Did you know that there is a monthly color challenge hosted by Patterns By Jen?
It’s totally okay if you didn’t, because you know now! Every month Jen will release a free block pattern download in a specific color. This year’s colors are spice inspired!
For April, we are looking at Nigella Seeds and the color black.
I had some black Kona Sheen fabric in my stash and a nice grey to go with it. I hope the sheen shines in these photos for you, it’s hard to capture.
This block is a great way to learn how to spin your seams. It helps decrease the bulk in the seam allowances.
When it comes to my quilts, black is either featured or not in there at all. I don’t know why, I just did a look back at my quilts to see where I used it and that’s what I found.
It is featured in my improv piece, Glitch. This actually started out where the quilt colorway was the strips of color you see in here and then flipped to black and white with the colors as accents.
This is Focus, an honorable mention winner from the Great Wisconsin Quilt Show. It is all black and white.
Check out these bloggers who are also working on the April monthly color challenge!
Two weeks back, Cassandra of The (Not So) Dramatic Life and I asked all our followers to vote on their favorite colorway for the new Quilt Concert. Independence Day, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and Christmas were our inspirations.
With 58% of the vote, you all have chosen Valentine’s day as my colorway!
Purples, pinks, reds and corals are in my future!! I am looking forward to this!
And just to show that EVERY.VOTE.COUNTS, winning by only 1 vote, All Hallow’s Eve for Cassandra.
Cassandra placed an order for fabrics before we left for the AQS Branson Show. We will be using Painter’s Palette solids from PBS Fabrics. Cassandra will have kits available to purchase if you are feeling Romantic or Spooky! I can’t wait to get home and start cutting!!!
The Quilt Concert will start in June, we are finalizing the pattern, making the quilts, and talking to Sponsors right now. Make sure you follow us and sign up for my newsletter to stay up to date.
Many moons ago I had my second pattern appear in Make Modern Magazine.
It was so thrilling! I was so proud of seeing my design in print AND I had Free Spirit Fabrics supporting me by sending me a Kaffe Fasset Collection line before it appeared in stores.
I was in Heaven.
Today I am thrilled to announce that I’ve reformatted the pattern into my own pattern template and have it available for sale to you as a PDF download!
Rising Star consists of 46 foundation paper pieced star. There is limited fabric waste with this pattern as I give cutting instructions for each section. Knowledge on how to paper piece is expected.
But that’s not all!! While I was working on this pattern I was the Queen Bee for my guild. I asked all my Bee Mates to send me one brightly colored star with low volume background, plus some leftover low volume fabric. From those stars I created this version of Rising Star.
This is now a BONUS layout included in the pattern!! I love the dynamics of this layout so much!
The Rising Star Block finishes at 8″ x 12″ and is easily used to create your own layout for a quilt, or put six of them together to make a pillow case.
The only limit is your imagination!!
Rising Star is now available at Quilt Pattern Mart use code LissaLaunch20 for 20% off everything in my shop this weekend! Sale ends Monday March 14th, so don’t wait!!
So, let’s have a frank discussion about the Intentionally Wonky quilts I just made. There are two versions. Cover Girl, which has the green background, and Sew Good, which has the pink background.
Initially these quilts were going to be sent off to Alloway Quilting and have an edge to edge quilting motif. I hadn’t put much thought or research into what the design would be, but I was sure about having Penny quilt them.
Then I finished Cover Girl. I took a good look at her and decided I want to enter her into Quilt Shows. So that meant *I* had to quilt her. (and this is me talking, other quilters will have their quilts finished by long-armers and enter them into shows and that is okay, just not my style.)
In my opinion, the best way to figure out what I desire is to start chatting it up with friends. Everything on Cover Girl came out of a conversation with me and two friends. I started describing some of what I was looking for, mainly quilting that could be done with a walking foot, and they started throwing back ideas at me.
I used three thread colors in Cover Girl; orange, pink and green. My teal triangle remained unquilted. If the line I quilted added to the “wonkiness” it was quilted, if not quilting worked then it was not quilted.
I stitched in the ditch around each triangle and then echo quilted more triangles in the inner part. The pink triangles each got three lines, while the orange ones got whatever I felt like quilting. Some have as little as two and some go up to four or five.
For the green background I created some “ghost quilting.” What that means is that I quilted the same motif that I did in the triangles, but just in the background. These motifs float around the background and sometimes aren’t complete as they are “behind” and actual triangle block.
I then chose three directions of lines at weird angles and quilted them across the background. These lines stop at the triangle blocks and the ghost quilting and sometimes at a line going in the other directing. The spacing of the lines was randomly generated by a random number generator. 1 meant 1/4″, 2 meant 1/2″, three was 3/4″, and four was a full inch away.
I truly thought this quilting was going to take me 4 days! HA!!!! It took me 11. I am so bad at estimating time.
So now, here I am with the Sew Good version and I am tired!!! I am keeping it easy with this one. One color thread that matches the background. I use the same thread in the bottom even though the backing fabric is a dark blue. It doesn’t bother me that the thread shows up.
I completed a quick stitch in the ditch around all the triangles. I don’t want to quilt inside them and detract from the fabric. But I may do some fun hand quilting in them as time goes on.
I had planned on a simple meander all in the background, but became tempted to do a meander with a 5 petal flower thrown in, along with some loops. I am loving it! I find a meander type quilting to be meditative and relaxing, with the exception that it makes all my muscles in my shoulders and arms cry. LOL! I look forward to some downtime after Quiltcon this week to finish it up.
So, if these were *your* quilts, how would you desire them to be quilted?
I’ve been a long time fan of Deborah Fisher of Fish Museum and Circus. I’m a proud owner of one of her hand made pincushions (really, are you surprised?) I recently heard she was coming out with a fabric line and I jumped at the chance to be part of the blog hop to introduce it.
The SEW GOOD fabrics are SEW FUN!!! It features sewing notions, fabric specifically designed for binding, and the focus fabrics are based on her head pin cushions. LOVE!
One day as I was scrolling through the Fish Museum and Circus site I came across this sticker, Intentionally Wonky.
It called to me. I can be pretty anal when designing and creating a quilt. Could I design one that was intentionally wonky?
Yup.
Flying Geese is a great block to go wonky with. Honestly making them perfect can drive me up the wall, so I absolutely love that they go every which way in this quilt. And they are nice and large geese, perfect to show off these great fabrics.
Now let’s talk about color. The colors in this line are THEEEEEEEE juiciest colors, I love the way the darkest navy all the way to the brightest green and yellow just pop so brightly against the pink background. Delicious!
AAANND, I cannot wait to get my hands on Deborah’s new pincushion patterns for this line (I mean did you expect any less from me?) And those Sewing Fairies!! Seriously, anyone want me to start a swap? Too cute.
Now back to the quilt. Do you like it? I’ve made it into a pattern if you do!! The quilt is paper pieced and does require knowledge on how to paper piece. I have it available for sale at Quilt Pattern Mart.
