Tiled Fabrics - Are They Panels?

 Since I'm knee deep in panels right now, and having great fun working with them, I've been digging out some fabrics I've found hard to use, but thinking of them as panels has given me ideas. 

Years ago I saw some fabric online that I loved so much, I ordered it from the UK. The line was Celtic Illuminations, and at the time, I couldn't find it from a US supplier. I didn't buy a lot of it, a pillow panel, a couple yards (meters) of the tiles fabric, and maybe one yard of another in the line. I didn't take a photo of the tiled fabric before I cut it up, but I found a photo online of it in a different colorway, evidently, Fabric Paradise still has some of that colorway in stock.

If you like this colorway, you can get it from fabricparadise.com, and if you send me a message, I have two squares of the larger version in this colorway I'd be happy to send you. I happened across the two large squares at a thrift store, but haven't used them. 

If you pay attention to the measuring tapes, you'll see each square is about 3.5" It's not exact. The strips between the squares are almost 1/2". I didn't like the idea of cutting off all the seam allowances and having only 3.5" squares, but I found it difficult to cut the squares apart at 4", because those skinny strips between the knots are not always 1/2", and I kept getting further and further off. I tried cutting them when I got the fabric, made a few blocks, but overall found it really frustrating and put everything aside. I had made some units with the other fabrics, found a blue I liked to go with my fabrics, so I stuck it all aside, but at least it was together. 

When I was working on my grandson's fantasy quilt, I thought about those fabrics, and decided some Celtic knots would go nicely with the fantasy theme so I dug out the fabrics. I also had some more of the tiled fabric on my fabric shelves. 

When I dug everything out, I had the one pillow panel, with the fabric I cut to put it on point. I had a stack of nine patches I had made, and a pile of HST's. Back when I had worked on this, I was not good about writing myself notes on what I planned to do with things, and there was no pattern or anything with the fabrics. It's been at least 15 years since I worked on this, and I have no idea what I was planning. These days I am good about writing notes to myself, so it I put a project aside, I can get back into it easily enough. 

I had no more of the background fabric I used for the nine patches and HST's, so as far as that went, I had to use what I had. 

I had enough HST's to make pinwheel blocks, and I used the blue to frame them so they'd be the same size as the nine patches. I used most of the HST's, and all but two of the nine patch blocks. I used a fabric from stash to bring out the rusts and browns in the Celtic knots. I would have made the border a bit wider, but this was every bit of the fabric I had.

Now to deal with the other tiled fabric. I felt like the Celtic knots in the nine patches looked crowded cut at 3.5". I really wanted to cut them at 4", the thing is, I could really only get every other tile at 4", and the others needed to be cut at 3.5". Could I figure out how to use them together in one quilt?

The answer to that was yes. I put the 4" cut Celtic knots on point, and framed out the 3.5" ones. Each block finished at 5". I used all of the one cut at 3.5" for this quilt, and have only a few left of the ones on point. 

Now I've got two quilt tops done, and I've busted most of that fabric line. Can I bust the rest?

I still have that pillow panel I put on point. I added some of the leftover HST's to make the two remaining nine patch blocks larger. I didn't have any matching background fabric, but I found some similar enough. I made some of the extra 4" cut Celtic knots and put them on point using the extra few triangles from my grandson's fantasy quilt. I still need to frame out the on point pillow panel, then I need to make the whole thing wider. I'm thinking interlocking rings going up each side of this center. I have to do the math to make sure it's all going to fit together. Would I have planned to make these quilts this way, probably not. Will busting this fabric get it out of my stash and result in three usable quilts, yes it will. 

I will have a couple units leftover, even after this third quilt, but I am perfectly OK tossing the extras into the orphan bin for now, or possibly trying to make a table runner. Just because I loved the fabric, did not mean I found it easy to use. Since I felt up to the challenge, it was time to get it out of the house. 

It also inspired me to use another tiled fabric I had in stash, but that's for next time.

It's a Quilt Top, Panel Style

Quilt panels, do you love them or hate them? Perhaps it's a bit of both. If a panel is off grain, it can be really tricky to work with. I think it's kind of funny when I see beginning quilters encouraged to use panels. In a perfect world, where everything is on grain and naturally square maybe a panel would be perfect for a beginner. Well, maybe some panels would be perfect for a beginner. When you have to trim a huge panel, I do not consider that a beginner skill. I know I find using panels easier now, than the first couple I used 20 years ago, and it's not because the panels changed, it's because I am more skilled.

There are a lot more ideas out there for using panels now, which I think is great! If you need to make a themed quilt for someone, and you don't have a lot of money to spend on fabric, you can buy a panel, and then just use scraps in coordinating colors to make the rest of the quilt. 

I have a family of six all wanting new quilts, and panels are going to help me out. I get to make quilts in their interests, without buying six quilts worth of fabric. I wrote a post about my grandsons quilt a while back, and I finally got that quilt off the design wall and sewn up. I was designing it on the fly, and I had to figure out how to make the center the size I needed. It was one of the few quilts I've designed from the outside in. 

There are parts of three different panels in his quilt. I LOVE how it came out, and I think he's going to love it too! 

Notice I said there were PARTS of three panels in this quilt. I didn't use all of any of them. You know what that means? More quilts will be made with this fantasy theme! One of the panels I had three of, and I only used a bit of one of those in this quilt. Does that worry me? Not at all. 

I really liked the blocks I made for the border, in fact, I liked them so much, I made enough for another quilt. I had to change the corner fabric because I didn't have enough of what I used in my grandson's quilt.

Each of the Wizards and Warriors panels has 30 different pictures on it. I only used 12 in the first quilt, but this second quilt used all 30. I really like the secondary design that came out when sewing the blocks together. It remind me of a mosaic or fancy tile floor. I still had another full panel, plus a partial panel. I didn't have enough of these fabrics to make another full quilt, but I did have the stone fabric in another colorway, so I started another quilt. 

I think the gray colorway works nicely too. I did realize I could use these same units for different blocks.

I could make a folded star type of pattern.

Something Shoofly-ish?

I decided to stick with my original idea, and I just finished the blocks in the gray colorway a few minutes ago. Tomorrow I'll start assembling that quilt. 

I never mind having extra quilts that are more masculine. I'm not saying a girl wouldn't like these quilts, I just mean a boy wouldn't think it's too girlish. And quilts that a TEEN boy would enjoy??? That's a serious win!

Now that I've got two quilt tops done from these panels and another quilt top ready to assemble, I can start thinking about what I'm going to do with the remaining panel pieces. I've got two more castles, two more of the 12" blocks I used as cornerstones on my grandson's quilt, plus 18 more of smaller Wizards and Warriors pics. Will I try to make one quilt with all of those, or spread them into several quilts. I haven't decided, but I have a bunch of dragon panels that would work with any of these too...

 

Finish #20

 So far this year, all of my finishes have been UFO's, and this one is no different. It's another quilt I pieced in a hotel. 

It's nothing fancy, but I did bust a lot of squares with white, black, or gray backgrounds. I used a black/white stripe on the binding, which I think was pretty fun. 

I stuck to the black/white/gray theme for the backing. That animal print is such a huge scale, that I was stuck on how to use it on a quilt. I have the same print in sepia, and just like this one, it's likely to be used on the back of a quilt. I don't remember buying such large scale prints, so possibly someone gave them to me. I could have picked them up a thrift store, I'm less picky about what I buy if I pick it up secondhand. I'm virtually positive I did not buy it new, I just don't think I'd have paid full price for something on that scale. The center fabric was just what I had on hand to make the backing the width I needed. 

I'm really glad I took the time to pull fabrics off the shelves that I wanted out of stash. That animal fabric was unlikely to be used when mixed with my stash for quilt tops, but busting it as a backing? That works! 

National Sew A Jelly Roll Day....Weekend?

 I've got a lot going on these days, I haven't done a mystery quilt in a couple years, haven't finished the last one I started, and even though I sew as much as I can, I still feel out of the loop. I haven't even been keeping up with the online quilt groups I am in. 

That's why it was so important to me that I get to participate in Sew a Jelly Roll Day. I didn't choose a one day pattern, so I knew I couldn't finish the top in a day, and I was using other projects as leader/enders while working on my jelly roll top, but I did indeed sew on it on September 19th. 

This was my starting place, the jelly roll Paisley Place by Wilmington Fabrics, some background strips I cut from a piece in my stash, and a pattern from Scrap Basket Strips and Squares by Kim Brackett. If you have never seen a Kim Brackett book, you are missing out, her patterns are fantastic! 

I chose the pattern Off Course, which I've made before, and I will make again. It's a fun, easy pattern to make. 

To make the pattern as shown, you only need 30 strips, and I had 40 in my jelly roll. I had four peach strips and I pulled out all of those, since the contrast with my background wasn't great, and I pulled out some black and white prints that I found to be a bit boring in comparison with the other fabrics. The good thing about pulling out the more boring prints? They will be easily used in another project, no crazy prints to try to fit in with different lines of fabrics. 

Step one was to sew a background strip to each jelly roll strip. 

By the time those were sewn and pressed, I ran out of sewing time for that day. The next morning I subcut the stripsets per pattern instructions, and soon I was making blocks.

My jelly roll strips were longer than the pattern assumed, so I cut some extra units. I have an extra block, and some extra parts, but not enough variety to make more blocks. I do have some extra background strips, so I'm thinking I may go ahead, pull some strips from my scrap user system and make another quilt. I could use the strips I didn't use in this one, but now that I'm thinking another quilt, I am still likely to exclude the boring ones unless I can find some really stunning ones in my scrap stash and need some boring ones to calm things down. 

This is how my jelly roll quilt top came out, and I'm quite happy with it. It looks better in person than in photos, which is often how things go. Did you sew a jelly roll up for National Sew a Jelly Roll day? I really want to do this pattern in one color of scraps, probably blue since I usually have the most blue scraps, and a white background. I think the design might show up better with less variety in the fabrics. The upside of the large value variety in this quilt is that it creates a lot of movement, your eyes are moving around trying to get the big picture. 

Trying to Stay Ahead While I Fall Further Behind

 I've been trying to schedule a few blog posts ahead, because life is just insane right now. We had only been home for five weeks after that two month trip, when we had to make an emergency trip to New England again. We had a bunch of legal things to attend to, as well as some medical issues to sort for my parents. We didn't know how long things would take to straighten out, so we opted to drive again. We drove there in four LONG days, spent three days running around getting stuff done, then took six days to come home. Thirteen days gone, ten of which were travel days, 5,500 miles on the van, and loads of stress! 

I'm still sorting things out from here, but all is as well as can be for my parents right now, and for that I am truly thankful. More trips out there are inevitable, and we will go as needed. My sister and I have tried to talk them into moving here for years now, but they don't want to move, which I totally understand. I also know, that if all my kids move away, we WILL move near one of them. Trying to do elder care from across the country is not easy, and much more complicated than if we only had to cross town to deal with something. My MIL is here in Southern AZ, and we are closest in distance to her, so we are torn between our aging parents. When we are the ones who need help, I'd like it to be as easy on our kids are possible. 

I do realize that we are blessed to have three of our parents still alive in their late 80's. It's amazing really. We also want to be there and be helpful for all of them. My MIL lives about 8 miles from us, my parents live about 2,600 miles away. My MIL was hospitalized days before my parents had a crisis. What do you do when they are all having a crisis? Thankfully my SIL stepped in and took care of things here, while we went across the country. 

Right now everyone is stable and cared for. That's the goal, right? I'll enjoy the lull while it lasts, knowing another crisis is just around the corner. My parents celebrated their 68th wedding anniversary on September 13th. How cool is that? So much to be thankful for, but that doesn't eliminate the stress. 

DH is hosting a scooter rally in October. I'm rapidly running out of time to get things done for that. No matter what is going on with our parents, we still have other obligations to meet. I've put other things aside for the last couple days, and I got the rally bags made.

Now I've got to to get them filled. I have some smaller zipper bags I was going to sew some trim onto, that we'll be filling with emergency type stuff, like zip ties and duct tape. I told DH rather than sewing the trim on, I'm going to take a scooter stencil we already have, and the screen print ink we already have, and decorate the plain zipper bags with that. I can likely get them done in an hour or so, where sewing the trim on the store bought bags would be fiddly and take much longer. Sometimes taking the easy way out makes a lot more sense. I already have a lot of the things that are going in the bags, just a couple more things to buy. Stuffing them won't take long at all, it's not as big a rally as we sometimes do, and I've pretty much got stuffing rally bags down to a science. 

That's all the sewing I've gotten done since we got home, but I am already prepping for National Sew a Jelly Roll Day on September 19th. I chose a jelly roll I wanted to use, and cut the background fabric I'll need for the pattern I want to use. I'll have to sew up some strip sets before I cut anymore, but I need a play day. The jelly roll and background fabric were all in stash, so it's not even an expensive play day! Is anyone else ready to play on Sew a Jelly Roll Day?