Stars and Shadows Class

Wow! What a nice group of women attended my class last week at the Wisconsin Quilt Expo. Everyone was friendly and enthusiastic, which always makes it so much more fun to teach.

At the beginning of class we sorted through all the beautiful hand-dyed fabric that I had brought. ..140 yards of it!! A big thanks to my friend Barb Raisbeck (Quiltsbybarb.com) for helping me with that!

Everyone chose their own fabric for the projec,t which helped to make each piece totally unique. I'm always so amazed by the choices that people make. Fabrics that I never would have thought of putting together turn out beautifully. It really is a learning experience for me too.

For those of you who took the class, I'll be posting some other ideas for using my pattern that we didn't have time to cover in class, like table runners and toppers. Hopefully, I can get to that later this week!

Oops!

62"x35"
2008


Okay, so I admit, I'm not very good with written directions. Not all written directions, just ones that include numbers or any kind of math or measurements. Not good for a quilter. That's probably why I like to make up my own projects...if there's no pattern, then I can't make a mistake.

This was supposed to be a quilt from Karla Alexander's book "Stack a New Deck"...well, I guess it still kind of is. The directions were to cut a certain number of squares, stack them in a certain number of "decks", and cut each deck randomly into three pieces. The pieces are then shuffled and reassembled into blocks.

When I got the quilt top done it didn't look like the photo in the book. I reread the instructions only to realize I had done each of the two instructions incorrectly. Wow, was that a weird moment. But the good news is that I actually like my quilt better. So I figured out what I had done wrong, wrote it down, and have made a couple of these, one of which I have yet to quilt.

Churn Dash

For me, this quilt was an experiment with color and pattern. I took about 18 different fabrics and alternately mixed ones that really looked nice together with ones that didn't match well. Some of the blocks I just didn't like, but when the whole thing got put together, it ended up looking very lively. It's also a king-size quilt.

Autumn Rectangles

I love making small quilt projects and used to wonder if I actually had the patience to make a bed-sized quilt. This is the first one I ever made, and as you can see, I stuck to a pretty easy pattern. It's king-size and I really like the way the fabrics work together. It looks nice on the bed in fall and winter too.

Stars and Shadows Pattern

Here are a few samples from my original pattern, Stars and Shadows, or in the case of the tree, Pines and Shadows. The pattern was created for a small project at Barb Raisbeck's annual quilt retreat last fall (Quiltsbybarb.com). I've been selling the patterns at a couple of local shops and will teach it as a class for three days at the 2009 Wisconsin Quilt Expo in September.

It's been fun seeing how many different looks everyone has given to the finished piece, and a great learning experience for me too.

Lewis's Quilt

The pattern for this quilt is called "Stone Cottage", from Judy Martin's "Log Cabin Quilt Book". I started it at a quilt retreat last fall (see quiltsbybarb.com for more information), and finished it in time for Christmas. The blocks were super simple...only 3 pieces... and I used batik or batik-like fabrics. It turned out very masculine looking, which is what I was going for. Barb Raisbeck (of quiltsbybarb.com) quilted it in a pebble pattern, much like one of the fabrics, and it turned out beautifully. I gave it to my father-in-law, Lewis Hyatt, who is pictured here.

Jace's Quilt

Jace's Quilt
2007


This is a quilt I made for our grand-nephew, Jace. And yes, that's him driving a matching red firetruck.

The center section is a really cute cheater panel, so the quilt went together in a flash. Little did I know he had a matching fire truck!