Everybody home, no school, those “mammy” days all days, the gifts/food race before christmas followed by the “floating felling” until the next year… Sometimes things can be blurry, especially when you are trying to work on a project with a deadline in early January. In this situation what I like to do is back off for a while, start another new and fresh project usually one I can start and see finished on the same day. And this is my Gipsy Vibes quilt, my “detox project” from a very intense project.
A couple of weeks ago, I bought two junior jelly rolls (20 stripes each) on my local quilt shop and saved them for a future project idea. I love precuts, layer cakes and jelly rolls are my favorite, they work so well with almost every pattern and you can also make them bigger with some extra background fabrics from your stash.
One jelly roll was from Denyse Schmidt past fabric collections (Shelburne Falls and Chicopee) and the other one was a kona solid turquoise. It was 40 stripes in total and I decided to mix them with some kona solids green and some white fabric for sashing the triangles.
Sew 2 blocks of 19 mixed strips together, alternating the sewing directions to avoid any “distortion” on the blocks. My “stripe blocks” were about 37 1/2″ higher, so I used this measure to square them (two 37 1/2″ square blocks).
Cut them in both diagonal (like a “x”), at the end I had 8 triangle shapes, 4 with “horizontal” stripes and 4 with “vertical”stripes.
Sew one vertical triangle with a 2 1/2″ white stripe, press to the dark side and sew a horizontal triangle, making one of the 4 blocks. Repeat the same process for the next 3 blocks.
Arrange the blocks with the “horizontal” stripes triangles on the center. Sew another 2 1/2″ white stripe between the two blocks on the top, and repeat the same with the two blocks at the bottom.
Now is time to sew the 2 1/2″ white stripes with the 2 1/2″ green square on the center, the top part and the bottom to this stripe.
The quilt top is DONE! My final size was something like 60″ square, definitely not bad for 2 junior jelly rolls and a couple 2 1/2″ white fabric stripes. I also used Aurifil 50wt 2783 (yes it is a dark blue) for piecing because I didn’t want to “show” any thread between the stripes so I coordinated the thread color with my darker color fabric. Why??? Because I want to highlight my quilting design on this baby 😉 Stay tuned for the Gipsy Vibes quilting plans!
Last Autumn we were in London, for a lovely trip. And I was at Liberty (he-a-ven) buying some fabric bundles. At this occasion the liberty lady was telling me about my great choices (they know everything about all the bundles), and I was telling her, I was not sure about one of the bundles, because it was a “Dresden quilt wanna be”, and I was not a big fan of dresden quilts. And she told me “why not???”
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And now is the most interesting part about this quilt… DON’T USE ZIGZAG STITCH, pleaaaassse! You know all those decorative stitches you almost never (I NEVER) use?! Now it’s the time for them to shine 😉 If you look at them, most of them are kind off zig zag stitches, but with decorative flowers, arrows and different designs. Pick one, make a test on a small scrap of fabric, pay attention where you are going to stop and turn the dresden to make sure you are following the circle.
Last year, my dear Auntie had a very complicated heart surgery. It was a difficult time for my family, and for me too. It’s very hard to be so far away when these things happen. I wished I could be there so badly… So I decided to make a quilt for her.