Author: louisaenright

I am passionate about whole, nutrient-dense foods, developing local markets, and strengthening communities.

A Quilt Challenge

My Charleston Modern Quilt Guild issued a challenge in October to make a completed quilt using the three colors we got in an envelope. Everyone got two different colors, but we all got this Smoked Oyster color as one of the three. The challenge is due at our January 2026 meeting.

Here are the colors I found in my envelope. I spent nost of November thinking about what to make using these colors. I love all of them, but I didn’t want to make a Christmas-type quilt using just red and green. The real problem child here is that Smoked Oyster color. The challengers did say you only had to use each color ONCE, no matter how tiny a piece you used.

Eventually I found myself thinking about the kite ruler I have and a kite block. I trialed one layout idea for the improv quilt of solids that is growing on my design wall.

Could that oyster color work as a background? Maybe, but for a whole quilt? So I tried it out with this red daisy pattern. I liked the block but couldn’t see a way to make it all happen with this large a block (10 inches) with only the oyster color as a background. It shows light here, but it is actually a darker greyish tan color that is, yes, “smoky,” not clear.

The other day I used that trial block to make another hot pad for a hot dish coming out of the microwave or the oven. I made the one behind it three years ago, and I use it all the time and needed another one. The inside contains 2 layers of batting and one of Insul-Bright Thermal batting. The whole thing is super thick and a pain to sew and to bind. But…the result is so useful.

I can still see a quilt made with this layout and with a variety of neutral fabrics for the side pieces. And that will likely happen…

I eventually settled on putting the single kite block on point, as if the kites were flying in the wind. I tried making some blocks sit sideways or even upside down, especially at the edges or the bottom, as if they were turning in the wind, but that didn’t look coherent to me.

So, here’s what I have now:

The border triangles were made bigger, so today I’ll trim the sides and sew a “victory lap” seam around all the edges–as that prevents block separation when the quilt goes on the longarm.

Now, on to the backing and binding decisions…

“Girls In Trees” Quilt

My backdoor neighbors are a young couple who just had their first baby–a little girl. She is BEAUTIFUL. And the picture announcement they sent me shows a healthy baby.

When I realized they were expecting, I started a “girl” baby quilt, and along the way found this perfect fabric for it: Heather Ross’s “Girls in Trees” (“Studio Edit,” #409271).

The block is Bonnie Hunter’s “Four Patch Fun,” which is her 2025 leader/ender block. It is free on her blog. I used the pantograph “TwoFold Feathers” by Hermione Agee and the Signature cotton thread “Petal.” The fabrics are all from my stash, and I used the same fabric for the sashing pieces as I had enough of it–and I love the animals it includes, especially the owl. I also like the striped binding cut on the bias.

Here’s a close-up of one of the blocks, so you can see I tried to include as many interesting animal and foliage images as I could–along with other images, like the bikes.

Sheep and the owl peeking out to say hello:

I make a quilt like this one to be loved and USED, and I hope that as this little girl grows older, she will notice all the things this quilt holds for her.

A Bit of Happiness

…that makes me smile.

This low-growing camellia blooms in the fall and early winter. This winter is her second winter, and she is…happy.

The other camellia I planted is on the other side of the house and blooms later in the winter. There are buds… Last year it lost most of its buds in freezing weather, even though I put a protective cover on her. This one is a taller form. Camellias can get quite big and wide.

AND, here’s another smile.

These trimmed back trees along the path I often walk are LOADED with orange berries this year. More than I remember from the past two winters I have been here. They are probably some holly form, and they are all along this path.

Can you imagine if they weren’t trimmed so drastically? They would be…glorious.

“Garnish” is set up for hand-quilting. Yes, I put the binding on as well, as that task prevents the edges from fraying and the batting from shedding. I used Dream Cotton’s thinnest weight batting for hand quilting–Request.

My “Garnish” is one of many forms of this idea given to us by Tara Faughnan in the online Blocks3 class that is happening now and will last six months, with a new block idea every month–and a new palette.

Here’s another form of this block–which I will put on a stretched canvas when it is done. The batting is already glued to the canvas.

If I were going to use this form in a quilt I think I’d separate it with narrow sashing. Otherwise the flower form would dominate.

This piece is waiting for the “brass” color to arrive in the mail–12 wt. cotton thread–for that top right “pickle.” I order this thread from Red Rock thread online as our local stores don’t carry much 12-wt. cotton thread–which I love best for hand quilting. You can the smaller “petite” spools online for a reasonable price, so I have a good collection of colors. And many thread makers produce 12-wt thread now, so if one doesn’t have the “right” color, another might.

This afternoon my DIL and I are driving out into the country to pick up our local organic turkey. I will join her family (my younger son) for our meal, and the whole family will gather at the older son’s house for dessert. All the grands will be there, along with two grandmothers, one grandfather, and a possible boyfriend.

Have a great Thanksgiving if I don’t visit with you here before Thursday.

The Traveling Flower Vase

My neighbor spoils me on a daily basis. Look what she brought me the other day!

These falls colors are just so gorgeous, and I love the little bit of frilly white that breaks up the density of the fall colors.

For the past year, and maybe a bit more, we have shared “the traveling flower vase.” She started it! She gave me flowers, and I returned the vase with flowers in it for her. Now this vase goes back and forth between us. We each enjoy the flowers the other puts into the vase, and sometime after the flowers have faded, the one with the vase puts in new flowers and delivers it to the other.

It’s so much fun!

One of my favorite meals is best done in the fall when the butternut squash is nice and ripe. I cut one into cubes, add lots of chopped garlic and fresh rosemary, some REAL olive oil (not the kind with mixed seed oils added), and a bit of rough salt. I roast on a fairly high heat (375 or so) until the squarsh starts to carmelize a bit–which makes it so so sweet. I usually turn it all over once with a spatula as the bottom will burn if you don’t. Don’t cook it too long as you don’t want it to get mushy.

This month’s Tara Faughnan Blocks3 class is “Garnish,” a pickle dish quilt block form. Tara gave us extensive instructions on how to improv cut this block AND many templates of different sizes if we wanted to have a bit more precision.

Here’s where I am now–with blocks ready to be sewn together. Each “flower” will finish at 8 inches, for a 32-inch square…something? A table topper maybe. I’m going to hand quilt it.

I could keep moving around blocks forever I think, but I’ll stop here. I love how the warm black is working with the other colors in this month’s palette.

What interests me also is the pattern where two big blocks come together and form a circle. So I made one of those which I’m now hand sewing and will put on stretched canvas if it comes out ok.

How did it get to be Friday already?

It’s still very dry, and I’m going to have to water the flower beds again, as I don’t see any real rain on the horizon. I’ve given up on the grass for this year.

Have a great weekend!

Design Wall Fun

With “Under the Maple Tree” off the design wall, new projects are emerging–including this month’s Tara Faughnan Blocks3 block: “Garnish.” It’s “the curve month,” and the block is a “pickle” quilt block variant. As usual, Tara has given us many sizes with which to play if we want to do perfection sewing, but she has also walked us through making improv blocks.

Me, I’m using the templates she has provided. And I started with the 6-inch version to trial the block, which I added to my collection of quilt blocks made with solid fabrics on the design wall:

I went then to the 4-inch templates next and will stay there–maybe until I mostly use up this month’s fabrics.

This month’s palette is really pretty, so I’m enjoying sewing with it. Having a palette selection of fabrics sent to you makes sewing decisions easy and immediately interesting. It is a treat.

Thanks to Tara’s many lessons over the years, I’m quite good with curves these days. These 4-inch blocks joined in a four-patch will each finish at 8 inches, so I’m thinking something that is 32 by 32–maybe a table topper that I can hand sew to quilt it. Of course, I’ll probaby move around blocks before sewing them all together.

These little X-Plus blocks inspired by a Bonnie Hunter project may work out to be another donation quilt. Who knows? I don’t. The components are all from the 3.5-inch bins of squares and my stash strip bins (which I’ve organized by color now as they have gone down in size these past years). I’m not planning to make all the centers “fussy cut.” Some will just be light or dark.

Note: the mini “folded corners” ruler is a real plus for making these flying geese blocks easier and quicker to make. I love the regular size of this ruler too. Maybe something with all flying geese is in my future…

Have a great week everyone! And enjoy your Sunday.

A Cold Spell

We’ve had temps dropping into the freezing area these past two nights, so it’s been time for me to seriously undertake the outside late fall cleanup chores. The red roses have survived the cold though, so I have not had the heart to cut them back.

Here’s what rosemary does in this climate: it makes bushes. Right now it is blooming, and the bees and hummingbirds have found it. But I think I’ll cut it back some after a hard freeze.

Still no rain though. But the walking has been delightful in these clear, sunny, cold days. Of course, if I were in Maine, I wouldn’t think this weather “cold” yet. I’d just put on socks and add a sweater layer. The wind here, though, was quite biting and strong for at least one day. And the trash cans, put outside the night before the weekly trash can pickup, had their tops opened with the night wind. We are all still picking up bits of trash that littered our front lawns.

I finished the quilt top for “Under the Maple Tree,” a Rachel LaBour’s Stitched in Color blog sewalong. The perfect backing fabric finally got here–delayed due, perhaps, to the slowdown at the airports during the shutdown. It’s a Tilda fabric. Yesterday I found a fabric for the binding locally as I couldn’t find something I liked in my stash. This quilt was a lot of work, fun though that was, so I wanted the backing and binding to really “go” with this top. The leaf blocks are all from my scrap stash.

These blocks are sewn on point, and those little cute gold side pieces were a bear to get “just right.” I worried and worried during the final trimming, but it all came out well. (Thanks Rachel LaBour.)

This little no-name donation baby quilt–made as a leader/ender with my 2-inch square bin and half-square triangles cut from scraps–is done. The pattern is from Bonnie Hunter’s free selection on her blog. It’s “Patches and Pinwheels.”

The on-point squares that form caught me by surprise. I didn’t see them coming. But I love how this secondary pattern makes this quilt so much more interesting. I’m still using those 2-inch squares to make four-patch blocks as leader/enders. So there may be another donation quilt from at least the “patches” part of this quilt down the road.

Next: a design wall update.

Good Morning!

How did it get to be November already?

We had a lively Halloween here in my small subdivision, which is filled with small children who delight me with their laughter most days as they play outside. It is so fun to see them growing up–but they are growing up so fast. In no time at all, it seems, these children leave their strollers and are pedaling small tricycles.

It’s time now to do the fall outdoor clean-up chores, but the roses are still blooming, so it’s hard to get the motivation to cut back those bushes for the winter cold that is coming.

I can still have my noon dinner on the porch most days, but often need a sweater. Yesterday I had baked cod and for a real treat, some delicious Carolina “gold” rice. I had some crunchy fresh salad veggies, so I cut those up as an addition and dressed them with some leftover homemade mayonnaise.

I’ve spent the summer cutting starchy carbs as I’m trying to drop a few more pounds, but all the summer fruit got in the way of that goal. I can, apparently, eat good fats or fruit, but not both outside of about an 80-20 ration for one or the other. LOL. Still I have dropped a few pounds, and the rice didn’t show up on my scale this morning, but eating only a half of an apple illustrates this truth.

I am ALMOST done with the blocks for the leaf quilt sewalong with Rachel LaBour of the “Stitched in Color” blog. Maybe today I will be able to start sewing that quilt top together.

There may be more moving of blocks around. But I’m really loving this quilt. I ordered a Tilda fabric for the backing that will work with these fall leaves, and it will come Saturday. As for binding… Maybe the gold fabric? I don’t know… Yet.

This little quilt is done. It was to be a donation quilt, but I’m holding it for either a family baby or a neighborhood baby. (My neighbor’s baby is due any minute now, and I’ll gift the finished pink quilt when she arrives and will share pictures here on the blog.) All the fun neutral fabrics are so fun.

The backing is a cheddar color from my stash, and the pantograph is “Bayside,” which lays down lovely texture without dense quilting. (When in doubt, pull “Bayside” out.) I used a pale peachy orange from Signature cotton threads, which does not draw attention on the front.

The other little donation quilt is getting its binding sewn down, so a final picture for the blog and my archive will happen soon.

Meanwhile, we have our November block for Tara Faughnan’s Blocks3 six months sewalong. It’s “Garnish,” a curvy orange-peel improv block, though I may make mine via precision cutting. I have a batch of block parts cut in all the colors, so will carve out some play time to try out various combinations.

Here’s Tara’s sample of one idea.

This month’s palette (13 colors) is so pretty too. It’s “dustier” than I would normally choose these days, but rich and very “Tara Faughnan.” I love it.

Of course, as usual, Tara has given us MANY ways to manipulate this block and the colors involved.

Quilty “play” is…everything. So fun!

Well, That Was Fun!

I’ve been playing with Tara Faughnan’s Blocks3 month 1 block for 5 or 6 days.

Here are my “Crosswalk” versions–made with Tara’s palette for this month.

As usual, Tara gives us MANY different ways to think about shape, proportions, and color use.

Note that I hand quilted some of the blocks I put on stretched canvas–a practice I learned last year in the Blocks2 class. And a little water sprayed on the far right canvas in the first picture below will erase the clamp marks.

And–note that the block on the right is an alternate setting method that has also ONE background color :

Two blocks went into the developing improv quilt on the design wall:

(The blocks on the bottom are for a different project.)

I think I’m done for this month now. But boy was this block fun!

Now, the leaves are calling for Rachel LaBour’s “Under the Maple Tree” sewalong. As is the small quilt that needs to go on the longarm.

Quilty Update: Late October 2025

BUT FIRST!!!

I saw my first Tea Olive shrub in bloom. It’s an orange one. They also come in white. This plant comes to us from Asia.

The fragrance is just heavenly–like apricots. I just stood in front of it and…smelled. The official name is Osmanthus fragrans…with further identifications based on family species.

I’ve been obsessed with Rachel LaBour’s “Under the Maple Tree” sewalong. I’ve made a lot of progress, too.

That picture could be…brighter. I took it last night. Now I’m down to making more leaves, moving around blocks, and sewing everything together. In other words, there is a long way to go–25 or so leaves, for one thing. Boy is this one chewing up scraps. I love this 8-inch leaf block. It is so fun to make.

This as yet nameless little neutral “Stacks” quilt–a Tara Faughnan pattern from season 2 of The Color Collective years–is off the longarm, trimmed, bound, and has its binding installed. So I have night sewing once more. It’s so cute.

I’m running out of October days to also play with Tara Faughnan’s October Blocks 3 block, “Crosswalk.” Here’s where I am now. There is also a block “in progress” at my sewing machine.

The block on the right is going into that improv quilt growing on the design wall. It will be such a nice fit with those blocks.

And the other finished “Crosswalk” block is now installed on a 10-inch stretched canvas:

There are so, so, so many ways to manipulate this block idea and so many colors with which to play in this month’s palettes. My two finished blocks are made from the brighter fabrics; the in-process block uses some of the duller/softer colors.

Today is a beautiful fall day. I’ll walk, and I’ll be able to have my noon dinner on my porch.

Life is good.

Rainy Days Sewing

Who was the person whining about no rain and a drought in recent months?

Yep, that was me.

My prayers have now been answered as we have gotten 12 inches of rain in my little rain gauge from Wednesday to Sunday night.

So, I….sewed.

I had a happy little retreat right here in my house.

The pink gift quilt for my backdoor neighbors’ baby girl is getting its binding sewn down. Said baby girl is due around Thanksgiving and is a first child. Our neighborhood is now full of young children and lots of new babies and young children–all of which I find delightful.

I’ve named this quilt “Girls in Trees” due to the Heather Ross print on the back with which I’ve fallen in love.

The low-volume donation “Stacks’ quilt top from Tara Faughnan’s first “The Color Collective” year (2019) is on the longarm and is waiting for me. I found a bright orange fabric in my stash for this quilt and the rusty orange fabric in some of the triangles on the front will be the binding–and it is made and ready.

The donation quilt made from a Bonnie Hunter free pattern called “Patches and Pinwheels” is done. Boy did it use up a lot of my 2-inch blocks in that bin of blocks which get cut as I finish a quilt project. I’m organizing a backing from my stash: those backing pieces are cut but not yet sewn together.

The six new placemats–also made from that 2-inch bin of blocks–are done. I hand quilted the bindings. BUT, our Patchwork Gals president Patti Gramling and quilter Rick Sanchez have released the video they made of how to sew down binding on a quilt. Patti’s work is the best I’ve ever seen with this method. Here’s the Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3UoCPmPuV4

These gift placemats all have the same backing, which works really well with them and uses up more of that very big pattern.

Here’s my first attempt at Tara Faughnan’s Blocks3 online class–using her palette for this month’s “Crosswalk” block. It will go into the in-process improv quilt on the design wall. Next I’ll make a version with narrower pieces as these seem a little fat to me. The object here is to play with color and with the fabric sizes in terms of pattern width, height, and so forth. Play is…everthing…in this online course.

BUT, BUT, BUT–I have been totally obsessed with working on Rachel LaBour’s Sewalong using her newly developed “Under the Maple Tree” pattern. I cleared the area on the left of the design wall, and this is happening.

Along the way I realized which rulers I could use (or in one case NOT use) while making these blocks–and that was fun too. Well, sort of… I have had to make a zillion half-square triangles for the leaves and for those tiny gold triangles in that “Breeze” block on the border. Part of the bigger gold “Sunlight” block is a Cat’s Cradle block–so using that ruler makes quick work of those units.

Here’s a picture of Rachel’s first quilt. She is now working on a second one using very different colors. My quilt uses her background fabric (Tilda’s Soft Teal) and the gold accent fabric (Free Spirit’s “Spark Gold” by Denyse Schmidt) as I loved them at first sight.

Today will be a short sewing day due to other commitments.

Bah! Humbug!

LOL, I’ll survive. It’s good to interrupt…obsessions.