The other day i talked about the Double Spiky 16 Patch that Lee Ann finished. It made me wonder about all the Spiky 16 Patch quilts I have made. I looked back at my media files and decided to put them all into one post.
Double Spiky 16 Patch Quilted #2
Double Spiky 16 Patch #1
New Blue Spiky 16 Patch donation top
Spiky Star donation quilt n.3
HRT Donation Top – April 2018 (Spiky 16 Patch)
Flame HRT Donation top – April 2020
Mrs. K’s Spiky 16 Patch Top
I also inspired Mrs. K to make a top. I love it when you sew along with me, especially if you use one of my tutorials. Hers is great! It makes me think I need to add a yellow version to my list. Look at the corner triangle detail. Isn’t it great?
I always think I have made more of anything I want to show you than I really have. Six tops is not nothing. I want make more of these and now, that I see them, in different colors.
I am sure I will make more of them, so I’ll have to update this post.
In between working on Scrap Dash, I made more yellow Improv blocks. I don’t have a tons of yellow scraps and I’ll be lucky if I can make this quilt and a straight Improv version like the other colors I have made. I’ll definitely be able to finish this one, but I have had to add chunks to the blocks. I don’t have enough strips to make all the blocks just from strips.
I sewed way more than one seam throughout the day. I felt kind of manic about these blocks. Even though I was working on Scrap Dash, I wanted to make progress on this quilt as well. I am pleased with the progress.
I am on the fence about how this quilt is looking. I don’t have the exact colors that Tim used, so I am using what I have. I don’t know if it is working.
Improv Checkerboard
When I talked about this quilt before, I had finished sewing the parts Tim gave me to the piece and had just added a strip of my own.
I made this improv checkerboard to add to the sides as the first piece that was all my own. It was kind of fun to play around with different sized strips. The green, however is a little more chartreuse than Tim used. While I like the shape, I am concerned about the colors and how they fit in with what went before.
I plan to put part of the checkerboard on another side perpendicular to the checkerboard I already sewed to the top.
Tim’s Improv Quilt with checkerboard
I don’t think it looks terrible and that might be good enough for a donation quilt. I don’t mean that it is ugly so it is only good enough for a donation quilt, but that it is not too ugly to give as a donation quilt.
I really don’t nee to make it much bigger, but I want it to have a relatively cohesive design without me spending 50 hours on it.
In February, I worked on some more Spiky 16 patch quilts. Then I gave them to Peggy and she found someone to quilt at least one. #2 popped up as finished at the guild meeting last Saturday! Lee Ann did the basting and quilting. She did a lot of straight line quilting, which I think works really well.
There is a wobble on the edge, which surprises me. I am hoping it is the wind blowing the quilt and not my piecing!
Double Spiky 16 Patch Quilted – detail
Lee Ann sent me these photos, which included a detail. You can see the leaf like shapes in the 16 patch center as well as a little more of the straight line quilting on the border.
I am continuing to work on the yellow donation blocks. I talked about making another batch a few days ago. I have more progress to show you today.
They look better on my design wall than they do on the photo. Oh well.
I made one with a strip going vertically, because I had two leftover pieces that weren’t wide enough to make a block with horizontal strips. For this version, I am really trying to make all the strips oriented on the horizontal. I have a lot of small pieces of yellow, so I don’t know if it will work. I’ll make as many blocks as I can with horizontal strips, then I will start putting more chucks together into blocks.
Tim made part of a top in a Sherri Lynn Wood class. He didn’t want it hanging around anymore because he didn’t like the class and didn’t think he would finish it. I offered to finish it into a donation top for the guild and get it out of his life.
I sewed a strip Tim gave me to the right of the quilt (the strip with 4 patches). I looked for fabric that would match, but I couldn’t find anything really similar. I chose a more reddish orange and am adding various bits to the piece.
I am slowly making more of these blocks. I know it seems like I am working on very little. I seem to be really busy on things that keep my mind scurrying in a zillion different directions.
Five Yellow Donation Blocks
I wanted to make enough blocks so I could see what I had. I think I will place the blocks 5 across. I might do 6 across, but we’ll see. My plan is 5 across right now. I also won’t set the blocks this close together. My design wall is a little full right now so I don’t have the blocks placed as they would be. I also am not sure what color I will use for the sashing. Blue is the complement, but I don’t think that blue will be good for the look I want. I think white.
Yellow strip donation block #6
I also made one more block, so I have a total of 6 right now.
Yes, I wrote the title correctly. I have just one block to show you.
I worked to make many, many donation blocks last year. This year I feel like I am sewing a lot and not getting anything done. Am I not finishing things or what? I don’t know.
As I said, I have started some new color improv strip blocks, but I haven’t made any guild donation blocks.
I have been using other projects for leaders and enders. Do I need to get on the ball or can I take a break?
I finally sat down on Friday afternoon and worked to finish this top. I really wanted to get it ready for quilting and it had been hanging around for too long. I am pleased with how it came out and look forward to seeing how it gets quilted.
HST Donation Back
I am going to show it to Tim, then send it on to another guild member for quilting.
I tried to use as much of the Pop Parade fabric for the back as I could.
I was amazed and thrilled that Tim had bound the small Kaffe donation quilt he quilted a few weeks ago. He put a binding on it sometime last week! He almost never does that, but wanted something quick after cleaning his studio all day.
He machine bound it, but that was a good choice since the quilt will go who knows where.
BAM Kaffe Community Quilt by Patti (detail)
I love the quilting – spirals. They look so great.
I moved the HST top in progress to my large design wall so I could try out different layouts. One thing I definitely wanted to see was how it would look with space between the columns.
As I mentioned, Tim was working on the plaid donation quilt when I left him the other day. He sent me a picture of the finished top and a detail (left).
I like what he did with the designs in the piecing. He has a good eye for quilting designs.
Plaid Donation Quilt- quilted
I also like this design quite a bit and plan to make another donation quilt using the Block Party pattern.
Wednesday, I helped Tim put the piece on his longarm and he started to quilt it.
He is quilting a combination of squares/rectangles and swirls. He is not doing an all over pattern, but is quilting in the piecing, which I like.
He and I have talked a lot about our tastes in quilting, so he knows I like my piecing to shine. He does all over patterns for some community quilts, but he often does custom for the quilts I have made.
Plaid Donation Quilt in progress – detail
For donation quilts I do not tell him how to quilt them. I let them go after I am done piecing and let him decide the best design. Like Colleen, longarming is really his jam and he is good at it. It is also something he enjoys. I leave him to it. In this case, he focused on the blocks and did a couple of different motifs in the various patches. He combined spirals and rectangles, which I thought looked really good.
I went to have lunch with Tim. I ended up helping him put two small baby quilts on his longarm. One of these was picked up from the guild community quilt project dropoff/pickup time the other day. He thought since the quilts were the same size they could be loaded on the machine and quilted at the same time.
KFC Community Baby Quilt by Patti S
It didn’t quite work out. We still got both quilts on the machine and he was able to finish quilting Patti S’s quilt. The plaid donation top I made was half quilted when I left.
I was impressed with his work on one quilt. I thought he might get two done, but quilting is tiring.
Patti S’s quilt was made from Kaffe Fassett fabrics, perhaps a jelly roll (or Free Spirit equivalent). I know she is trying to clear out her fabric closet, so this might be an older group of fabrics. It is a fun quilt and I thought the quilting would just sink right into it, but the quilting sparked up the top even more.
KFC Community Baby Quilt by Patti S – detail
I like the swirls that Tim used to quilt the piece. I always enjoy watching him work on the longarm. He is so careful and knows so much about how the machine works. It makes me want to try it out, under his guidance, sometime. Shocking after my bad experiences longarming before.
Yes, we wore masks the whole time we were together and both of us are really careful otherwise. We are about the same age so we have awhile to wait for our vaccines. We have, however, kind of ended up in the same bubble and it has helped to relieve the tedium.
Alison also quilted Ends n.9. It is an appropriate quilt to post on Valentine’s Day because of the colors.
Like Blue Strips n.2, this will be donated to the Project Linus project near where Alison lives.
I forgot about this one even though it was the last one that I made. It makes me think that I need to look and see if I have some more ends that need making into a quilt.
