FaveCrafts

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Meet and Make: Road Home Quilting

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Today’s Meet and Make blogger is Road Home Quilting. Road Home Quilting is a quilting blog with regular quilting posts and tutorials.

Let’s meet the team at Road Home Quilting!

Road Home Quilting

10 Fun Facts about Road Home Quilting:

1.  Road Home Quilting is a family team of three; Mom designs, Alex blogs, and Kitty Pearl supervises and personally tests each pattern for fun and functionality.

2.  Pearl is a talented Kitty; she also writes quilty stories, Pearl’s Posts, for Alex’s blog. [Please watch http://roadhomequilting.blogspot.com for Pearl’s Posts.]

3.  Mom’s favorite sport (after quilting, of course) is crew rowing. Yes, she took a class and even won a skulling race in a team of eight!

4.  We believe each quilt tells a story.  Mom’s designs all start with a title of the dream we want to share.

5.  Alex’s favorite color is blue. When you see blue in a Road Home Quilting project, you can thank Alex for getting it in there.

6.  Speaking of blue, Alex has a big blue LQS bike. Yes, we won a bike at Quilt Bloggers Meetup, and since it is blue…Alex rides everyday.

Road Home Quilting Bicycle

7.  Do you know why the quilt book reviews on our RHQ blog are so amazing? Mom was a librarian. She also applies her research talents in our Totally Tech Tuesday blog reports, where Mom hunts for quilty tools on the web for maximizing the computer in your sewing room.

8.  Alex is the best stitcher in the family. Mom has made some amazing silk ribbon projects, but Alex is a natural talent. Pearl just hides pins.

9.  We love patterns – collecting, reading, study, everything! And we want to share pattern fun everywhere. That is why Road Home Quilting patterns have an extra one-of-a-kind feature; each pattern cover is a real postcard you mail!

10.  Shhhh, can you keep a secret? August 6 is not really Kitty Pearl’s birthday. If you are Kitty Pearl’s Facebook friend, you may have noticed her profile lists her birthday as 8/6. But Pearl is a rescue Kitty, so we don’t know when her real birthday is. We chose August 6 in memory of Alex’s Great Grandma Lola, who taught us the real meaning of home.

Here is Road Home Quilting’s Project:

Quilted Candy Corn Pillow

Quilted Candy Corn Pillow

Materials:

  • 2 fat quarters each of white, orange, and another color fabric
  • Batting – about 40″ x 24″ or 20″ x 48″
  • Halloween-themed cookie cutters and ink pad (optional)
  • Stuffing (feel free to use fabric scraps for stuffing)

Instructions:

1. Cut fat quarters in half to create 9″ strips. Join the strips into 3 very long bands with orange in the middle.

Quilted Candy Corn Pillow

2. Press seams flat. Direction doesn’t matter in this step.

3. Make a Candy Corn pattern. [Recycle Tip:  We  use grocery bags for pattern papers.]  Pattern is a triangle, 24″ tall with 20″ base. Use a cup or bowl to help you draw round corners. Center your pattern over your stripes. Mark both edges of the orange stripe on your pattern to create “register marks,” that will help accurately reposition the pattern.

Quilted Candy Corn Pillow

4. Start cutting out some Candy Corn! [Tip:  We like pan lids for pattern weights.] Flip your pattern upside down with each cut. Remember to use the register marks to re-align your pattern.

Quilted Candy Corn Pillow

5. Sort pieces. Some will have white on top, some will have white on bottom. Decide if pillows will have matching backs or reversed backs. Pair pillow pieces. [If making one pillow, you will have a reversed back] Notice that orange band now appears to be the largest stripe. Spooky!

6. Press pillow pieces so that seams run opposite on each piece, and will easily nest together when pillow is assembled.

7. Layer pieces with batting. No backing necessary. We like spray basting, but any method will work here. Fusible craft batting is also suitable.

8. Quilt as desired!

Quilting Tool TRICK: Turn cookie-cutters into quilting stencils. Ink holiday themed cookie cutters with a stamp pad. Use washable ink if you are stamping on quilt top. We stamped and quilted on the batting side.

Quilted Candy Corn Pillow

9. After quilting, trim batting with bevel cut. Hold scissors parallel to top. Batting is angle cut to reduce bulk in seam allowance area. Press one last time.

Quilted Candy Corn Pillow

10. Secret 3-D Step: Baste curved edges. Pull basting bobbin to gather edges. Easy!

Quilted Candy Corn Pillow

11. With right sides together, match orange seams and stitch around pillow leaving a hole in side.

Quilted Candy Corn Pillow

12. Turn pillow case right side out through hole. Remove basting stitches in corners.

13. Stuff pillow then close hole by hand with blind stitch. Because pillow is lined with batting, it will be hard to stuff with batting. The battings will want to stick together. This is an opportunity to recycle that box of cuttings and “scraps too small to use.” [Admit it, you know you have one too.] Go ahead and stuff your Candy Corn Pillow with scraps. Since pillow is lined with batting, the scraps won’t feel lumpy. Sweet!

Quilted Candy Corn Pillow

Optional: Having trouble matching the orange side seams? Hide uneven seams with giant ric-rac.

 


National Sewing Month: My Favorite Quilting Memories

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Dear Readers,

It’s National Sewing Month! To celebrate, AllFreeSewing.com is hosting a special blog series throughout the entire month. Check back daily for posts featuring our favorite projects, new sewing videos and tutorials, guest blogs from talented designers and more. We’re also giving away a HUGE sewing prize at the end of the month. You won’t believe how EASY it is to WIN!

Leave a comment on any of the blog posts with the headline “National Sewing Month”. Your comment will count as an entry into the giveaway. You are free to comment as often as once per blog post (for a total of 30 chances to win!). At the end of the month, we’ll pool all of the comments together and pick one lucky winner to win the mystery grand prize. And trust us; you want to win this one!

Whether you’re already a sewing enthusiast or new to the craft, our hope is that this September will encourage you to create wonderful sewn projects.

Happy National Sewing Month!

Here’s today’s post:

Although I am the editor of FaveQuilts.com, my quilting memories are few. I spend my days poring over pictures of quilts and I can tell you anything you want to know about any quilting technique, but I’ve actually made only a handful of quilts myself. I made my first quilt as a child when I was maybe nine or ten years old. At that time, my mom was sewing prolifically, and she had a huge bin of fabric scraps leftover from all of her projects. That bin of scraps was my introduction and inspiration in the world of sewing. With the unwanted fabric at my fingertips, I was free to experiment in whichever direction I chose. I made purses, shirts, pincushions, and, as my imagination outgrew Barbie’s fashionable store-bought accessories, caveman wraps and shag rugs for my dolls.

One day, purely on a whim, I decided to make a quilt. I collected an array of blue, pink, and silver fabrics left over from handmade Halloween costumes and dutifully cut out each 5″ x 5″ square with a cardboard template. The finished quilt ended up too small to serve as anything but a doll quilt, but it was my first experience of the warm, cozy satisfaction of making a quilt. I’ll never forget the sense of accomplishment in making something that could provide so much comfort.

    

Ever since that first quilting project, I have been enamored with the basic qualities of a quilt; the thick, slightly lumpy network of batting and fabric, softened in the laundry and ready to envelop you in its warmth, appeals to your sense of touch in a way that is both physically and psychologically satisfying. But you can easily achieve those characteristics in a quilt as simple as the checkerboard quilt I made as a girl. Fabric and quilting patterns can take you beyond that, from tactually pleasing to aesthetically endearing. The first quilt I fell in love with is the one that still sits on my bed, over ten years after I first bought it. Although I am tired of the furniture I have now and frequently fantasize about choosing new paint colors, I am so attached to the quilt that I refuse to redecorate. Even now, I sometimes sit on the bed and trace the quilting lines or marvel at the beauty of the simple patchwork.

“Wild Child” art quilt from fiber artist Barbara Olsen

When I became the editor of FaveQuilts.com, my appreciation of quilts exploded. I had been virtually ignorant of the possibilities in a simple sandwich of fabric and batting. Through the FaveQuilts Pinterest boards, I began to discover the creative, expressive, three-dimensional beauty of art quilts. But as much as I admired the fabric artists who had created them, the quilts and the art form itself seemed inaccessible to me. Although I am a lifelong crafter and I consider myself imaginitive, the sense of spatial aesthetics and color coordination that make art quilts beautiful does not come naturally to me. I searched in vain for art quilting tutorials, but they come far and few between, mostly focusing on specific techniques rather than finished products.

That’s why my pulse quickened when I saw the Road to Brownwood Quilt by Judy Laquidara from Patchwork Times. It’s a quilt built with traditional piecework patterns like Ohio stars and log cabin blocks, but the overall effect of the finished quilt reveals the designer’s astute feel for the way that pattern and color interact. The purple and gold patterns create a luminous quality that makes me think of a desert sunset. I fell in love with this quilt the moment I first saw it and comprehended the talent it took to design something so subtly beautiful: a traditional quilt that wowed me as much as any art quilt. The best moment was when I realized I could make that quilt. I could follow the directions, cut up the pieces, stitch them together and put it on my bed. I could look at that art every day and cuddle underneath it at night. That’s the moment I became a quilter.

When did you feel you had become a quilter? Tell us about it!

Carve out Some Time for Pumpkin Patterns: Free Fall Quilts for The Entire Season

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With September well underway and the weather turning chilly, I’ve got pumpkins swimming in my brain like apples bobbing in a barrel. Pumpkins seem to be the universal symbol of fall. In September, Starbucks rolls out its famed Pumpkin Spice Lattes (I had my first one yesterday!), and pumpkins appear on the glossy pages of every cooking and decorating magazine. Pumpkin patches, petting zoos, and local farms are filled with rows of the large orange gourds, sorted by size and shape; even grocery stores and hardware stores are sure to have outdoor pumpkin displays in just another week or two. The week before Halloween, pumpkins will be carved and set out on porches filled with cloves and votive candles, and their roasted seeds will be enjoyed almost as much as packaged candy. By Thanksgiving, pumpkins will be baked into delicious breads and pies in their last appearance of the season.

As I decide what to quilt for the fall season, it occurs to me that pumpkins are the perfect motif throughout autumn. Their cheerful orange color and simple round shape make them a good fit for quick and easy quilts, and they can easily be adapted for Halloween or Thanksgiving decorations. Jack-o-lantern faces are easy to applique onto finished pumpkins, and quilting lines mimic the natural ribbing on the gourds.

It turns out that quite a few other quilters agree with me! I found plenty of pumpkin quilt patterns and pumpkin applique patterns on other quilting blogs, so I put together this collection of 12 Pumpkin Patterns: Free Tutorials for Fall Quilts to showcase all the awesome pumpkin quilt patterns out in the blogosphere. In this collection you will find every pumpkin pattern you need for all of your fall quilting projects.

       

To design your own quilt, choose one of our pumpkin quilt block patterns and make several for an easy patchwork quilt. Leave the pumpkins plain for Thanksgiving or autumn decorations, or add jack-o-lantern appliques and black sashing for a Halloween quilt. Of course, you don’t have to use these blocks just to make decorative quilts. Use any of our pumpkin blocks or pumpkin applique patterns to make quilted trick-or-treat bags, door hangers, table runners, and more. One of the most unique pattern in this collection is a quilted dog coat embellished with applique pumpkins!

If you’d rather skip designing and jump right into making a quilt pattern, you’ll love the spooky applique quilt, the happy jack-o-lantern quilt, and the jack’s lantern patchwork quilt. Making these jack-o-lantern quilts will be just like carving pumpkins, but without all the mess! The best part about quilted jack-o-lanterns is that they can be used year after year. Soon you will have an entire collection of jack-o-lantern quilts to decorate the house for Halloween!

Once the fun of Halloween has passed, check out some of our harvest pumpkin patterns for more subdued Thanksgiving decorations. My favorite is this autumn wall hanging, which perfectly captures the feel of fall with its pumpkin, leaf, and acorn appliques.

What are your favorite fall quilt patterns? Have you made a pumpkin quilt pattern? Show it to us!

 

 

 

FaveQuilts.com Welcomes You with A New Free eBook

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All summer I’ve been working on our new quilting website, FaveQuilts.com, and now that it is officially launching, I feel like a proud mama on the first day of kindergarten. I’m so excited to watch FaveQuilts.com grow and I’m hoping my baby will be popular with the other quilting blogs. In order to show everyone what we have to offer at FaveQuilts.com, I put together our very first quilting eBook with a collection of quilt patterns and tutorials from the new website.

12 Awesome Free Quilt Patterns and Small Quilted Projects includes an assortment of quilt patterns to show off the variety of projects featured on FaveQuilts.com. The free eBook is divided into three chapters: applique quilt patterns, patchwork quilt patterns, and small quilted projects. Each of the applique projects comes with a free printable applique template (so there’s no freehand drawing involved!). With these applique projects, you can create a beautiful quilt with bright, bold patterns in just a few hours. Start off with a Bug Jar Quilt (p. 12). This easy tutorial is especially designed for beginners, and the fusible applique takes only minutes!

If you enjoy those meditative hours spent chain piecing at your sewing machine, our patchwork quilt patterns are for you. 12 Awesome Free Quilt Patterns and Small Quilted Projects includes several patchwork quilts to keep you busy stitching. The glorious garden quilt (p. 27) and concentric diamonds quilt (p. 24) are easy enough for newer quilters, while the apple core throw (p. 31) presents the challenge of curved piecing for intermediate quilters.


One of the things I’ve learned as I’ve been building FaveQuilts is that quilting takes a very long time. In my limited quilting history I’ve only made baby quilts, and they took months since I’m not quite the committed crafter I imagine myself to be. I always assumed that serious quilters were whipping out a new king-sized quilt every other week, but I soon found that quilts could take months and even years if hand-stitching became involved. I know there are many quilters out there like myself who are looking for quick quilted projects to give them the satisfaction of quilting without the serious time commitments. That’s why I included a section of small quilted projects that you can finish in just a day or two in this free eBook. Projects like a simple patchwork pillow (p. 45) or a table runner (p. 34) are great for beginners because they speed up the learning curve. Experienced quilters will love the satisfaction of putting together a quilted piece in just a few hours!

To get the patterns for all these wonderful quilt projects, download 12 Awesome Free Quilt Patterns and Small Quilted Projects here for free. I hope you enjoy this sampling of FaveQuilts.com!

The History of Quilting and Free Quilt Patterns

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Quilting is a really neat hobby to get started on. If you haven’t quilted before and you’re intimidated it’s ok. Once you get started you’ll realize quilting isn’t that hard to do. There are so many quilting patterns out there for you to use.

The types of quilts you can make are made with columns or patchwork style. You can choose fabrics that compliment each other or complete opposite fabrics to give it a bit of a crazy look.

Quilting in short, is stitching together layers of fabric. In ancient Egyptian times they quilted cloth quilts which were very popular and used for trading goods.

The earliest quilt around is from the early first century BC to the second century AD. It was found in a Mongolian cave and is a quilted linen carpet. It is housed in the Saint Petersburg department of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Archaeology Section.

Quilts these days aren’t so much made for trading but more for home decor. You can throw a quilt on your couch just to add some color and design to the room, but I’ve also seen people use quilts as wall art. You can make a beautiful quilt out of whatever fabrics you choose and then hang it on your wall. This again adds some decorative flavor to your home.

Below you can find some fun free quilt patterns:

ABC’s Baby Quilt

Animal Nursery Quilt

Autumn Colors Quilt

Belvedere Floral Quilt

Crayon Stained Quilt Art

Family Love Quilt

Crayons and Quilting: 2 New Projects

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I am totally digging the idea of using crayons to dye quilts. Crayons are inexpensive and available everywhere. These two new quilting projects at FaveCrafts.com are amazing.

Crayon Stained Quilt Art– This project tells you how to create a “textile painting” with a crayon stained background, strips of fabric and free-motion embroidery. This is just gorgeous!

Seashells Quilt– For something easier, but nonetheless beautiful, give this seashells quilt a try. Crayons, rubbed into templates on sandpaper are used to create the soft seashell images all over the quilt. This is the perfect summer quilt project.

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