Over and Under Placemats

My Over and Under Placemats were featured in Benartex's Modern by the Yard ezine! 

I fell in love with the textured look of these rich hues, from Benartex's Bali Fiesta collection. I ultimately chose to use just five of the colors, but you can see the range of tonals below. I love the summery look created by pairing these brights with a cool, crisp white solid.

These easy strip blocks create a woven look just based on orientation and placement within the placemat. The strip blocks are pieced slightly wonky to create a more modern look (and they're really fun to sew!). I bound each placemat in a combination of the fuchsia and that particular placemat's accent color--I really like the look of a multicolor binding! 

The pattern for these placemats is available for free in Issue #11 of Modern by the Yard (along with three additional projects). See the entire issue here.

ZuZu Squares in all its quilted glory!

Ready for a splash of color? 

I'm back from teaching my ZuZu Squares workshop to the Great Lakes Modern Quilt Guild and we had a great time. (Purchase your copy of the pattern here!)

Diane Oakes quilted this quilt for me (and brought it to the guild meeting bound and ready to go!). Enjoy the close-ups of her fabulous quilting!

The whole quilt:

Diane used an echoing square design for the block centers and then two different back and forth designs for the solid frames. The black and white sections are quilted in the ditch to avoid distraction.

I love the black and white stripe binding!

Want to make your own? Purchase the pattern in my Etsy shop. If you'd like me to do a workshop featuring this pattern at your guild or quilt shop, email me.

And a couple more eye candy shots...I'm in love!  

OMG: New Wonky Quilt

I've had an idea for a new wonky quilt for a while now, and finally got the chance to start it. The black and white sections are pieced, but could easily be replaced with a stripe. When I finish it, this quilt will be my newest pattern, as well as the workshop I'll be teaching at the Great Lakes Modern Quilt Guild at the end of April. It's no surprise, then, that my March One Monthly Goal is to finish piecing the quilt top! 

I'm trying a multicolor version:

And a single color version:

Which do you like better? I started out leaning toward the multicolor version, but this calmer version has really been growing on me! 

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: