Tag Archives: half-square triangles

Panache Mini Quilt Finish: Superbolt!

November 30, 2017 kittywilkin 9 Comments

A few months ago, my friend Rebecca Bryan from Bryan House Quilts asked me if I wanted to play with her new Panache fabric, her premier line for Robert Kaufman Fabrics. One look at the fabric line, and I was sold. Of COURSE I wanted to play with it!

I’ve been wanting to create a pattern exclusively for newsletter subscribers, and as I played around with simple and fun mini quilt/pillow patterns, this one jumped out at me. You could say it electrified me. Inspired by lightning, the Superbolt Mini Quilt came to be.

A superbolt is a bolt of lightning around a hundred times brighter than normal. On Earth, one in a million lightning strikes is a superbolt.

That’s pretty special, isn’t it? Absolutely worthy of its own quilt pattern!

Panache-Preview rebecca bryan robert kaufman fabrics — Photo by Rebecca Bryan, Panache fabrics preview

I had a lot of fun sewing with Becca’s fabrics, since she totally nailed my favorite color palette with this fabric line. Teals and magentas, blues and purples, a bit of gold, and of course a solid showing of black and whites. The stripes are a really fun addition, and while I don’t usually gravitate toward stripes, I find myself wanting to work these in anywhere I can!

It was tough to limit myself to just a few of the colors, but with my design I had to pick my top favorites. Turquoise and magenta won the day, and that perfect purple print with both turquoise and magenta details, called Energy in Berry, was the perfect middle man! Plus, I can’t think of a better fabric name to go in a Superbolt!

I quilted Superbolt with a variety of color-coordinating Aurifil 50wt and 40wt threads. I quilted straight lines in the lighting bolt white sections using 50wt thread in 2600-Dove and the walking foot on my Bernina 560. I’ve been wanting to practice free motion quilting ever since taking Christa Watson’s class at QuiltCon, but haven’t had the right sized project to dive in. I finally bit the bullet with this mini, since using coordinating colors of thread meant I had room to mess up without it being very noticeable. The good news is, I am really happy with how smoothly the quilting ended up, and my confidence is built enough that I think I will be playing with free motion quilting a lot more in the future, even for larger quilts.

I used a different design in each colored section, and tried to choose mostly curved designs for the darker areas, with more angular and sharp designs for the light ones. I used 40wt 1148-Light Jade in the teal section (Charisma in Seafoam from Panache), 50wt 2535-Magenta in the purple (Energy in Berry), and 40wt 1100-Red Plum in the bright pink (Spirit in Pink). Because the thread color blends in so well, it’s hard to see how fantastic my free motion quilting was, so you’ll just have to take my word for it! LOL

I found the perfect backing fabric for this mini in my stash, Aloe Vera in Candy from Pretty Potent by Anna Maria Horner, and with the addition of a few leftover blocks from the mini quilt top, it came together as a really fun quilt back.

The striped fabric makes a perfect binding, but also makes a great label! I took the photo before I hand stitched the top edge, and don’t mind that top stray thread that escaped my snips, but I love how easy the stripes made it to write in a straight line! I usually kilter when I write, so having that extra guide was super helpful.

In between the family holiday fun this next month, I will be writing up this Superbolt mini quilt pattern and as soon as it’s ready, it will head out to all of my email newsletter subscribers. Those of you on the list know that my emails are sparse; at most once per week, but more often once per month. Being on my email newsletter list is a way to ensure you’re in the know and the first one to hear about any new patterns, projects, or fun events in the Night Quilter world. You can opt-in HERE.

I’ll be linking up with Let’s Bee Social, Crazy Mom Quilts Finish it up Friday, and TGIFF. Gotta love a finish!

Quilting

Slow and Steady

January 27, 2016 kittywilkin 13 Comments

I’ve been quiet here, not for lack of sewing, but for lack of *shareable* sewing and computer time. I’ve been working on my first commissioned quilt, and I’ve been buckling down to try to get it finished. I’m having fun with it, but as is the case with just about every project, it’s taking me a bit longer to get together than I had hoped.

Perhaps one day I will learn that “I’ll just make a background of half square triangles (HSTs) and then I’ll just appliqué on top…” really is equal to cut, sew, press, trim, sew, cut, sew, press, trim, sew, on repeat for days, and while aesthetically “simple”, it is far from actually simple. The just is deceptively dismissive, but resides heavily in my planning process. I think part of my nurture goal for the year should include eliminating some “just” and being more realistic with my goals. In the meantime, I’ll continue making slow and steady progress, and enjoying the journey.

I can’t share much, since who knows if the recipient may be reading this, but here are a few peeks at my progress, and at the awesome project that has been filling most of my sewing time as of late.

I promise to show the final quilt once it is finished, gifted, and received. All I can say is that the half square triangles are “just” a canvas for something greater.

Back to the final stack of HSTs!

I’m linking up with Lee’s Works in Progress Wednesday and Lorna’s Let’s Bee Social for some fun socialization in this online quilt world.

Quilting

Works in Progress: Late Night Quilters Club, Supernova Block 1 & Scrappy Play

May 21, 2014 kittywilkin 5 Comments

Today is one of those days where I feel like I have a million things “in progress”. I promise I won’t spill my entire brain’s to-do list for you (that would be messy), but here are some of the top projects I have in progress at the moment:

Late Night Quilters Club Facebook Group

LNQC-cover-4 — This awesome LNQC banner was created by my talented brother Steven.

About a week ago, my new quilting friend Stephanie and her local quilter friend Michelle and I decided to launch a new Facebook community for fellow late night quilters, since we were getting so much out of our own nightly conversations. It started as a page, but the interest and content was so fabulous after only a day, that when new members requested that we make it a private group, we knew it was the right path. This way, it allows for easier communication and better sharing of pictures and ideas. Facebook “pages” aren’t as conducive to posts by many different people in a community as “groups” are. So we made the change, and the group is hoppin’!

We want you to join us there. Your posts will be front and center so you can get lots of feedback from fellow quilters. You can network, ask questions, share advice, share your own works in progress, or even just be a wallflower looking for inspiration.

How is this a work in progress, you may ask? Well, we have a lot of great ideas still in the works, including the creation of a button you can include on your blog, creating a weekly fabric swap so that you can buy, sell, and trade fabric on the page, and more! If you’re on Facebook, would you please give us a little love and take a second to join the group (Steph, Michelle and I are accepting requests as fast as we can), share it with your quilting friends, and perhaps post some of your projects? We’d all love to see what YOU’re working on!

Supernova Friendship Block Swap: Block 1

I have completed my first block for the Supernova Friendship Block Swap, and I love it! I still need to make a duplicate for myself, but I figured I may as well stay ahead and start writing my first letter to my partner Laura. The aspect of the swap that really drew me in at the start is the friendship-making in the process. Each month, I will send not only an awesome 18″ supernova quilt block to Laura, but I’ll also write her a letter about myself. I’ve decided to type most of the letters since I have an awesome typewriter and may as well use it.

Besides, how awesome would it be to receive a typed letter in the mail?! I hope Laura agrees.

I think that the swap is partially supposed to be a surprise each month, and I’ve already blown the surprise this month anyway with my tweeting and Instagramming, so I figure a semi-secretive peek at my block is okay. In future months, I promise to only post pictures AFTER Laura has received her blocks! This is going to be fun!

Scrappy Play

My final work in progress has been a fun little “extra”. My Star Crazy quilt is the first pattern I’ve used that results in many, somewhat large, already cool-looking scraps. I have been having a lot of fun playing around with different possibilities for the scraps.

I think I have decided to make them into a set of place mats, but I think I will wait until the quilt is finished to make sure I have enough pieces to make a sufficient number of coordinating place mats. The alternative, of course is to use them on the back of the quilt. Either way, it has been fun discovering all of the wonderful arrangements possible with half-square triangles (HST).