The non retirement quilt

I'm squeezing in one more finish before the end of the year and then my next blog post will be my annual wrap up. 

This quilt was designed and made for friend and work colleague. We gave it to her this week and she was thrilled.  

It possibly looks a bit washed out in these photos but it's bright!!

It's all 6" finished half square triangles but the placement works so well with these strong colours.  

I had this one long arm quilted at Busy Bee Quilt shop in Wellington.  The backing is a Kaffe Fassett wideback.  

I showed it at Capital Quilters guild meeting with my own purple/green version from quite a few years ago.  

The finished size is 60" x 60".

Crazy

And I have another finish to share with you.  I'm calling this one "Crazy" because it sends your eyes a bit crazy as you try to pick out the pattern.  However, I chose a very clever motif for the long arm quilting and that may help you to see the blocks.  (Garden Trellis 4 by House of Creations)

I purchased this Kaffe Fassett Marquee Stripe fabric at one of our guild sales days and I didn't have a lot to play with. this is all of the blocks I could make from what I had.  And it's long out of print now.

I couldn't find a fabric in my stash to complement the top, so the next best option is to go opposites so I went for beautiful Cactus Flower - also by Kaffe Fassett Collective. 

I showed the early stages of this quilt back in July, and I had actually forgotten about it until I stumbled across it a few weeks ago.   Fortunately I still had enough of the teal stars to do the binding in the same fabric.  I'm very happy with that decision, although I did consider a black stripe for a while. 

The Shiraz stripe in the border triangles is from Kaffe Fassett Collective too. 

My Crazy quilt is 50" x 60" so it could be used as a lap quilt of on a single bed. 

Tekapo - Capturing Memories

I'm on a roll with finishes at the moment.

I asked my long arm quilter to do some very simple quilting on my Symposium piece while she was quilting a couple of other quilts for me recently.  

Then I added some facings because the quilt is only 27" x 27" and I didn't want  binding that could appear bulky on such a small piece.  

I love the backing because it looks like deep blue water.  

I've called my quilt "Tekapo" because as soon as I saw the design I thought of Lake Tekapo in the South Island of New Zealand.  I've stayed there twice and I love the special colour of that lake.  I made sure that my lake was the colour I remember and I changed my background from grey to blue as well.    

    

So now I have a finished quilt and very fond memories of a great class with Veruschka Zarate - Pride and Joy Quilting.  If you ever get a chance to take a class with Veruschka then I recommend that you grab it.  She is such a a lovely person and she shared so much of her quilting knowledge with us.  

You can read my earlier post about the class I took at Symposium here. 

Her "Dignity" quilt has been juried in to QuiltCon in February 2025 so I'm sure you're going to hear a lot more about Veruschka then.  You can see it here https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1A27Nc8UHP/

Houdini

I've called my Lollie Wheels quilt "Houdini" because it's magic.  There's an optical illusion that make you think that there's a square in the middle of each pinwheel block.  But it's all due to fussy cutting! The fabric has printed lines of stitching on it, and if you cut it right way you can make this effect. 

I made my quilt from some pieces of Lollies, Looking Forward and Remix that I had in my stash - along with contributions from 4 other sources.  Jen Kingwell has a whole new range of Lollies fabrics coming out right now and the Lollie Wheels pattern was released at Quilt Market to go with the new fabrics.  The pattern is available as a free download from the Amitie Textiles website. 

You can read more about the cutting process on my earlier blog post here. 

I asked my long arm quilter to keep the quilting simple and just do straight vertical lines with pink thread.  I'm really pleased with it.  I think it allows the viewer to focus on the blocks without getting distracted by the quilting.  

If I have left over fabrics I like to put them on the back because then I can show people how I did the fussy cutting. 

My quilt ended up bigger than I initially planned because I was able to source more fabric than I expected.  But I love the variety of fabrics in it.  There certainly won't be another one identical to this!

My finished quilt is 64" x 72".

Kokomo (Stars Upon Stars) Hand Quilting

And now to Part D of my posts on Kokomo (Stars Upon Stars)

D. Hand Quilting

I always knew that I would hand quilt my Kokomo. I wanted to say that it was entirely made by me. 

However, with so many tiny pieces in this quilt there are a lot of seam allowances to quilt through. 

I used Aurifil 24wt because it's fine and strong and perfect for hand quilting.  I didn't want the quilting to stand out, so I used colours that blended into the fabrics.   

You can read more about how I hand quilt on this page on my blog, but I always use a hoop and I always choose wool batting because it's the easiest to quilt through and gives a lovely soft result. 

I quilted three lines across the diamonds in the central stars which you can see on the photo below.  One at row 3, one at row 5, and one at row 7.  I needed to do some quilting withing the diamonds and this worked best for me.  

I tried multiple methods of quilting the sashing strips in straight lines, but all of them looked like I was rushing it and just wanted it finished, so I bit the bullet and quilted the sashing strips in the ditch.  And I'm very pleased that I did.  I like the finished look. 

I really enjoyed hand quilting Kokomo and revisiting all of my fabric choices.  

Kokomo (Stars Upon Star) Assembly

And now to Part C of my posts on Kokomo (Stars Upon Stars)

C. Assembly

I chose to hand piece my quilt because I knew it would give the me level of accuracy and finishing that I was after.  And I won an award for "Best Piecing" in our guild's exhibition so it worked!

I English Paper Pieced my La Passacaglia quilt, but now I much prefer hand piecing with no papers because it's easier on my hands.  

I was fortunate to stumble across a rubber stamp set for hand piecing Stars Upon Stars made by Jeanneke.  The stamps result in each piece being slightly bigger that in Laundry Basket Quilt's pattern, but the finished look is the same.  

EDIT: the stamps are back in stock in Jeanneke’s Etsy shop 🎉🎉🎉🎉

There's a lot of Y seams in this quilt so it's perfect for hand piecing.  I do find that I have much more control when I hand piece. There's no lost points on my stars when I'm hand piecing. 

I made a few videos about how I hand piece the 8 pointed stars here on my YouTube channel. 

I use Aurifil 50wt in a neutral grey and a very fine milliners needle.   

If you've got time and just want to enjoy the process I really do recommend hand piecing or English Paper Piecing to get a high level of accuracy with this gorgeous quilt. 

As I chose the fabrics for each block I bagged them up and they became a very portable travel project for quilt a few years.  

When hand piecing the diamonds I started on one side and worked down the vertical rows.  It helped to layout the pieces so I didn't accidentally pick up the wrong one.  

Once the diamonds were finished I turned them over and pressed them carefully so they would sit flat and nest nicely into the next piece. I used Flatter to help the blocks sit flat. 

I experimented with each set of diamonds to see which way up I preferred them.  And then I tested out my outside stars to see which colour would work best with the centre star.  

auditioning the external stars for each block

Once I had made a complete block I set it aside and didn't join any of them up until I could lay out the whole quilt and check the colour placement. 

Considering how they're going to work together

Back in December 2016 I tried Edyta Sitar's (Laundry Basket Quilts) method in her Stars Upon Stars pattern . Even following the directions closely, and using all of the available tips online, I still couldn't get the seams to meet nicely, so hand piecing was the perfect solution for me. 

These were the test fabrics only

Lollie Wheels

This week I decided to start something new.  I saw a cute quilt in the background of Jen Kingwell's booth at Quilt Market and I thought about some of her fabrics that I had in my stash.  

This clever version of a Pin Wheel quilt is made by cutting Jen Kingwell's Lollies fabric in a particular manner. Jen offers a free pattern to make in on her Amitie Textiles website - it's called Lollie Wheels. Fortunately I had a few pieces of the first run of Lollies in my stash so I decided to give it a try. 

 

width of fabric of Lollies

More of the colourways that I just happened to have

I was very pleased with my first blocks so I kept going and now I'm on a roll.  

Maybe I'll be able to report back next week with even more progress.  The blocks are 8" finished so I'm aiming for 49 of them to make the quilt 56" x 56" as per the pattern.