Another Mini Circle Quilt

 Hi Quilty Friends!  Y'all had to know when you first saw this scallop quilt stand a few months ago that I would eventually make a mini quilt with my blog logo.  

Over the years my logo has been updated a couple of times, but the original logo was my favorite. 

I played around a bit with the design and how I would make the applique letters.  My thought was the bigger the letters the easier they would be to make.  Nope!

Plan B: print the letters of my logo onto the fabric with my inkjet printer, then applique the cherries. A quick dig in my spare parts applique tackle box produced everything I needed for the applique.  The pieces were different sizes but that's okay.

Next, I needed to make the background fabric larger because I printed "podunk pretties" from my home printer.  The printer only uses a standard sheet of paper, 8.5 x 11, and my circle needs to be 10 inches.  So, I added a 2.5" strip to each side.

Within no time the quilt sandwich was made and was ready to quilt.

I even quilted around every letter to try to make it look appliqued.

It took all week to get this little gal finished.  The binding was added Sunday afternoon.  Well worth all the trouble!  I love it!

The first circle quilt I made can be found here with information to create your own Mini Dresden quilt.

And the other one, click here for the free pattern.

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I'm In The Mood

 Yes Quilty Friends, I'm in a mood.  Not just any mood.  A lot of white space for quilting it to death kind of mood.  So, I pulled out the Cabin Fever quilt I shared with you a couple of weeks ago.  There's plenty of white space for feathers, swirls and whatever else my little ole quilty heart desires.

And since I'm in a wild and crazy kind of mood, I'm going to live a little dangerously by not adding more fabric it to the backing that is just a few inches larger than the quilt top.  I think it'll be okay as long as it's carefully loaded on the quilt frame.  Wish me luck!

A quick label was made.   And wouldn't you know it, there's two errors.  The date is wrong, and I misspelled the word DESIGNED.  

Guess what?  The label is staying as is because I didn't notice it until editing photos after the quilt was loaded to the frame.   The little errors give the quilt more character and adds to the story it has to tell, right?  

The quilting plan is coming along.  I'll play around with the quilting ideas a little more and hopefully start the quilting sometime today.  See you soon with a sneak peek of the quilting!

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Twinkle, Twinkle And More Twinklers

 A few more Twinkler blocks were finished in yesterdays sewing in my jammies session.  The morning session was cut short for a visit with family. We had a great time at our little pitch in dinner and catching up on the kids new adventures.

They are always up to something, and jaunting off to here and there.  I don't remember my life being so exciting when I was younger.  Well that's because it wasn't.  Being a housewife and raising kids is an adventure but it's just not quite the same as traveling and seeing the world without kids.  

After our family time it was back to the studio to finish a couple more quilt blocks.

My Twinkler quilt block is my design, or so I thought.  It's nothing more than a variation of a variable star block.  The star points are a taller and not made with flying geese.  I thought I was being clever with the points. Many hours were spent searching on the internet and in my books for this block and I came up empty handed.

Well, the internet somehow remembers and helps you out when you least expect it.  The Jelly Roll Illusions video popped up in my YouTube feed.  You can watch the video by clicking on the video below.  The block is a tad bit different with snowballed corners and color placement, but has the same star points.

The maker of the video, Carol Thelan, was making a variation of Moda's FREE Illusions quilt.  Link to that pattern.  Moda's block is larger, has less snowballed corners and the color placement is different.  The chances of there being older versions of this quilt block out there is pretty good.  Anyway, I just wanted to give credit where credit is due and to say I'm not as clever as I thought. BOOHOO!  What a shocker! HAHA!

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I Stumbled Upon A FREE Fibonacci Spiral Quilt

Hello Quilty Friends!  I have no business playing in the fabric stash.  There's way too much to do but what the heck.  I haven't been able to play in the Studio for days.  I deserve a few minutes of fabric petting before the day begins.

The Fibonacci Spiral Quilt calls for 10 Fat Quarters.  So I pulled a whole slew of Pioneer Woman Fat Quarters.  Then I started whittling them down to what I thought would work best in this quilt.  The first ones to be cut are the solids because I'm not a fan of solids mixed in with prints.

Next to be cut from the grouping was the larger prints.  Two cheater prints and two large florals.  The quilt pattern has some smaller pieces and the large prints will get lost in the small cuts.  But one could say that might be a good thing and make the quilt look scrappier.  For now they are a no go for me.

Next I pulled out the ones I felt were too dark, too large, the wrong colors or I just didn't like.

I was left with these 10 fat quarters.  The large floral needs to go.

It was replaced with this medium floral.  How do I decide on fabrics?  Well as mentioned above, scale is important.  So is color.  Think about if the fabrics end up side by side in the quilt, are they going to muddle together or stand out from each other.  What if two of the light background fabrics end up side by side?  Will they blend or be noticeably different?  I'm considering pulling out the red gingham.  What do yo think? What would you change?  I'm not completely happy with this group of fabrics but for now, play time is over.  There's plants to be planted, a dog needing walked and yard to mow.

So let's talk about the FREE pattern.  It's called the Fibonacci Spiral.  What in the world is a Fibonacci Spiral?  I have seen this before but didn't know what it was called.  I'm sure we learned about it school but it didn't stick in my brain.  Let's just tell it like it is, I'm a simple person and geometry isn't my thing.  I understand basic math and quilt math, is that geometry?  Yes, I'm really that clueless!  So anyway below is the spiral.  A bunch of squares with arcs in them.  Looks like a quilt pattern to me and I could do the math to make this quilt block in no time but someone has already done the math for us! 

The quilt pattern reminds me of a Yellow Brick Road Quilt or Turning Twenty Quilt.  The pattern is well written and easy to follow.  This would also be a great scrap buster quilt.  There's only four sizes of squares.

Here's two samples made by the designer Michelle of Bit's and Pieces Quilting.    Great for a quick gift or charity quilt.

The FREE pattern is a YouTube tutorial. In the video description Michelle  shares a link to her blog where you can find the Free PDF printable in the patterns tab on her blog. 

  Click here to go to the YouTube Video,  She is fairly new at making YT videos and is doing a great.  Hop over and give her some quilty love!

Until next time...

I hope you find time to stitch up something sweet!

A video from my back porch I posted on FB a couple of days ago.

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~ Christmas Joy Quilt ~

Hello Happy Quilters!  I'm so excited to finally get my Christmas Joy Quilt off the frame.  This is a fairly small quilt and  pretty lightly quilted it should have taken no longer than 2 days to quilt.  However my ruler foot broke and then there was an issue with a back spinning bobbin.   The powers that be love to throw me a few curve balls with ever quilt.  

The quilt will be used by my grandchildren when they come to visit during the holiday season.  I wanted it to be soft and cuddly for them and have pretty quilting is for me.   I think I achieved both.

Sometimes it's hard to achieve the feathery look I love without making a stiff quilt.  The trick is to not follow some of the so called rules for custom quilting.  I'm pretty sure the longarm quilting police would curl their noses at the lack of background quilting in my applique blocks.

Now all that's left to do is add the polka dot binding.  Since I have about 11 months to finish the binding I'll take my time and hand stitch it to the back of the quilt.

The Christmas Joy Quilt pattern was designed by Carol Swift for the Thermoweb website. I made a few alterations to the pattern to make my own.  Click here for the original pattern.

Just a little reminder that you can still gt 20% off you entire purchase at The Purple Hobbies website using the code PodunkPrettiesJan20  

Offer ends February 29, 2020.   Make sure when adding the code to your shopping cart that you click APPLY.  You can see my review of the BladeSaver Thread cutter here.  And the Third hand Binding Folder Clip here.

50% OFF Sweet Sixteen PDF pattern

click image

expires 2-15-2020

#thermoweb #heatnbondlite #christmasjoyquilt

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~ Quilt Border Options ~

 This may not surprise most of you when I say this....I changed the pattern.  Just a tiny bit, a few minor changes.  There was absolutely noting wrong with the pattern other than I wanted it a little larger.  So with the help of EQ8 I started playing with options.  Before showing you my changes I want to give credit the designer of this super cute quilt.  Carol Swift from Just Let Me Quilt designed this Christmas Joy quilt for ThermoWeb.  It's a FREE pattern that you can find by clicking here.

Instead of trying to recreate Carol's applique blocks I used what was already in EQ8.  Here's the first quilt I came up with as I set the blocks into place.  It's still too small but I like the look of the extra hourglass blocks around the outer edge of the quilt.  Making them in three colors instead of 2, then setting a plain block in between.

Now to find a border.  My first thought was to do a simple border with a fun bright binding to finish it off.  I like it but let's see what else I can do with a few clicks of my mouse.

This one was interesting but still doesn't WOW me.

I have to say this one I LOVE but it would require ordering more aqua gingham for the border.  I have some but I already have a plan for it in my next quilt.

At last I think this will be the one!  I might even add a little more applique to the corners. 

Carols quilt finishes at 50" x 58".  My quilt finishes at 72" x 72".  The yellow square on my quilt shows the original blocks without the sashing in Carols quilt.  Another change was every other row of hourglass blocks I turned.  In Carols quilt they are all the same direction.

Now to find the perfect red stripe.  I used a small red stripe for the candy canes in the stocking blocks.  The plan was to use the same red stripe for the border.  However it just didn't look right. So I dug deep into my stash and found this wider stripe...I love it!  I think it's going to be perfect.  What do you think?  The small stripe or the large? OH!  you know.... I could omit the applique in the corners and do a mitered border.  What do you think?  Should I ?  I'll need to think this over as I run some errands this morning.  I can't wait to get home and start adding the borders.

#christmasjoyquilt 

#freequiltpattern

#christmasquilt

#thermoweb

#heatnbondlite

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