Grand Canal Table Runner/Wall Hanging

Posted on September 7, 2018 by Barbara Frank

I saw a table runner online that someone made by taking a pack of 5” charm squares, dividing them into darks and lights, cutting them all in half diagonally, sewing the light triangles to the dark triangles, and then piecing them back together. It looked really cute. (I’d share the link if I could find the bookmark!)

But when I tried it with a charm pack from a very pretty fabric line, Grand Canal by Kate Spain for Moda…

… it didn’t turn out so well. It looked like chaos to me:

What to do? After some thought, I decided to try salvaging the project by putting sashing in between the squares made up of light/dark triangles, and some cornerstones using a lovely light green from my stash. And it completely changed it! Now I love it:

This was made from one charm pack, 1 1/2”-wide strips of white cotton scraps for the sashing, and part of a fat quarter for the cornerstones. I was surprised to find that just one charm pack plus sashing makes a table runner that’s 17″ wide and 70” long. Since that’s much longer than my table, I decided to turn it into a very long wall hanging in my sewing room. It looks really pretty there, and no one will ever spill gravy on it 🙂

Our Endless Summer Quilt

Posted on June 21, 2017 by Barb

It all started when Hancock’s of Paducah put some charm packs on sale for $5 each. How could I pass that up when the fabric line, Saturday Morning by Basic Grey for Moda, was so cute? They weren’t the type of fabrics I would usually buy, but one design in particular, the lines of people, caught my eye. So I bought five charm packs.

I started designing a quilt requiring over 200 5″ squares, and soon realized I was going to need a solid fabric to balance the wide variety of prints. Luckily H of P had an off-white grunge print from the line on sale, so I bought a few yards. Then I saw the Moda Love pattern on Pinterest and decided it would be perfect for the center of my quilt.

The quilt would be quite large, maybe bigger than any quilt I’d ever made. I decided it would be perfect for our bed. Wouldn’t you know, H of P put batting on sale, including an extra-light batting that I had never tried before. I bought one, figuring I could make a summer quilt. I also bought a very busy triangle print from the Saturday Morning line for the binding, and a wild streaky blue print for the borders.

It took me a while to decide how to quilt this quilt. I decided on one design for the center, modified a flower design from Lori Kennedy’s blog for the squares, and modified another flower for the border from the same blog (she’s so talented, and has some awesome tutorials on her blog). Here’s the back of the quilt where the squares are:

I named this the “Endless Summer Quilt” because my husband and I fell in love one summer over 40 years ago and married three years later; in the summer, of course. I hope we use this summer quilt for many, many years to come.

New Quilt in Process

Posted on March 13, 2017 by Barb

Grant Park Table Runner

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Barb

I just finished this table runner made from the Grant Park line by Moda. I bought some charm packs and a bit of extra yardage from a cute little quilt shop in Pecatonica, IL, while out shop-hopping with a friend a few years ago, and finally got around to using it.

I love precuts because the fabrics in them are designed to go together. That’s a great blessing for those of us who love to sew but aren’t gifted with the artist’s eye; we just don’t know how to pick out fabrics that go well together! But check out how nice the Grant Park line looks:

I machine quilted this runner in a matter of minutes using my supermachine, the Brother PQ-1500s:

And I pieced the back using the extra yardage that I’m so glad I bought:

I don’t know how many quilt shops still carry this line, but I see it’s available on Etsy; I imagine you could find it on eBay as well.

“Weeds” Quilt

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Barb

I was at the Quilt Expo last year when I saw a charm pack that I just had to have. The fabric collection is called “Weeds,” which doesn’t sound very attractive but it caught my eye, so I bought three charm packs and decided it would make a great quilt.

But I couldn’t bring myself to cut up those cute little squares, so I decided to let each square be a block. It was easily pieced; the hard part was deciding how to quilt it.

I chose to quilt each of the 120 blocks in whatever way I wanted to quilt it. I tried not to think too hard and just let myself do it. This sounds easy but it took some getting used to as I prefer to have a plan. Now that the quilt is finished, I realize just how much fun it is to let yourself quilt in whatever way you want without too much thinking or planning.

I free-motion quilted my “Weeds” quilt on my Brother PQ1500S High Speed Quilting and Sewing Machine using Aurifil Quilting Thread.