Have you ever made a quilt that you enjoyed making so much that It's almost criminal? This quilt is that, for me. Custom-made for a friend, I designed this quilt based on interviewing the recipient's husband and best friend-slash-sister-in-law. I thought I knew Karen before I made this quilt for her, but after spending three months making it, I sure do know her well. This quilt has everything plus the kitchen sink in it. Some blocks are pieced, some are paper-pieced, some are just fabric. One block is from a cloth bag of paprika from Hungary. Some blocks are fussy-cut from Spoonflower fabrics I ordered.  There's a story behind every block and I won't go into every last detail, but I represented her husband (Groundhog Day), her sister-in-law-slash-best friend (a mountain lion), her hobbies (gardening gloves, a shovel and a No Trespassing sign, and dominos), her favorite places (Disney and Hawaii), her daughters (two hearts), her sisters (a five-part heart), her fur ba...

  Hollow Diamonds is one of those quilt patterns that is just meant for  Tula Pink 's striking fabrics.   Free Spirit , the company that creates these beautiful fabrics, offers free quilt atterns with their designers in mind.   And that's where I found Hollow Diamonds, the perfect design for Tula's black and white fabric line  Linework , as well as slim pops of her bright colors. Who was it that said, "It takes a lot of work and planning to make a quilt look random." Maybe me. This time, I tried to let it just happen and I'm pretty happy with the results.  Lil' Stinker is a favorite Tula Pink critter.  This was my first bias striped binding and I absolutely fell in love with it. I see more Tent Stripe fabric in my stash's future. I love this backing fabric so much. It's Tula's Sketchyer , which represents her drawings, notes and plans for the whole line of Linework fabrics. The 108" wide backing fabric is done on a larger scale than the s...

  I had such fun making this quilt as a wedding gift for a very, very special couple. The bright colors of Tula Pink 's fabric lines seemed perfect for this bride and groom, so I had a chance to use up some of the Tula fabric I had been collecting. This L-O-V-E pattern is easy to put together. I saw a picture of this done in African print fabrics and fell in love with it. So I drew out a grid, sized it the way I wanted it, and started cutting out simple squares. With enough of a variety of fabrics, a quilt like this one doesn't require a lot of planning.  I love to see this quilt outdoors - the bright colors can really jazz up nature! One of my favorite Tula fabrics is Mineral and I used it in several colors in the quilt top and used the black and white version as backing. When folded up, this quilt looks like geometric designs, but you and I know there's a message hidden in there! I went with a scrappy binding, which has become my favorite way to bind a quilt. (Thanks to m...

  There's something about a log cabin quilt . . .  I subscribe to emails from Donna Jordan of Jordan Fabrics . Her free video tutorials, where she whips up (or "stitches up" as she says) a quilt so fast, are real confidence builders. More than once I have made a quilt without buying or using a pattern. I just follow along with Donna's video. When I saw her tutorial for this Curvy Jelly Roll Log Cabin quilt, I said, Aha! This was my chance to use a jelly roll I had bought a year earlier. Quotation , a line of modern fabrics by Brigitte Heitland , comes in these snappy, bright colors, and I'd been dying to use them for something worthy. According to the Textile Research Centre , a research foundation in The Netherlands, log cabin quilts were made in England and Ireland in the second half of the 19th century, but the pattern has been associated with North American quilts, especially during the American Civil War.  Quilters have been playing around with light and dark...