New Pattern Alert: Rapids

 Let's keep this one short and sweet! This is Rapids.

I lacked a quilt holder for this photo shoot.  I have some photos from January, but leading with a picture of it in snow when it's so hot and humid outside right now seems wrong somehow.

Also, the Radiant Wings prints from Island Batik are all about big bold buterflies, dragonflies, and leafy things so the snow doesn't match.  (The light accent is Whip Cream, an Island Batik foundation.)

I chose plain squares to showcase the prints so the eye would focus on the prints instead of the shapes, but I wanted something a little more interesting than rows of squares. The zigzag layout fits the bill, and the accent triangles defining the zigzag path also draw the eye to the print squares.

The cover quilt was made yardage of six prints for the squares, but you could cut the squares from scraps for a scrappier quilt.  If you want a scrappier effect but don't have scraps or you just don't want to sort through them, you can use a package of 5" precut squares and just a little yardge to cut a few extra squares to make up the total number of squares required.

What else do you need to know about this pattern?

• You won't need to cut and sew any individual triangles
• It's suitable for a confident beginner.
• The quilt measures 61" x 77.5"
• It is Rosie-approved.
• You can buy the PDF download version in my Etsy shop, or you ask for a printed version at your favourite quilt shop.

I didn't lead with the snowy picture, but perhaps gazing at it will help counter the current heat.

The snowy picture is helping helping my brain think cool.  I think hunkering down in the sewing room, downstairs where it's cooler, will also help.  I guess I'll just have to go test a few new design ideas.  It's such a hardship :)

Happy quilting,

Joanne

Patchwork Wishes

Patchwork Wishes was supposed to be  Friday Finish reveal, but I kept forgetting to post it on a Friday, so it's just going to be a "any-day-of-the-week but it's finished" post.   

Don't you love a professional (ahem) photo with feet and dog's tail? 
Patchwork Wishes by Canuck Quilter Designs

I shared the start of this quilt back in January, showing off the package of precut squares I used to acheive a coordinated scrappy look with less effort than digging through scrap bins. Though I posted a few brief updates on Instagram and Facebook, I neglected to share here on the blog.  I gave you a peek in my post about binding choices earlier this month, but I think Patchwork Wishes deserves its own post.

The piecing went relatively quickly and I had a Rosie-approved finished top by the middle of January.  

The nine-patch cornerstone blocks are strip-pieced, which reduces the amount of cutting and makes assembly much faster.  Of course the star points are my favourite stitch-and-flip (AKA lost corners) star points that can't be accidentally blunted.  I think the most time-consuming part of this quilt was moving the sashing strips around until I liked the distribution.  I tried to let it be random, but my brain just wasn't having it.

I started quilting it a month later.  That's actually a rather quick start for me.  Quilts I send out to a longarmer get finished promptly, but when I plan to quilt the quilt myself it can languish for a while.  There's a stack of tops growing on my shelves, some of them several years old.  

Repositioning the quilt to continue quilting after running out of bobbin thread

Moving right along...Patchwork Wishes got a quicker start.  As some of you might know, I'm a big fan of my walking foot.  That's what I started with.  I stitched in the ditch in all the seams in the sashing.  That was an easy job.  Tedious, but easy.  Stitching all the way down the quilt multiple times and across the quilt as well was not the most stimulating activity, but audiobooks kept me entertained.

Stitching in the ditch is tedious, but it's a little bit like tracing the outlines of a shape before filling in the middle when you're colouring in a colouring book.  It think it defines the shape and makes things crisper. I love the slightly puffy texture it raised in the sashing of this quilt.  It just screams "I'm a cozy quilt, come curl up" to me.

I also wanted to stitch in the ditch around the stars.  I hoped to use freemotion quilting rulers for that so I wouldn't have to turn the quilt or break thread several times to avoid turning.  However, my sewing machine misbehaves when I ruler quilt, lifting the presser foot up randomly and making me risk a needle in a finger.  It's been in the shop many times but the technician can't figure out what's up, so I've given up on the ruler quilting for now.

In the end, I used the walking foot and just turned the quilt.  It's just small enough to not have required too much effort to smoosh through the throat of the machine at each turn.  I extended the lines through the center of the star for a little added interest and slightly denser quilting.  I was surprised to find I was able to quilt the whole star without breaking thread.

Once all the ditch stitching was finished, I wanted a bit more stitching in the block backgrounds to add more visual interest as well as to even out the quilting density.  I used a hera marker to audition lines where I thought I'd stitch.  The indentation left by the hera marker gives me a better idea of the texture the quilting will add than a drawn line does.  

I quilted all these short lines in long passes, stitching a line, securing stitching with very short stitches at the beginning and ending of each line but not breaking thread, then moving on to the next line in the same direction, all across the quilt.   I went back after and snipped away the thread between the stitched parts.  This was faster than having to pull the bottom thread up from the back at the beginning of each line.

So far so good.  I was thrilled with the texture and subtle detail in the background.

That's where I stopped in very early March.  I just had the border left to quilt, but I could not decide what to do.  Should I try to freemotion a string of stars?  Hold off in the hopes my backup machine could be made to love ruler work again? I considered using the walking foot to quilt a beadboard/piano key design like the one I quilted on Quilter's Scrapbook 15 years ago, but that seeemed really, really tedious.  

What's a quilter to do?  Go work on something else of course.  Feverish sewing to complete four new quilts for upcoming fabric collections ensued. (Can't wait to show you those in December!)

I came back to Patchwork Wishes in late June, settling on gentle cable that I could quilt with the walking foot.  I've had the stencil for years, dating back to my hand quilting days.  I think it's funny I never actually used this particular stencil on a hand quilted quilt but have now used it on three machine quilted quilts.

I did drag my feet for a couple of weeks about marking the border design, convinced it would take forever to adjust the stencil placement to fit just right and that figuring out how to turn the corner would be a pain.  I guess I either forgot it went smoothly the first two times I marked this on a quilt, or it just went more smoothly because I"d done it before.  In any case, once I stopped dragging my feet and complaining, I marked the border in one evening and quilted it in four easy passes around the quilt over the course of two leisurely evenings.

I hadn't planned ahead for the binding and I'm lucky there was still a bit of the border fabric left on the bolt when I went back to the quilt shop.  I suppose I would have found something else to use, but I think the matching binding was perfect for this quilt.

Rosie approves :)

At 56" x 67", it's a lovely size for a throw.  I'm looking forward to curling up under it with a good book when the weather coold down. 

If you have a layer cake (or non-Moda equivalent stack of 10" precuts) waiting for the perfect quilt, Patchwork Wishes might be the one.  I really think this design would work with all sorts of fabric styles.  You can find the pattern as a PDF download in my shop or you can ask for it at your favourite quilt shop.

Time to go rustle up some supper.  Hubby is away this week and cooking for one is boring.  Bread and cheese and an assortment of fruit sounds like an easy summer supper...

Happy quilting,

Joanne

Matching or accent binding?

For years I used the same fabric for binding a quilt as I used in the last border.  It was a rule.  I don't know where I heard it or saw it or who came up with it, but it was a rule and I followed it.  Over the last few years I have pretty much thrown that "rule" out the window and started having fun with my binding choices.

Still, this weekend I chose to bind Patchwork Wishes in the same fabric as I used in the border.

Sewing binding on is pretty boring, so my mind tends to wander.  This time it wandered and wondered if there was any pattern to my binding choices. When do I choose matchy-matchy and when do I chose a contrast?  When I choose a contrasting binding, do I choose a reads-as-solid or a print?

I might have taken a small break to scroll through my quilt photos. Here are some trends I found in my quilts, complete with some brand new close-up photos of some bindings.

***********************

Quilts without borders

When the "border" matches the background, or if there is no border, I usually choose a contrasting binding to act as a frame.  

Fabulous Phlox

Rush

Quilts with light borders

When a quilt has a light-colored borders, a darker binding adds a more solid edge to the quilt.  It also will show dirt less than a light binding would.

Boxed Kisses

Sprinkled

Quilts with pieced borders

When there's a lot happening in borders already, as in the case of a pieced border, a contrasting border might be one extra detail too many.  In the two quilts below, I used a matching binding to avoid pulling the eye away from the pretty pieced borders.

Positivity Squared

Prairie Mix

Quilts with prints in the border

I used fabrics that read more solid to corral the prints in the borders of these quilts.

Knotted

Crossings

Notice that Crossings also has a pieced inner border, so obviously the "matching binding when there's a pieced border" above is not a hard and fast rule!

Prints or Stripes for extra interest

Most of my quilts end up with a fairly plain binding, but every now and then the right print comes along to add a little pop.  

Sailing School

Saling School also belongs in the "quilt with no borders" category, but repeating a print from the quilt really kicked the binding up a notch.

Stripes can be stricky.  You need to find a striped print with colors that go really well with the fabrics in your quilt, but if you do, it can be really fun, like the diagonal stripe on Tic Tac Who - puppy version.

Tic Tac Who

A print binding against a solid border can also work.

Focus Squared

Repeating a border accent

Multiple borders with a binding that repeats the fabric from an inner border can emphasize the idea of the border as a frame.  It reminds me of a picture frame with molding.  You can see that in Focus Squared above, as well as in Starlight Plaid below.

Starlight Plaid

Scrappy quilts and other quilts with scrappy bindings

With busy scrappy quilts, I can go either way:  a quiet solid binding to contrast with the busy scrappy center, or a scrappy binding to embrace the scrappiness.

Quilter's scrapbook has a lot going on in the scrappy blocks, as well as the pieced border, so the red binding matching the border avoids adding one more element to the mix.

Quilter's Scrapbook

None of my pictures of scrappy quilts with scrappy bindings really show the binding well enough to illustrate.  My Temperature quilt isn't technically a scrap quilt, but it does have a scrappy look and the scrappy binding repeating all the colors works really well.

Temperature quilt

Temp quilt back - because this is a better picture of the scrappy binding :)

I also like to use up leftover strips if there are some several leftover after making a quilt top with precut 2 1/2" strips.

Star Chips

Matchy-matchy bindings

After all that analysis, you may wonder if I still use matching binding.  I do.  Not very often, but I do.  Genrerally, I'll use binding that matches the border if there's a lot happening visually in the rest of the quilt and I feel it doesn't need to have yet another element stand out.  That was the case for Patchwork Wishes which I bound this weekend.

Patchwork Wishes - pattern release coming soon!

(Patchwork Wishes will get it's very own post soon!  Stay tuned.)

Tell me about your binding choices. Do you have any guidelines you follow?  Do you like your binding to fade into the background or pop with color?  Any favourite successes or some you wish you had chosen differently?

Happpy quilting,

Joanne

PS: You can read about how I machine bind my quilts here.

Where did this scrap come from?

I pulled scraps recently to start testing a new design.  I chose a blue and white color scheme because my blue scrap bins are overflowing and I hoped to make a dent in the blue collection (Spoiler:  This quilt did not make noticeable inroads into the blue scraps.)

A tiny portion of the blue scrap stash

These are most of the bits I chose, and pulling them did lower the level in the blue bin, but then I didn't use up every fabric so the level in the bin went back up again after I had cut everything I needed and put the rest back

Back when I made Quilter's Scrapboook in 2013, with scraps from my first 13 years of quiting, I could remember which fabric each scrap came from. Guess what? I can't remember most of those anymore. It was finish #25, 109 quilts and 12 years ago.  I now have a lot of scraps I can't identify, but I did pretty well with this stack of blues.  There are some I can't quite place.  The bright blue with tiny stars, under fabric #3 above, is driving me nuts.  I feel I should know that one but can't place it at all!

Just for grins and giggles, here's where the ones I identified came from:

1. Snowflake tote bag 2016
2. Simply Snow 2019
3. Hoarfrost 2016
4. Backing from Clear Skies 2013
5. Window valance 2004
6. Blue frosty versions of Geese Across the Table 2019 and Hovering 2022
7. Twist 2008
8. Rush and Side Trails 2023
9. Jelly Bean Stars 2012
10. Which Way North 2015
11. Focus Squared (I think!) 2021
12. Sprinkled (the blue one) 2020
13. Forty-Eight (AKA Seeing Stars) 2014

Here's the scrap I'm most excited about:

I didn't think about it much as I cut up the last of it for this quilt, but as I sewed I let my mind wander.  When I picked up this square, the thought that this just might be the backing from my very first quilt popped into my brain and wouldn't let go.

Can it be?  I've browsed through all my quilt pictures.  (It's not like I had anthing else to do.  Ahem. That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)  I can't think of what else it might be from, but it could have been the backing of that first quilt.  I texted my brother, who owns it now, but he's not a fabric guy, so he couldn't say for sure.  The quilt is at his cabin, and he was not at the cabin, so I am still awaiting confirmation. 

All that to say I might have just used up the last bit of my very first fabric scrap, over 25 years later.

If you're curious about my first quilt, pop over to  Leanne's Devoted Quilter blog, where she interviewed me for her "My First Quilt" series.  You can read about why I made it, how I made it, and how I almost kept it.  Here's a peek:

I'd love to hear about your oldest scraps, or really any of your scraps.  Do you find it hard to use up the last piece of something?  Do you remember what project you bought the fabric for? Do you like to think about where you used the fabric in the past, or are you focused on the project at hand?  Let me know in the comments!

Happy quilting,

Joanne

Colour Value Mystery Solved: Evening Light

 My Colour Value Mystery Quilt-Along (QAL) wrapped up last Thursday.  Over 1200 quilters signed up to receive the clues.  I don't know how many sewed every week, but I was excited and inspired to see all the different versions taking shape as some chose to share their progress in the Quilting with Canuck Quilter Facebook group. 

The theme of this QAL was how different fabric choices and value placements can affect the design of a quilt.  I made two versions using the same fabric and the same pattern but using the fabrics for different elements in each quilt.  Here's how that worked out.

Evening Light by Canuck Quilter Designs
Traditional version on the left, modern version on the right.

I find it fascinating how my eye is drawn to different parts of the design in each version.  In the version on the left, I see rows of chunky starburst.  In the version on the right, my eye places equal, if not stronger, emphasis on the groupings of four 3D pillars where the blocks meets and the white star seems more delicate.

This design is Evening Light, originally released in 2021.  I have updated the pattern with guidance on choosing fabrics to make the traditional (on the left above) or modern (on the right above).  

I tried to include dual illustrations, showing the appropriate colour values for each version, but that made the pattern cluttered and confusing, so I settled for illustrations showing the values for the modern version.  If you're making the traditional version, use the color/fabric key to help make sure you're using the correct fabric at each step.  You can read more about colour keys here.  If you need help figuring out relative colour values, your might like to view your fabric selections in grayscale.

Have you experimented with swapping color values or otherwise moving them around in a design?  How did it turn out?

Happy quilting,

Joanne

Pattern available as a download in my Etsy shop

Field of Leaves

I love quilts with leaf blocks.  Scattered Leaves, the first quilt pattern I ever wrote featured leaf blocks, and I've written a few more over the years.   When Island Batik sent me an advance peek of their Earth Essence collection,  I couldn't help myslef.  I designed another leaf quilt.  

Field of Leaves by Canuck Quilter Designs.
Fabrics from Earth Essence by Island Batik, a division of Lumin Fabrics
Photo by Jerry Khiev of Lumin Fabrics

I'm really pleased with the leaf block in this one.  In many of my previous leaf quilts there was a tiny bit of paper-piecing in the center leaf tip.  This one is FPP-free.  Stitch-and-flip corners make all the angles super simple.

Closeup of leaf block in Field of Leaves
Fabrics from Earth Essence from Island Batik, a division of Lumin Fabrics

I had to fiddle a little bit with a frame around the leaf to get the leaf centered in the setting I chose, but I think it was worth it.

The alternate blocks could not be simpler.  They are squares cut from strip sets.  Easy peasy.

Field of Leaves by Canuck Quilter Designs
Fabrics from Earth Essence from Island Batik, a division of Lumin Fabrics

Another favourite feature?  This quilt requires no sashing and no borders!  I'm not a fan of measuring and sewing sashing and borders.  I do it because sashing and borders can be really useful and important design elements, but it's always fun to come up with something that doesn't need either.

Obviously, the golds and earth tones of this version strongly suggest fall, but go ahead and imagine something different.  Take a look at what Anja of Anja Quilts made with this pattern.  

Field Of Leaves quilt top made by Anja of Anja Quilts

Anja reports that different Kona cotton reds are very close in value. I can see some variation here if I look closely.  I'll keep that in mind when I select reds for my own red and white version, but honestly I think it looks stunning even with very little value difference.  It could be a two fabric quilt.

A scrappy version would probably look fabulous too.  I'm on a scrappy bender right now, trying to use some up to make room for more.  I wonder if I have enough red scraps?  Maybe I should dig into my fall rusts and oranges.  I wonder if I could bring myself to just throw all the colors together?  Probably not.  I know myself!  I need control of the scrappy!

I'm off to dig in my scraps.  I'll report more on that later.

Happy quilting,

Joanne

Field of Leaves is available as a pattern download
 in my Etsy shop, or you can ask your
 favorite quilt shop for a print version.

Shifting Crystals

 I'm excited to share Shifting Crystals with you! 

Shifting Crystals by Canuck Quilter Designs
Made with fabric from the Fossil Finesse collection from Island Batik, a division of Lumin Fabrics

It needs another photo shoot.  My supportive husband trekked out with me on a very cold January day so we could take pretty pictures before I shipped the quilt to Island Batik for their April catalog.  By the time we photographed this quilt my fingers were freezing.  I landed flat on my back when I slipped on the ice.  I was ready to be done and rushed through. I think I might manage better pictures now that the quilt is back home and the weather has warmed up.  

The chevrons in this design are strip-pieced, so they are quick and easy to make.  If you've made Leading Edge or Echo Point you know how these work.  The key to making these is the diamond-shaped segments cut from the strip sets.  The pattern illustrates and explains how to measure the diamond segments, but you might also find this tutorial helpful.  Just remember you should NOT be measuring along the top edge of the strip.  Trust me.  Just check out the tutorial and the instructions and email me if you still need help!

What about the stars?  These all all made with stitch-and-flip tecniques, without cutting and sewing individual triangles.  If you find it challenging to trim QST so the seams stay on the diagonal to get the crisp star points in these stars, scroll down to the last part of my QST tutorial to see how I do it. 

I spent some time mulling over pressing directions for these stars.  Press to one side?  Press open? There are some intersections with the potential for a lot of bulk.  In the end, I figured out it was possible to plan the pressing to spin the seams allowances in all those potentially bulky spots, including in the blocks and between blocks.  The pattern walks you through all of it, showing what direction to press and spin so that everything flows together, rather like the seams in the 9-patch in this tutorial.

What colours would you choose to make this quilt?  I'm considering rusts and earth tones for a version with extra columns to fit a queen sized bed.  The pattern is single size, but it would be easy to expand by adding columns and making the top and bottom colour blocks taller.  So many possibilities...

Happy quilting,

Joanne