Red Stars at Night

Quilt Documentation #182

Red Stars at Night

Quilts for Christmas

My personal quilting challenge for 2014 was to make a quilt for each one of my six grandchildren.

Red Stars at Night was made for Matthew, a 25 year old bachelor who owns his own home. His living room colour scheme is black and white with red accents.

Judy Laquidara's February Scrappy Challenge Block was perfect for this quilt.

I placed the blocks on point and filled in with plain black on point squares.  The four-patches were all made with brown or black prints and white-on-white, white beige or grey prints 

Here's a close-up of one of the blocks:

Red Stars at Night - block

I used flannel with a snowflake design on the back.

Red Stars at Night - back

plain grid quilting in-the-ditch

label and binding

By the way, he's my oldest grandson and the one who gave me my "grandma" name.  When he started talking he called me Samma and it has stuck to this day with all the grandkids.

Matt with Red Stars at Night.

Linking to The Needle & Thread Network.

Happy Quilting,

Terry 

DOCUMENTATION:

Quilt Name: Red Stars at Night

Description: 12 pieced star blocks set on point with plain black squares

Pattern: Judy Laquidara's February Scrappy Challenge 

Block Size: 60" x 76"

Fabrics: 100% cotton

Predominant colours: Black, neutrals, white

Construction Techniques: pieced

Back: flannel

Batting: Warm and Natural 80/20

Edge finish: Double fold french binding

Quilting: Free motion quilted on Domestic Machine, diagonal grid in- the-ditch

Quilted by: Terry Whyte

Sleeve: no

Label: yes

Date completed:  2014

Inspiration: Judy Laquidara's Challenge Quilt 

History: Display at the Kirkland Lake Mile of Gold 2014 Quilters' Guild Show, at Museum of Northern History

Maker: Terry Whyte

Blue Stars

Quilt Documentation # 155

Here a little lap quilt I just finished.

Blue Stars

This is the January block for Scrappy Challenge 2014 from Judy Laquidara.

The challenge is to use scraps and NOT make another UFO.

The idea is to make blocks (from scraps) until about 10 days before the due date and at that time, use however many blocks were made and finish the project. She says if you only made one block, make a hot pad or pot holder, etc.

I love piecing and using scraps  and sometimes I just want to sew, sew, sew.

This is Judy's pattern “Big T”:

Judy Laquidara design "Big T"

I changed the orientation (dark and light) of the half-square.

I used up this flannel from my stash for the back of the quilt.

I finally got to use up some blue print that was used in at least two other quilts.  I used it for the outside border, a strip on the back and the binding.  Bye, bye blue print.

back of Blue Stars

The quilting is stitched in the ditch in a simple grid.

Linking to The Needle and Thread Network .

Happy quilting,

Terry

DOCUMENTATION:

Quilt Name: Blue Stars

Description: Twelve 9-inch blocks set with lattice

Pattern: Big T from Judy Laquidara

Size: 53” x 43 ½”

Fabrics: 100% cotton

Predominant colours: Blue

Construction Techniques: pieced

Back: flannel & cotton

Batting: cotton

Edge finish: Double fold french binding

Quilting: Stitched-in the ditch on Domestic Machine

Quilted by: Terry Whyte

Sleeve: no

Label: 

Date completed: 2014

Inspiration: Scrappy Challenge 2014 – January block – Judy Laquidara

Quilt History:

Maker: Terry Whyte

Circle Squared

Quilt Documentation # 134

I made this quilt in this orientation, and it just never “felt” right. Not balanced.

Circle Squared

So while playing with my photos, I flipped it around with the dark at the bottom and I like that a lot better.

Circle Squared - Rotated

What do you think?

I love working with scraps and I like making crazy patchwork and see what I can come up with.

My scraps are sorted by colour......I know, a little obsessive!

So, I grabbed my “Orange” basket and sorted into lights and darks.

"light crazypatch"

"dark crazypatch"

In order to get this to work, I cut a paper pattern, the size I wanted the quilt to be, and drafted my circular design. I then marked it off in a 4” grid and cut it apart.

curved piecing

After foundation piecing light and dark 4” squares, the squares were assemble using curved piecing, just like you would piece Drunkards Path.

It is echo quilted following the centre line using a cotton variegated thread on the front and Razzle from Wonderfil on the back.

quilting and binding

The back was pieced to line up with the front. Even the sleeve and binding follow the curve. Too bad, I think I now have to make another sleeve so I can hang it the way I like it.

Circle Squared - back

back - quilting detail

Linking up to The Needle and Thread Network - check out more Canadian bloggers.
And it's Off the Wall Friday at Nina-Marie's.

Happy Quilting,

Terry

DOCUMENTATION:

Quilt Name: Circle Squared

Description: Crazy-patch

Pattern: original

Size: 24” x 24”

Fabrics: 100% cotton

Predominant colours: Orange

Construction Techniques: 4” crazy patch squares

Back: 100% cotton

Batting:

Edge finish: Double fold french binding

Quilting: Quilted on Domestic Machine

Quilted by: Terry Whyte

Sleeve: yes

Label: no

Date completed: 2008

Quilt History: Display at the 2008 Kirkland Lake Mile of Gold Quilters' Guild Show, at Museum of Northern History.

Maker: Terry Whyte

Vesey's Coneflowers

Quilt # 49

Veseys Coneflowers

I love making Challenge Quilts. I always challenge myself to try something different when making any quilt, but to do it with a group is so much more fun.

Vesey's Coneflowers was made as a result of a mini challenge at our guild.

Members were asked to bring along a sandwich baggie of scraps, which were exchanged amongst those wanting to participate.

The challenge was to make a quilt using some of the scraps, one other fabric could be added in the quilt top.

Other fabrics could be used for the borders, back and binding.

While some baggies were quite full, mine was pretty skimpy.  Nine tiny scraps. I used them all.

I found inspiration on the back cover of Vesey's Seed Catalogue.  I fused all the scraps, cut out coneflower petals from the brightest colours.  A purple patch was big enough for the centre of the flowers.

detail

This left me with a mosaic looking green, a plain grey, navy with small circles containing stars or something, and a big floral in blues. These were all cut into skinny strips to represent the leaves.

detail, leaves borders

I just happened to have a piece of that same floral, so I used it for my border, back and binding.

I just won't throw away any left-over paint or dye. I had previously painted a small piece of fabric with liquid dye after finishing another project that worked perfectly for my background.

I fused all the leaves to the background and stitched them down. Then added the petals and lastly the centres of the flowers.

back of quilt, sleeve and label

I picked up the red from the floral fabric for my skinny border and used the floral to finish off the quilt.

I stitched-in-the-ditch around the skinny border and then quilted a double grid right over the whole centre part of the quilt.

label

You may have noticed in the detail shot of the leaves above that I signed and dated the front even though I have a label.  That is a very good thing to do either on the front or back of your quilt. Since starting this blog, I have come to realize that after quilting for over 20 years, I'm really struggling in trying to figure out when quilts were made if I have not done that and attached a label.

I really liked how this little quilt turned out. I probably would never have used all those fabrics together.

But that's what's fun about challenges.

DOCUMENTATION

Quilt Name: Vesey's Coneflowers

Description: Floral Landscape

Pattern: Original

Size: 23¾” x 13”

Fabrics: 100% cotton

Predominant colours: Blue, green, rust, purple, yellow, black & white

Construction Techniques: Raw-edge Applique, fused and stitched

Back: 100% floral cotton print

Batting: Hobbs 80/20

Edge finish: Double fold french binding

Quilting: stitched-in-the-ditch and double grid

Quilted by: Terry Whyte

Sleeve: Yes

Label: Yes

Date completed: 2009

Inspiration: Picture of coneflowers on the back cover of Vesey's Seed catalogue

Quilt History: Displayed at the Kirkland Lake Mile of Gold Quilter's Guild Show in 2009

Maker: Terry Whyte

Seeing Stars

Quilt # 48

Seeing Stars 

Seeing Stars is a reversible Quilt made using Sharon Pederson's technique from her book Two at a Time.

This technique allows you to "quilt" each block individually by using the stitch and flip method on the reverse side of your block.

detail

I made these star blocks (quarter square triangles) many years ago to practice sewing points and they sat  on the shelf for a long time. 

Ohio Star block

I chose to do crazy patchwork on the back side using red scraps.  My rule was that as long as there some red in any value, from lightest pink to darkest red, it was fair game.  

Seeing Stars - Reverse side

Batting was added to the block and the patches placed on the batting, stitching through all layers.  The bobbin thread is what is showing on the star side.

detail

Since I was working with 12" blocks, I chose fairly large pieces. 

Crazy patchwork

I used a dark red print for the sashing strips on the Star side and was fortunate to still have some of the background fabric from the star blocks.  That became my sashing and binding on the crazy patch side, which helped to ties the two sides together.

Sashing and Binding

Quilt Name:  Seeing Stars

Description:  Reversible Quilt 

Pattern: Ohio Star blocks with crazy patchwork on reverse

Size:  49" x 73"

Fabrics:  100% cottons

Predominant colours: All values of red

Construction Techniques:  Piecing and Crazy patchwork (stitch and flip method)

Blocks - quilt-as-you-go and sashed together using Sharon Pederson's technique described in her book Two at a Time.

Batting:  Polyester 

Edge finish: Double fold french binding 

Quilting:  Quilt-as-you-go by stitching and flipping crazy patches.

Quilted by:  Terry Whyte

Sleeve:  No

Label:  No

Date completed: 2008

Quilt History:  Class sample

Maker: Terry Whyte

Ice Floes

Quilt # 24

Ice Floes

Ice Floes is a scrap Spider Web Quilt, and one of my favourites.  I like making scrap quilts and I like the looks of them.

Before starting this quilt, I went through my scraps and anything with any amount of blue in it was fair game.

detail

One common fabric was used to start all the triangular shapes and this ended up making a ring around each circle. This stripe fabric has red and green and many other colours as well as blue. This served to connect all the blues and any other colour that showed up.

quilting

Muslin was cut using a template to make a foundation for the strips. The common fabric was used first and then blue strips were added, stitching and flipping.

Flannel was used for the back of the quilt.

back, binding, label

The quilting is stitch-in-the-ditch and stippling in the muslin areas.

A couple of muslin borders on either side of a border made up of blue strips were stitched together and mitered at the corners.

The common fabric binds the quilt.

Have a great day,

Terry

Documentation

Quilt Name: Ice Floes

Description: Scrappy and muslin quilt

Pattern: Spider Web

Size: 63” x 73”

Fabrics: Cotton and some polyester

Predominant colours: Blue, white

Construction Techniques: Stitch and flip on foundation template. Mitered corners.

Back: Blue Polar Bear & snowflake flannel

Batting: Polyester

Edge finish: Double fold french binding

Quilting: Stitch-in-the-ditch and stippling on domestic machine

Quilted by: Terry Whyte

Sleeve:No

Label: Yes

Date completed: 1997

Quilt History:  This quilt was used as a class sample

Maker: Terry Whyte