I made this 32-inch wallhanging project–in the Maria Shell style–which the modern quilt group’s Cathy Beemer taught to us during our monthly morning Sit and Sew. I’ve long wanted to play around with this kind of “Maria Shell” project, but never had the mojo to…just start such a project. And Cathy is brilliant about figuring out so many ways to combine fabrics in super creative designs that go well beyond the basics of this method.
I started with the lower left quadrant, which is fairly tame as I felt my way. And then I…launched. I hand quilted it with 12-wt cotton–Big Stitch quilting–I have quite a collection of colors now. The white in this piece really lightens up everything, but I wanted to knock back some of the brilliance in the lower right hand quadrant, so I did that with thread color. And I wanted to make that starter lower left quadrant look a bit more…developed…so I quilted it heavily to make it more interesting.
I had enough of this Ruby Star fabric for the back–and I’m a fan of using a print on the back when handquilting. BUT, BUT, my stitches have gotten so much better in consistency after taking Tara Faughnan’ online class on Big Stitch hand quilting.
I hung “Beemer’s Block” in my sewing room–over my cutting table, and it makes me smile every time I look at it. I centered it, so maybe there will be some more small pieces to join it down the road.
That will be possible since I just got this book, which was shown at the Patchwork Gals meeting last Wednesday morning:
I’m intrigued by many of the blocks Kelly Young has created here–with SCRAPS! Many of her ideas are one-block small quilts, BUT each one could be expanded into a full quilt. And many of her small quilts do have multiple colored/scrappy blocks that make up her small project.
Also, several of the men in our neighborhood are going to build a little portable library kiosk that will go next to our big mail kiosk. You know what I mean–you see them everywhere now. So… Debbie Jeske, of the A Quilter’s Table blog recently posted about the little library kiosk near her (or her’s–I forget). She put one of her small quilts behind the display of books, and one day she noticed it was gone. So she put in another one. Hmmmm… Was it synchronicity that I got exposed to this book of small scrappy quilts this week???
Prickly Pear is off the longarm–I quilted it all yesterday afternoon. The new panto, New Wave, gave it awesome movement and texture. Thank you Wendy Curry (a longarm quilter who lives in Thunder Bay, Canada.)
I’ll use this same panto on the local modern group’s “Make the Churn Dash modern” challenge I’ve just finished–but more on that quilt later as it deserves its own post. I’m making a pieced backing for it now.
At our last Sit and Sew, Cathy Beemer shared this quilt top–made by cutting up a panel and adding her own, fabulous additions to the squares she chose to use from the panel. Wow! This top is a whole new way to think about using panels. She, too, was responding to a challenge–this one from the Cobblestone quilters.
Cassandra Beaver recently posted this quilt in her blog–The (not so) Dramatic Life–a blog which I highly recommend following as she teaches a lot of methods along the way. Isn’t it AWESOME. Note the mixture of machine and hand quilting. She has a whole post on how she made this quilt if you are interested.
Cassandra did a very recent blog post on the “Feed Sack” fabrics from back in the day, highlighted at the big quilt museum in Lincoln, Nebraska. It was fun for me as I spent a chunk of time this spring and summer making quilts using “feed sack” reproduction fabrics collected about 20 years ago.
It is very cool here these days–with days in the 70s and 80s. This coolness so didn’t happen last year, LOL. We’ll likely get an Indian Summer of hotter weather, but that is ok too. I have increased my walking now–2 miles the other day and more short walks too, off and on, around the neighborhood.
We do need rain, so I’ll water the new roses out front this morning. Maybe I’ll “jinx in” one of the thunderstorms that have been promised all week.
So, now, we’re off to a whole new week! Enjoy this day and this week to come!
Louisa Enright's Blog 