A Nerd Quilts

Some potholder ideas I've been kicking around...

(click on image to see full-size)

Next on the List

After DQS4 is over, and I finish up both the niece quilt and the red pentagons quilt, I want to make this:

 

It's this quilt from Den Haan & Wagenmakers (and they do offer a kit if chintzes are your thing), which I've reimagined in spring-colored Kaffe Fassett prints, Haze Stripes and Shot Cottons.  I would scale it up, too - the original quilt has 10cm square blocks, which I would enlarge to 10 inch square blocks, making the full quilt about 41" square.  Perfect for a wall hanging.

It's been a while...

... since I made a virtual quilt.

I made this out of two kinds of hexagon, a square, and a cross.

Pentagons

Someone has asked me about my pattern for the red pentagon quilt, so I thought I'd post it here. 

The pentagon I used is basically half of the double-ax one-patch seen here (11th picture from the top).  Here is a drafting template for the pentagon (this is the size I used for my quilt, as it can be cut from a 5" charm square):

(Click any image to enlarge.)

There are also 3 templates for partial pentagons, which get used at the edges of the quilt:

Note that templates A and B look the same if you flip them over, but C and D do not.  Both regular and reversed versions of C and D must be used.  This layout below is much smaller than my quilt, obviously, but gives a pretty good idea of how the partial pentagons fit in around the edges:

I hope this is enough information!  Please comment if it isn't, and I'll do my best to clarify.

Hopefully I will have some progress photos of the actual quilt to share soon.  I am still working on the outermost ring - this quilt has been lagging, since I have been working on other projects.  The quilt for my niece (I'm late on that one - she was born two days ago!) has finally been basted, but I still need to quilt it.  I also started a pink-and-green medallion quilt (the center is almost done) that so far I'm really happy with.  I'm designing that one as I go.  The center is just plain hexagons, 16" x 21".  I'm going to put a flying geese border around that.  Beyond that, I'm not sure yet.  I'm not even sure how big it's going to be.  All I know is that it's going to use lots of different fabrics, and all of them will be pink or green.

There will also be some patchwork pillows in the near future.  Since I do everything by hand, I am a very slow crafter.  I've been quilting for 6 months now, and have no FO's to show - it's driving me crazy!  Pillows will be perfect since I enjoy piecing much more than I do quilting.  Plus they are small, and will dramatically increase my rate of FO production (while decreasing my stash - another bonus).

Playing With Friendship Stars

I'm still here

And I'm still quilting.  I've almost finished the next ring of pentagons on my son's quilt.  I'll post a photo when that's done.  And I'm still working on the baby quilt for my future niece.  The second border strip is done and waiting to be sewn on.

And, of course, I'm still farting around designing quilts on the computer (click to enlarge):

This is what I'm going to do with some of my Civil War charm squares.  (Did I mention that my husband got me the most awesome Valentine's Day present ever?)  This is just an approximation, of course.  These aren't the real colors - I just chose these so that the different elements would stand out clearly. 

The whirligigs will be each made up of one charm square; the strips are only 1" by 3", so that I can get all 4 strips from one square.  Because the strips are so small, I'm going to use only the smallest-scale neats and calicoes for this quilt - that way the prints will still show up clearly.  The whirligigs will alternate dark and light, and both darks and lights will progress from lightest in the center to darkest on the outer edge.  Here I have the lights as blue-grey, and the darks as yellow-green, but in reality the charm squares I have are all different colors.

The peachy tones in the picture will all be solids of one shade, although not necessarily that shade - I haven't decided on it yet.  Probably white shading to medium tan.

The full quilt will be 42" x 42" and use 109 charm squares.  One day I'll have to invest in some fat quarters and make a queen-sized version (84" x 84" using 2" x 6" strips).

Back to your regularly scheduled virtual quilting

I collect a lot of charm squares.  I have an automatic quarterly shipment of pre-1900's reproduction charms from Hancock's of Paducah, plus a monthly shipment of random-themed squares from Keepsake Quilting.  I also make some one-time charm square purchases, generally of the pre-1900's variety.  From all of these, I have been carefully separating out all the squares that have no other colors but blue (any shade) and white (I also allow off-white, as well as very small amounts of black, but absolutely no other colors even if they are in microscopic amounts).  I think I've finally decided what to do with them:

Obviously this is not a full quilt.  First of all, each square here is the same, but I would be using charms so each square would be different - I was just trying to get a sense of how I would separate the charms by value and use them within a square.  Second, each block is 8" square so this is just the center 24" x 24" of the quilt - I would probably make a large lap quilt, maybe 56" x 64" or even 64" x 72".

The background fabric is Kaffe Fassett's Shot Cotton in Mustard (or maybe it's Chartreuse - I own both but no longer know which is which).

Thing-a-day

I joined the thing-a-day challenge.  My "thing" will be virtual quilts made with MS Paint (surprise, surprise).

You can see all my posts here.

More Virtual Quilting

I've finally decided what to do with all my lovely green Kaffe Fasset fabrics!  I've settled on this simple isosceles-triangle design with all the greens pointing one way, and a single contrast fabric pointing the other way.  Trouble is, I've got six possible candidates for the contrast fabric, and I'm not sure which one I like best (click for bigger)...

Decisions

They settled on Ocean Waves, even though I gave them one new layout to look at, which is definitely my favorite and which I'm shocked they rejected:

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So now they've got to choose between the single-fabric Ocean Waves (from the previous post), or this new Ocean Waves using three fabrics with different values:

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(As usual, click images for biggification.)

I like the multi-value, but we'll see what they say.

Update: They chose the single-fabric version.  To each his own, I guess...