Jump on In designed by Julia Davis of Red Rainboots Handmade, top completed

I love how the quilt looks with different orientations

Jump on In (designed by Julia Davis)
top completed 2024
96 by 80 inches

Last winter Julia Davis of Red Rainboots Handmade (her main business is making wooden barn quilts--those tulips are calling me) had a fabric swap and quilt-along called Jump on In. I did not participate in the swap, but purchased her pattern and watched the progress of the project on instagram.

The pattern is available HERE.
Read about the swap HERE. It was a fun process to follow on her Instagram. She was very organized!
And HERE is a link to the hashtagged quilts made by the participants.

I  kept the idea on the back burner, cutting triangles while cutting reds for other projects and sewing stacks of the units behind the scenes.

Two things I changed to fit my sewing preferences:
I dislike trimming down units, so I cut my triangles from strips to finished size using the Easy Angle or Bonnie Hunter's Essential Triangle tool.
Are my triangles a bit less accurate than if I over-cut/pieced/trimmed?
Yes.
And I am ok with that.

I also dislike sewing lots and lots of long rows together onto a mothership, so I sewed the units into 16-patch style blocks. Once the 16-patches were made I laid out, I sewed into rows, pressing each row east or west, alternating.
All seams nest.

Sew into strips of 4. Press half of these strips up and half down.
Make half-block of 8 units.
Do not press these units yet

Sew two half-blocks together into a block
Do not press these units yet

My reds range from tomato/madder to berry/maroon. The white is Kona Snow.

Thanks, Julia, for the delightful design!

Backing by Timeless Treasures

purple alphabet in progress using Alyce Blyth from Blossom Heart's pattern

Another alphabet!
I don't make a purple quilt very often. I use purple in my quilts, but decided to make it the focus of this alphabet.

Alyce Blyth has a free quilt-along on her blog Blossom Heart Quilts from 2013, Easy as ABC.
https://www.blossomheartquilts.com/easy-as-abc-qal/

It has delightful chunky modern looking letters for which I used eggplant-range purple batiks on a subtle horizontal washed greyed lavender ground.
I pretty much stuck to her letters with a few alterations and construction changes.
I did re-scale letters from a 2 inch (2 1/2 inch cut) grid to a 1 1/2 inches (2 inch cut) grid.
I kept the frames cut at her 1 1/2 inches.

With this variation, my letters finish 4 1/2 by 6 inches, finish 7 1/2 by 9 with the background, and my final framed blocks finish 9 1/2 by 11 inches.
The background frames are cut 2 by 6 1/2 inches for sides and 2 by 8" for the top and bottom.
The purple frames are cut 1 1/2 by 9 1/2 inches for the sides and 1 1/2 by 10 for the top and bottom.


This little chart helped me stay on track

1 square        1 1/2" finished         2" cut
2 squares       3" finished              3 1/2" cut
3 squares       4 1/2" finished        5" cut
4 squares       6" finished              6 1/2" cut

Examples--something 1 by 3 squares was cut 2 by 5"; 2 by 2 was cut 3 1/2 square

I am struggling a bit with the X and may have to resort to paper piecing--a technique I greatly dislike. There is a right brain/left brain thing with it that makes me unhappy to work with it.

BUT, what a great pattern! I am mulling ideas for how to put together and border it.

Fading charms from Wedding Dress Blue, quilt completed

Fading Charms
88 inches square

This lovely pattern is from Deanna's Wedding Dress Blue quilt blog. Her tutorial is here:
https://weddingdressblue.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/tutorial-fading-charms-quilt/

You can read about how I made it, with my variations here:
https://kleinmeisjequilts.blogspot.com/2021/03/fading-charms-from-wedding-dress-blue.html

I like how the fading is not just from Deanna's pattern of spacing the squares. It also is from my using grey/taupe leaning patches scattered in the patchwork that melt a bit into the solid.
It is a difficult quilt to photograph from a distance. Below in close-ups you can see more of the contrast.

Many of the 2 1/2 inch cut squares are from my quilting small group. We shared squares in a Covid round robin by mail during the year we could not meet because of the quarantine. We have been meeting outdoors for the past few months and plan to go back to zoom when the weather no longer permits that.
Beautifully quilted by Sue Divarco. I used a wool batt.

Note a Dr Fauci square near the top

calico rose, quilt completed

Calico Rose
Finishes 96 inches square

Made from a design by Deanna at Wedding Dress Blue.
https://weddingdressblue.wordpress.com/calico-rose-quiltalong/
I changed the star point construction to geese and changed the border to be all 16-patches.

Quilted by Sue DiVarco, using a Tuscany wool batt.

It used many, many 2 inch squares from my bins.
The blue solid is Prairie Sky 855 by Kona.
Thank you Deanna for delightful design.
It is for my sister Beth.

calico rose, top completed

Calico rose
96 inches square
From a sew-a-long on Deanna's delightful blog Wedding Dress Blue:
https://weddingdressblue.wordpress.com/calico-rose-quiltalong/

Changes I made:
I used flying geese for the star points instead of half-square triangles
I used 16-patches for the border

Look carefully for the orientation of the blocks for the border.
I sewed together the border blocks with the block seams perpendicular to the edge of the quilt. I sewed the border pieces to the center flipping the border seams to nest with the center seams. I then stay-stitched the edges before pressing to these nested orientations.

This is the second quilt I've made from Deanna's pattern. The first, made in 2015, belongs to my sister Janna. My sister Beth asked me if I could some day make her one like it. That day is today.

Over the past few years if I was using a 3 1/2 in strip I would cut a few triangles for this quilt. I keep my 2 inch scrap squares at the ready in shoeboxes and there are fabrics here from decades of work--some of my mom's scraps are included too.
The square prints parts of the blocks were done last year during a busy semester and were welcomed mindless sewing.
Last week I pulled out my Studio Cutter and cut the 3 1/2 inch and 2 inch solid strips to make the remaining parts.While this feels it went together quickly, it really has had years of prep work behind it.

I have an appointment for a drive-by drop-off with my longarm quilter this week. We decided a wool batt would be best to keep the quilt from being overwhelmingly heavy.

Thank you Deanna, for sharing this great design.

My obsessive pressing made sure every seam in the quilt top nested.

star block pressing

alternate block pressing

16-patch border orientation and pressing

patience corner sampler, quilt completed

Patience Corner Sampler, 2020

Tememcula Quilts had a sew-a-long in 2018:
https://temeculaquiltco.blogspot.com/search/label/1880%20Sampler%20Sew%20Along
Her delightful quilt lead to this one. I followed along for a few blocks then started making whatever came to mind. The little blocks finish at 4 inches.

I explain my patience corner set here:
https://kleinmeisjequilts.blogspot.com/2018/10/patience-corner-set.html
I plan to hang it in my sewing nook once I can convince anyone to climb a ladder.

Almost Amish sew-a-long, top completed

Lori DeJarnatt had another of her periodic sew-a-longs. I love these as they are just bits of sewing that I can fit in during my busy times.
This finishes 22 inches.
Thanks, Lori!
https://humblequilts.blogspot.com/search/label/Almost%20Amish%20Quiltalong

patience corner sampler, top completed

Patience Corner Sampler

130 4-inch finished blocks
Set into 130 6-inch finished quarter blocks with an added 2 1/2 by 4 1/2 rectangle and a 2 1/2 by 6 1/2 rectangle.
Set into 30 12-inch finished Patience Corner Blocks and 5 half blocks (I added a row of half-blocks to my final set).
Layout was 5 blocks by 6 and a half blocks.
Final borders cut 3 1/2 inches.
Top finishes about  66 by 84 inches.
The set is my design, use at your pleasure.

In early 2018 Temecula Quilt Co. had a sew-a-long with little 4-inch finished blocks.
https://temeculaquiltco.blogspot.com/2018/01/quirky-quilt-sew-along.html
It was a pleasant project to work on as I set up my sewing space in our new place.
About 20% of my blocks are from her designs, the rest are my own based on traditional patterns. I used Tonya Riccuci's method from her Word Play book for the letters of my name in the bottom right corner.

 I put them together using a Patience Corner set that I describe here.
https://kleinmeisjequilts.blogspot.com/2018/10/patience-corner-set.html

lower right quadrant

lower left quadrant

upper right quadrant

upper left quadrant

patience corner set

I really enjoyed this year's 4 inch block sew-a-long by Temecula Quilt Company.
I loosely followed her patterns, adding more of my own. A few are scaled down from the current Moda Blockheads sew-a-long. I have several blocks yet to make to get the quilt to the size I want.

I am using a Patience Corner set. Four little blocks come together to make one 12 inch finished block.
The setting pieces are cut 2 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches and 2 1/2 by 6 1/2 inches.

shirting from Italy

I purchased that lovely Italian shirting in Bologna and it is making its way into my 4-inch blocks for the Temecula sew-a-long

piecing my name

To add to the Temecula inspired sew-a-long 4 inch blocks I decided to make my name in free-pieced letters Tonya Ricucci style from her Word Play Quilts that has been in my regular inspiration reading rotation since it was published in 2010.

I took a day this week to take in the John Singer Sargent exhibit that will close the end of the month at The Art Institute. It is amazing how he paints fabrics.

Dropped into the closing Georg Jensen silver exhibit and a quick look at favorites American Gothic and Nighthawks. I love watching people look at the them.

delightful book

One of my favorite blogs/Instagrams/ is Sheryl Johnson's Temecula Quilt Company.
http://temeculaquiltco.blogspot.com/
She recently published a book, Quirky Little Quilts, with Martingale.

I've been loosely following along on her blog's current 4 inch finished block Friday sew-a-long and look forward to using my limited school year sewing time to make more blocks.
Her book is a delight in how she puts together fabrics.
A happy book!

olympic sew-a-long with Temecula Quilt Co., quilt completed

Temecula Quilt Co. had a sew-a-long during the 2016 Olympics.
I made two of them, one with all solids and this one in the suggested color way, with Civil War type fabrics.
I love how it turned out.
Thanks Temecula Quilt Co.!

48 by 56 inches