Raevenfea

Maker of various fabric things

  • Subscribe

To be a bit cliché, this shoemaker is a professional Web Developer and her child is this blog, but it was past time to launch what I have of a new design. All the content is still here, everything else is a work in progress (kind of like most of my sewing projects)!

Posts tagged: Q014BD

Half-baked Blueprint: Rail-fence Baby Quilt

Posted in Quilting

  • Baby quilts
  • Half-baked blueprint
  • Q014BD

It’s been a long time since I followed a quilt pattern. The last twenty quilts I’ve made have been largely or completely my own designs, or my own take on something I’ve seen. The hardest technical part is doing the math and figuring out if I have the right amount of fabric for what I’ve chosen to do, but simply believing that I don’t need a pattern was a huge initial hurdle. Remembering that hurdle, I’m starting this Half-baked Blueprint series. They’re not patterns; think of them as rough outlines of the inspiration, math, fabric, and techniques I use in some of my quilts—there’s a lot you’ll have to fill in yourself. The rail fence “Noble Blooms” quilt from earlier this year is a good place to start. My hope is that it will inspire other quilters to play with quilt top designing rather than always reaching for published patterns.

blueprint

The Blueprint

The quilt:

40.5″ square quilt, made from 25 8″ finishing blocks

rail-fence-blueprint

The blocks:

Starting with 24 2.5″ x width of fabric strips…

Sew six strip sets of four strips each…

Cut four 8.5” blocks from each strip set, totaling 24 blocks.

Then, cut a 4.5” x 8.5” section off two of the strip sets and sew those together to create one more 8.5” block.

Alternative: if your strips have 42.5″ of usable width (after you remove selvages), you can get all 25 blocks from only 20 strips—5 blocks per strip set, and no pieced extra block. Some strips will have this width, others won’t; each manufacturer, fabric line, and even bolt varies on the total width of fabric.

The layout:

Basic: Five rows of five blocks each, alternating the direction of each block.

Intermediate: use values of the strips within blocks to create secondary patterns (sketch it before piecing or use a design wall).

Advanced: solve the n-queens problem with your placement like I did to please my nerdy mind (no block is on the same horizontal, vertical, or diagonal as another of the same block set).

Go Further (optional):
Use embellishment or applique to personalize it
Add borders to make it larger
Add asymmetrical borders to play with negative space

My Decision-making Process

What caused me to make the choices in my own quilt? In this case, form followed supplies and time. I had a Rolie Polie of 23 2.5″ strips, a 54″ square piece of Minky, a stash to draw from for binding, but nothing much that coordinated with the Rolie Polie otherwise. And, I had about a week and a half to make the quilt.

Rail fence blocks can be arranged in any number of ways. Since I had four distinct color and value groups (brown, pink, green, beige) with an equal number of strips in the roll (more or less), I was inspired to make all of my strip-sets with one strip of each from darkest to light. Because I could only cut four blocks from each strip set, I had to add one additional strip from my stash to the Rolie Polie, and piece a block together from two half blocks to make 25. As I mentioned above, the layout of blocks was mostly to appease my problem-solving mind (although I deviated with the planned layout for the half-and-half block and another spot where I flipped a block when sewing rows and didn’t want to rip).

Railfence Blueprint block layout

I wanted to personalize it, since the recipient’s sibling’s quilt had her initials in the quilting, so I chose to applique her first initial and a crown (playing off the meaning of her name) in one corner, using one of the few FQs in my stash that matched the other fabrics. You can download a printable version for your own project (if you want a curly, be-crowned ‘G’).

Railfence Blueprint with Applique

Quilting possibilities are only limited by your imagination. I used a large-scale, all-over flowery free motion motif based on the flowers in the fabric for two reasons: it could be done quickly, and was a good project for me to play with free-motion on. I chose to use a cream-to-brown variegated thread because it was the best match in my stash, but also because it blended the quilting into the varied colors of the fabrics.

Overcoming Obstacles

Because I worked with 2.5″ strips, the math on this was simple. But, that didn’t mean everything went to plan. I didn’t measure the width of the strips, so I couldn’t cut my planned five blocks from each strip set and had to improvise by finding a 24th strip (actually, two 21″ strips from a fat quarter) and piecing a block together from the leftovers of other strips sets. Sure, it meant reevaluating the block layout I’d planned initially (as well as choice of binding, as I’d planned to use the leftover strips and that fat quarter as the binding), but in the end, I am pleased with the final quilt (and, I like the solid binding far more than I think I would have liked the original plan). In the blueprint above, I went with the assumption that you might also run into this issue.

Noble Blooms front
“Noble Blooms”, Rachael Arnold, February 2014, 40″x40″. Photo by Carl Pfranger.

September 28th, 2014

Noble Blooms

Posted in Quilting

  • Doll quilts
  • Fabric Designer: Zoe Pearn
  • Fabric: Indian Summer
  • Finished projects
  • Q014BD
  • Simplicity 2613

One of my earliest stash purchases was a Rolie Polie of Indian Summer that I’ve been holding on to for the perfect project. Its day in the sun (or perhaps clouds, based on recent weather) has finally come in the form of a quilt for a newborn girl.

Noble Blooms front
“Noble Blooms”, Rachael Arnold, February 2014, 40″x40″. Photo by Carl Pfranger.

Because the Rolie Polie only had 23 strips, I had to add in one of a coordinating dot from my stash to finish up the strip sets needed for the 8″ blocks. To personalize the quilt, I did a reverse raw-edge applique of her first initial in one corner. The pale pink solid (exact type unknown) doesn’t stand out as much as I’d hoped in the curly, light typeface I used, but that’s okay. You can also see in that corner that I was one block short of the 25 needed for the quilt, so the very last one is pieced from two strip sets.

Noble Blooms Detail
“Noble Blooms” (detail), Rachael Arnold, February 2014, 40″x40″. Photo by Carl Pfranger.

The piecing was a breeze but the quilting was not. I decided to try a new FMQ design (don’t scrutinize my sloppy first attempt!), so I used leftovers from the top to make a doll quilt/FMQ tester. The tension left something to be desired, but was good enough. Moving on to the quilt, I broke two needles. Then, my darning foot broke! I was able to finish up the quilting with my floating embroidery foot, but it was rather obnoxious and puts a kink in the progress of other projects.

Noble Blooms back
“Noble Blooms” (back), Rachael Arnold, February 2014, 40″x40″. Photo by Carl Pfranger.

The back is a Minky that came from my stash (actually, the result of an incorrect shipment when I ordered the paisley backing for the Peter Rabbit quilts. Thank you, Fabric.com for your great customer service). In between is a low-loft cotton, likely Pellon Nature’s Touch White or Warm & White—possibly even both, as it’s joined stashed pieces. The quilting was done with a Gutermann brown-to-cream variegated thread. It’s bound in a lime solid from stash.

Noble Blooms set
“Noble Blooms” and accompanying items, Rachael Arnold, February 2014, 40″x40″. Photo by Carl Pfranger.

A Minky giraffe made with backing leftovers completes the shipment. I tried something new with this round of Simplicity 2613 giraffe-making: the ossicones and neck-hair details are made with pinked fabric from the quilt. The ossicones especially worked out so well that I might continue using fabric in the future. As it was, it was a great way of eating up more scraps.

Noble Blooms Giraffe
“Noble Blooms” and accompanying items, Rachael Arnold, February 2014, 40″x40″. Photo by Carl Pfranger.

I hear that the Impressions Baby Quilt and stuffie that I sent her sister are well-loved possessions, so I hope that the baby comes to love her own set just as well.

Noble Blooms
“Noble Blooms” (detail), Rachael Arnold, February 2014, 40″x40″. Photo by Carl Pfranger.

It’s probably a bit gauche to mention this when the result is a gift, but this project was entirely from stash—fabric, batting, thread, giraffe eyes and stuffing, … everything. Go go gadget stash busting in 2014!

March 6th, 2014

 

© 2008–2023 Raevenfea