Learning Something New

In January, I set about on a project.  My plan: to take a concept I had in my head, and turn it into a lap quilt for the back of my couch.  A winter themed quilt.

It's not quite finished yet, but hopefully will be in the next few days.

To begin, I had an idea of trying to find quilt block patterns that, if done in a color scheme of blues and white, could give the impression of snow flakes. Limitations: this quilt must cost me next to nothing--since cash is short, I wanted to use as much fabric as I could from my stash, while staying in my color scheme.  Also, no paying for patterns.  I could find actual snowflake patterns for purchase online, but that was not in the spirit of I want something new but I'm too broke to buy it right now.  So I went to my favorite online free quilt pattern site Quilters Cache and looked at all they had to offer.

I found several star type blocks that I thought might work, and made a list of those patterns.  Then I whittled it down to just four patterns, with the idea of making multiple blocks of each pattern (four, I thought) until the quilt was large enough for a lap quilt/throw.

Two of the patterns I chose, were very simple. The other two, however, would be a challenge.  One had templates and would require doing Y-seams.  The other, was paper pieced.

not bad for first attempts

Y-seam on left, paper pieced on right

I found that I really loved the paper piecing, even though I kept sewing things on wrong and having to rip out my stitches. The Y-seam was challenging, and just when I thought I'd gotten the hang of it (on the second block of that pattern), my third block came out completely wonky and had to be redone.

But I loved the paper piecing and can see myself doing and entire quilt this way sometime in the future.

another of the paper pieced blocks

 I had made 2-3 blocks of each pattern when I got the idea to do the quilt with my blocks on point. I thought that layout might help my blocks look less like stars, and more like a bunch of snow flakes.  So I googled how to do that.  And found out I would need only 13 blocks instead of the 16 I had originally calculated.  But, I didn't want one pattern to have more representation in the quilt than the other three.  What I decided was that  I wanted a fifth pattern, in just a single block, as the center block of this quilt. So, back to Quilters Cache I went.

Consulting my original list of prospects, I reviewed those that hadn't been chosen to be the four for the quilt, and decided on this one, which I'd been very close to using originally.

Once I had all my blocks sewn, I did some more research so that I could figure out how to do the setting and corner triangles for a quilt on point. I'd show you my quilt top all sewn together, but I'd rather wait until I'm done with quilting and binding it.

Speaking of quilting and binding, when I envisioned this quilt in my head, it wasn't tied, and it wasn't quilted with stitch-in-the-ditch like the other quilts I've made to date have been.  No, this one is supposed to have an all over quilting design.  Another new skill for me to try my hand at.

I thought I might want to stipple quilt it.  But first, I should try that on a smaller project.  Enter, the quick pot holder (made with DD1 in mind).  Behold, my 'stipple' quilted Baking Day potholder (pattern from Farm Girl Vintage).

Stipple quilting was easier than I thought it would be.  And yet, while I was doing it, I decided that it wasn't the design I was going to use to quilt my snowflakes after all.  I'm going to do something a little less free form, while still being visible.

Stay tuned. . . I'm hoping to have a finished product to show by this time next week.  :0)