Baby Steps (AKA Star Steps) in Bloggers’ Quilt Festival

My second entry in the Blogger’s Quilt Festival is Baby Steps, which I am entering in the small quilts category.  It measures 50 1/2” x 64”.



Until I made Quilter’s Scrapbook (my other BQF entry) I always bought fabric for specific projects and didn’t feel I had enough left of anything that went together to make anything else. I certainly didn’t consider the leftovers a stash. With the success of Quilter’s Scrapbook I was inspired to use up my strings for Sparkling Strings.  That went well, so I was encouraged to head to the bins of leftovers instead of the quilt shop when I needed to make a baby quilt last spring.  Surprise!  I had enough brights and novelty prints to pull this quilt together AND  there was  fabric left over.  I guess I do have a stash after all!  It’s just in mostly smaller pieces.



This quilt just went together effortlessly. Besides the fabric jumping out of my bins and saving me a trip to the shop, the quilting cooperated beautifully.  As I wrote in April, a cardboard circle saved from some packaging was exactly the right size to fit evenly along both the width and length of the border and wrap around the corners with absolutely no fudging required!  How often does that happen?  I used my walking foot to quilt straight lines in the steps and to quilt the half-circles in the borders.  The swirls in the star are free-motion quilted.



I made this as a baby quilt (generously sized for tummy time and big enough for when the baby grows into a toddler) and I love how it turned out. My blogging friend Sandra recently tested the pattern I wrote for this quilt, using “all grown up” fabrics.  You can see her version here.  It got me thinking about alternate colorways and I decided to rename the pattern Star Steps, since it obviously works as a more grown-up quilt too.

Since it was so quick and easy to piece, I’m tempted to make it again in a totally different style.  I’m plotting…if I can get the list of other things to do down to a manageable size, can I try one of these versions? Which one would tempt you, or would you choose another colorway entirely?

Quilter’s Scrapbook in Blogger’s Quit Festival

It’s Blogger’s Quit Festival time again.  This time around I’ve decided to enter Quilter’s Scrapbook in the Scrappy category.  If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you’ve seen this one before.  I love it because it has a scrap of just about every project I made in my first 13 years of quilting.  I have to think a bit harder for some fabrics than others, but I can still identify which project most scraps came from.



When I started cutting down my scraps into strips, squares and rectangles a few years back, I cut 1 1/2” squares from the smallest scraps.  Once I had a pile of them, I felt ridiculous.  Seriously, when was I going to use those small bits?  I’m not a very scrappy quilter.  I work well with matchy-matchy, organised designs. and all those varied bits were all so…NOT matchy matchy!  Plus they were so small!

I held on to the box of little squares a little longer.  Just as I was about to throw them away, I saw a picture of a quilt made of 144-patch blocks.  All those little disparate bits in each block looked fantastic together and I started thinking that perhaps I could use my tiny squares after all.

In the end I made 100-patch blocks, making a conscious effort to not try to match fabrics as I sewed squares together. After the blocks were made I dressed things up a little with pieced sashing and a pieced border.  I waited until the blocks were done before choosing the sashing and border fabrics.  Once the blocks were made I had a better idea what colours would set them off well.



I quilted it very simply using my walking foot to quilt straight lines. What you see in the block above was Take 3.  I forget what else I tried, but I do remember picking out whatever my first two ideas for quilting the blocks were!  I knew exactly how I wanted to quilt the border, but it was tedious and I didn’t get a good rhythm going until I was onto the last side.  I think it was worth it though.

This is possibly my favourite quilt so far (well, at least until I put it away and pull out another favourite for a little while!)  It measures 59” x 73”, just perfect for curling up under on the couch.  It’s not quite big enough to drape over my queen bed, but it has been used on top of bigger quilts for an extra layer on colder nights.

I released the pattern for this quilt last January.  I have since updated the pattern to include instructions for strip piecing the blocks as well as those for piecing individual squares.  It is one of my most popular patterns, available here in my Etsy shop.



Hop on over to the festival to see all the other lovely quilts. You can nominate your favorite entry for Viewer’s Choice until October 31, then go back and vote for Viewer’s Choice and your favorite quilt in each category between November 1 and November 7.  Enjoy browsing the eye candy!

Snowalong Week 5!

Let’s have a few cheers for Judy and Sandra who both linked up last week!  I hope you popped over to see their eye candy.  Over in the Facebook group Deanna posted pictures of her 4 lovely snowflakes, and Cindy showed us her first one – her first ever paper pieced block too!  Whoot whoot!



You’ll find extra options for week 5 of the Snowalong.  Adding just one line to the Snowflake 5 templates created new designs and I couldn’t resist.  Snowflake 6 is just Snowflake 5 plus one extra seam line, so I went ahead and lumped the two together this week.  You could use Snowflake 6 templates to make Snowflake 5, but I included both sets anyway.

I included 4 variations for snowflake 5:



There are at least 3 variations for Snowflake 6:



Download the patterns here.  This pattern will be free for two weeks.

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Update June 23, 2019: Patterns 5 and 6 are now available for purchase as part of Snowflakes Sampler Set 3 or Snowflakes Blocks Complete Set, both in my Etsy shop.

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We’re almost done!  There will be one more snowflake pattern next week. How many have you tried?  Any pictures to share?  Link up to your blog post or post pictures in the Facebook group.