Way back in May I promised my sister Reigh a pair of oven mitts. Good thing she’s a patient person! I finished the mitts last week . . .
. . . and popped them in the mail.
Reigh had requested yellow and blue. I chose a medium dark blue tonal print for the outside of the mitt — a practical choice and one I’ve used before — and a lovely blue and yellow floral print for the lining. I must have bought a lot of that floral print back in the day because I used it close to 20 years ago to make a ruffled bedskirt for my twin Diane that was eventually swapped for a more tailored one. It also went into a couple of cloth napkins that are in constant rotation at the Portland White House.
You can see more of the lining fabric in this process photo:
That’s a freezer paper pattern I’m sewing around. When the mitt on the left below is trimmed and the cuff is bound, the mitt is turned inside out and looks just like the mitt on the right:
Reigh’s mitts have arrived — she likes them! — and my guess is she has already put them to good use.
Just in case you’re new to my blog, here are links to my tutorials on how to make these oven mitts yourself:
My quilt guild held its annual auction last week, selling over 200 items. My goodness, I’ve never seen such an array of generously bundled fabrics along with books, patterns, sewing notions, vintage linens, and even a Singer Featherweight machine. And what did I come home with? This beautifully pieced quilt top:
We all know the last thing I need is another quilt top when I have so many of my own begging to be finished, but friends, I could not resist. The final bid was $20 — an absolute steal. Truth be told, I would have paid more but the top didn’t seem to be drawing a lot of interest. Was it because I was hovering in the background willing my guildmates to keep passing it by? I also lingered nearby (inconspicuously, I hope) as the auction drew to a close, making sure no one could squeeze in at the last minute to outbid me.
I have no idea how old this top is or who made it. Judging by the looks of it, the fabrics are 1930s reproductions rather than vintage pieces. What struck me as I unfolded it to get a better look was how beautifully it was pieced. The quiltmaker sewed consistent quarter-inch seams . . .
. . . and every single point on the front is perfect as a result:
That makes my little wannabe perfectionist heart go pitty-pat. It also argues for the top being more recent. My guess is that the quiltmaker used a rotary cutter and made very accurate cuts before piecing the top so accurately.
I hadn’t seen that block design before but it seemed to be a variation on the Shoofly block. I did a little research from the best source of all: Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns. Looking in the index under Shoofly, it didn’t take long to find the block, which has several names. It’s known as Richmond, Aunt Vina’s Favorite, Pin Wheel, Butterfly, and Lucy’s Four and Nine:
Brackman notes that the earliest publication she has seen for the pattern is Hearth & Home magazine about 1915 under the name Richmond.
The quiltmaker used a 5 x 6 setting, separating the blocks with 2″-wide sashing. The blocks finish at 10½” square, which seems a bit unusual to me. Right now the top measures 61″ wide by 77½” long. But here’s something a bit odd: there’s a border strip of the lavender lattice fabric on the top and bottom of the quilt top but not on the sides. Look back at the first photo to see what I mean. Could the quilt have been abandoned because the maker didn’t have enough of the lavender fabric to complete the border?
I’ll never be able to find the exact shade of lavender to add side borders. What are my options? Well, I could add side borders with a reasonably close match to the original lavender but in my heart of hearts I know that’s not going to happen. I could remove the top and bottom borders and find a different fabric — perhaps a reproduction print containing many of the colors in the quilt top — to border the blocks. Or I could cut down the lavender fabric on the top and bottom borders and make borders for the sides with what is cut off. Then I could add a larger border of print fabric. Just an idea — but I’m leaning in that direction.
Having recently finished my 11th Junior Billie Bag, it was inevitable that I would make a suite of accessories to go with it:
In clockwise order starting at the top, you can see a 4 x 4 fabric box (which I use as a threadcatcher), a quilter’s tool caddy (an embellished version of P3 Designs’ Travel Case pattern), a rotary cutter coat, and a scissors case. Directions for the rotary cutter coat and scissors case are on my Tutorials page.
It was also inevitable that Princess Cordelia aka Coco would photobomb my picture-taking efforts:
I shooed her off the ironing board so I could take a photo of the quilter’s tool caddy in its open position . . .
. . . and she returned to photobomb that as well. Notice the proprietary paw placed firmly on the tool caddy:
Here’s a better look at the threadcatcher:
I’ve devised a way to attach the binding that does not involve sewing!
This fall I’ll be teaching a class at Montavilla Sewing Center in Lake Oswego on how to make all four of these accessories. The class, called “Quilter’s Tote Accessories,” is intended as a companion to my Junior Billie Bag class but these accessories would be welcome additions to any quilter’s tote.
If you’re in the Portland metropolitan area and would like to treat yourself to some useful accessories or perhaps make gifts for your best quilting buddies, this may be the class for you. Thanks for stopping by!
. . . is back from the longarm quilter! Here’s a glimpse of the front:
This photo was taken by Karlee at SewInspired2Day, who has quilted several of my quilts. Karlee’s photo turned out better than the one I took inside today so I borrowed it (with her permission) from her Instagram page.
There’s quite a bit of negative space in my Sea Star Sampler, especially in two of the three large blocks that finish at 18″ square, so I was looking for a quilt design that would look good in the background without distracting from the sampler blocks. The motif we settled on is “Embellish” by Quilts Complete, and I must say I like it a lot! In keeping with my theme of selecting fabrics evoking the sea, you could almost say the quilting looks like swirling water.
Here are a few close-ups:
The simple pieced back features just two fabrics:
The trimmed quilt measures 60½” square. I have just enough left of the purple fabric used in the 6″ curved Atomic Star blocks to make the binding. I’ll be back with photos when the binding and label are finished.
When I showed a picture on my blog a couple weeks ago of a stack of six quilts I had donated to Hopewell House, a hospice care facility in Southwest Portland, some of my readers asked to see pictures of the full quilts. Three of the quilts pictured above were made before starting my website/blog in 2012 so I thought it would be fun to do a “Throwback Thursday” post and show you these early quilts as well as the more recent ones.
We start with the the quilt at the top of the stack — Swinging on a Star, the quilt I pieced in 2005 under Billie Mahorney’s tutelage in Quiltmaking III, the third installment of the Quiltmaking class she taught for so many years at the Pine Needle Quilt Shop in Lake Oswego (current home of the Lake Oswego branch of Montavilla Sewing Center):
Swinging on a Star, 46″ x 58″ (2006)
In this class Billie taught us how to draft blocks (including some from Quiltmaking II) that finish at 9″ square, and how to set them in a “Twist ‘n Turn” technique described by Sharyn Squier Craig in her 1996 book of the same name. At the time I started this quilt my focus was on using up cottons I had accumulated in the 1980s while making charity quilts for babies. Little did I know that setting foot in a quilt shop 20 years later would cause me to abandon all hope of using up that old fabric as I quickly began accumulating a much larger amount of new fabric that would become known as “my stash.”
Swinging on a Star was the first of my quilts that included free motion quilting (FMQ). Billie insisted that we learn how to do that. I stitched in the ditch around the star blocks and did free motion quilting in the borders. Happily the ditsy print in the borders hid a multitude of FMQ sins.
The fourth quilt I am holding in the first photo is Starry 9-Patch, finished in 2007. I took Billie’s Quiltmaking series out of order, starting with the second class. I learned so much in Quiltmaking II and III that I decided to take Quiltmaking I when she offered it again. The basic design was a combination of 9-Patch and Rail Fence blocks but I threw in some Sawtooth Stars to jazz it up a bit:
Starry 9-Patch, 56″ x 63″ (2007)
The bottom quilt in the stack pictured is based on Billie’s original design called Maisie’s Garden. She taught this class at the Pine Needle in 2007 and I happily jumped in, using a palette of blues, greens, and yellows, a combination I still love to this day:
Star Garden, 44″ x 62″ (2007)
The next quilt in chronological order is V8, a quilt I designed to highlight my discovery of kaleidoscope blocks and inset circles:
V8, 55″ x 64″ (2010)
Every circle is a revelation! You don’t know what a block will look like until you have sewn eight 45-degree triangles together. I named my quilt V8 because the colors reminded me of the vegetables that go into the making of the vegetable juice blend.
One thing I can definitely say after posting these photos is that digital photography has certainly improved over the last 15 years!
Number 5 in the grouping of quilts is Simply Dashing, also an original design, this one focusing on four-patch kaleidoscope blocks, the ones I call “4-Patch Wonder” or “faux kaleidoscope” blocks:
Simply Dashing, 55″ x 64″ (2010)
In this quilt the centers of the Churn Dash blocks (on point) and the alternating blocks (also on point) are 4-Patch Wonder blocks.
The final quilt I donated to Hopewell House is a recent one, Tea Time on High Street, finished in 2021:
Tea Time on High Street, 55″ Square (2021)
Was it hard to part with these quilts? To be honest, yes. The first three have a lot of sentimental value because of their association with my teacher and mentor Billie Mahorney. The other three represent steps I took in trying out my own designs and/or moving outside my comfort zone. The hospice patients and their families who become the recipients of these quilts may never know their significance in my quilting journey but the fact that they are helping people on a different kind of journey makes it all worthwhile.
It’s been a few days since I added borders to my Sea Star Sampler quilt top:
The outer border is the same fabric used in a couple of interior blocks, this whimsical design by Jessica Zhao for Cotton + Steel:
I made sure all four borders show my little fishies swimming upstream! To do that I had to cut the side borders on the lengthwise grain. I had enough fabric to make single cuts for the sides but had to piece the top and bottom borders because they were cut on the crosswise grain.
Today I made a simple pieced backing for the quilt using mainly this fabric, which has already made an appearance in three blocks (in fussy-cut form):
The plan is to deliver the top and backing to my longarm quilter later in the week. Since many of the fabrics in this quilt are related to the sea and/or are suggestive of water, I’m thinking of asking for a simple quilt design suggesting waves. But I am open to other ideas. Feel free to weigh in!
Officially finished and ready to load! Here ’tis, my eleventh Junior Billie Bag (JBB):
The block in the left photo above features an inset circle. Rather than make a different block for the other side (right photo), I used an uncut piece of the focus fabric because I wanted to showcase that gorgeous poppy border print. I really like how nicely the binding fabric — a metallic silver and black leaf print — sets off the grey, red, and black fabrics as well as the poppy print.
The bag is 14″ wide, 17″ tall, and 7″ deep. The depth of the bag is sufficient to hold a 6″ x 24″ acrylic ruler, which is only one of the terrific features of Billie’s design.
It’s always rather difficult to get good photos of the JBB with both sets of straps in plain sight. Here you see both sides flattened out, with the short and long handles in view:
Why two sets of handles? It’s so handy being able to choose when to carry the bag as a satchel using the short straps or when to carry it over your shoulder using the long straps.
It’s also difficult to get a good look at the pockets inside a Junior Billie Bag:
Here’s a photo of the interior (from a previous post) taken before the fourth side was added:
If you’re new to my blog, you may be wondering why on earth I’ve made so many Junior Billie Bags. The short answer is that I’ve been teaching this scaled down version of Billie Mahorney’s original design since 2015, and every time I teach the class, I make a bag because I’ve found that the best way for me to demonstrate construction techniques is to build a bag alongside my students.
Because of the pandemic, quilt classes came to a halt early in 2020. The last JBB I made was in 2019. When I started working on this one I realized how rusty I had gotten. As I tell my students, “This is a challenging bag to make but so worth the effort!”
You can see all of my Junior Billie Bags on the Gallery page of firstlightdesigns.com or by clicking here.
My quilt guild, the Metropolitan Patchwork Society, recently published a blog post entitled “A Call for Comfort Quilts.” Friends of Hopewell House is looking for comfort quilts for residents of Hopewell House, a hospice facility reopening in southwest Portland this fall after a three-year hiatus. Prior to closing in 2019, Hopewell House spent 30 years helping thousands of individuals and their loved ones navigate with grace through one of the most profound times in their lives — death and dying.
According to Jill Citro, the Comfort Quilt Program coordinator, “The Quilt Program will offer patients a quilt of their choice, handmade by generous and creative community members who have donated their time, talents and materials. Each quilt will remain with the patient during their care. Upon the patient’s death, their quilt will be part of their ‘passage observance’ with their family, friends and caregivers, and the family will be invited to take the quilt home with them. As you can see, the quilt becomes an extremely meaningful, moving and cherished gift.”
It’s time to say goodbye to a few of the quilts I’ve made over the past 15 years or so. In a way, quilts are like books. If you’ve read a book and loved it, it’s like an old friend. It’s comforting to see it on a bookshelf; it might even be a book you’ll want to read again someday. I’ve become attached to every quilt I’ve made (even the ones that were made as gifts!) and I have enjoyed filling my home with them. They’ve been displayed in various and sundry places: draped across chairs or on the back of couches, folded at the foot of beds, or displayed on quilt racks. Many a time a quilt has been pulled from its place on a chilly day to cover me or the Dear Husband while reading or watching TV.
Of the quilts I’m donating, three were made in classes I took from Billie Mahorney at the Pine Needle Quilt Shop in the mid-2000s. (Billie taught me so much about quiltmaking and is the one who first encouraged me to teach quilt classes.) A couple of the quilts are original designs and one is a recent quilt made from a free pattern.Now, freshly laundered and folded, these quilts are on their way to their new home. When Hopewell House opens its doors again, my hope is that these quilts will bring comfort and maybe even joy to hospice patients and their families.
I can’t remember the last time I spent the entire afternoon in my sewing room. Despite the fact that it was really hot upstairs — the temperature in Portland reached 100 degrees at 6:00 pm today — I was in heaven. Fortunately, my ironing board is positioned right under the ceiling fan; the circulating air helped. I still got hot and sticky but it was totally worth it.
First I worked on Junior Billie Bag #11, the one I am making as a teaching tool for my students at Montavilla Sewing Center in Lake Oswego. I could have finished the bag today but I needed to leave the final steps undone so I can demonstrate them for my students at our third and final class on Friday. Look for the final reveal of this ultimate quilter’s tote next week!
Then I finally got the blocks sewn together on my Sea Star Sampler quilt. Because the blocks are of different sizes — finishing at 6, 12, and 18 inches — I knew I’d be sewing the top together in sections. You can see the four sections here:
The Chicago Star was the first block I made way back in May of last year, when Kristin at Montavilla Sewing introduced it in a Block of the Month program via Zoom. Once in-person classes resumed at the Lake Oswego store in the fall of 2021, the BOM project faded away but I carried on, not really knowing what I would end up with. By the time I finished making blocks, I had used only two of the ones in Kristin’s design — but I feel sure she would approve.
The Chicago Star block needed to be added to my top with partial seams . . . and here it is in its rightful place:
I did wind up making one last-minute swap of two blocks and am pleased with the decision. Right now the top measures 48½” square but there are two borders to come. Maybe tomorrow?!
. . . when a Junior Billie Bag becomes three-dimensional:
It makes all the work that goes into a JBB totally worth it!You’re looking at the inside of my current Junior Billie Bag-in-progress. You can’t see them all but there are 14 pockets in the three sides in the photo above. The other front/back panel has four pockets, bringing the number of inside pockets to 18.
But wait — there’s more! The side panels on the outside of the bag also have pockets. There are three in the photo below . . .
. . . and one more in this next photo, bringing the total number of pockets to 22:
The size of each pocket was carefully measured and made to hold the tools I use most often when I go to take — or teach — a quilt class.
Here’s a look at the side panels/bottom unit on the outside . . .
. . . and on the inside:
I’m absolutely loving the bold poppy prints, all of which have touches of silver. I also used two other silver metallic fabrics in other parts of the bag. I’ve loved every single Junior Billie Bag I’ve made, all of which have been bright and colorful, but this one — #11 — is probably the most elegant.
That’s a freezer paper pattern I’m sewing around. When the mitt on the left below is trimmed and the cuff is bound, the mitt is turned inside out and looks just like the mitt on the right:
Reigh’s mitts have arrived — she likes them! — and my guess is she has already put them to good use.
We all know the last thing I need is another quilt top when I have so many of my own begging to be finished, but friends, I could not resist. The final bid was $20 — an absolute steal. Truth be told, I would have paid more but the top didn’t seem to be drawing a lot of interest. Was it because I was hovering in the background willing my guildmates to keep passing it by? I also lingered nearby (inconspicuously, I hope) as the auction drew to a close, making sure no one could squeeze in at the last minute to outbid me.
