City Line quilt

My designs often develop in clusters, where I start with one idea that develops in multiple different directions.  City Line is part of one of those clusters, coming along for the ride with the Love Large strip-friendly heart quilt.

City Line by Canuck Quilter Designs
This version made with Northcott Stonehenge Gradations fabrics

In both designs I was experimenting with ways of using panels made of precut strips (spoiler in case you stop reading too soon:  City Line ended up not using precut strips!).

Here's the first draft of what became City Line.

First Draft of City Line

As you can see, it wasn't quite there yet. I played with the center band little more, testing out different spacings, more sashing, less sashing, no sashing.  Eventually I landed on the checkerboard look I chose for the final version.

About this time digital fabric swatches for Northcott's Bordeaux line arrived in my inbox and I recolored with those because they were just so pretty.

Here's where I shifted away from precuts.  First, I don't think this collection will have precuts (it will ship to stores this fall). Second, this would only use 26 of the 40 to 42 strips in a strip pack.  that's not ideal.  Finally, when I used these red and white prints, I had to carefully choose placement to keep the red-on-white prints separate from each other because they blended together otherwise and the design was lost.  Keeping the darker fabric on the left of each column and the lighter on the right created a slight dimensional effect that I rather liked.  So, what happens if the fabrics in a strip set don't have as much value variation?  It might be harder to create that effect.

Maybe yardage, where you have more control over the fabric choices, would be a better bet.  Also, as much as I love these red and white florals, I wondered if more subtle prints or tone-on-tones would do a better job emphasizing the dimensional element.  I reached for Nortcott Stonehenge Gradations for subtle texture.  (All that said, if you don't mind having leftover strips, and your strip pack includes a good range of values, you can choose to use precuts if that's your preference.)

Second to last draft of City Line design

Almost there! The last little tweak came whan I worked out yardage requiremenmts.  I thought eight fabrics was a good number, with enough variety but not too many choices to make.  Starting with that number, and the number of strips needed in each fabric, I found two fabrics would need more yardage than the rest.  Wouldn't it be easier to use the same amount of each?  That way I wouldn't have to decide which two fabrics would have more before I was able to shuffle the fabric on my design wall.  Removing one pair of strips made the math math beautifully.

A nice side effect?  I like the aspect ratio of the final design more than the original.  Yay!

Here's a quick look at the making of the quilt.

Auditioning fabric order

Piecing the panel

Sliced and reconstructed to finish the top

I was thrilled with how quickly this all came together. I think talking myself into basting the quilt so I could quilt it took longer than the piecing.

Basting the quilt

I kept the quilting very simple, stitching in the ditch in the columns and checkerboard, then emphasizing all the vertical elements with evenly spaced vertical lines  in the background.

Quilting the quilt

Rosie seems a little unsure of the quilting choice but I like it. With the simple quilting and Hobbs 80/20 batting, the quilt is super soft, drapey and cuddly.

Quilt inspector at work

I'm planning a quilt-along for this pattern.  It will be a very slow, easy pace, and hopefully a chance to get to know and encourage other quilters online.    No prizes, no hoops to jump through.  Just quilty fun.  When I asked for preferences in my Facebook group, there seemed to be a strong preference for September dates so that's what I'm looking at right now.  Check back for more details, or sign up to receive my newsletter to get the announcement in your inbox.  

I'm considering these fabrics from assorted White Owl Textiles Fundamentals collections for my quilt-along quilt.

City Line by Canuck Quilter Designs
mocked up in assorted blue White Owl Textiles Fundamentals.

Now I'm off to work on a new idea that cropped up while I was scouring my EQ files to share the City Line design process with you.  There was another discarded idea in there that is now tickling my creativity with scrap quilt possibilities...

What is your creativity up to today?

Happy quilting,

Joanne

Find the PDF download version of the pattern in my Etsy shop

 or ask for a print version at your favourite quilt shop.

Love and Cuddles

I haven't made a baby quilt in ages, but when I pieced a backing for Love Large,  my brain latched onto that backing design as the perfect start to a baby quilt.  I'm thrilled with how Love and Cuddles turned out.

Love and Cuddles baby quilt

Here's the inspiration quilt backing for reference.

Backing of Love Large was the inspiration for Love and Cuddles.

Step one towards turning this into a baby sized quilt was to scale down the size of the hearts.  I knew I'd need skinnier strips for a smaller heart but I still planned plain vertical strips.  The visual interest would come from the different fabrics.

When I started thinking about fabric amounts for a pattern I realized that at a smaller scale, a single strip of any one fabric wouldn't use a significant portion of even the smallest cut you can usually buy.  Some shops will cut as small as 1/8 yard, but many will round to 1/4 yards.  Either way, there would be a lot of leftover.

With that in mind, I looked for ways to make the heart visually interesting with only two colors.  Here's my little test block.  I was happy to be able to spin the seams in that middle section to minimize the bulk.  Pressing instructions in the pattern reflect that, or you can press to one side as you prefer.

Test block for Love and Cuddles

It was quick and easy.  I built the base, sliced it and rebuilt it. No individual squares to cut and sew together.  This definitely had potential.   They seemed  a little too small to take the stage all alone against the background panels, so I framed them for a more emphasis.

When I was ready to make the sample quilt, I knew I didn't want to use traditional pink or blue.  I thought some of the currently trendy less traditional neutral tones could look cute, but would look drab out of context on a patter cover.  With that in mind I headed to the quilt shop and browsed for an hour until prints from a 2023 collection from Riley Blake caught my eye.  With those in hand I picked out coordinating tone-on-tones to round out my fabric selection.

The stars and clouds prints and the plaid are from a collection called "It's a Boy", but I think the theme and the green and yellow prints are gender neutral.

It took me about 5 hours to make the top, from pressing the fabric to sewing the last stitch.  That included time to rip stitches and resew when I sewed a whole side panel on upside down. Oops! 

I moved on to the quilting before I took a photo of the top.  I kept the quilting vey simple to match the simple piecing.  The walking foot, as is often the case, was my tool of choice.  

First I stitched in the ditch along every seam in the heart and in the yellow frame, then filled in with a little bit of outline quilting.  Usually, I outline quilt 1/4" from the seams, but this time I chose to use 1/2" spacing.  This echoes the 1/2" between the sides of the hearts and the yellow frame.  I repeated the 1/2" spacing in the beadboard quilting in the background panels, just a small way to tie the quilting in the hearts with the quilting in the rest of the quilt.

Five generous quilters offfered to test the pattern for me.  I greatly appreciate their help.  Despite my careful proofreading and tech editing, there were still a couple of mistakes to catch, so I owe a huge thanks to Pat Minnick, Vicki O., Tammy Howell, Elizabeth, and Susan Brown.

City Line, the other quilt I designed while working on Love large, is up next.  There will be a quilt-along for that one!  I'm still working out the details, including the dates, but I'm committed to it :)

Time to go make dinner again.  I'm not inspired tonight.  I wrote a menu for the week, but none of what seemed appealing before I did the groceries is whetting my appetite today.  What do you do when that happens?

I'll figure something out.  In the meantime, happy quilting and I'll see you next time.

Joanne

Find the PDF version of the Love and Cuddles pattern in my Etsy shop or ask for the print version at your favourite quilt shop.

Love Large matching pillows

Tidying up after making Love Large, I pondered what to do with the bonus triangles cut away while shaping the heart.  Should they head to the scrap bin or the orphan blocks collection?  Maybe they could become a small bonus project?

Bonus pillows to go with the Love Large quilt

I toyed with the idea of a runner or table topper, then decided I really didn't need another runner.  I could use more variety in pillow covers for the throw pillows on my couch though.  I'm tired of looking at the basic brown ones that came with the basic (but comfy) brown couch.

The left and right pillows in the photo above were easy enough to plan.  They used the offcut triangles from the large stitch-and-flip corners of the Love Large heart.  I needed to trim the background one to match the size of the strip triangle, sew the diagonal seam, and trim to the right size for my pillow form.

The center one took a little more thought. I made HST using the offcut strip triangles and background triangles, then experimented with 2 block x 2 block layouts.  These are just the ones I took pictures of.  You could also make a classic pinwheel, or lay them all out with the purple triangle on the lower left.  I've included multiple bonus project layouts at the end of the pattern for inspiration.

4 possible layout for the bonus HST

I decided to add extra stitch and flip corners to the plain halves of the HST using extra purple scraps.  I would have made them larger, but I was limited by the size of the scraps.  Still, it adds a little something to the center of the pillow.

Bonus block from bonus HST

So there we have 3 square pillow tops ready to go, fairly quickly.  The sane thing to do would have been to cut backing panels from a single fabric for the back of the pillows for a quick finish.

I was not sane.  I had more scraps of the purple fabrics just sitting in a pile looking pretty.  This is why it took me longer to finish the pillows than it did to make the quilt.

I couldn't just piece scraps together willy nilly.  I had to overthink things and plan.  Consider every scrap and decide what would be the most effective use of them.  I did math and shuffled scraps again.  Several weeks later I finally stitched the last stich in the pillows.

Backs of the bonus pillows to match Love Large

Despite all that planning, the backs didn't turn out the way I pictured them in my head.  The middle one is simple, no scraps in sight.  The other two lack the symmetry I was aiming for.  The center strip was supposed to run exactly down the middle between the pieced strips.  It's particularly apparent on the pillow on the right that it does not run down the middle.  What happened?

I like to make zippered pillow covers that are easy to swicth out with the seasons or my mood.  That center strip is actually the flap that hides the zipper.  When I planned the two panels that make up the back of the pillow I forgot that the flap would not be centered on the zipper, but sewn into one side of it and extend further past it on the other side.  My planning and math were based on two panels the same size, tied together by the zippper exactly in the center.  That's exactly where the zipper lies, just like I planned, but the flap isn't centered on the zipper so it's off center, not as I planned.

The pillow on the left had a couple of extra snafus.  First, the strips of purple squares were not supposed to have a strip of background between them. I cut the background fabric parts too narrow, 1/2" less than my notes said. I needed to make up the 1/2" so I slipped an extra background strip in there.  Second, I sewed the first panel to the zipper with the wide strip of background by the zipper, opposite of what I planned.  By this point I was ready to be done so I left it and flipped the second panel to match.  Seeing them now I think it would look better the other way around and wish I had taken the time to rip and resew, but it doesn't bug me enough to take the pillow apart and redo it!

I've had a few offers to take the pillows off my hands if I'm not happy with them, but their slight wonkiness has grown on me.  On days when the lack of symmetry bothers me, I'll just make sure the pillows are showing off the front side.

What would you make with the offcuts from the Love Large pattern?  Let me know in the comments.

Happy quilting,

Joanne

PS:  The quilt is NOT a twin size, but it has enough length to be a good bed topper, draping just over the foot of the bed if I pull it way from the headboard and let the pillows fill the space at the head of the bed.  A plain white blanket underneath can be a bedspread while the throw adds the colour.

Love Large heart quilt

In late January inspiration struck for a heart design using 2.5" strips. 

Did I have any strip packs/jelly rolls on hand?  No.  Was the quilt shop open?  No.  Could I wait a couple of days?  Also no.

What's an impatient quilter to do?  Raid the stash, of course!  The trick was to find enough coordinating width-of-fabric (WOF) pieces to cut enough strips that played well together.  I really thought I would have options, but these purple leftovers from Island Batik projects were really the only ones with enough WOF pieces.  

Leftover batiks from Heavy Metal, Secret Garden and Rosy Bloom
collections from Island Batik

It's a good thing these three different collections shared some common ground so I could cobble together a collection of 38 strips. Choosing the 26 to start the panel, then deciding in what order to lay them out took a chunk of time, but I like what I ended up with.

It may seem fussy to cut them all carefully to the same length before sewing them together, rather than just sewing and then trimming the resulting panel.  However, sizing first then matching and pinning ends and center of strips when sewing them together helped ensure the resulting panels were straight and didn't curve.

The rest of the strips ended up in strip sets to make units for the center inserts.  Add some huge and some medium stitch-and-flip corners, a little slicing, inserting strip-pieced bands and voilà!

I tested a different construction method for the bottom point of the heart but it didn't work well and wasted the light gold background I had pulled from my stash.  I didn't have enough of anything else to use for the background so I had to wait for the quilt shop to open after all!

While I was disapppointed not to make the quilt entirely from stash, it was for the best in the end.  This background is perfect, a much better match for the purples than the gold was.

I'm not a big fan of square quilts, unless it's a queen size, so I added wide top and bottom borders to make the quilt rectangular.  I waffled between adding plain background borders and adding decorative accent strips.  When  I decided to skip them I went back to the quilt shop for extra background to make up the difference.  When I got home, I promptly decided  the quilt needed the accents after all, so the extra background augmented the stash.

Rosie approved of the accent strips.  Who am I to disagree with the Quilt Supervisor?

Having bought fabric when I had not planned to, I doubled down on stash for the backing.  I didn't have enough of any one fabric, but I did have some larger pieces left over from previous backings.  I also had scraps of the purples I used in the heart, and a little spare time to play.

Ta dah!

Backing of Love Large using assorted Island Batik fabrics

I thought I would get the quilt finished by Valentine's Day.  I was mistaken.  Life and other priorities intruded and I didn't get the quilt basted and start quilting until March.

You know the walking foot and I are great friends.  We teamed up again for outline quilting in the strips.

It looks so different on the back!

I had planned to quilt diagonal lines in the background, but as I was looking through quilt photos for something else I remembered how I quilted the background of my batik Modern Lace.  

Using my trusty Hera marker, I marked the design on the heart quilt to see how it might look.  I love auditioning quilting lines with the hera marker.  It works by making an indentation, so it mimics a bit of the texture that quilting would give.

I felt confident enough of the design to start quilting.  

I started second-guessing my plan after quilting the lower right corner of the quilt...

...but I really didn't want to pick out what I'd done so I committed to finishing as I started.  In the end, I'm very happy with how it turned out.  This photo isn't pretty, but it does show the quilting.

I used Hobbs 80/20 cotton/polyester blend for the batting.  Combined with the low density quilting, it made this quilt light and soft with a lovely drape.  It's been couch-tested and I love it!

Writing the pattern took me a little longer.  As is often the case, something that would be quick and easy to demonstrate takes a bit more effort to describe in words and illustrations.  Thanks to these quilters who volunteered to test if those words and illustrations were clear enough to follow:

Jackie Morrical

Lessa

Barbara Paventi

Ronda Dye

Dawn

Jilleen Neumann 

Coming up with a name for the quilt and pattern was challenging.  I wanted a name that didn't already have someone else's pattern attached to it.  Guess what?  There are a lot of heart quilts, and their designers had already come up with my clever ideas for names.  In the end, I settled on "Love Large".  It's not the cutest idea I came up with, but it was the only one not already taken and it isn't awful so there you have it.

Love Large by Canuck Quilter Designs
Inspected by Rosie, canine quilt inspector

I 'm so happy with this quilt, and also thrilled that it led to two more designs.  City Line came to mind about the same time as I worked with these strips, and Love and Cuddles was inspired by Love Large's pieced backing. I'll blog about those soon.  If you subcribe to have blog posts delivered directly to your inbox, heads up that you'll be receiving more mail than usual in the next few weeks!

Time to go make supper.  I think two-bean tuna salad on bulgur with cantaloupe for dessert sounds good today.  I also have a hankering to bake, and since I can fob off most of it to my son when he pops in for a visit tomorrow I may go ahead and bake some peanut butter cookies.

What's up in your sewing room and/or kitchen today?

Joanne

Find the PDF download version ofthe pattern in my Etsy shop
or ask for a print version at your favourite quilt shop.

Jump Space

 One more quilt from my December 2025 pattern releases!   Take a look at Jump Space.

Jump Space by Canuck Quilter Designs
Fabric:  Secret Garden from Island Batik for Lumin Fabrics

You know I love floating stars with points that won't be accidentally cut off.  I dressed them up with some strip-pieced sashing to connect the blocks.  I like the mix of traditional "blocks in a row" with a fresh take on sashing.  

Stitch-and-flip construction makes a cute trimming monster...

Obligatory corner trimmings monster

...but more importantly it makes a lot of designs easier to make, avoiding cutting and sewing individual triangles. In this case it helps me float the points to keep them pointy.  That said, I know some quilters find it challenging to get consistent units so I shared my tips for best results here.

I wish I had more process photos to share with you, but looking through my photo roll I realized that little trimming monster photo is the only one I took!  I was on a deadline with this one so I suspect I got into the sewing zone and just forgot to document my progress.

Can I make up for that with extra photos of the finished quilt?  There was a bit of a breeze on photoshoot day, which was a bit challenging.  I lilke the reflection in the water, though the quilt is a little too far away to appreciate the design.

Quilt Husband's hand trying to regain  a grip on Jump Space in the breeze

This little deck at the park is usually occupied so I hadn't used it for quilt photos before, but on this particular day last summer it was empty and was just the right height to let the quilt drop.

Jump Space by Canuck Quilter Designs

I'd love to make this one again in different colors.  Here a a few options I mocked up in EQ8 in fabrics that are currently available in stores. 

I rather like this softer more traditional looking version in Belle Nouveau from Connecting Threads.

Jump Space in Belle Nouveau from Connecting Threads

The Island Batik collection below came out at the same time as the Secret Garden collection in my quilt.

Jump Space in Twilight Realm from Island Batik for Lumin Fabrics

Jump Space in Rosy Bloom from Island Batik for Lumin Fabrics

Jump Space in Salsa from Island Batik for Lumin Fabrics

The last mockup features Cottage Cove that was released in the current Conneting Threads catalog.

Jump Space in Cottage Cove from Connecting Threads

That last one definitely has a US patriotic vibe that I'm sure would appeal to many at my local quilt guild here in Iowa.  My Canadian bones require me to figure out a Canadian counterpart.  Let me pause for a moment to boot up EQ8 again.

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

OK, I'm back :)  I really like what I came up with...  I think I have to write an alternate version swapping leaves for the stars.   There's a little over two months before Canada Day... and if I miss that it would still make a lovely fall quilt in fall colours...and Canada Day comes around every year...

Maple leaf block in the Jump Space setting
Featuring Northcott's "Oh Canada 14" collection

Time to sign off and get to work fleshing out this new possibility!  If you don't want to miss updates, sign up to receive my newletter in your inbox.

Happy quilting,

Joanne

Find Jump Space as a PDF in my Etsy shop or ask for a print version at your favourite quilt shop.

Rib Stitch

I've been very slow getting around to blog about quilts I finished last year.  I finished Rib Stitch in December, just after a lovely, unusually early snowfall.  The snow made for a pretty photoshoot!

Rib Stitch by Canuck Quilter Designs

I designed this in the wee hours of the morning at some point last year during a bout of insomnia. I booted up my EQ8 software and started playing with HST.  Obviously, I ended up with more than just HST, but HST is what I started with and there are still quite a few of them in the quilt.

Making them a tad oversized and trimming down to perfect size is a bit tedious but worth it in the long run for accurate piecing and making everything fit together just right.  That said, after trimming 189 HST, I decided to add triangles papers to the pattern to give you the option of making the HST more quickly with less fuss and trimming.  If you're not familiar with making HST using triangle papers, you can read more about the technique here.

The two at a time method with trimming does give you a cute little trimming monster though!

Many of my patterns use stitch-and-flip techniques to avoid cutting and sewing individual triangles.  I tried to come up with a way to do that for this design, but it would have used almost double the fabric and left me with a lot of "bonus" parts to figure out how to use up in something else. I gave in to the triangles!  Look at all tose cute little triangles, lined up and waiting.

Sewing triangles requires an accurate 1/4" seam.  Also, when you're first joining things together it may seem as though things aren't fitting together properly.  Just trust my math and take a look at the detailed diagrams in the pattern that show you exactly how things should look, even if it seems wrong!

I chose to quilt Rib Stitch on my domestic Sewing machine using my walking foot.  I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to quilt, but I knew it would start with stitching in the ditch, so I started with that.  It might seem daunting to stitch in the ditch around all those triangles, but it really isn't difficult.  The key was to not stitch every side of one triangle at a time, but rather stitch a series of lines in one direction all they way down or across, then stitch all the lines in another direction.  Eventually there's stitching on all sides of each triangle without turning the quilt a bazillion times.  (I discuss examples of this approach in my guild presentation "There's More than One Way to Quilt a Quilt".  Please reach out to me if you think your guild would like me to visit by Zoom!)

After finishing all the ditch stitching, I had a better idea what I might quilt in the large parallelograms.  I used my hera marker to mark and audition my idea.  This tool makes a light indentation in the quilt sandwich, which is a great way to audition what the quilted texture will look like.

At this point I ran out of thread.  Well, out of the color I needed.  Of course this happened over the two days of the week when the local quilt shop is closed.  I didn't want to interrupt my momentum on this project, so I moved on to quilting the borders, as I had matching thread for those.  You can see below that the quilting in the borders is minimal, just straight line 1/4" in from each edge of the border. 

Once that was done, I figured it was safe to bind the quilt.  Generally, it's best to quilt the center first, then the borders, and only trim and bind the quilt after all the quilting is done.  In this case the ditch stitching and the quilting in the borders seemed like enough to be sure the quilt wouldn't wave or shrink from additional quilting.  So, I bound the quilt.

After a quick trip to the quilt shop for thread (did I buy too much, just to be safe? - yes, yes I did) I finished the quilting and headed out into the cold with my ever helpful quilt husband for a photo shoot.  It did not go quite as planned, as the tape I had used to tape rods to the back of the quilt to keep it straight failed.  I had done this with other quilts in the past with no problems.  However, this photoshoot day was well below freezing.  Even tape for "hard to stick surfaces" isn't rated for that cold.  Go figure.

Tape failure 

We regrouped without the rods, though the wind did move the quilt around a lot more without the weight of a rod at the bottom.

The lighting was great to sow off the quilted texture.  Unfortunately, it also really showed off fold creases.  

Here a look away from the creases so you can focus on the quilting.

This quilt, which I chose for the pattern cover, uses 4 fabrics plus a background.  If you use seven fabrics, you could acheive a lovely ombre effect.  Here's the seven-colour version featured in White Owl Textiles' winter catalog on page 90, pictured in their Botanical Sketchbook collection. (Check out Boxed Kisses on page 89 and Surface Curves on page 86 too!  Botanical Sketchbook fabrics will arive in shops in early fall 2026.)

For a much more exhuberakt look, I love rainbow brights on black.  The ones below are Micheal Miller Fabrics' Patina basics.

Which version would you make?  Let me know in the comments.

I'm off to bind a new quilt I'll be sharing later this month.  Can't wait to show you!

Happy quilting,

Joanne

Find the pattern as a PDF download in my Etsy shop
or ask for a print version at your favourite quilt shop.