Miami Meets Manhattan

When Giucy Giuce's Deco Glo II fabric line was announced, I wanted to make a quilt to highlight the color gradient in the collection. I pondered variations of New York Beauty blocks, based on the few NY Beauty blocks in my Ode to Joy quilt. Around this time, we made a visit to Miami Beach and went on a walking tour of Art Deco architecture. I spotted an arch-shaped ornament on a building there, and the idea struck me to merge the New York Beauty spikes into a tall arch shape and assemble the shapes in a clamshell type quilt.

I drafted the design using Affinity Designer, and used our library's laser cutter to make custom acrylic templates.

The spikes are paper pieced.

The neutral fabrics are mostly Essex yarn dyed metallics. The black backgrounds are a variety of metallics and non-metallic yarn dyes.

I used the laser cutter to make a few quilting guides too. I used these to quilt the echos in the white and silver arches. (I originally cut these from 1/4" acrylic, but I got the scale wrong, so I had to re-do them using scraps of 1/8" acrylic.) These were also helpful in quilting the colored centers.

 For the back I used a 108" Chalk and Charcoal print.

The binding is another Essex metallic. I had ordered this to use as another background for the spikes, but it read too light to me. It works well for the binding though.

I tried something new for my photo setup. In the past I've pinned my quilts to a muslin photo backdrop when I wanted a clean background, but that can be tedious to do.

This time I sewed a set of small pockets along the top of the muslin backdrop and purchased a set of strong neodymium magnets to fit inside.

A wide pocket curtain rod fits well in the 4-inch hanging sleeve, and works with the magnets to hold the quilt in place against the backdrop.

Here's a view from the back with the quilt held in place:

There are multiple Art Deco inspirations in this quilt, including the fabric collection itself. As mentioned above, I found a specific inspiration in Miami Beach, and the fabric colors are reminiscent of Miami too. On the other hand, the silver and black metallic fabrics remind me more of NYC skyscrapers, and the New York Beauty inspiration is there too. All this inspired the name "Miami Meets Manhattan."

Wonky Housetop Blocks

It's my turn to request and receive blocks for another Do Good Stitches group quilt. This month I'm requesting wonky housetop blocks, 12.5" unfinished, with only two rounds of fabric around the center. I thought I'd write a tutorial on how I approached this; this isn't the only way to make these, but hopefully this method will consistently produce blocks of the desired size.

For one block, make the following fabric cuts:

Fabric 1:

(1) 4" - 4.5" square

Fabric 2:

(2) 3" x 4.5" rectangles

(2) 3" x 10" rectangles

Fabric 3:

(2) 3.5" x 10" rectangles 

(2) 3.5" x 13.5" rectangles

The center piece (fabric 1) does not have to start out as a square, and it can be slightly smaller if it does not need to be trimmed.

If you are starting with a square, trim two opposite sides at slight angles:

Attach a 3" x 4.5" rectangle of Fabric 2 to the sides just trimmed; press.

Now trim the other two sides at slight angles:

Sew the remaining Fabric 2 rectangles to these sides and press.

Trim two sides again; try to keep the narrowest part at least 7.5" wide (it should be ok if it's a little less):

(Please excuse the glare on the ruler.)

Sew the 3.5" x 10" rectangles of Fabric 3 to the trimmed sides.

Trim two sides yet again, still aiming to keep the width at least 7.5" (notice how little I trimmed from the narrow part of Fabric 2):

Sew the remaining Fabric 3 rectangles to these sides, press, and trim to a 12.5" square.

I used 3" strips for Fabric 3, which worked but gave me little leeway when it came to the final trim.

3.25" strips should be fine if you are careful not to trim too much; 3.5" strips should give more margin for error and plenty of freedom for the final trim to be at a wonky angle.

Here's my finished block:

And a second block:

 

Funky Pickles

This is Funky Pickles, an idiosyncratic take on a pickle dish design.

 

This project was inspired by an antique quilt in the collection of the Tennessee Valley Museum of Art in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

The antique quilt has a number of elements I found to be quite quirky, and I tried to incorporate most  of them in my quilt. However, rather than cutting the octagons as a single piece, I chose to divide this section into four pieces to reduce the number of Y seams.

Multiple blocks in the antique quilt have a mix of fabrics in them. For the most part I used only a pair of fabrics in each block, but there are a couple with some variety in them. I copied the placement of fabrics in this block in particular:

Here's my version (just imagine it rotated 180 degrees):

I'm not quite sure how the original border was constructed; it almost looks like a straight strip of fabric might have been sewn to the outer curves then coaxed into laying flat. I chose to keep the general idea of a narrow, plain border but I followed the curves to produce a scalloped edge.

I drafted my design in Affinity Designer, and used our local library's laser cutter to make my own acrylic templates. (Clear acrylic is difficult to photograph!)

I also used the laser cutter to make drawing tools to mark quilting lines 1/4", 1/2", etc., offset from a template, and to cut a larger circle to use as a ruler to quilt curves in the octagons.

Fabric selection began with a fat quarter bundle of Seth Apter's Storyboard fabric; I added a number of fabrics by e bond, and a variety of other fabrics. The background, backing, and binding are also from Storyboard.

Some of the blocks have low contrast thanks to the busy fabrics. I think this adds to the quirkiness.

Here's a more conventional block:

Barbara Black told me the original quilt looks like the creator tried to draft their own pickle dish design and didn't quite know what they were doing. Mine might come across like that too -- but I'm pleased with the result.

Mosaic Musings

About 10 years ago I designed a block based on our church's logo, and I've used the design several times to make small wall hangings or other gifts. I've also made a quilt using a larger version of the logo.

My latest quilt, Mosaic Musings, uses multiple instances of the block in a modified grid.

The fabrics are primarily by Giucy Giuce and Alison Glass; the background fabric is Essex Yarn Dyed in Aqua.

The quilting is done in a diamond grid -- which somehow makes me think of stained glass windows.

The backing fabric is a Mammoth Junior flannel. I really like how it coordinates with the aqua linen.

I used the aqua linen for binding as well.

The church uses various colorways of the logo depending on context, one for general use and others associated with specific ministries. I tried to incorporate each of these colorways, and also added some variations of my own.

Incorporating the church's different colorways produces a result that appears more random than I would probably have come up with on my own -- but I think it works.

Improv strip blocks

 This hotel room carpet had me thinking of improv quilt blocks.

I thought this would be a good choice for our April quilt for the Bliss circle of Do Good Stitches.  Here's a tutorial for blocks inspired by this carpet.

Assembly of these blocks was quick and easy for me, but the key is to stay organized. I'll have a couple of suggestions for how to deal with this.

Start with two strips of fabric 7 inches by 20 inches (or longer); align one on top of the other, both with right sides up.

Make a series of random cuts, using the carpet photo as inspiration. Leave the first and last pieces a bit wider than the rest, to allow for joining blocks later. Try to keep your pieces more than a half inch wide to avoid losing bits in the seam allowance (although you might be ok with that).

It is critical to keep the pieces in order. One approach is to mark numbering on the pieces; I used a fine-point marker in the lower seam allowance.

Separate the two fabrics and number them correspondingly.

Now swap out alternate pieces.

Sew the pieces in order and you'll get two complementary blocks.

To join two blocks, overlap the ends and make another random cut as shown by the black line below. (Bliss members, you can skip this step.) This works best if there are an even number of cuts in the blocks.

Optionally, trim the blocks to 6.5" high to straighten the edges. (Bliss members, you can skip this step too.)

An alternate approach to staying organized is to make only one cut at a time (after the first two cuts) and sew together as you go, as illustrated in the following three photos.

When joining pieces, remember to line them up at the quarter inch point, not at the edge of the fabric.

This is my second pair of blocks:

These two photos show two options for joining a pair when they have an even number of cuts. Rotating the block on the right gives a slightly different look.

(My apologies for the poor color consistency of my photos. I know how to avoid this issue using my DSLR, but I don't know if it's possible on a cell phone camera.)

UPDATE (8/10/2024): Here's our group's finished quilt. I'm thrilled with how it turned out.