When I wrote my first book, Bundles of Fun, I designed each quilt to be made from twelve fat quarters.  So, all the quilts have names like Midnight Cowboy, A Dozen Roses and Twelve Step Program.

As it turns out, Twelve Step Program has been the most popular quilt in the book.  I did two versions for the book, this one out of batiks…

…this one…

…made with William Morris fabrics.  It’s much more bended looking because there isn’t as much contrast in the fabrics.

You can sure see the difference in this one, which has lots of contrast.  I just stumbled across this top I started from a class demo.  I wonder if I have the borders somewhere???

As you can see, this pattern lends itself to any fabrics!  Teri at Boardwalk Quilts made this one, and instead of steps, did a chevron!

Last Saturday, she offered a class on this quilt.  I stopped in just after lunch to see how everyone was doing.  It’s so much fun to see what fabrics everyone picked!

After sewing strips together…

…you sew one more seam to make a tube!

Then you do some more cutting and end up with lots of loops.

See what I mean about this working with lots of different fabrics!

I’m partial to the brights.

But the florals are strikingly pretty.

It’s hard to beat black and white with a touch of red!

One you cut have the loops, you start staggering the design.

Magically, you have stair steps!

Then it’s just a matter of sewing it all together.

This quilt goes together very quickly.  I took this picture at the class on Saturday…

…and when I saw Dianne on Monday, she had it all together!  I hope the ladies in the class will all send photos of their finished quilts.  When they do, I’ll be sure to post photos of them.

The following photo is from one of my retreats.  Here, the loops are pinned to a design wall.

Once the loops are cut in the proper places, it’s ready to sew.

Here are a couple more that friends brought to retreats for show-and-tell.  Another beautiful batik version.

Yummy colors here, and look at the fabulous border treatment.

Good, strong contrast in these blocks.

And I love the vintage-y feel to this one.  Notice the little ad I’m doing in the corner!  Shameless!

If you have photos of quilts you’ve made from any of my books, I’d love it if you’d share them with me.

And here they are……..On Friday, Margaret stopped by.  This is the quilt she did in class.  It turned out to be amazing!

She added a tiny flange between the quilt center and the first border.  If you don’t know what a flange is, it’s a 1/2″ strip of fabric, folded and sewn in, so it’s three dimensional.

And after Kathi saw this post, she stopped by on Saturday, during my open house, to show me three quilts that she had made with this pattern!

You can really see what I mean when I say this pattern looks good with any fabric combination!

 

Five or six years ago, I made this quilt.  It was to showcase my second fabric line, Wash Tub Butterflies.

When I was sorting through my scraps recently, I discovered I had some segments of the piano key border left, and some 1-1/2″ strips.  So, yesterday I sliced them up and put them back together.  Voila!  A doll quilt!

I think a red binding will finish it off perfectly!  And, as you can imagine, my scrap pile is now much smaller.

 

I love the Swedish artist Aina Stenberg.

She was born in 1885 in Stockholm, the second youngest of  twelve children.

She loved to draw, and at the age of ten she approached a publisher with her first Christmas cards and…

…he accepted them!

She sold fifteen images and received fifteen kronor for them!

She went on to study art.

At art school she met her future husband, Helmaer (Mas Olle) Olsson.

He was from Dalarna, the home of Anna Lena!

After they were married, they bought an old farm in Dalarna.

They took the old log house and moved it to the village of Siljansnäs, high above Lake Siljan.

Aina loved to listen to old timers tell stories of superstitions and legends, especially those of elves, trolls and superstitions.

Many of those images made their way into her artwork.

She drew between 5000 and 6000 designs for Christmas, Easter and New Year cards during her career!

I hope you enjoyed these Easter cards.

Last week was both the Peninsula Quilt Guild meeting and our Redwork Club meeting.  It’s always great to see everyone, but I like the show-and-tell best!

We’ll start with Guild.  Gloria really livened up this Log Cabin with some beautiful applique!

She did the same with the border on this star quilt.

Janet has strip pieced this Seven Sisters block.

Here’s Cherry’s fun St. Patrick’s wall hanging.

And a sample quilt she made from shop hop blocks.

Earlene got another amazing horse block from her secret pal.  I featured them a few weeks ago on another blog post that you can see here.

It’s always fun to see someone use my fabrics, like Dee did with this At Play quilt!

Doris’ Christmas sampler blocks look great set this way.

Randi took a photo of the tile floor at our county  courthouse and is reproducing the design!

Ann made this pretty quilt…

…and also this log cabin.

And now for Redwork, which always includes a lot more than just Redwork!

Linda made a reversible picnic cloth from my book Quilts From My Garden.  This side is for birthdays….

…and this side is for the Fourth of July!

Our Redwork group has started two new patterns.  The first is called Shabby Chic Girl.

Cortne` is almost finished with her center square.

Linda has started her border.

I love the little bits of fabric in the flower petals.

The other pattern we’re doing is Snow Crazy–a combination of snowmen and crazy quilting!

Marla has her first block finished.

Mary’s shared this delightful Valentine from her granddaughter!

She had also made this cute Pinwheel quilt while visiting her daughter in the Tri-Cities.

Robin brought lots of goodies to share, including this adorable wall hanging.  I love the addition of the rickrack and buttons.

She’s been making doll quilts for a reach-out in her community.  These are 1-1/2″ squares!

She recently quilted this Eye-Spy panel.  Panels are a great way to practice your machine quilting!

Here’s she showing off her sweet Valentine pillow.

This is another Valentine stitchery she is working on.

Robin calls this a Crumb Quilt–just sew all your fabric crumbs together!

Robin makes wonderful scrap quilts.  This one is 4″ squares.

Earlene has been working on these sweet Redwork blocks with birds.

And she’s almost finished with this snowman block.

Thanks, Ladies, for all the inspiration!

Today I hosted my Mentor Study Group.  How fun to get to do it on Valentine’s Day!

I love to entertain, but I’ve been gone and didn’t get a very early start on my preparation.  I was expecting 15, so needed to use both tables.  This is the dining room, with some vintage china my mom bought me a few years ago.

In the living room, we have a drop leaf table that’s only 14″ deep when the leaves are down.  When we need more table space, we move a couple of chairs, pull up the leaves and have a 60″ round table.  Works great!  Another set of vintage china.

I decided I wanted to make something called a Smörgåstårta–literal translation from the Swedish is sandwich cake.  It’s usually done with a whole loaf of bread, then sliced and served, but I decided to do individual ones.

I started by cutting rounds of bread–lot’s of rounds of bread, as these are triple decker sandwiches!  Then I spread some softened cream cheese on them.

That was followed by Swiss cheese.

More bread and cream cheese, very thinly spread.

Then there’s turkey.

Finally, the last piece of bread.  I used a yummy oat bread.

I made a mousse of shrimp, lemon and cream cheese and spread it on the sides and top.

Then I wrapped the whole thing with a thinly sliced cucumber and topped it with a cherry tomato and some sliced radishes.

I may have gotten carried away with slicing radishes, and I think Bob will be eating radishes with every meal for awhile!

Here are the first eight ready to go into the refrigerator.

All plated up.

I served grapes and an asparagus salad with them.

The ladies dug right in, which I always take as a compliment.  There’s my friend, Karen, helping serve.  Thank you, Karen!

I had three no shows.  Argh!  But, we just pulled off a couple of table settings and it all worked out.

We had a great meeting, then a little dessert.  Last night I baked a double batch of Chocolate Decadence in a sheet pan, then this morning I cut out hearts.

I borrowed these adorable heart shaped dishes and mugs from my sister.

A little raspberry puree and whipped cream along with the Chocolate Decadence was a perfect finish to a fun day.

I hope your Valentine’s Day was fun, too.

Our Redwork group is very faithful–faithful about getting together and having fun!  We don’t always have Redwork to share, but we always have something to share!  I love to see what everyone is working on, and I’m sure you do, too.  Here’s what they ladies brought in January.

Robin is working on an Alphabet Quilt. I think the yellow and pink combination is really nice.

Adorable illustrations.

This is Happy’s Friendship Quilt.

What a lovely sentiment.

And the blocks are all very sweet.

This is Happy’s quilt from a coastal shop hop that she did.

I love the fabric for the crab, it looks like he has barnacles on him!

And here’s her Bow Tie quilt….

…every fabric in it is a polka-dot!

She had also done some charming, stitched Christmas ornaments.

One of the ladies had a few vintage blocks that don’t lay flat, and wondered what to do with them.  Our advice?  Take them apart and re-stitch them!

Another adorable Christmas ornament.  See, we do do Redwork!

Earlene is getting the most amazing blocks from her secret pal at guild.

She had mentioned on her form that she likes horses.

I think she thought her secret pal might use some horse fabric in her blocks.

But no!

She is appliqueing all these amazing blocks!

They are just incredible.

There are even horseshoes…

…and stars…

…and flying geese for fillers.

This is a corner block, according to the note that was attached to it.

We’re all so excited to see what it looks like when it’s put together.

Loretta is working on a Christmas Memories panel.

And Carol has done this great stitchery on linen.

 

I love the little trim she inserted.

It’s a very precious piece.

So much fun.

A few days ago, I posted about the Paint Chip Challenge our Guild did.

This is my table runner.

Each participating member did a blind draw for a paint chip.

The goal was to make something using the colors in your chip, like this gorgeous Hawaiian wall hanging Doris made!

You were supposed to use three of the four colors on your chip.

How adorable are these elephants!?!

Renee made this.

You could add white to your palette.

Like Cherry did with this pretty pillow.

Or, you could add black.

Like Jan did to embellish her vest.

Some people were able to find a single fabric that had more than one of the paint chip’s colors in it.

Terri made this.

The stipes in this border look great against the chip!

Peggy’s quilt had a whole story to tell.

And the back is adorable.  There’s even a hidden pocket!

Participants had no idea what color they would get.

Nellie had yellows and made a cute table runner.

Audrey had golds.

She went the table runner route, too!

It was harder than you’d think to find just the right shades to match the chips.

Dianne’s adorable piece showed Sunbonnet Sue on vacation in Europe, and what a vacation it was!  She swam the English Channel, picked lavender in Provence, went nude sunbathing in St. Tropez, and took a steam bath in Baden Baden.  Wow, I want to travel with her!

Kathy resorted to dying her own fabric!

She made this clever purse.

The stripes in this border fabric had all the right colors!

I love Bev’s seashells in the attic windows setting.

Here’s another one with black.

Jo’s quilt was really striking, and the quilting was great.

You can’t go wrong with feathers and a scalloped edge!

Lynda made this radiant start quilt.

Oh, can you say Kermit?

That’s what Earlene thought of when she saw her paint chip!

Wow, imagine finding a single fabric that had all the colors!

Gerri turned it into this sweet apron.

Dee also found a print that worked with her chip.

She made an adorable apron with cross-stitch embellishments on it.

I didn’t get a snap of Janet’s paint chip, but her apron sure turned out cute.

Glennys’ giant dahlia quilt was one of two winners.

The other was Dixie’s lavender cat.  Both of them were whisked away before I got a picture of their paint chips, but believe me, they did a great job of matching their fabrics to their paint chips.

Here are some great neutrals.

Alas, I don’t know who made this great Quilter’s Roll.  Can someone tell me, please?

The whole challenge was great fun and the quilts will all be displayed at the Peninsula Quilt Guild Show in March.

Our Quilt Guild just held a Paint Chip Challenge!  What’s that, you may ask?  Each participant got a paint chip and some simple rules—use three of the colors on your paint chip plus black or white.  Okay, I’m up for that.

Here’s the paint chip I got.

I chose to use the two on the left and the lightest one on the right.  Imagine, I had fabrics in my stash that worked great!

I had seen a tutorial for a cute table runner on the Knitty Bitties blog, so decided to make one.  It starts with half-square-triangles.

Once they were sewn together, I added wide rickrack.

I think the colors are pretty true to the paint chip.

Once the rickrack and borders were on, I layered everything, using the dark purple solid on the back and a scrap of cotton batting that I had left over from another project.

I knew I’d need three threads to quilt with.  I just don’t like light thread on dark fabrics and dark thread on light fabrics!  Once again, my stash—thread stash, that is—came through!

I just did some straight line quilting on my Featherweight.  I used my foot as a guide to quilt a 1/4″ from the edge of the triangles.  For the other rows of quilting, I used the Frixon pen to mark the lines and loved it!

I trimmed away the batting, cut the backing 1″ larger than the top and just did a double fold, bringing the back to the front for the binding.

I wasn’t sure how I wanted to stitch the binding in place so I experimented with a couple of stitches on my Elna.  I decided on the middle stitch, a triple zigzag,but once I started on the actual runner, I had trouble with consistency of size.  So, after about 12″, I decided to tear it out.  Ugh!

Do you know this little trick?  After you’ve cut your stitches with your seam ripper, you can use a lint roller to pick up all the tiny treads!  As you can see, I had a lot!

In the end, I used the buttonhole stitch, and it worked great.

The finished product!

Last fall at the Anna Lena retreat, Mary and Robin had a stack of really fun blocks that they had gotten in a block swap.

Once the blocks started going up on the wall, they drew a lot of attention.  That led to a conversation about block swaps, and before you could say “Crossroads to Jericho” we decided we would do a block swap at our next retreat!

Robin and Mary’s blocks were so striking yet so simple that we decided to do this block for our first swap.  You might want to organize a swap with your friends, too!

Blocks finish at 8-1/2″. Here are the fabric requirements for each block.

Black: 5) 2-1/2” squares

Four different bright prints: 1) 2-1/2” squares of each and 1) 5-1/2” squares of each cut once diagonally.

When you cut your large square diagonally, you will end up with two triangles.  You only need one per color per block, so set half aside for another block.

L
Lay out your squares to form a nine-patch with the black in the middle and on the corners.

Match the triangles to their companion prints.  I love how this forms an arrow.

Once you have the nine-patch sewn together, line it up with one of the triangles as shown below.  Make sure an equal amount of fabric is visible on each side then stitch.  I like to do opposite sides first, press, then do the remaining sides.  On the nine-patches, I press toward the dark.  On the triangles, I press toward the triangle.

Voila!  Your finished block.

If you set the blocks straight, the black forms a chain through the bright arrows.

If you set the blocks on point, the nine-patch is more visible.

Every swap needs a few rules.  Below are ours.  The last one is the most important!

Your pieced block should measure slightly more than 9”.  There’s a little wiggle room here, so blocks can be trimmed to 9”.  If your block is smaller than 9”, it isn’t acceptable.  Either restitch with slightly smaller seams or make another one to swap.

Don’t trim your blocks.  Let the person receiving them do the trimming.

The black can be a solid black, or a black-on-black print, but be sure it “reads” black from a distance.

Bright means bright, clear colors.  Nothing muddy!

You may make all your blocks the same, or use lots of different blacks and brights.

Have fun!