Quilters DNA

It's no secret that I love designing quilt patterns and I especially love paper piecing. If I can't paper piece it, I better really love the pattern or design in order to make the quilt. Often I start designing my patterns by doodling on a piece of paper and move to the computer to see how it would look as a real quilt. That's how this quilt came about. I just started sketching and throwing lines on a piece of paper and fell in love. Introducing Quilters DNA!

I love this quilt. The colors, the jewel tones, are so me. Teal is my absolute favorite color. Add some purples, lime and orange and this quilt just screams me. The geometric design and paper pieced elements also scream me. Combined, I'm pretty sure this quilt is a depiction of my own, personal DNA.

It took me a while to figure out how to quilt this. I did some "point-to-point" style quilting in the "DNA Strands" to keep things simple. I didn't want to overwhelm the design. For the vanilla background, I emphasizing the diamond shape inside the strands while adding a ton of straight lines in the background.

And while it was next to impossible to photograph, I did extend the orange strands into the background, adding a fun quilting motif to break up the negative space. I love this design feature and think it gives this quilt just a little something extra that it needs.

If interested, I created a pattern for this and posted it in my Craftsy shop. Check it out today!

Fabric: Michael Miller Cotton Couture
Thread: Pieced using Aurifil #50 2024. Quilted using So Fine! #50 505
Batting: Quilters Dream Cotton Select
Finished Size: 68.5" x 62"

Picchu Boo

Almost a year ago I took a trip of a lifetime to Peru to celebrate graduating from graduate school. One of the most memorable parts of the trip was when I visited Machu Picchu. I took thousands of photos during the ten day trip, but this photo was one of my favorites.

I knew it had to be turned into a quilt, so when we announced the solids challenge in the Boston Modern Quilt Guild, I decided this was my opportunity to make this into a quilt.

Not wanting to do an exact interpretation or make an art quilt, I started cutting a ton of 1" strips out of five different brown fabrics and sewed them together. I ended up making three different groups of these brown strips, one with the strips horizontal, one vertical and one on the diagonal. I varied the width and length of all three as part of my interpretation of the photo.

I decided on a teal background instead of a more natural green that's found in nature. Again, this was my way of modernizing the quilt and avoid looking too much like an art quilt. When it came time to quilt it, I knew I wanted to quilt straight lines opposite the direction of the brown strips. It took me a little while to settle on echoing the brown sections, which ended up giving the quilt a 3-D look.

I used an Art Gallery print from my stash on the backing that I thought went well with the top. I quilted it using gold and teal Aurifil threads. The batting is Quilters Dream Cotton Select. The solids are Michael Miller Cotton Couture.

Overall, I'm pleased with this quilt and it will definitely remind me of my trip to Peru every time I look at it.

Milky Way Quilt

Several months ago the folks over at Michael Miller reached out to me and asked me to help participate in a 100 Quilt Block project in conjunction with Janome. The block needed to be six inches square and use the provided Cotton Couture solids from Michael Miller. I'm a huge fan of Cotton Couture, as I find the hand feel of those solids the best in the industry (along with Art Gallery's solids). So of course, I set to work designing a fun paper pieced block.

I had fun making this block and decided to make a larger quilt out of it. I took the remaining solids that were in the bundle Michael Miller provided and enlarged the block to 12" square and made the following quilt with it. (Excuse the less than stellar photos, with it getting dark so early these days, it's hard to get a good photo right now.)

This was the first time I used a cream-colored binding to blend in with the vanilla background I used to offset the four quilt blocks. I'm slightly worried that it will get dirty easier, but I'm willing to take that chance.

Here's a closeup of the quilting. I used an Auriful 50 weight thread in Chalk (#2026) to quilt this on my domestic machine. I did most of the quilting on an diagonal parallel to one of the star points, but changing direction about three quarters of the way through to add some dimension and twist to the quilting.

To download the pattern for free and see the rest of the blocks, visit the Janome site.

This quilt measures 30" square, so I'm entering it into the small quilt category in the Blogger's Quilt Festival. 

Spin Art

About a year and a half ago I designed this fun paper pieced quilt that some of you might have seen hanging in the Michael Miller booth at QuiltCon and Quilt Market earlier this year. I was obsessed with the color coral when I made this quilt and just had to incorporate the two shades of coral and soft blue into a quilt. I might have to make another quilt using coral and mint sometime soon, my new favorite color to pair with coral. 

This quilt is made using Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids, my favorite solids to work with. I just find their hand-feel to be so soft and a pleasure to work with. This quilt uses the colors Clementine, Peach, Vanilla and Powder Blue. The clementine color has to be one of my favorites still that Michael Miller puts out. That's saying a lot given that my least favorite color of all time is orange (followed closely by brown). 

I quilted it on my HandiQuilter longer using SoFine #50 thread. It's been so long since I quilted it, but I'm pretty sure I used #402, a soft white. 

The free pattern for this quilt will be posted to the Michael Miller website soon. And of course, it's paper pieced for easy assembly! 

SewDown ThrowDown

While at SewDown, a bunch of us were looking for something to do during the free sew time. I had come directly from a work trip in Milan, Italy, so I didn't have much room to pack extra fabric/projects. Fortunately, we all received charm packs of Michael Miller Cotton Couture solids in our swag bags. A bunch of people decided to do a challenge to make a quilt using the charm pack - and thus the SewDown ThrowDown was born.

While I think everyone else added additional fabric, I set out to just use the fabrics provided in the charm pack - my own personal challenge within the challenge. I knew my suitcase was nearing the max weight, so adding more fabric might have put me over the limit (I ended up three pounds over and had to do some serious moving of stuff anyway).

I decided to make half square triangles, separating the colors by warm and cool colors. Overall, I think trying to separate the colors that way was okay, but because the charm pack was full of colors that could have gone one way or another - yellow or green, or purple or pink - that the separation of colors wasn't quite what I was hoping for.  That being said, I'm still really pleased with how this quilt turned out.

I backed it using an Art Gallery print that I've had in my stash for a couple of years now. As you can see above, I quilted this quilt, echoing either side of the diagonal lines of the HSTs.

I bound the quilt using Kona Iron.

Quilt Stats:
32" x 28"
Fabric: Michael Miller Cotton Couture Solids, Kona Iron, Art Gallery (I forget the line)
Batting: Warm and Natural
Thread: Aurifil #50 2600