From Moo to Quilt: A few tweaks needed!

The second project that I took on my guild retreat was making a Highland Cow baby quilt for one of my daughter’s friends.

I picked out a pattern and did a fabric pull before the retreat, and then pieced the three cows during the retreat…

They were relatively easy to piece together, with lots of sew-and-flip…

…using 1.25-inch strips!!

I did struggle with the cow on the left that was reversed in direction. There was a LOT of ripping….

Interestingly, another retreater (Beverly) also had a Highland Cow pattern from Art East, although hers was a bit BIGGER than mine…..

I left the retreat with the three cows pieced and ready to go.

Now it was time to start adding background to the quilt. I started by throwing fabrics on the wall that roughly matched the baby room color scheme…

But, before I started putting strips together, I needed to fix two places that were bothering me. Here, the body “hair” and the leg blended together too much…..

So I picked out the sections and changed the bottom color…..

It didn’t make a ton of difference, but at least my eye doesn’t go there immediately now!!

The other problem was that I had mis-calculated the grass on the right side of the middle cow, and they weren’t going to match up…..

So….first step was to fix these issues, and now I can start putting the top together…..come back on Saturday, and we will get the bottom section finished!!

Some fabrics deserve more than a tiny square.

Woodland Walk gives your favorite prints room to shine with larger blocks and an easy layout that showcases every detail.

No overcutting. No overthinking. Just beautiful fabric on display.

👉 Get the pattern here

A Scottish baby quilt

Yesterday, we looked at the first quilt that I plan to make on my upcoming quilt retreat. Today, let’s talk about the second one.

A few years ago, my daughter, Jenny, commissioned me to make an ocean quilt for her friend’s new baby. I had SO much fun making this one…..

Now, this friend’s sister is expecting and Jenny once again commissioned me to make a quilt for her. But, this family travels a lot and currently lives in Scotland, so the request has been for Highland Cows!!

I am SO EXCITED!!!

I found this fun pattern…..

Don’t you love the tams??

My plan is to make this a row quilt… one tall row with 3 cows, and then other rows above and below to be the sky and land.

The full pattern is 36 pages long, so I printed it, hole-punched it, and put it into a binder…..

It is an intricate pattern, with each stripe less than 1 inch finished!!

I think that having more fabrics will add much interest to them. So….off to the brown shelves I went.

These will be a great start, and I grabbed a handful of scrap strips to add to them…..

I pulled sky and ground fabrics that match the color scheme….

I am thinking about adding one strip of thistle blocks from the pattern, and these fabrics will add the perfect pop of color….

And….we can’t forget the tams……

It is all packed up and ready to go……

This is going to be so much fun to work on!!

Some fabrics deserve more than a tiny square.

Woodland Walk gives your favorite prints room to shine with larger blocks and an easy layout that showcases every detail.

No overcutting. No overthinking. Just beautiful fabric on display.

👉 Get the pattern here

Lots of Stars

As you have seen from earlier posts about the UFOs I inherited from my Mom, she often found one design or pattern and made TONS of blocks from it.

That is the case with these blue-and-white stars…

She had one finished quilt top…..

I think that I will donate this to my guild charity group, but I may re-do the borders a bit first. Maybe make the inner border smaller by cutting it down and then adding a darker outer border. We will see….I may just hand it off.

But then, there are all of these…..

At one point, I decided to take these apart to set them differently….

…but they were REALLY hard to unpick. Apparently, she had used a tiny stitch length.

Now, some of you may be wondering why I am willing to give away so many of her UFO’s.

The truth is that I already own more than 25 of her finished quilts, so I really don’t need to add more to my collection.

At this point, I am excited to see them being sent out into the world to do good!!

Green With Envy

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, I wanted to show you a quilt from my past..

Many years ago (1992 to be exact), our guild brought in Katie Pasquini Masopust (before she was super famous) to present a Kaleidoscope Quilt class, and I was immediately hooked!!

We started with a piece of flannel taped to the wall and worked from the center out… adding each round as it came up.

As I worked thru the day, I kept cutting off small corners of my scraps and putting them in a circle around the piece so that I could decide what the next round would be.

When it came time to finish the quilt, I kept thinking about those triangles scattered around the kaleidoscope and wanted to figure out a way to incorporate them into the border and maybe some of the other blocks. I remember lying in bed one night, trying to figure out exactly how I could piece them in, and realizing it would be a mammoth task.

THEN the epiphany came….. why not do them as prairie points so they would add dimension to the quilt AND be much easier to piece!!!

THE PERFECT SOLUTION…..

I was using scraps for much of the piecing and was running REALLY short on greens!! So short that I didn’t have enough to add the triangles in the corners!! Consequently, the quilt ended up with cut-off corners….

I love the final quilt and it is a great addition to my Spring decorating.

Hope you have a wonderful GREEN TUESDAY!!

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