Category Archives: Quilt designs

On the angle {a finish}

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Just before Christmas, I made a couple of mini quilts as gifts. I have not shared those makes with you yet. One of those quilts was a striking black and white minimal quilt.

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Idea

This quilt was inspired based on a drain cover discovered on our family walk around the neighborhood. I loved the diagonal pattern of lines.

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Design

During the design phase I used those 45 degree lines in the top part of the design. In the drain you have this bar 1/2 way across the lines, giving it a broken line feel. For me, that translated into this break a a random angle with the lines then being distorted back the opposite angle. fullsizeoutput_13c6

Create

The creation was relatively simple, using PBS White solid and black fabric at 1″ unfinished, I stitched 16 pieces together. Making sure the angles were at a 45 degrees I then cut an angle that closely matched the design above. The remaining fabric, I removed the excess lines and added a much larger white section to the stripes for the lower negative space.  I lined up and pined where the lines best connected. Once pinned, I cut the fabric at the appropriate angle and stitched the two pieces together. It was both liberating and a little scary as I did not measure or carefully planned these connections. Luckily, it turned out as expected.

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Quilting

As this was a small piece, I kept the quilting design simple. I stitched about 1/8″ from exhaustion of the stitched lines (both sides of the line). I did not bind the quilt to finish, as the final piece was framed and ready to be hung.

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I swapped this gift for 6 ginger pear galettes from a local baker, Meg. The family loved them. So amazing (including the extra banana pecan bundt cake that was added)!!

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Details

Name : On the Angle
Design: Original Design
Fabric: Black & White Painters Palette Solids, Paintbrush studios
Dimensions: 12 x 14 in.
Quilted: Straight line quilting using Aurifil #2021

Book Project: Rotating Spokes {a finish}

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I have not given up on my book “Idea. Design. Create. Quilt.” It is just taking more time than expected. I did finish another one of my book projects last year. This table runner, I am calling “Rotating Spokes”.  I love how it looks on our outside table in these pictures.

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This was inspired by an Art Deco style wrought iron balcony rail, I saw in New Orleans. I immediately a design formed, and it is repeated but rotated for each of the circle designs. The fabric choices were also an easy decision. I used:

  • Black Essex Linen (Background Fabric)
  • Recycled Clothes (T-shirts, wool trousers and Corduroy)
  • AGF Denim
  • Kona Cotton (Silver & White)
  • Various yellow prints
  • Various grey prints

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It took me a little while to decide on the quilting. In the end I decided to quilt the circles with 1/2″ straight line quilting. Where the triangles meet at a 90 degree angle, I have lines following the angle and making a crosshatch. The background is quilted in 1″ horizontal lines.IMG_7896

I realized fairly quickly that I did not want the family to spill food on it. So, I moved away from using it as a table runner and it’s found a home above our bed. It is a perfect width across our King size bed.

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This was one of my favorite finishes of the year.

Details

Name : Rotating Spokes
Design: Original Design
Fabric: Variety of Prints, Neutral solids, Recycled Clothes and Essex Linen
Binding and Backing: Carolyn Friedlander, Carkai Print
Dimensions: 15.5 x 80 in.
Quilted: Straight line quilting using Aurifil #2021

Mt. SohCahToa {a finish}

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When designing a new quilt design, I am usually inspired by things around me and what I have seen. This time was no different. This past year (April 2018), we had the most amazing road trip in Utah and a smidge in Arizona. We visited 7 national parks and a couple of other parks in 7 days (Arches, Canyonlands, Natural Bridges, Monument Valley, Glen Canyon Dam, Horse Shoe Bend, Antelope Canyon, Zion and Bryce Canyon @ml.wilkie_adventures).

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More images of our trip you can check out my other Instagram account (@ml.wilkie_adventures)

It was such an inspiring trip. One of the images that made me think of a quilt design was one of the La Sal Mountain range seen from Arches National Park. The continuous looking peaks lead me to a design using lines of angled triangles. The color’s represent the snow-capped peaks and rock base. These colors are also inspired by the color of the mountains from a distance.

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I submitted the design to the MQG for a Quilt of the Month and it was released in December (lucky last of the year).  Knowing that I had to make a pattern from this, meant I actually needed to consider repeatability and provide measurements that when making  I wouldn’t normally worry about.

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After some trail and error, I paper pieced the triangles as accuracy of those triangles were important to the overall design. In a hilarious conversation with friends on working out the length of those rows, I broke out my math skills. As these are isosceles triangles, I divided a single triangle down the middle and worked out 1/2 Base using the right-angled triangles using some geometry (Soh-Cah-Toa). This gave me enough to calculate the length of those rows for you all but more importantly a few laughs with friends. When it came to naming the quilt, this conversation lead to the name.

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For quilting, I used a light blue grey Aurifil thread for some 1/2″ straight line quilting. I used the horizontal lines of the triangles as a guide. As a surprise, adding more interest, some echoed triangles were stitched randomly into the quilting lines. You’ll find these not only within the triangles but also echoed in some of the negative space.

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Lastly, I wanted to highlight that last horizontal lines (the base of the snow line). I did this using two different colors in the binding and color blocked it to match the fabric color palette in the design.

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Details

Name : Mt. Soh-Cah-Toa
Design: Design by myself
Fabric: Paintbrush Studio’s Painters Palette Solids.
Binding: Paintbrush Studio’s Painters Palette Solids
Dimensions:  60″ x 60″
Quilted: Straight Line 1/2″ with inset echoed triangles

If you are an MQG member, you can get this free pattern from the resources web page here.