Category Archives: update

UFO Sighting: Fractured Image from 2019

by Dawn Posted on June 27, 2025

A couple of weeks ago I was digging through a dresser drawer in my sewing room looking for a scrap of fusible interfacing to use in making a quilt label. In the process I pulled out a mysterious bundle, which turned out to be a folded piece of gridded flannel onto which I had pinned 143 — count’ em! — 3-inch squares:

Apparently I set this project aside in 2019 — the year I taught a Fractured Image class at Montavilla Sewing — and promptly forgot about it. Don’t you think it’s high time I finished it?

I started sewing rows together from the bottom up (for the simple reason they were easier to get to). Here’s how far I’ve gotten:

Can you see how the rather abstract medley of blossoms, leaves, and ferns is coming together to form a striking ripples-in-a-pond effect? It starts with an image cut from four repeats of fabric, and the magic is in the cutting and arranging of squares. Unlike a four-patch kaleidoscope block in which four layers are stacked on top of each other and cut into squares, a fractured image is created by trimming the second, third, and fourth repeats a certain way before cutting them into squares. When the squares are sewn back together, the result is a fractured image. It sounds complicated but it’s very easy.

Here’s a better shot of the rows I’ve finished so far:

If you look carefully at some of the squares, you should be able to see how any two squares viewed side-by-side or top-to-bottom share design elements.

I first learned about fractured images in a class I took in the summer of 2010 from Johanne Gibson in Sisters, Oregon. After getting back to the project you see above, I rummaged around in my sewing room closet and unearthed several projects I had fractured in the past, including some I had completely forgotten about.

Here is the result of that first class with Johanne:

No doubt the Kaffe Fassett fans reading this will recognize the fabric immediately. Using 3″ squares, my first fractured image measures 28½” x 34″. This could easily be transformed into a wall hanging by quilting and binding it as is. Or I could add a narrow border and finish it. Or it could be the centerpiece of a larger quilt. So many options!

With Johanne’s permission, I taught her method several times in classes at the Pine Needle Quilt Shop in Lake Oswego (now home to Montavilla Sewing). A blog post from 2012 shows a few more examples of images I fractured. You can see those images and read the post at this link.

Among the images I fractured (and forgot about) was this sweet one. . .

. . . featuring the pink colorway of “Hydrangeas and Raspberries” by Lakehouse Fabrics that was used in my 4-Patch Wonder quilt Framboise. This fracture started with 2″ squares and measures 20″ x 17″. I’m thinking it would make a lovely pillow to complement my Framboise quilt.

I’m also thinking it might be time to teach another Fractured Image class. What do you think?

 

 

 

Posted in 4-Patch Wonder, fractured image, update | 7 Comments

Berried Treasure Is A Wrap!

by Dawn Posted on June 1, 2025

Finally, a finish to report: Berried Treasure, the quilt I started at the beginning of this year:

You can read my first post about it here.

Have a look at the back:

As you can see, I made my trademark round label using a compact disc as a pattern and added a contrasting ring of the bright blue tonal fabric:

A close-up of said label:

Even though I used the “natural light” function on my camera phone to take the indoor pictures you see above, there’s no substitute for the real thing to capture the true colors in the fabrics:

Berried Treasure measures 68″ x 81″ but will shrink a bit after being laundered. After being dragged around the back deck, it definitely needs a trip through the washer and dryer.

Given that today is the first of June, I hope to be more productive during the remaining months of 2025. My mind is already racing with possibilities for my next project.

Posted in 4-Patch Wonder, faux-kaleido quilts, kaleidoscope quilts, update | 6 Comments

Berried Treasure Is Back from the Quilter

by Dawn Posted on May 15, 2025

A heartfelt thank you to all my friends and followers who responded with words of condolence and comfort following my last post about our beloved cat Coco’s departure from this world. So many quilters are also pet owners and they love their furry friends as much as the Dear Husband and I loved our Coco. We want you to know how much we appreciate your messages. We miss her so much.

Last week I picked up my Berried Treasure quilt from longarmer Karlee Sandell at SewInspired2Day. Karlee sent me a teaser shot of the quilt while it was still on her longarm quilting machine:

As usual, I am thrilled with the result!

I chose “Embellish” by Quilts Complete as the quilting motif. It’s the fourth time I’ve asked Karlee to use this quilt design; it seems it is becoming my “go to” motif. At my request she used a pale green thread to blend with the outer border. It also blends well with the yellow background in the 4-Patch Wonder blocks and looks good against the vibrant blue in the sashing strips and setting triangles.

Here are a few shots of the quilting:

Notice in the photo above how the quilting goes beyond the raw edges of the quilt top? I always ask Karlee to do that. The main reason is that the quilting stitches hold all three layers together after the quilt is trimmed, making it much easier to apply the binding. There’s another reason: I often cut my outer borders an inch or so wider than my planned border width. That gives me the option to keep that extra width in the final quilt, trim the excess batting and backing right at the raw edge line, or trim the borders to make them a little narrower. I like to have options.

Here’s a look at the back of the quilt with the focus fabric on display:

You can see that I have the binding ready to go. It’s the same green floral print as the outer border. With Berried Treasure I didn’t have enough border fabric to cut my strips a bit wider because I needed to save a few inches for the binding strips. I used up every last bit of that green floral fabric!

Now the quilt has been trimmed . . .

. . . and the binding is ready to go:

Oh, how satisfying it is to pen the words “Binding has commenced!”

 

 

 

Posted in 4-Patch Wonder, cats, family, faux-kaleido quilts, kaleidoscope quilts, update | 3 Comments

Remembering Coco

by Dawn Posted on May 3, 2025

It’s been a rough week. Last Sunday the Dear Husband and I had our beautiful calico cat Princess Cordelia – known to many as Coco — put to sleep. Although she appeared healthy at her annual exam last July, the visit was followed by a series of medical setbacks, all requiring medications she was notoriously uncooperative about taking.

Early Friday morning of last week she threw up and wouldn’t eat anything all that day and well into Saturday. Coco’s regular vet was unable to see her Saturday afternoon so I took her to a veterinary pet hospital open 24/7. A battery of tests revealed no medical reason why she would be refusing food. Still no change by Sunday night. With no way to tell if Coco would start eating on her own if we took her home and knowing that every trip to the vet would cause her additional stress, we made the agonizing decision.

Coco brought so much joy into our lives. She could be loving but feisty (a trait of her breed), playful but laid back, serene but goofy. She adored my husband right from the start; in fact, I think she preferred him to me. If we were watching TV in the evening, it was Charlie’s lap she would usually settle on. Or she would sit right next to him with one paw on his arm in what I can only describe as a proprietary gesture. The very first day we brought her home, she staked her claim on Charlie:

I have my dear friend Colleen to thank for bringing Coco into our lives nine years ago as a stray cat needing a forever home. You can read how it happened here.

My special time with Coco was in the morning. My routine is to sit on the couch with my first cup of coffee and my iPad, reading my email followed by a look at my website to see how many visitors I had the day before, then Instagram, then The Oregonian, and finally the New York Times Spelling Bee. After her breakfast Coco would come sit on my lap for five or 10 minutes. Then she would move to a place on the couch right next to me or close by. Returning from the kitchen with my second cup of coffee, I would invariably find she had taken my spot on the couch.

Coco liked to hang out with both of us. If it was the Dear Husband, it was most likely in the garden where she could supervise his weeding and planting. She was a frequent visitor in my sewing room. If I was taking photos of a quilt top or a backing or a finished quilt, she would appear out of nowhere and flop down on it (“Miss Floppy” was one of her many nicknames):

It wasn’t just quilts she would flop on. She would flop on my ironing board . . .

. . . my cutting table . . .

. . . my sewing machine table:

If she wasn’t on something . . .

. . . she was in something:

Over the last several days I have returned again and again to my blog posts and Instagram feed, filled as they are with pictures of Coco photobombing my photo shoots or just being so adorable I couldn’t resist reaching for my camera.

The Dear Husband and I are still reeling from losing her. She was only 9½ years old; we fully expected to have her for many more years. But we cannot dwell on that; we need to remember the nine years we did have with her and celebrate every one.

Here is a handful of my favorite photos of Princess Cordelia over the years:

 

 

 

 

Posted in cats, family, update | 17 Comments

Backing for Berried Treasure

by Dawn Posted on April 19, 2025

Here is the very simple pieced backing for my recently completed 4-Patch Wonder quilt top, Berried Treasure. The quilt back measures 77″ x 91″ — four inches more on all sides than the quilt top measuring 69″ x 83″. That’s standard for a quilt that’s going to be quilted on a longarm machine by a professional quilter.

The bottom half of the quilt back came from my stash and was chosen because it was the perfect shade of green. The design is a map of Manhattan. (The Dear Husband has been fascinated by maps since he was a small boy and as a result I have acquired several fabrics in my stash that feature actual maps.)

Whenever I make a kaleidoscope quilt (or in this case a faux-kaleido quilt), I like to include a piece of the original focus fabric on the back. Why? For the simple reason that people always want to know what fabric design created such an amazing diversity of blocks. The floral fabric you see above (an older piece of Lakehouse Dry Goods’ “Raspberries and Hydrangea” fabric line in the blue colorway) was stacked and cut into identical squares and then rotated to create the individual blocks, which you can see on this photo of the quilt front before the borders were added:

I’m hoping to deliver the quilt and backing to my longarm quilter early next week. It would be lovely to get this beauty quilted and bound by the end of the month. One can hope!

 

 

 

 

Posted in 4-Patch Wonder, family, faux-kaleido quilts, kaleidoscope quilts, update | 3 Comments

Throwback Thursday: Stargazer Lily

by Dawn Posted on April 17, 2025

Today’s post is inspired by this gorgeous Stargazer Lily, given to us on Tuesday by a good friend who came over for lunch:

She predicted the buds would be open by Sunday but this morning when I got up I discovered the first two blooms had already unfurled. I’m pretty sure a third one will open up this afternoon.

I was reminded of a block I made back in 2021 called Stargazer Lily, designed by Lisa Jo Girodat for Moda Fabric’s 2021 “Summer in the Garden” Quilt-Along (QAL):

The instructions for the blocks by several different Moda designers were available as free downloads; you can still find the directions for the Stargazer Lily block here.

I did not participate in the Moda Quilt-Along. Instead I incorporated the Stargazer Lily block into a sampler quilt I named Sea Star Sampler, completed in 2022:

Sea Star Sampler, 60″ Square (2022)

The Stargazer Lily block was quite challenging to make and at the time I didn’t think I would make it again. You can read about my process here. Incidentally, my version eliminates four seams in the block.

As I look at the block now, I’m reminded of how much I love star blocks. Don’t be surprised if another Stargazer Lily “unfurls” in a future quilt of mine!

Posted in Block of the Month (BOM), Quilt-Along, sampler quilt, Throwback Thursday, update | 4 Comments

Cause(s) for Celebration

by Dawn Posted on April 11, 2025

Happy Friday! I have two causes to celebrate today:

Number one: I’ve completed the top of Berried Treasure, based on my own 4-Patch Wonder pattern. The Dear Husband obliged by taking this photo of me with the top late this afternoon:

The top measures 69″ x 83″ at the moment. I made an error in calculating the length of strips for the outer borders. They’ll still finish at a generous six inches wide but the quilt will be a couple inches smaller all around than its fraternal twin Framboise, made years ago with the same focus fabric in a different colorway.

Number two: The DH and I are celebrating our 44th wedding anniversary today — woohoo! We just returned from a lovely dinner at A Cena, one of our favorite restaurants in Portland.

It’s been a good day!

 

 

 

Posted in 4-Patch Wonder, faux-kaleido quilts, kaleidoscope quilts, update | 7 Comments

Turning the Corner

by Dawn Posted on April 10, 2025

Here’s a peek at the first mitered corner on my current WIP (work-in-progress):

The inner border finishes at 1/2 inch and the second one at one inch. The inch-wide border is one of several pieces I have in my stash of “Spin Dot,” a lovely blender by Timeless Treasures Fabrics. It’s from the same line as the royal blue blender I used in the corner and side triangles (as well as the 12 inner blocks you can see in this post from Feb. 23).

You may not be able to see from the photo above that the blue border is lightly metallic. Normally I would have chosen a bolder fabric but nothing in my stash seemed just right and I felt that the pearlized effect would complement the luminous light blues in the focus fabric.

My first mitered corner went together beautifully. Let us hope the remaining three do as well!

 

 

 

Posted in 4-Patch Wonder, faux-kaleido quilts, kaleidoscope quilts, update | 6 Comments

The Case of the Vanishing Blog Post

by Dawn Posted on April 7, 2025

No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. I even posted an entry on March 16 that mysteriously vanished along with its comments after I had agreed to a month of website design services – for a fee, or course — provided by my website host, GoDaddy.com.

Here’s the backstory:

In late February I notified GoDaddy that some of my readers reported they couldn’t leave comments on my blog posts, and my latest post wasn’t showing up unless I rebooted my computer. GoDaddy convinced me to pay for a month of website design services to address these issues and make my website even better. Much to my dismay, the marketing team introduced a series of errors in the appearance of my website, including extra spaces between blog titles and text, missing spaces between words in random blog posts, and weirdly enlarged and cropped photos replacing my standard logo at the top of every page and post.

At the end of the month of so-called design services, my blog was back to its previous normal look – but the blog post of March 16 and its comments were still missing, despite my repeated requests to GoDaddy to restore them. The comments on my post of Feb. 23 also mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again.

When GoDaddy emailed me on March 27 that “we’ve completed your request,” I immediately responded that it had NOT been completed and I wanted the missing blog post restored. This is the message I got in response: “Thank you for reaching out to us. Your email has been received and will be responded to on a first-come-first-serve basis.” That was well over a week ago. As you can imagine, I’m not holding my breath waiting for a response.

So what was in that March 16 post that disappeared? It was titled “Website Woes” and included a brief description of what was happening to my website posts. It also included a photo of my current Work in Progress, Berried Treasure, taken after the blocks were sewn into rows, the rows joined, and the setting triangles added. Take a look:

Yesterday was the first time in weeks that I’ve spent a significant amount of time in my sewing room. I’m working now on the borders (three of them) for Berried Treasure and should have something to show you very soon.

 

 

 

Posted in 4-Patch Wonder, faux-kaleido quilts, kaleidoscope quilts, update | 4 Comments

Coming Right Along . . .

by Dawn Posted on February 23, 2025

. . . on my current 4-Patch Wonder quilt. The second set of sashing strips has been added to my blocks, and here the blocks are arrayed in their final position ready to be sewn together in diagonal rows:

I moved only two blocks — switching the second and third ones in the third row — before proclaiming the setting complete. Now the big decision is what fabric to use in the setting triangles — the ones that go around the entire quilt to make it rectangular.

My two top candidates are the yellow fabric I initially chose for the wide sashing, which I think may draw out the yellow background in the 4-Patch Wonder blocks very nicely, or the royal blue used in the wider sashing strips. My fear is that the blue will be too strong. I’m going to sacrifice a 15″ square of each fabric and cut them into four triangles to audition them side by side, and then I’ll report back. Do come back to see what I chose!

 

 

 

Posted in 4-Patch Wonder, faux-kaleido quilts, kaleidoscope quilts, update | Leave a comment