seams that required no marking.

I chose a 30 wt. Sulky Blendable in variegated parchment tones and an Aurifil (50 wt.) in the bobbin. I used a walking foot; it was a perfect set-up, the stitching looks great and even. I found the stiletto valuable, too. I used it as almost an extension of my finger for holding and sometimes encouraging the fabric to proceed when it didn't want to or when there was a pucker that needed smoothing before it went under the foot. Ideal!

The quilting is done and I'm very pleased, binding is on the docket for today. I'll post a finished quilt 'portrait' this weekend. I heard Marianne Fons say "you can't ever finish the quilts you're not working on", or something to that effect. How true! I'm going to go and quilt up something else now...

I'm on a roll.
Life is Good!

28 March, 2007

Charmed!

I am part of a group that meets to exchange Charm squares once a month at my LQS. There are fourteen of us in the group and we bring that many six-inch squares of two different fabrics; in turn, we each come home from the meeting with 28-6" Charms! This month the selected Charm color was GREEN: aren't they pretty? The "rules" for a Charm Quilt are really quite simple: the quilt should be of a one-patch design with no fabric repeats. Many Charm Quilts depend on the interplay of light and dark to illustrate the chosen pattern, it's perfectly OK to turn the Charm to the wrong side to create more lights... but still, no fabric should repeat! I tend to be a quilt-rule breaker and love to read stories of mothers who, a century ago, purposely repeated a charm just so that the children would have fun, and spend hours, searching for that one pair of identical twin prints! (Go ahead and summon the quilt police now, I'm completely sure I'd like to do that!) I have found some down-loadable one patch designs with printable templates from Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, there are lots of intriguing options. We will continue to meet through the year, giving our Charm collections plenty of time to grow! (I find the collecting every bit as much fun as eventually making the quilt!) Our Charm organizer does a great job of instructing, yesterday she did a mini-lesson on value before she invited participants to come up for show and tell. Coincidentally, there happened to be two different Grandmother's Flower Garden quilts; both stunning examples of one-patch designs, it was a Spring-garden kind of day!

So many Charm choices!