Stonefields Sawtooth Stars, Blocks 1-4, + Flying Geese Ruler Roundup

I present to you Sawtooth Stars, Blocks 1-4 of my NewFO project "Stonefields" by Susan Smith.  Ta da!  These blocks will finish at 6" square.

Stonefields Sawtooth Star Blocks 1-4, 6 inch finished

It took me the better part of two days to piece these four blocks because I decided to foundation paper piece them.  In hindsight, I'm not sure that was the best use of time.  I mean, the pattern instructions told me to piece these blocks by hand, and that probably would have been faster than the way I machine pieced them when all was said and done!

I printed my paper piecing foundation patterns on newsprint for a 6" finished sawtooth star block from EQ8 software, then used the software to print rough templates for cutting onto card stock (not pictured and definitely a waste of time because it was just triangles and squares, DUH!).  

Oversize Precut Patches, Foundation Patterns + Supplies, Ready to FPP

March Madness (NOT Basketball!): New Tilda Fabric + Stonefields Quilts for Nanette (and for Rebecca)

Today I'm sharing Nanette's Stonefields quilt that I quilted for her in January of 2023.  This was one of fourteen quilt tops (out of a stack of many more!) that she had originally planned to quilt herself and had been feeling guilty about leaving unfinished -- you know, like quilters do!  With health challenges multiplying and the stack of quilts not getting any smaller, she decided to scale back some of that self-imposed pressure by having some of the quilts professionally long arm quilted by me.  

Nanette passed away suddenly a week ago, and that got me looking back through photos of her quilts again and thinking about how glad I am to have helped her achieve the satisfaction of seeing and enjoying her gorgeous quilts as finishes.

Nanette's 65 x 65 (Modified) Stonefields Quilt with Filigree E2E Quilting

First things first, let's credit the pattern designer.  Stonefields is an original pattern by Australian quilter Susan Smith, which she was commissioned to make by Paramount Studios for a film that was shot in Ireland.  I have no idea which film; what I've shared with you is all the info I was able to squeeze out of the World Wide Web!  Stonefields is a sampler quilt combining appliqué with EPP (English Paper Piecing) and machine piecing, and Nanette shared that this was the most expensive pattern she ever purchased and that made her feel even more pressure to have a finished quilt to show for what she'd invested in it.  

So, I know what some of you are thinking -- edge-to-edge quilting over hand stitched appliqué?!  I know, I know.  Nanette's original plan was to hand quilt this one, but she realized that she had more quilt tops that "deserved" hand quilting than she would ever be able to complete in her lifetime.  Custom machine quilting was outside of her own skill set and beyond her budget, especially considering the number of tops she wanted to finish all at once.  And so she sent Stonefields to me, and I recommended the simple loops of the Filigree allover quilting design.

That Bunny Rabbit Is My Favorite!

With this quilt, it was really important that the appliqué and patchwork should be the star of the show and the quilting should just be a supporting element.  

New Fabric, New Project (Maybe): Scrappy Celebration Quilt in Tilda Prints and Solids

Good morning and Happy Thursday from sunny Naples, Florida!  🌞. I’m in limbo right now, moved out of our old house in Charlotte, North Carolina, but we don’t close on our new house here in Naples, Florida until next Tuesday the 20th.  My entire fabric stash, all of my rotary cutting tools and rulers, and all of my current works in progress are packed up in boxes that have not yet been delivered, but I do have access to my AccuQuilt GO! fabric cutter and all of my dies, my Bernina 475QE and my vintage 1935 Singer Featherweight 221 sewing machines, my travel iron, Best Press, and a tabletop ironing mat, and a bolt of Moda Bella Solid fabric in Off White.  These items traveled to Florida with me in my car so I have them in our temporary housing situation.  My husband is abandoning me for a couple of days for a business trip to Ft. Lauderdale, so I decided to self-medicate my moving jitters with a quick fabric shopping trip to my new LQS/Bernina & Baby Lock dealer, Flash Sew & Quilt.

New Tilda Precuts for Scrappy Celebration Quilt (Maybe)

I know, I know — if there’s one thing a quilter becomes acutely aware of when packing for a household move, it’s how much more fabric she already owns than she could ever reasonably use within her lifetime…  But medical science is making advances every day, and the cost of fabric keeps going up, so I’m rationalizing that I am wisely buying fabric while it’s still affordable, before global warming makes the planet too hot to grow cotton anymore, and I need to buy enough of it in case scientists cure everything and I am still here quilting away in my 200s.  Ahem.

In all seriousness, though, I was judicious with my purchases.  I bought precuts because they will be easier to manage with my GO! cutter on a kitchen table than yardage, and I didn’t want to buy enough for a whole new quilt, just enough to give me something to cut up and sew back together again for stress relief over the next couple of weeks until I get my hands on the rest of my stash.  I bought a fat quarter bundle of Tilda Solids and several fat eighth bundles of the newer Tilda print collections that I don’t already own, knowing that I have bundles and scraps of older Tilda prints (leftover from my Halo quilt) that will coordinate with the new stuff.  I also bought myself a pair of fabric scissors (the purple handled micro serrated Karen Kay Buckley Perfect Scissors) so I can rough-cut my Bella Solid Off White yardage and my fat quarters before running them through the die cutter, and I bought some pins and a spool of neutral Aurifil 50/2 cotton thread because I’m pretty sure both of my travel machines are current threaded with the dark navy I was using for my Deco quilt.  (Side note: TOTAL BUMMER that I packed my Deco Quilt and my FrankenWhiggish Rose projects in boxes and loaded them into the moving pod, because either of those projects would have been ideal to work on right now).  

The quilt you see on my iPad in the photo above is Scrappy Celebrations by Lissa Alexander for American Patchwork & Quilting, and it was a quilt along project in 2023.  I haven’t purchased the pattern and don’t intend to — I like the idea of mixing up a variety of 9-patch and 4-patch blocks but I’m not interested in making the exact quilt, and I definitely don’t need any instructions for such simple blocks.  I’m sure the pattern instructions call for rotary cutting and strip piecing anyway, which I won’t be doing since I don’t have any of those tools available right now.  

You know what else I don’t have access to right now?  My computer!  I’m writing this post on my iPad right now and it’s really annoying.  I am missing my big desktop monitor where I can do photo editing and have multiple windows open for adding links etc.  And by the way, my email subscription service is still paused (need to work some kinks out with that) so that’s why this post wasn’t delivered to your in-box even if you’ve subscribed to receive my blog posts that way.  Honestly I don’t know when I’m going to have time to deal with that, so please check here on the blog from time to time for new posts.  Thanks for understanding.

I hope you’re all sewing and quilting up a storm wherever you are today!  I’ll be linking up today’s post with the following linky parties:

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

TUESDAY

To-Do Tuesday at Quilt Schmilt  

WEDNESDAY

Midweek Makers at Quilt Fabrication

Wednesday Wait Loss at The Inquiring Quilter

THURSDAY

Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation  

FRIDAY

Peacock Party at Wendy’s Quilts and More

Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? at Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Finished or Not Friday at Alycia Quilts

Off the Wall Friday at Nina Marie Sayre

Beauty Pageant at From Bolt to Beauty

 TGIFF Thank Goodness It’s Finished Friday, rotates, schedule found here: TGIF Friday

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

Another Fresh Start On My Horizon: A Halo Quilt for Marlies

 Good morning, quilters!  Despite waking up to a muddy, rainy day here in Charlotte, I am in a sunshine mood today.  I think I may have finally figured out how to get my blog posts to automatically email to all of you wonderful people who have signed up for my email subscription!  Woo hoo!  Any of you who are not signed up for email but would like to be, just scroll to the bottom of my web site to find the signup box.  In case anyone else out there has been having a similar problem, here are the boring technical details: The RSS feed generator I'd been using successfully with that free email subscription service for years (can't even remember the name of it now!) and then with MailChimp created an RSS feed with slightly different tag names than the ones my new SendinBlue service is looking for when it checks my blog for new content.  The tags that were incorrect were "Published" instead of "pubDate" and "Content" instead of "Description," and SendinBlue's tech support identified that problem for me and directed me to a different website that would generate a new RSS feed with the universal RSS tags that their robots look for when they check my site for a new blog post.  The reason those awful blank emails were going out with just a header, a post title, and a footer, with no photos and no text, is that the SendinBlue robots were finding a new blog post title but couldn't "see" any of the text or photos when it wasn't associated with the tag name "Description" that they were looking for.  Clear as mud, right?  Anyway, I've been going back and forth with tech support about this and pulling my hair out over it for three months now, so it will be a huge relief to me if it's finally fixed.  The test email that I sent to myself last night came through correctly, so fingers crossed that THIS blog post shows up in everyone's inbox complete with text and photos, too!

But no one came here to talk about RSS feeds and computer bots, did they?  

Another NewFO for Rebecca: Halo Quilt by Jen Kingwell

I know I just posted last week about starting a new challenge project (the upcoming Star Upon Stars QAL from Laundry Basket Quilts), but the fabric and templates haven't shown up in my mailbox yet and the quilt along doesn't kick off until the middle of next week.  Meanwhile, my restless heart fell under the spell of a more intermediate quilt that will go together faster for me, one that involves curved piecing that I enjoy and find satisfying.  This is all the fault of my client Megan, by the way, because she's going to be starting this quilt in a class at the Quilt Patch shop in Matthews at the end of March and she tempted me with photos of a quilt that is way too adorable to refuse.  I'm also blaming Teresa, the Quilt Temptress who is teaching this class and who has been sharing photos of the gorgeous Halo quilt she made as a sample!  Teresa's class is already full and has a wait list, but I have a feeling she'll be teaching it again in the future.  As for me, I have a constitutional inability to follow directions anyway, so I'll be diving in on this one totally unsupervised.

Halo Pattern, Templates, and Tilda Pie In the Sky Fabric Bundles

If you're local to the Charlotte area and you'd like to make a Halo quilt of your own, Quilt Patch Fabrics in Matthews has both the Jenny From One Block pattern booklet and the optional acrylic template set for sale in their shop.  I purchased my Halo pattern booklet and my Tilda Pie In the Sky fabrics from the fabulous Flash Sew and Quilt shop in Naples, Florida while I was there visiting my in-laws, and I'll be making my Halo quilt as a gift for my mother-in-law Marlies.  

New Year, New Ambitions, and New Applique Projects for Rebecca!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!  Have you made big plans or resolutions for 2022?  Will you be Eating Less Junk Food, Drinking More Water, Spending Less Money, Achieving Self-Actualization and Becoming One With the Universe?  Or are you mustering your willpower behind resolutions like No New Projects Until the Old Ones are Finished, or Only Using Fabric that you Already Own?  If those are your goals for 2022, I'll be cheering you along from the sidelines but I won't be joining you in your Year of Austerity.  Two years into the Plague, I've had enough of deprivation and restrictions and my New Year's Resolutions are all about MORE instead of less.  More creative challenges, more learning new skills and honing existing ones, and more shopping to support small businesses: local quilt shops, mom-and-pop online sellers, and all of the talented designers whose fabric lines, quilt patterns, and digital quilting designs send so much beauty and inspiration out into a bleak world!

Rebecca's New Applique Projects for 2022:

With that in mind, I've resolved to start THREE of Sarah Fielke's challenging year-long BOM (Block of the Month) projects involving extensive handwork, lots of variety, and excuses to buy more fabric (and cut into plenty of the scraps and yardage already in my stash).  Mwahahaha!

A few weeks ago, I asked y'all to weigh in and help me decide which of these three Sarah Fielke BOM reruns I should join in 2022, and I was hoping your collective feedback would help me to pick one.  Well, that didn't happen!  There was no clear preference for one project, and I am drawn to different aspects of each one.  What I like about all three projects, and what I like about designer Sarah Fielke's style in general, is their playfulness and whimsy -- like beautiful children's book illustrations that captivate a child's imagination.  The techniques are challenging and involve a lot of hand stitching, but the style is just plain cheerful and fun.  I need some FUN in 2022!  If any of you want to join me (and thousands of other quilters around the world) with one of these projects, you still have time to sign up on Sarah's web site here.  The first patterns won't be released until January 31st, so you still have time to pick your project and get your fabrics together!

I'm planning to use lots of scraps and fat quarter yardage from my stash for these three quilts, so the easiest way to ensure that they don't end up looking all alike is to use very different background fabrics for each one.  To that end, I made a quest to one of my favorite Not-Quite-Local Quilt Shops a few days ago, Sew Much Fun in Lowell, NC.

Supporting Local Businesses by Purchasing Way More Fabric Than I Need

Yes, my plan was to just buy yardage for the background fabrics and alternate block fabrics for Happy Days and Simple Folk, and yardage for the center medallion and borders of Down the Rabbit Hole.  As you see in the photo above, I also bought half yard cuts of a bunch of other fabrics that caught my eye, to be cut up for the appliqué and pieced blocks.  It's a good thing I got to the shop 45 minutes before they closed, because I kept finding more and MORE fabrics while they were cutting the ones I'd already picked out...  I was like a toddler in the grocery checkout, grabbing candy bars and tossing them in the cart while mom isn't looking!

The Bachelorette, BOM Edition, But With a Married Quilter Bachelorette Who Just Can't Decide...

Y'all, I need HELP!!!  Australian pattern designer Sarah Fielke is relaunching her popular BOM (Block Of the Month) programs from previous years, ALL of them, running simultaneously in 2022.  I have admired her designs for several years but have never done one of them before, and I can't decide between three of them.  So I am going to show you the three BOM quilts, and then I am asking you to help me decide by either commenting here on the blog, or if you get my blog posts as an emailed newsletter, you can just hit reply to that email.  If any of you are planning to join one of these BOMs for next year, please let me know -- I'd love to have "virtual company" on the journey!

Down the Rabbit Hole (BOM from 2017)

Okay, here is Bachelor BOM Number One, the first of Sarah's patterns to catch my eye because I am totally smitten by the huge folk art style rabbits in the outer borders.  They remind me of William Morris and The Velveteen Rabbit and the fable about the Tortoise and the Hare:

Down the Rabbit Hole by Sarah Fielke, BOM from 2017

Happy Days (BOM from 2016)

Bachelor BOM Number Two would be sure to hold my interest over the year because it involves such a great variety of techniques and skill challenges.  Do you see the sweet singing birdie with the sixteenth note to indicate that he's singing?  There is appliqué, English Paper Piecing, Hawaiian appliqué in this project...  Never a dull moment and only Happy Days with Bachelor Number Two!

Happy Days by Sarah Fielke, BOM from 2016

Kick-Starting the Kaleidoscope Quilt

Son-the-Younger's high school graduation quilt has begun!  And it's SOOO exciting!

In the photo above, the isosceles triangles have not yet been sewn together into an octagon, but I just loved the way the strippy pieced triangles came out and had to snap a picture.  This idea was born of necessity, because I didn't pay attention to the size of the hand dyed fabric pieces in the assortments I ordered from Marjorie Lee Bevis on Etsy and I do not have enough of any one of them to cut four identical 5" x 6" triangles out of any one fabric.  Bummer -- but also opportunity for inventive solutions!  I cut two different marbled fabric pieces into four strips each, then pieced them with strings of Kaffe Fassett, a green batik, and a strip of Tula Pink spots that was trimmed away from leftover quilt backing, all from my overflowing scrap bins, and then I layered for of these me-made string fabrics over my AccuQuilt 5" x 6" Isosceles triangle die to get two different sets of pieced triangles for my kaleidoscope blocks.

My GO! cutter did not appreciate me cramming four layers of pieced fabric with stacked seam allowances through at once, and it was really hard to turn the crank handle -- but it cut them cleanly and without breaking anything...  So I'll be doing that again!

First New-FO of 2021: Kaleidoscope Grad Quilt for Anders

Alright you guys, I know you've heard me sing this song before, but THIS time I mean it.  THIS is the quilt I'm making for Son-the-Younger's upcoming high school graduation:

77 x 99 Kaleidoscope Quilt in Blues, Greens, and Purple

Some of you are raising your eyebrows at this, recalling my previous announcement about a year ago that I would be making Anders a version of Karen Kay Stone's spectacular Cinco de Mayo quilt for his graduation, but that idea has been abandoned for the following reasons:

1. Graduation is only 5 months away, and I have customer quilt commitments that will demand my attention in addition to my own ongoing projects.
2. While I still love the elaborately foundation paper pieced New York Beauty blocks in Karen's design, I know that all of those seams add up to a stiffness that is fine for a wall display quilt, but not so soft and snuggly to sleep under.
3. It bothered me that the New York Beauty blocks were too similar to the curved flying geese arcs in my older son Lars's high school graduation quilt, and I wanted Anders' quilt to be completely different.
4. Most importantly, I think, is that I just don't want to devote such a significant block of time to recreating a version of someone else's design right now.

So I may (or may not) end up making a quilt like Cinco de Mayo someday, but it's not going to be Anders' graduation quilt.

SANTA SQUIRREL! I Need to Make a Christmas Throw Quilt, and I Need to Do It TODAY!

 

Today is the Drop-Everything-And-Make-It linky party at MMM Quilts, which is the perfect excuse (as if I needed one) to give in to the "squirrel" of an idea that's been chasing me around for the past few days!  I've seen so many cute Christmas quilts over the years, but have never had a strong urge to make a holiday-themed quilt before this year.  Maybe it's the pandemic, maybe it's the adorable snowflake E2E quilting designs that I'm dying to try out with R2D2, who knows -- but the squirrel won't leave me alone until I swap out the year-round throws that grace my sofa for something red, green, and scrappy, full of nostalgic and happy Christmas prints.

I didn't have as many Christmas novelty fabrics in my stash as I thought I did, so I had to trek out to two different quilt shops to come up with this assortment:

Assorted Squirrel Project Fabrics, With Neglected Sampler Blocks as a Backdrop

My mom just finished piecing another scrappy tumbler charity top for me to quilt, using my 4" AccuQuilt GO! Tumbler die.  It looks very similar to this one that I quilted a few weeks ago:

Charity Quilt Made With AccuQuilt 4" Tumbler Die

Isn't it cute?  I'm always surprised how quickly these come together.  It only took me an hour or two to cut out all of the tumblers for this, and my mom had the top sewn together in two days.  I need to make more projects like that, y'all, instead of only making quilts that take 6 months to 7 years to finish.  I went to the quilt shop planning to make a throw quilt just like this one, but with solid red fabric in place of the purple and Christmas prints instead of the juvenile novelty prints.

But when I got to the quilt shop, I was delighted to discover that they had a 6" AccuQuilt Tumbler die.  Bigger tumbler patches means fewer tumblers need to be cut out and fewer seams needed to sew them all together!  

57 x 72 Quilt Design Using 6 inch AccuQuilt Tumbler Die

Using the 6" tumbler die instead of the 4", I can get a 57" x 72" quilt top out of just 78 red tumblers and 78 prints.  Not sure if I'll match my seams as shown above or if I'll go with my mom's staggered layout, which gives a nifty chevron/ricrac effect.  This layout was fastest to draw up in my EQ8 quilt design software, and my primary objective was to quickly calculate how many tumblers I'd need to cut out.  (I won't be doing those partial tumbler slivers along the sides, either -- instead, I'll trim the edges to the narrow point on the final full tumbler).  

I haven't decided on the backing fabric yet, although I do have a couple of appropriately Christmasy fabrics in sufficient quantity in my stash.  I'd almost like to back it with a minky cuddle fleece to make it extra warm and snuggly, but that would mean another trip to the store...

Oh, and here's another DREAMI project that I stopped everything to make earlier this month, the one I MEANT to be sharing for today's linky:

My Notorious R.B.G. version of Preeti's International Sisters Block

Once I got the idea in my head to make a "Notorious R.B.G." version of Preeti's International Sisters block, I was helpless to resist!  First, I drafted a foundation paper piecing pattern in EQ8 to change the head wrap of the International Sisters block into Justice Ginsburg's no-nonsense, swept-back hairstyle and the crown that she wears in all of the memes.  The solid black, skin tone, brown hair, metallic gold crown, and floral background fabrics were all pulled from the stash, but I had to hunt down the perfect fabrics to appliqué for her glasses and her dissent collar on the Internet and then wait ever so (im)patiently for them to arrive.  It was a fun little diversion, for sure!  The glasses, collar and "jade" earrings are all hand stitched needle turn appliqué.  If you want to read more about that one, check out this post.  

And that's all you get from me today!  We started putting up Christmas decorations yesterday so there are boxes and debris from that strewn all over the house, and a few gifts that I've ordered have already started to arrived and are wrapped and ready to stick under the tree as soon as I locate the tree skirt.  This year more than ever, the song that's stuck on repeat in my brain is "We Need a Little Christmas" from Auntie Mame!

Rosalind Russell as Auntie Mame

In addition to Sandra's DREAMI linky, I'm also linking up with the following weekly linky parties:

SATURDAY

UFO Busting at Tish in Wonderland

SUNDAY

Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

MONDAY

Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

In Which I Shamelessly Flaunt My CCD: Compulsive Creative Disorder

My Math quilt remains untouched on my longarm frame (perhaps today or tomorrow?).  My Tabby Mountain quilt remains on my design wall, since I had to order a couple Kaffe Fassett prints to replace the creepy Cat Eyes fabric (maybe by end of this week, or early next week the fabric will get here?).  I don't feel like making a pineapple block right now, I'm bored with my eight identical in-progress Frankenwhiggish Rose applique blocks, and I'm not in the right mood to finish the Jingle BOM applique top or to make more Farmer's Wife blocks or clam shells or to start any of my one patch project ideas.  But I was just over on Esther Aliu's blog and saw her free BOM applique project for 2018, Queen's Garden.  I am in love.  Not too easy, not too difficult, not too repetitive, and perfect for all my bright, splashy scraps of fabric.  I HAVE TO MAKE THIS QUILT!

Queen's Garden, 70 x 70 Free BOM by Esther Aliu

I have been reading on the Internet, folks, and it has come to my attention that an awful lot of quilters out there have an awful lot more projects-in-progress than I do.  You can call them WIPs (Works In Progress), UFOs (UnFinished Objects), or Proof of Mom's Poor Work Ethic (what my son Anders calls MY projects-in-progress), but I'm pretty sure that it's not an actual SIN to start a new project before finishing an old one.  And if it IS a sin, well, at least it's not a MORTAL sin.  Certainly nothing I need to confess in church and pray for forgiveness, right?  

You know, as I'm thinking about it, God Himself, the Creator of the Universe, has more WIPs than anyone.  Every human being on this planet is a WIP and UNICEF estimates that over 350,000 new babies (God's new projects) are being born every day.  

Infrared Portrait of God's WIPs and NewFOs in the Small Magellanic Cloud, Credit: ESO/ESA/JPL-Caltech/NASA/D. Gouliermis (MPIA) et al.

The Earth itself is a WIP, and the Universe is a WIP with new stars being born before all the old stars have burned out...  The picture above from Science Daily is of a dwarf galaxy near the Milky Way.  The blue areas show God's WIPs (stars that have been around awhile, but haven't yet burned out) and the red dots are all brand new stars being born, like so many new projects going on simultaneously in the heavens.  When I read in the Bible that we were created in God's image, to me that means God created us to BE creators.  

And so, based on this new Quilter's Theology that I have just invented (you're welcome), there is no such thing as Quilt Guilt because we were MADE to work on lots of different projects at once and to be CONSTANTLY STARTING NEW PROJECTS even though our other projects aren't finished yet, just like all those new babies being born and all those red dots in the Small Magellan Cloud dwarf galaxy.

Which just shows you the lengths that I am willing to go in order to justify my reckless decision to add YET ANOTHER new project, when all the other quilters on the Internet are making resolutions to finish what they've already started!  Hah!  But seriously -- this is my HOBBY.  It's supposed to be fun and it's supposed to be relaxing.  If I'm having fun and I'm relaxing, it doesn't matter if I EVER finish a quilt.  Finished quilts are happy accidents that occasionally happen in my studio, not regular occurrences or obligations.

Join me on the Dark Side, Ladies and Gentlemen -- and start a NEW project today!  Might I suggest Esther's new applique BOM?

Today I'm linking up with:

• ·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts http://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com  
• ·       Main Crush Monday at Cooking Up Quilts http://www.cookingupquilts.com/
• ·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/
• ·    Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework: https://quiltingismorefunthanhousework.blogspot.com
• BOMs Away at Katie Mae Quilts: https://www.katiemaequilts.com
• Moving it Forward at Em’s Scrap Bag: http://emsscrapbag.blogspot.com.au/

A Disco Kitty Followed Me Home: Tabby Road by Tula Pink for FreeSpirit Fabrics

I don't normally post about fabric collections.  I don't do any advertising or sponsorships, and I'm not trying to sell you anything.  But I'm totally smitten with Tula Pink's Tabby Road collection for FreeSpirit Fabrics, especially the Disco Kitty and Cat Snacks prints.

Tula Pink's Tabby Road Collection for FreeSpirit Fabrics

Most of you know that we're dog people at my house (Rottweillers are for snuggling.  And for singing), but I have several friends who are cat lovers and these fabrics are just PERFECT for one of my friends in particular, so never mind the yards and yards of hoarded fabric in my studio; never mind that I STILL have not finished organizing what I already have.  I HAVE TO HAVE this Tabby Road fabric, so I ordered it online and while I await its arrival in my mailbox, I played around with some design ideas in EQ7.

Priscilla Blocks

Meh, right?  My first idea was Priscilla blocks, shown above.  I really like how the stripes and dots work with those blocks.  But it feels too busy with so many prints.  If I do something like that, I'm going to need to use some coordinating solids to break up the prints.  But I'm going to wait for my Tabby Road fabrics to arrive first and then match up some solids -- maybe even some from my stash!

After spending way too much time playing with Priscilla blocks, I wanted to see whether a simpler quilt might better showcase these fun novelty prints.  So then I came up with this idea:

I Like This Better!

Those octagons have 2" sides and they are nearly 9 3/4" across, so they would be great for showcasing the kitty prints.  And despite the large pieces, it wouldn't be a total bore to piece this quilt because of all the lovely Y-seams.  Yes, I know I could simplify construction by making on-point snowball blocks instead, but then I'd have seams through the middle of my 4" squares and that would bug me until the end of time.

One more idea -- what if I chopped this collection up into 4" finished clamshells using the Accuquilt GO! Baby die cutter that I got for Christmas?

Tabby Road 4" Clam Shells

That would be cute, and I'm not afraid of the curved piecing, but there are SO MANY of them and I'm looking for something that goes together a bit faster.  Accuquilt does make an 8" finished clam shell die that would be really good for this collection, but I don't have that die (it's not compatible with the GO! Baby cutter, anyway -- only the regular GO! and the Studio GO! cutters).  So it's either 4" clam shells that I could cut out fairly quickly but would take an eternity to piece together, or else I have to print myself a larger tagboard template that I can trace onto my fabric and cut out all of my clamshells with a SCISSORS!  Talk about Old School versus New School! 

I don't know.  I have no business starting a new project right now anyway, with so many works-in-progress and so few FINISHED projects to show for myself.  I'll see how I feel about it once the fabric shows up.

Oh goodness -- How is it 11:06 PM already?!!  Goodnight!  I'm linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.blogspot.com/.