Quilt Projects & Crafts
I made this quilt for a dear friend who loved the beach, which is why there are beach colors of browns, blues and sandy-neutrals. It is a modified version of a log-cabin quilt. While the angles are not hard, you do have to square-up after every strip addition. It looks a lot harder than it really is, but it is time consuming.
This pattern is specially available on this website and is usually hard to find. It comes with a paper template to help square-up all your diamond pieces. There are two diamond blocks, one vertical and one horizontal.
Lemon Grass Placemats
Island Batik "Lemon Grass" Fabric & "My 2 Sisters" Quiltworx Pattern
These pair of placemats were made for a friend using the Island Batik Lemon Grass fabric collection and the paper pieced pattern My 2 Baby Sisters Placemats by Quiltworx. The color palette of the Lemon Grass collection perfectly matches the Sweet Friendship tea collection set of mugs, teapot and tray that we found online at Christianbook.com.
Ellie Elephant
by Funky Friends Factory
Meet Ellie Elephant! This adorable animal was made from soft plush fabric and minky. The pattern is by Funky Friends Factory. For an extra personal touch, the names of the recipients of this elephant were custom machine embroidered onto the foot pads of the rear feet.
Daybreak is one of my Go-To favorite patterns for charity quilts. It’s fun, exciting, and uses up a variety of fabrics that can blend well together when assembled.
The first quilt is a pastel one that glowed as I was taking photos of it. The multicolor fabric showing through the background is from the white background on the top allowing the sun the shine through the backing color (Batik Textiles 4512) and creating a beautiful glow of pastel colors. With a white top background remember to always use white (not natural) batting for a clean, crisp look. I was also reminded that pressing was important since it can be seen through the quilt.
The blue and green quilt was a lot of fun because I got to use all those vibrant fabrics I’ve been collecting that I keep saying that I’ll use one day. Sound familiar? That day finally came and it made for a wonderful boys quilt. I cheated on the border and used Anthology’s gradient batiks to make it appear that the border was pieced when in fact it’s not. It added a wonderful mix of color. Important: Make sure to use a “black batik” that’s dyed and not just a black printed fabric for the background when working with batik fabrics to get the best color blends/match for the top. I recommend Hoffman’s 1895-494 Watercolor “Raven.”
HINT: I start my quilts from the border when choosing colors for any quilt and work my way inside. That way the border is guaranteed to match the fabrics inside.
This quilt is fast and fun and works well for those panels that you’re not sure what to do with. Now that digital panels are out on the market, it’s easier than ever to match the saturated dyes of batiks to really create a stunning quilt. Each one of the quilts above uses a digitally printed panel matched with four different Hoffman 885 Dot fabrics and Hoffman’s 1895-494 Raven Watercolor for the background. I chose four colors that I wanted to showcase from the panel and matched the dots to them.
These quilts are a breeze and once you make one, you’ll want to do another! It takes me less than 6 hours to make one of these, from cutting the fabric to finishing the final border. The digital prints lend well for boys quilts, which can be sometimes difficult to envision. The colored angled accents look a bit tricky but are really simple and all the instructions are easy to read and follow. This is a quilt I can personally recommend.
Buckeye Beauty is a classic quilt that lends itself well to multicolored fabrics and scraps. I’ve made this quilt several different ways: With specifically colored fabrics (the peach-blue quilt), a fabric collection (Summer Breeze by Moda, 20 different fabrics, blue-green-yellow), and with bright primary batiks mixed together from my stash.
I recommend the Strip Tube Ruler by Cozy Quilt Designs, available on my Etsy store, to make the tube cutting (pyramids) go fast with accurate measurements. I also found that Cozy Quilt Design patterns are generous with their fabric requirements as I have been able to use less fabrics than it says allowing me to have left overs enough to make a matching pillow case or pillow sham to go with the quilt.
The bright quilt with the black background (I used Hoffman 1895-494 Raven) uses a border similar to the Daybreak quilt above from Anthology. The multicolored brights worked well for creating the illusion that the border is pieced when it really isn’t. It’s an older fabric that I had purchased some years ago so I don’t remember what it was specifically called. This is a great pattern for multicolored fabrics and even gradient scraps (oooh, that would look cool wouldn’t it?).