Quilts in Peril: Echo Drops (and Rises)

This is the fifth of my new weekly mini video series - Quilts in Peril! 

We could all use a little more humor right now. Read the backstory here.

I'll be posting a Quilts in Peril video each Wednesday for the foreseeable future. 

Each video will be accompanied by a short sale for the featured quilt pattern, so watch for your favorite! 

When you hold up a finished quilt to take a photo, does it ever fall? 

Thanks to special effects, ours bounces right back up! 

Purchase the Echo pattern here.

Echo show in the Maara collection from Art Gallery Fabrics

Visit my Etsy shop here.

Find me on Facebook

Find me on IG @lisaerin1121

Disclaimer: Beyond a couple needing a wash afterwards, no quilts (or kids) were harmed in the making of these videos. 

Don't miss the other Quilts in Peril videos!
ZuZu Squares on Fire

Ribbon Weave Falls from a Tree (x3!)

Twirled Squares Takes a Spill

Wonky Spirals Goes for a Ride

Introducing Echo!

I first designed the Echo quilt a couple years ago and have been wanting to remake it in a different fabric line. I found the perfect one! I used the Maara collection by Alexandra Bordallo for Art Gallery Fabrics.  

Here's Echo, a modern take on a Log Cabin. Four jumbo Log Cabin blocks with some pieced logs to enhance the design. The pattern is available in my Etsy shop, and the quilt is featured in the Maara lookbook.

I couldn't resist taking Echo out into our gorgeous Michigan fall colors for a photo shoot. The leaves didn't disappoint! 

My favorite part of the quilt? I love the two alternating light strips in the outer corners of each block. One is a cream solid, and the other is such a fun safari print from Alexandra's line called Maasai village. I love the subtle look of these logs.

I quilted Echo myself, and I'm pretty proud of it. I stuck with my three most comfortable designs, and they fit well in the various logs. 

The design is the same for all four blocks but I changed up the fabric placement in kitty corner blocks. 

The great thing about a four-block quilt is once the blocks are stitched, assembly is super quick! 

Here's what you're waiting for: the pattern! 

Purchase the pattern here.

Crossroads in American Patchwork & Quilting!

Happy April!
I've been eagerly awaiting this day for a couple weeks. The June 2018 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting goes on sale today, and I have a quilt in it! My quilt is called Crossroads, and it uses Sarah Fielke's Wordplay collection for Windham Fabrics.

Here it is! Don't you love that dark blue wall behind the quilt? 

Used with permission from American Patchwork & Quilting® magazine.

 ©2018 Meredith Corporation. All rights reserved.

The cover quilt is pretty great, isn't it? 

Let me tell you how this quilt came to be.
I had the idea to use large log cabin blocks to make a version of an eight-pointed star. My husband and I were returning from a kid-free mini vacation last summer, and while he drove, I pulled out my laptop, enjoying the silence (there are usually three boys in the back seat!), and played around with a design. 

Here's what I came up with:

Okay, so maybe not a star, like I'd envisioned, but still cool! I thought it might be a winner, and started looking for a fabric line to use in the quilt. I knew I wanted the outer sections of each block to be a mix of low volume prints. Then I saw Wordplay and fell in love. These prints were perfect for my quilt! I plugged in the digital swatches, submitted it to American Patchwork & Quilting, and here we are, eight months later. This is my first quilt published in AP&Q--I was excited! 

I got the quilt back last week and took it outside for a short photoshoot. I love how the brights pop against the low-volume background. The contrast shows up beautifully in photography. I also love the variety of colors in the prints--several blues, bright green, red, yellow...it was fun to choose which prints to use in the quilt. 

On our swing set's climbing wall:

Hanging over our deck railing:

I need to send a big thank you to two people involved in the making of Crossroads. 
First, my mom, Lindy, who happened to be in town for the weekend while I was piecing this quilt AND the hourglass quilt last September. She helped cut the first log cabin block strips and then pressed after I pieced. I love these prints, but we had to cut very carefully to make sure each strip was as straight as possible. The results were worth it!

And second, Diane Oakes, who quilted it so beautifully. She and I talked about a couple different motifs, and she varied them, stitching a design in each strip row. You can see some of the detail below. 

I have two more quilts featured in magazines coming out in the next month or two which I'll be sharing as the issues go on sale--you're seeing why I was so busy last fall! 

A Lovely Year of Finishes October Goal

There are 3 months left in 2013's A Lovely Year of Finishes!

With my next couple of projects only existing as vague ideas in my head, I'm choosing a simpler and more concrete goal for October. Hopefully I'll also get at least one of those projects started during the month, but my goal for this month is to bind my polka dot log cabin quilt (which I spiral quilted as my June goal). It may not be a super-exciting goal, but it's always satisfying to be able to move a quilt into the "done" pile!

Gone Dotty!

I am lucky to be one of the blogs posting on the LAST day of Sew We Quilt's Dots on Dots blog hop. Thanks so much to the fearless leader of this blog hop and many others, Madame Samm, and the cheerleader/hostess, Corrie of QuiltTaffy--it's been so much fun following along and seeing everyone's dotted creations!

Be sure to scroll down to the bottom of this post to enter the giveaway!
The giveaway is now closed. Thank you for visiting!

My initial thought was to do bowtie blocks. It seemed a perfect fit for polka dot fabrics! I made this small quilt using dotted fabric from my stash and a white-on-white circle print. I quilted it 1/4" from each horizontal and vertical seam line. I love how this turned out, but since I'd wanted to do a quilt made of small blocks, I really wasn't following the rules about block size for the hop.

So I went back to my stash again and came up with this:

It is very bright and cheery. And hurts the eyes a little bit, I think! 

Log cabins (both wonky and traditional) are my go-to block. They're easy, they're fun, and pretty much any fabric looks great in the pattern. 

Every fabric in the quilt, except for the sashing, is from my stash. And I still have enough dotted fabric left to make two more quilts this size, easily. Scary! :) 

Here's a close-up of one my favorite blocks:

Here you can see my sashing audition. I wanted a black and white dot fabric and could only find this optical illusion print. I bought 1 yard and decided I'd make it work, because the blocks definitely needed something DARK to separate them. A place to rest the eyes between each bright block. 

I decided that I preferred the uniform smaller dot size for the sashing, so I fussy cut sashing rows and reserved the fussy-cut larger dot strips for the outer border. 

Here it is with the outer border, which provides a good frame. 

I won't even try to claim that the outer border offers an opportunity to rest the eyes! :)

After I machine quilt this, I'm going to send it off to Margaret's Hope Chest. I hope it will make someone in need happy and warm!

If you're not going dotty yet, here's one more dotted quilt, a top that I made earlier this summer. 

 Read more about it here.

Thanks so much for stopping by to see my dot-filled projects! Make sure to visit the other blogs showing off projects today:

Bejeweled Quilts by Barb 

Cate's Linens

From This to That

suemacseeds

Marcia's Crafty Sewing and Quilting

Color My World Color My World (you're here right now!)

 Rosemary B- that other blog

Bquiltin Studio

Nati's little things 

Madame Samm

*The full schedule for the dots on dots blog hop can be found by clicking here.

Oh yes, and the GIVEAWAY!!!

I am giving away my little bowtie mini quilt AND a charm pack of Amy Butler's Spots (seemed appropriate to the theme, right?)

To enter, simply leave me a comment telling me your favorite color. 
*Note: You must be a follower to win, so if you are not yet a follower, 
please join first and then leave a comment.* 

The giveaway is open through Monday, September 24th at 5 pm EST. 
The giveaway is now closed.

I will use random number generator to select a winner that evening 
and post the winner's name by Tuesday morning. Good luck!

p.s. Linking up with Confessions of a Fabric Addicts "Can I get a whoop whoop" and Quilt Story's "Fabric Tuesday" to share the dotted love! 

Permission to Play

Most of the quilting I've done has always been purpose-driven. It's either a gift for someone or yet another quilt for my own house, so I pick a pattern, buy fabric, and make the quilt, following the pattern. I've made a couple quilts without patterns, sort of making up the design as I go, but they were still made for a purpose.

Recently I've decided to spend some time just playing for the fun of it. I'm using fabrics from my stash and experimenting with some different types of blocks. Sure, I'd like to use the blocks to make a quilt rather than adding them to my UFO list, but there's no set purpose (and more importantly) no hard and fast timeline for finishing.

Last week my husband was working late, the kids were in bed, and I had some time. I pulled out my batik scraps (my favorites...I could write a whole blog entry about batiks, but I'll save that for another day), some Kona white, and started playing. I knew I wanted to try some wonky blocks. After reading through some quilting blogs, I found this from the Quilt Dad. Perfect!

I sorted my batiks to pull out "my" colors (delicious blues and turquoises and lime greens!) to go with the white solid:

It needed something, though, so I grabbed these to add a "pop" to the center of each block:

And six blocks into my playtime, here's what it looks like:

I love how they turned out, and it's so much fun--just freeform and liberating to grab strips and sew. My left-brained self decided to time how long it took for each block: 20 minutes. I'm planning to sash 3 sides in white and the last side in the orange again and then lay them out, but first I want to make some more blocks. Here are close-ups of all 6 blocks: