Tag Archives: meadow quilt

Meadow Quilt is a Finish!

Making a quilt is not a quick endeavor. At least for me it isn’t. Back in 2016 I read a tutorial by Bonjour Quilts and left a comment about how much I loved the quilt. Then in 2020, in a newsletter by Bonjour Quilts (side note – if you don’t receive her newsletter, check it out. Kirsty writes a great newsletter and I very much enjoy reading it) I was reminded of the quilt. At that time, I started cutting pieces for the background. I believe this was at the beginning of the pandemic. Fast forward to 2021, I decided to finish the quilt so I could give it to my nephew and his bride when they married in July 2021. Well, then we decided to list the house and move so all sewing came to an abrupt halt.

With my sewing room (almost) set up and my time freed up, I am sewing and quilting again! I had the Meadow quilt top finished and basted before we moved, so I started to quilt it. Before basting it, I did some FMQ over the flowers in the center. I knew I wanted to secure them tightly, even though they are fused to the base. However I didn’t want all of that to show on the back. I did a preliminary set of stitches before basting and then finished securing the flowers after it was basted.

The background is free motion quilted with whatever came to mind. There are swirls, basic stippling, some flowers, hearts, sunshines and a few words here and there. On the top I used an off-white Glide thread and the bottom is a pale green Glide thread. (I am a big fan of Glide for free motion quilting).

Every meadow has a few butterflies fluttering about, right? I fussy cut these and fused them to the top. Using Perle cotton, I did some basic stitching around the edges to help them stand out a bit.

I forgot to take a shot with the backing showing but in this one you can see a bit of the corner. It is a 60″ wide voile by Frou Frou. Grassy green with tiny white stars on it, the fabric is so soft. I think it gives a cuddly feel to the quilt. (I have had this on the shelf for a long time so don’t know that it would be available anymore?)

The pictures were all taken in our yard. Right now everything is so green. Foxglove are standing tall in the backyard, giving a meadow like feel to it.

I am so happy with this finish. It is unusual but not difficult. I actually think this is the case with many of Kirsty’s (Bonjour Quilts) patterns and tutorials. It is on the way to the bride and groom, just in time for their first anniversary!! I hope they love it.

Sharing at my favorite link ups – see the list at the top of the page for the details!

REMINDER: The first link up for 2022 Positivity QAL opens this Sunday, June 26th. Please come back (here) then to link up and show us your progress with your blocks. I am looking forward to seeing the different color combos!!

Finishing Up a Nice Week

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Even though nothing extra special happened, this was a lovely week. I got to have a nice visit with my parents. We knew snow was coming so we got together before their driveway became difficult. (They live about fifteen miles from here but they are at a higher elevation. When they get some snow, it is usually a lot.)

We did get some snow but just a dusting and it only lasted a day. I do love when we get a little snow. When I woke up that morning and saw it was snowing, I woke Julia up so she could watch the snow. It is such a treat for us. Most winters we don’t see any snow. I remember when I first moved up here (back in 1994) we did get snow each winter and it was more substantial. Climates have changed and now we rarely get any.

The rest of the week was quite rainy. This is always well received. Each time we get a good rain, we hope it means the fire season in late summer will be a bit less dangerous. Due to the rain, I was able to spend quite a bit of time in the sewing room. Above is a stack of strips I cut for a coin quilt. I am focusing on blues, greens, pinks and yellows. I told myself I don’t get to start sewing these strips until I get somewhere with my Meadow quilt though. I just don’t want to have quite so many projects in process at the same time. This quilt was designed by Kirsty of BonJour Quilts. Click the link if you want to see her version.

This is the background for the Meadow quilt. It is a series of disappearing nine patch blocks in three sizes. The largest size has a greater proportion of the cream and white colors to the greens. Medium has about an equal portion and the smallest size has mostly greens. I like how this causes the colors the gently change as the eye moves up. I will be appliquéing a large swath of cut florals through the meadow as soon as I have the background completed. I am almost there and I am itching to get to those florals.

I also took an evening to make some pink diamond blocks. These blocks are made using half square rectangles. I am going to use them for my RSC2021 quilt. I really like the blocks and found them (once again!) on Kirsty’s site, Bonjour Quilts. I think the quilt will have a cool mid century modern vibe to it.

The blocks are finishing at 6″ x 12″. I will need quite a few for a nice sized lap quilt. If I put 12 across and 5 down, it would finish at approximately 60″ square. I think I will be interspersing some plain rectangles here and there to break up the pattern though. I have all year to figure this out though. For now, I am waiting to see what the color for February is.

In the evenings I have been working on the hand quilting for this project which I am calling Homespun. I love this quilt. It is so cozy. Once I finished stitching around each of the background squares, I decided I wanted to keep hand quilting it. This is the perfect time of year to snuggle under a quilt in the evenings and do some hand stitching. I have nearly finished going around the background border. Hard to tell from this photo, but the outer border is a dusty purple color. I think I will mark a pattern on it and hand stitch that as well. It will be a while until it is finished, but really – what is the hurry? While stitching, I have been going back and forth between watching Queen’s Gambit and The Last Tango in Halifax on Netflix. I like both of them, though they are quite different. Have you watched either of these? What do you think of them?

I have also worked on some projects for my shop. There are a number of new bundles available – each one contains three coordinated pieces of fabric, cut in one yard pieces. They are perfect for using with the Fabric Cafe, three yard patterns. These patterns are very simple and quick to piece, making them nice for baby quilts, a gift or donation quilt. These kits and patterns are also wonderful when teaching someone to quilt. They make a lap size quilt and there are a number of different patterns to choose from. I also have some fun kits for baby or toddler quilts. To take a look, click here.

That sums up my week. How was your week? Hoping you found some time to be creative. I would love to hear what you are working on. Enjoy the weekend all. 🙂

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Catching Up

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Oh my goodness – time is flying by. Nothing like a pandemic forcing all of us to stay home day after day to make a person busy, right? In March when all of this started I thought I would accomplish this huge to-do list due to being stuck at home. I created a list of blog posts to catch up on, pictured myself scrubbing the kitchen and bathrooms till they sparkled – it was going to be such a productive time. Ummm, what the heck? I have hardly posted here and it took me until yesterday to force myself to scrub one shower. Not the picture of productivity I had anticipated!

Ah, just proof of my human imperfections!! Also proof I really am not into house work. Haha. OK – moving on to sewing. There hasn’t been a lot going on. I did get the April and May blocks done for the 2020 Monthly Color Challenge. Want to see them?

The block for April was made with purple and I was able to continue my polka dot theme. Have to say, I have no idea how I will put these blocks together. I suppose I need to think of a way to sash them with some sense of continuity.

Love the green block which was May’s color. It is a great pattern and would be cute as a quilt on its own.

I also made this cute little pink Dresden. Now I have three of them. Still not a concrete plan as to how I will use them but I like making them and they use up lots of tiny scraps so that is a win in my book!

A few days ago, I posted on Instagram that I was totally inspired by Kirsty of Bonjour Quilts to start a new project. She sent out a newsletter and as she always does, showed some quilts that had been made by others, using one of her patterns. She has a tutorial called Meadow and when I saw that quilt, I got all excited to make one. I clicked over to this post which was from a long time ago (maybe 2016?) . Deciding I really NEED to make this, even though there are three quilt tops on the guest bed waiting to be quilted, I started to pull scraps.

I spent a pleasant evening sorting through white, off-white and green scraps. I ironed a stack of them and began cutting squares in three different sizes. This is a great pattern to use lots of scraps from my bins.

Last night I started making nine patch blocks – only made a few but it is a start. These are the biggest size, using 6 1/2″ squares. They gradually become smaller. Fun, fun, fun. I love starting a new project!

Finally, I will leave you with a picture of my very imaginative grand daughter. She was pretending to be a bird in her nest, reading books. Thankful this bird is safely wearing her helmet while sitting wayyyyy up high in her imaginary tree. 🙂