Simple Charm Quilt Tops

 Do you ever feel like digging through your fabric stash just for fun?  It happens around here often and it always ends up the same . . . A new quilt plan or two.  The current fabric petting session ended with four new quilt plans.  Nothing fancy, just a few quick and easy quilts to use up some charm packs.  the first quilt top was made with four charm packs of Moda's Red Dot...Green Dash.  

To make the quilt top a little larger I found the perfect red polka dot fabric for an outer border.  The same fabric will be used for the backing.  And a red stripe is sure to be the perfect touch for the binding.  This simple quilt made me so happy.  It'll be a great quilt for the grandkids to snuggle.

The second quilt was made with Welcome Winter by Wilmington.  Another quick and easy and a tad bit smaller.

The blue gingham was the only fabric in my stash suitable for the border.  I would have prefered something not so bold, but it's the best my stash had to offer.  

Both of these quilt will be quilted ASAP . . . in the next couple of weeks.

That's all folks!  See you next week! 

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Dresden Test Block And New Fabric

 Most you know the Dresden quilt block makes makes my little ole heart go pitter pat.  Every once in awhile the urge it hits me to make one for no reason other than they are a joy to make and they make me smile.  But for this one I had a reason.

All of my Dresdens up to this point have had pointy blades, like the one below that I made last month.

Two or three years ago, I decided it was time to expand my Dresden making skills. A few quick clicks on Amazon, and a day later, the new templates arrived. And like I do all too often... SQUIRREL!!... the plan was pushed aside for the next great quilt plan.

Well, last week, my quilting buddy Melissa and I were talking about Dresdens when we realized we both had the same templates and had never used them. Her templates didn't come with instructions, so I made her a copy. She's never made a Dresden and was looking for advice and tips. Since she'd be using these templates, I decided it was time to read through the instructions and whip up a test block.

For my block, I used the smallest round top yellow cutting template. The instructions for the round top Dresden suggested using freezer paper to make a turning template, but I decided to use quilter's heat-resistant Mylar template plastic instead. That way, I can use it for many quilts for many years.

I used to buy Mylar sheets on Amazon or at the quilt shop. I bought mine years ago, and that particular brand is no longer available online. However, if you search for quilter's no melt Mylar sheets, you'll find several different brands.

TIP... Make sure the sheets are clear so you can easily trace the shape you need.

It's hard to see in the picture below, but trust me, the clear plastic template is there. And it worked perfectly.

The instructions called for a fabric circle to be made using the circle templates provided. Again, I opted to go a different route.

I want the center of the Dresden to be white, and since I plan to put the Dresden on a white background, I saw no reason to add another layer of white fabric on top of the Dresden. I wasn't sure my idea would work, and I didn't want to waste any template plastic, so... I layered three small pieces of freezer paper together and ironed them until they fused. Then I cut out the circle you see below.

I snipped two or three threads at each seam in the center of the Dresden, then used my paper template and an iron to turn the center edges under.

Now I have a plan for a new Dresden quilt in the new year! That would be the perfect way to start another wonderful year of quilting. So, I’d better get busy finishing up a few more things before January rolls around!

Speaking of finishing, the blue quilt on the frame is finally nearing the end! There's nothing better for a quilting mojo boost than seeing the bottom of a quilt on the frame. Yippee! Binding a quilt is the best part of quilting. I hope to have it off the frame and bound by Tuesday evening.

The green Yo-Yo's are coming along at a slow pace, only 16 made last week.  

And last but not least, I ordered a fat quarter bundle of Special Delivery by Edyta Sitar for Andover. This is my first bundle of Edyta's fabric. I just couldn't resist, especially since I got a good deal on the Quilt in a Day website.

I have a few of her prints but have never purchased an entire bundle of her fabric. Now I need to find the perfect quilt pattern. I have a couple of her books around here somewhere, so hopefully, I'll find just the right pattern in one of them.

Until then, I'm going to leave her wrapped in plastic, sitting on the cutting table... sigh... So much fabric, so little time.

My back porch last week.  I planted morning glories 15 years ago.  One pack of seeds = a lifetime of trying to keep them from taking over the entire landscape.

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The Best Way To Start Off The Holiday Season

This is a THANK YOU JEANINE blog post.  It's been a few years since closing my pattern writing business. Every once in awhile I still get a happy customer quilt picture. This one came at the perfect time.  I needed a little boost.  The powers that be have a funny way of knowing what we need and when.  Jeanine had no idea how much this picture would touch my heart or how much I needed it.  Heck, I didn't know it was what I needed.  Yes, it brought me to happy tears.

  This was her second attempt at applique.  Jeanine, I think you have gotten the hang of applique!  It turned out beautiful!  My first few applique projects were not so pretty.

She didn't mention the fussy cut Santa faces in the nine patch blocks but I immediately noticed the little Santa's spying on me . . . no worries here, I've been a good girl this year Santa!

Jeanine, thank you for sharing your beautiful Christmas Memories Truck quilt with me. You may have thought you were just sending a picture, but it meant so much more to me than you'll ever know. It's a wonderful reminder of why I love creating and sharing quilt patterns.

 

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New Fabric and New Quilts

Yep that's right, I bought fabric.   I can't help myself when it comes to pretty floral.  I loved it so much I bought it all,  a little over 6 yards of the blue floral.  It was purchased at Hobby Lobby during the 30% off sale.  I'm thinking it will make some pretty pillow shams, curtains or if I get in a pinch for quilt backing it'll work for that too.  Of course I had to buy another fabric to match and the blue dots was the best option.

The only reason I went into Hobby Lobby was to get some cheap fabric to recover my pressing table and small pressing boards.  They looked awful.  I hope a good soak and wash will bring these back to somewhat normal.  But in the meantime I needed something to replace them.

I had a small piece of the blue gingham in my stash and used it to cover the two smaller pressing boards.  I was hoping to find more of the gingham at the store but they only had a small piece.  So I decided to go with a light tan ticking.  It's kinda plain and boring but it works.

While at Hobby Lobby I also snagged the patchwork piece on the left side of the image below.  Yes, this is patchwork, not a patchwork print.  My plan is to make a small Christmas quilt.  So I pulled a few fabrics from my stash that I thought might work.

The pattern I'll be using is called Twinkle by Pastthyme Patterns.  My neighbor/quilting buddy made this quilt then passed the pattern on to me. Her quilt is more like the quilt on the pattern cover. In true Lea Anne fashion, I'm doing my own thing.  Some may think I'm cheating by using the premade patchwork but I prefer to call it being clever and saving myself some work.  I hope to get started on it sometime in the next couple of weeks.

Right now I'm working on another new quilt.  It's small, 41" x 41".  Hold onto your hat.....I'm making this little quilt to use as a small practice piece for hand quilting.  Yep, you read that right....HAND QUILTING!  It's been years since I last gave it a try.  I'm determined to do at least one hand quilted full size quilt in my lifetime.  Right now I'm gathering the right supplies and making the quilt top.  The little quilt will be used in my living room as a display piece on a childs wooden rocking chair.  The image below is what I drew up as my pattern.  I do this with all the quilts I make.  After making the rough draft below, it's printed out so I can do the rest of the math on the back of the paper.

The quilt above is my version of the pattern called Wintersweet by Cake Stands Quilts.  I've adjusted the pattern to suit my needs by making the blocks smaller.  Yesterday I pulled the fabric from my stash. 

And in no time I had the first 100 units made!  There's no hurry to get this one finished, so I'll put it in the rotation of WIP's.

First in the WIP's rotation is the sampler quilt on the frame.  It needs to be finished because I'm sick of seeing it on the frame.  I spent about 2 hours on it last week.  Most of this week will be dedicated to getting it finished.  I'm pretty sure it's been on the frame for over a month.  Every time I see it.....UGGG....slips out of my mouth.  Sampler quilts....UGGG....just get it done!!

And of course the Yo-Yo coverlet is still being worked on from time to time.  Only 13 Yo-Yo's last week but it's better than none.  

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New Scrap Quilt ~ Red and Green

 A year or so ago I had a great plan to make a red and green quilt.  As you can see I didn't get very far before pushing her aside for the next big quilt plan.  Tis the season to start a huge Christmas quilt plan with hopes of having it finished in time for Christmas.  What's a holiday season without one or two unnecessary expectations!

Over the last year I've been building a scrap saver system, so that seems like a good place to start looking for more fabrics.  As you can see, there's not much in the scrap saver system that will work in this quilt.  Just a few greens in both the squares and the strips, no low volume backgrounds.  The basket with the green and red fabric might be enough to get the quilt top made, if not I can always go to my large red and green scrap bin for more.

It was time to dig through the bin of low volume prints that are less than 2.5 inches wide.

Well poo!  My quilt will be over 90" square.  This isn't going to be enough background fabric and I know the other low volume bin with larger cuts doesn't have the prefered style of prints.

So it was time to pull out the extra large tote of shame.  This tote is solid whites, white on whites, creams and cream on cream.  I've been adding to it for about 15 years with very little ever being used.

 The first thing I found was this bag of hundreds of 2.5" solid white unstarched squares.  I would have preferred they be white on white and starched but this will work.  The plan is a quick and easy scraps quilt.  Using what I have will keep it quick and easy and it gets me out of a comfort zone.

It didn't take much longer before realizing more space was needed to sort this tote of fabric.  So I took the sort down to the floor.  After an hour of sitting on the cold tile floor a break was needed to warm up my tooshy.

Then it was back to the cold floor for another hour of sorting.  There's more than enough white on white fabric for this quilt.  

It gave me a chuckle to see the little specks of itty bitty colorful prints hiding in the huge tote of whites.  Y'all know I have a hard time trashing little bits of fabric.  It was hard to let the pretty little ones go but I sticking to my rule put in place earlier in the year ...  I can only save it if I can cut a one inch square.

Thankfully I had tucked away  some larger pieces of white on white fabric in this tote.  The larger scraps will make the piecing go faster. So I'll be using the larger pieces first. The rest of the white on white will be stored in a smaller project tote just incase they are needed later.

Some of these prints are from 15 years ago.   And they are not quilt shop quality.  More than likely they came from Joann Fabrics.  They also are from the time in my quilting journey when I didn't starch my fabric, so they got a good starching and pressing before the cutting began.

To start out my day of sewing I cut just enough to go with the few green squares I found in the scrap saver system and the squares that were hiding the basket of fabric I shared earlier in this post.

Before I knew it they were all sewn and pressed.  A few of them were pulled and will not be added to this quilt.  They will find their new home in the orphan block tote.  They look a little too blue for this quilt.  Then it was time to start counting.  I had more than expected, over half of what is needed for the quilt.

At this point you're probably wonder what's the quilt pattern?  Christmas Garland by Wendy Sheppard.  It was on the cover of Quilters World Magazine, Winter 2025.

I'll be honest, this quilt isn't one of those that I saw and thought it was a must make.  It's one that looked like a good way to use up a lot of little scraps and it's easy piecing.  It should go together quickly with strip piecing most of the units.  

For now she's being set aside so I can work on a few other things.  

First up will be the Yo-Yo coverlet.

I finished the last of the yellow yo - yo's.

This week I'll be cutting green circles from the scrap bins.  I found four green ones already made.  I don't remember making them but obviously I did.  That's 466 yo-yo's made so far.  759 more are needed from the scrap bins.

After making 759 more from the scrap bins, I'll still need 800 more white and green for the borders.  I'm 13 months into the 2 year plan for this coverlet.  My thought was one year to make the yo-yo's and one year to sew them into a coverlet....sigh....a 3 year plan is looking pretty good right now...HAHA!  

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DIY Curtains and Valances

As I mentioned in my previous post, last week was full of sewing ... just not quilts! Curtains were the theme of the week. It all started with a simple valance for the laundry room.

The cute little blue floral duck cloth was purchased at Hobby Lobby well over a year ago. From start to finish, it took about 30 minutes to make. After I finished it, I realized I had forgotten to add a lining. Oh well, it’s good enough! Sometimes you just have to call it done and move on.

The little valance put me in the mood to keep going. As you all know, my sewing room has been without curtains for a long time ...  about a year, actually. I purchased the fabric for the curtains two or three years ago at Hobby Lobby for $2 a yard. It was a great price, and I fell in love with the sweet little embroidered flowers.

Aww… look at them! Little daisies… my favorite flower.  I knew they would probably cause a little trouble when sewing, but it was a chance I was willing to take. After all, who can resist a fabric covered in little daisies?

 They didn’t cause a problem at all. The needle went right through them with no issues. BUT the fabric, on the other hand, was the biggest pain in my keister!

I tried every size needle in my stash, and not one of them would go through this crazy fabric without pushing the fabric down into the bobbin housing. After a few swear words, a time-out, and a completely useless search of the internet, I started brainstorming the problem.

Then, out of nowhere, I came up with a solution. My thought was that if I pulled the fabric from the back side of the walking foot and from the front, but in opposite directions, while helping it along, it might stop the fabric from being shoved down into the bobbin housing.

By golly gosh, it worked! It was a little awkward to do, but it got the job done. Sometimes you just have to outsmart the sewing machine! 

It took a little longer than expected, pretty much the whole day to make two sets of curtains for the windows and…

.…one set for the door. Yes, I have an exterior door in my sewing room. We think that at one time, this was a small one-car garage.

The next day I thought, why stop now? I was on a window treatment roll, so let’s make a new valance for the bedroom. I wanted something a little more “fancy.” How about a valance with a scalloped lower edge?  Oh, that would be cute!  I had to tape together some packing paper to make a long enough template. There was a little math involved to get the scallops evenly spaced, and I used an old quilting template to draw the wavy line.  Who knew all those quilting tools would come in handy for making curtains? 

This valance will be lined. I watched a few videos on how to add a lining, and they made it seem far more complicated than it needed to be.  I decided to keep it simple ... put the right sides together, sew around the outer edge, and leave an opening for turning. Sometimes the simplest way really is the best way.

Slowly, I made my way around the fabric. Sewing a 5/8" seam made me feel like I really knew what I was doing,  It’s been many years since I’ve used anything other than a quarter-inch or half-inch seam allowance.

That extra 1/8" had me feeling pretty fancy!

After turning it right side out and giving it a good pressing, I sewed around the edge to keep the seam secure through future washings.

A rod pocket was added to the back by making a simple tube of fabric. I drew a straight line on the backing, lined up the edge of the pressed tube with the line, pinned it in place, and sewed it down.

This was much easier than the complicated methods used by those professional curtain designers I found on YouTube. Sometimes I think they just enjoy making things harder than they need to be.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that all of the fabrics in today’s post were prewashed and dried on high heat for maximum shrinkage. No future shrinking surprises for me!

She turned out pretty darn cute if I do say so myself.  Maybe next week while doing my weekly errands I'll stop by Hobby Lobby and check out the trims.  Perhaps a short fringe of little fuzzy balls for the scalloped edge?

  

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