FITF: Film in the Fridge | modern quilts, clothing, fabric, and photos

A smattering of Greenfield Hill

Posted on April 4, 2011

Well, no baby news yet, but I do have a quilt to show you — it’s always a great feeling to finish a quilt! No matter how many I make, I always look forward to pulling a new one from the dryer.

I put off quilting this one for a while since it’s on the larger size (and I was feeling too large to attempt it!). But I finally decided to go for it, and I’m so glad I did – it’s fun to have this one finished!

It’s made up of Denyse Schmidt Greenfield Hill fabrics in the Dogwood palette, along with some Japanese polka dots, some Erin Michael Lush, a bit of Cake Rock Beach and a couple Essex solids.

I made up a bunch of these blocks (which you can see here and here) and then decided to play a bit with the layout, setting the blocks on point and scattering them through the center of this quilt, amidst a sea of Kona Snow.

On the back, I used up most of the leftover printed fabrics to create this stacked strip, bordered on either side with more Kona Snow.

I’ve always loved the look of stacked and staggered blocks, and it’s always been on my list to make a quilt top in this manner. Perhaps looking at this backing will motivate me to finally do that!

(love that random triangle!)

I quilted this one with straight lines, echoing the square blocks – quilting on either side of the narrow sashing. I was hoping to leave it like that, but there was too much space between the quilting lines so I filled in with some additional straight lines through each block. And actually, I like it better like this, so I’m glad it turned out that way.

I made up a scrappy binding using the remaining fabrics, and I love how it looks. Typically I’m more of a solid binding kind of girl, but since there was so much white space around the edges of this quilt, I thought scrappy and printed might work well and I’m pretty pleased with the look!

Definitely looking forward to spending some time on the couch with this one!

big diamond, little diamond – a straight line quilting pattern

Posted on April 1, 2011

Lately I’ve been quilting most of my quilts, especially the smaller ones, with straight line quilting. I love random straight line quilting, like on this quilt, and I’m also quite fond of diagonal quilting, especially with double or triple quilting lines for a little something extra.

I’ve wanted to try something new though, so I was happy when I thought of this little variation (inspired in part by the quilting on this mini quilt by Kate).

I love how these quilting lines intersect in the middle to form one large diamond, along with several little diamonds along the midpoint.

Want to try out this pattern? Here’s what you’ll need:

A quilt ready for quilting (probably easier to do this on a smaller quilt!)
Washable marker (I use Mark B Gone, which I buy at Joann’s)
Walking foot (not required, but certainly helpful when quilting straight lines)
Edge guide, if you have one

(click any image to see it larger if you’d like!)

So here’s my pretend quilt. To start, measure along the long sides of your quilt and use a washable marker to mark the centerpoint of each long side (note: make sure you’ve squared up your quilt so the long sides are equal in length – otherwise this design won’t work out so well). Draw a line across the middle of the quilt, connecting the two points.

Starting from one upper corner, draw a diagonal line from the upper corner to the opposite centerpoint marking. Repeat for each corner, and you should end up with marked lines that look like the ones above.

Stitch along one of your marked lines, creating a sideways ‘V’. Now decide how far apart you’d like your quilting lines. If you have an edge guide for your machine, set the guide at your desired distance. (For the manly baby quilt, I used a distance of 1 1/4″, but this is really up to you.) Use the guide to follow your first stitch line, keeping the needle down when you reach the marked horizontal centerpoint line you drew earlier, and pivoting to continue stitching to the opposite corner. Continue until you’ve filled in this section, as shown in the image above.

[Note: if you don’t have an edge guide, you could instead decide what distance you’d like between your quilting lines, draw them on with a washable marker and stitch along those lines.]

Repeat for the opposite side of the quilt.

You can see how your lines will intersect along the horizontal centerpoint line to create a row of little diamonds (shown in this photo in the solid gray section).

The final part is to fill in the top and bottom triangular sections that are left without any quilting. I opted to echo the triangular shape, using quilting lines that were the same distance apart as in the middle section of the quilt. On the manly baby quilt I left an empty space of 3″ and then started these quilting lines.

I think this is a fun variation on diagonal quilting, and I hope you do too! If there are any questions, leave them in the comments and I’ll answer there.

Posted in Posts about Quilts, Tutorials | Tagged machine quilting, quilting, quilting tutorial, straight line quilting, tutorial | 38 Comments

the manly baby quilt

Posted on March 30, 2011

Thank you all so very much for all the sweet comments on the baby’s room! I really appreciate all the kind words and the well wishes! He still seems content to stay inside, so I guess I get a bit more time for sewing and quilting (or at least that’s my way of putting a positive spin on it!)

This one is one you’ve seen a few times, so perhaps it won’t be very exciting. My sister stopped over the other day and when I showed her the finished quilt, all she could say was “blah, boring, seen it”. And indeed, these blocks have been up on our design wall for what seems like forever. I just looked back, and it looks like I pulled fabrics for this quilt back in 2009, and made these blocks up in early 2010. I had big plans to make this a queen sized quilt with the blocks set on point. But of course, as you can see, time passed and I got busy with other things. I ended up setting other blocks on point, so I no longer felt the need to do so with this quilt.

Anyway, long story… not very interesting. The other day I decided that I should just sew together the 20 blocks I had into a baby quilt. Since this was always called the ‘manly quilt’, now it’s known as the ‘manly baby quilt’. This one is a mix of Denyse Schmidt Hope Valley, several solids, a bit of Flea Market Fancy, some Kei Honeycomb dots and a little Joel Dewberry. (I used the same fabrics for our throw pillows too)

And I’m actually very happy with it as a baby quilt, not only because I can finally call it finished. I know I said I wasn’t going to make any more quilts for the baby, but I guess I lied. Add this one to the pile!

For the backing I used pieces of the remaining fabrics, sewn together into a bit of a strip pattern (yes, made during my strip quilt phase!)

I really like the wider strips as a backing, and once again, the use of many solids really lets you see the quilting design. (or rather, it would have, had I gotten a better photo!)

I played around with some straight line quilting on this one, and I quite like the pattern. Unfortunately you can’t really tell from these sunny photos what the quilting looks like. There are areas with just straight lines, and then a section where the lines cross to create a diamond pattern. It’s always fun to play around with something a bit different! (If anyone’s really interested, let me know – I could probably draw up a little diagram to show the quilting pattern!)