Category Archives: State Fair quilt pattern

First Light Designs: Best of 2021

by Dawn Posted on December 26, 2021

For the sixth consecutive year, Cheryl at Meadowmist Designs is hosting a “Linky Party,” inviting quilt bloggers to share their top five posts of the year. It’s a fun way to look back on the past 12 months and identify some of the high points as well as see what marvelous things other quilters are creating. So thank you, Cheryl. I’m delighted to join the 2021 party!

Clicking on the links below will take you to the original posts where you can read more about the finishes and see more photos.

Number 1. Best Tutorial:  Oven Mitts that Fit

I’m still waiting for the quilting and crafting world to discover my tutorial on quilted oven mitts. I worked really hard on writing this tutorial and loading it with pictures. So much so that the tutorial is in two parts with a prequel!

Oven Mitts that Fit: the Prequel gives the background for my taking on this project and shows you how to make your own pattern based on the size of your hand.

Part 1 covers fabric requirements, instructions for downloading and printing the pattern, assembling the layers, and quilting the resulting “quilt sandwich.”

Part 2 covers the sewing of the mitt and contrasting band around the cuff edge as well as the final step of tacking the band down before turning the mitt right side out.

These mitts make great gifts for friends and family. I invite you to take a look!

 

Number 2. Best UFO Finish

Okay, I confess:  This is the only UFO (UnFinished Object) I busted this year. It’s an updated version of the traditional pattern Grandma’s Surprise. I started working on this quilt in 2015 in a class taught by Joyce Gieszler. Her book Then and Now Quilts (Kansas City Star Quilts, 2014) had come out the year before and Grandma’s Surprise was one of the quilts featured in the book. My version of this design is called Currant Affairs (there’s a pun in that name).

 

Number 3. Best Quilt Made for a Car

You read that right. I made this quilt for my 2019 Subaru Forester aka the Green Goddess. I’d been wanting to make a car quilt for some time and was prompted to do so when I discovered the line of “Jungle Paradise” fabric designed by Stacy Iest Hsu and the free (and very easy) pattern State Fair by Melissa Corry. This is my Green Goddess Car Quilt.

 

Number 4. Best Quilt Made from a Jelly Roll

I don’t use precuts very much, mainly because I like to prewash my fabrics. But in my stash was a Jelly Roll (2½” strips) of “High Street,” a line of fabrics by Lily Ashbury for Moda Fabrics. I used the Jelly Roll in a free pattern called Tea Time in Bali and wound up with a quilt I named Tea Time on High Street.

 

Number 5. Best Red and Green Quilt

It’s a tie! I made two quilts this year using red and green fabrics. First up is ‘Tis the Season:

It’s actually my first quilt finish of 2021 but I saved it for the fifth slot because we’re still celebrating the season. ‘Tis the Season was made using the Missouri Star Company’s pattern Quatrefoil and Corey Yoder’s fabric line called “Holliberry.”

My second red and green quilt of 2021 is the very recently finished Winterwood, based on my pattern Season to Taste:

It can be a wall hanging or a table runner. I gave it to my sister Diane for Christmas so now we know: it’s a table runner:


With five days left in the year, there’s a good chance I’ll be able to add a third red and green quilt to the mix. (You may see it in next year’s Linky Party.)

Be sure to check out the top five posts of the other quilting/blogging partygoers. If you’re a quilter, you can join Cheryl’s Best of 2021 Linky Party, too. The link is open until January 2. Thank you for visiting First Light Designs. All the best in 2022!

 

 

 

Posted in home dec, kaleidoscope quilts, oven mitts, Quatrefoil, single-fold binding, State Fair quilt pattern, table runner, tutorial, update, wall hanging | 8 Comments

It’s a Wrap: The Green Goddess Quilt

by Dawn Posted on October 30, 2021

A windy fall day in Portland, Oregon did not offer a great photo op for my latest finish, The Green Goddess Quilt. Nevertheless, I posed in front of my Subaru Forester (aka the Green Goddess) today so the Dear Husband could snap this photo to show you how well the quilt goes with the car.

Here’s a close-up of the binding:

Don’t you love the look of a stripe on the bias on a quilt binding? I sure do!

Here’s a photo of the finished front . . .

. . . and the finished back:


The label:

I made an inset circle (using a compact disc as my pattern) and then enclosed it in another circle using the same fabric I used for accent strips on the back and for the binding. The label was appliquéd in place by hand.

Sometimes, if the quilting motif is compatible, I will stitch in the ditch around the inner circle to secure the label even more to the quilt. The motif I chose for this quilt (an edge-to-edge design called Sashay) has a lot of loops and swirls so I went for the added stitch-in-the-ditch. If you look carefully you can see the stitching:

Now take a look at the front of the quilt:

Do you see the circle? Look at the dark orange print triangle in the lower left corner. There it is!

But if you looked at the entire quilt again from the front, you probably wouldn’t notice it unless I pointed it out:


That’s what I mean about the stitching motif being compatible; the stitching around the label is virtually unnoticeable from the front.

Before The Green Goddess Quilt takes up residence in its namesake, I need to throw it in the washer and dryer so it gets that lovely old-fashioned puckery look that only comes with laundering.

The Green Goddess Quilt finishes at 48″ square. It was made using Melissa Corry’s free pattern State Fair and a Layer Cake (10″ squares) of the charming “Jungle Paradise” line designed by Stacy Iest Hsu for Moda Fabrics.

 

 

 

Posted in family, quilt labels, State Fair quilt pattern, update | 8 Comments

Rounding the Bases

by Dawn Posted on October 24, 2021

Yesterday afternoon I finally got the bias binding attached to my Green Goddess car quilt (made from the free State Fair pattern by Melissa Corry). It’s a little hard to tell from this photo but I’m attaching the binding with a 3/8″ seam, the same measurement the finished binding will be:

The binding got attached shortly before the beginning of yesterday’s Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, with the Atlanta Braves holding a 3-2 edge over the Los Angeles Dodgers (last year’s winners of the World Series). If the Braves won, they would advance to the World Series; if the Dodgers won, the two teams would be tied at 3-3 and force a Game 7.

The Dear Husband and I settled down to watch the game and I began hand stitching the binding to the back of the quilt. Many quilters dread this step in quiltmaking but it has always been a process I’ve enjoyed. And it was oh, so appropriate to be working on this while a baseball game was underway.

You see, whenever I bind a quilt I have a visual in my head of each corner being the base of a ballfield. I start out a few inches from one corner, and as I get to each corner I tick off the base mentally in my head. It’s always satisfying to round third base and head for home plate.

I didn’t get all that far yesterday because the game was so exciting I kept pausing with my needle in midair. By now (if you’re a baseball fan) you know the Atlanta Braves won the game and will be going to the World Series for the first time since 1999. Twenty-two years! The team will face the Houston Astros, winner of the American League Championship Series.

I hope to have my quilt completely bound before the first game of the World Series on Tuesday. In the meantime, here are a few process shots of my binding, starting with first base — er, the first corner:

. . . which looks like this from the front:

. . . and the second corner:

. . . which looks like this from the front:

Depending on the time of day and the amount of natural or artificial light, the colors of the quilt — especially the greens — can look so different. Nevertheless, I think you can see how cute the fabrics are that feature the animals in Stacy Iest Hsu’s “Jungle Paradise” fabric line.

Can I say it? I think this quilt is a home run!

 

 

 

 

Posted in family, State Fair quilt pattern, update | 5 Comments

Sashaying Around

by Dawn Posted on October 16, 2021

Who’s doing the sashaying? That would be moi, doing the happy dance because my latest quilt is just back from the longarmer. Karlee at SewInspired2Day quilted it with an edge-to-edge design called “Sashay” by Anne Bright. Take a look:

For such a small quilt (48″ square), there’s a huge amount of negative space — so much so that any quilt motif was bound to stand out. I was looking for a design with loops and swirls that would provide a pleasing counterpoint to all of those straight and diagonal lines in the print fabrics. “Sashay” fits the bill nicely. I asked Karlee to match the quilting thread to the pale green background fabric so the quilting would compliment the quilt design without overpowering it. I’m delighted with the result.

Here are a few close-ups for your viewing enjoyment:



If you’ve just tuned in, those fabrics are from the “Jungle Paradise” line designed by Stacy Iest Hsu for Moda Fabrics. The quilt pattern is a freebie from Melissa Corry called State Fair.

Here’s a look at the back of my quilt:

When I turned the quilt over to Karlee I asked her to extend the quilting about a half-inch beyond the edges of the quilt top. The reason? With no border on this quilt, I knew I’d have to be very careful when trimming the excess batting and backing fabric to leave enough so that no points are cut off the triangles when the binding strip is added. Having the quilting stitches go all the way to the very edges of the fabric (and beyond) helps keep the edges flat, making it easier to trim the quilt and add the binding.

If you look at the top photo you’ll notice I didn’t trim to the very edges of the quilt. I left a half-inch margin all around. Now that I’ve measured and know that the quilt is square all around, I’ll trim most of that extra off, leaving just an eighth of an inch because I’m going to make my binding finish at 3/8″ instead of my usual quarter inch.

This is actually the second time I’ve chosen “Sashay” for a quilt. Back in 2017, longarmer Sherry Wadley used that motif on a baby quilt I made for my great niece Selene. You can see Selene’s quilt here.

With all of the Major League Baseball playoff games under way, I’m eager to get the binding sewn to the front so I can settle down in front of the TV with the Dear Husband and handstitch the binding to the back while watching to see which teams continue their advance to the World Series.

 

 

 

Posted in State Fair quilt pattern, update | 6 Comments

Zingy Zebra Stripes

by Dawn Posted on October 11, 2021

As promised, here’s a shot of the backing of my current project:

You will recall that the front features glimpses of wild animals and birds frolicking in the jungle:

Didn’t I tell you I had the perfect fabric in my stash for the backing? I hope you agree! I’ve had this green zebra stripe fabric for — oh, at least a dozen years. I’ve used it in two other projects and have enough left for at least a couple more. That’s because after buying one large-ish piece, I found it for sale somewhere else and on impulse bought the rest of the bolt. It was a good impulse, right?

For those of you who like to know such things, the backing fabric is from the Peyton Collection designed by Anna Griffin for Windham Fabrics. I just checked her website, AnnaGriffin.com, and it appears she isn’t designing fabrics now. That’s probably a good thing for my pocketbook because if she were still designing fabrics, I’d be buying them.

On the back I added a row of leftover half-square triangles (HSTs), including one with a pink background that didn’t seem quite right for the front. Here’s a close-up:

The HSTs are separated from the zebra stripes by a stripy green print that makes me think of blades of grass. I’m going to bind the quilt with this same fabric, cut on the bias. I think it will add a bit of zing to both the front and back of the quilt.

Speaking of front and back, they are ready for the longarm quilter. All those straight lines and angles in the quilt top are telling me the quilt motif needs to incorporate curves and circles. I’m thinking “filigree.” Stay tuned!

 

 

 

Posted in State Fair quilt pattern, update | 4 Comments

Changing Horses Midstream

by Dawn Posted on October 5, 2021

There must be a quilting equivalent to that expression but I’m leary of mixing my metaphors. And, metaphorically speaking, I didn’t really change horses midstream. Instead I said “Whoa!” and pulled them to a halt.

You already know that I spent hours and hours in front of my design wall arranging the blocks on my current project, nine large blocks making up a fun pattern called State Fair. Each block contains 36 pieces so you know there was a lot of moving pieces around to get the balance I was seeking. I didn’t sew a single component together until I had all nine blocks laid out.

But here’s what happened: after sewing just four of the nine blocks together, I was so pleased with what I saw that I didn’t want to go any further. Behold:

What you see is a quilt top that will measure 48″ square when bound. That’s a bit on the small side for a lap quilt — but not for what I have in mind. You see, I have long wanted to make a quilt for my car (aka the Green Goddess). I think this will be the perfect size. It’s large enough for the Dear Husband to throw across his lap on a road trip but small enough to fold up easily and toss in the back seat. And in a pinch it could double as a seat cushion at a baseball game.

Here’s another bit of good news:  in my fabric stash I found the perfect fabric for the back. I’ll be back soon to show you. In the meantime, here’s a shot of the Green Goddess when she was brand new (January 2019):

You’ve probably already noticed:  green house, green car. And soon: a green quilt for the green car.

 

 

 

Posted in family, State Fair quilt pattern, update | 4 Comments