Cathedral Window April 13, 1933-Kentucky's first cathedral provided the inspiration for the Cathedral Window quilt block pattern according to Nancy Cabot. She wrote "the quiet, softened pastel shades of pink or blue on a background of milky white are a wise choice of materials" for this pattern. This pattern is very different from what we would think of as a Cathedral Window block today. I'm guessing that it was not a commonly used pattern since I can't find any info. on it. I did not try to make this block for my sampler quilt because I didn't think it was suitable for a 6" block. The Cathedral Window block can be found in BlockBase as #1953. This block reminds me of cutting out paper snowflakes as a kid. You know, where you fold the paper and cut out shapes? Anyway, I think it would be nice made as a big block. In a 6" block, the large squares are only about 1 3/8"! Tomorrow-Star and Crescent
Classic Quilt Blocks have been sewn for centuries, are easy to recognise and are every quilters favorite. Let's celebrate these gorgeous blocks and add them to our quilting projects! Welcome to Week Three of my Flying Geese Classic Quilt Blocks series. I hope you enjoyed sewing last week's Dutchman's Puzzle block - it's such a fun and gorgeous way to showcase some simple Flying Geese! This week I want to show you some other examples of blocks with a flock of geese and share some of my favorite Flying Geese quilt patterns. Please note: the diagrams in this post are for inspiration purpose only, there are no patterns! Are you ready to be inspired? Let's go: Simple settings such as these two examples make such a pretty block. These formations are a great way to use Flying Geese and they are effortless and beautiful. Sew four in a vertical row and add sashings or sew two rows of four in a horizontal formation and alternate the orientation. Multiple rows add even more visual interest to a block, and you can inject lots of colour making them perfect for scrappy quilts. Alternating the orientations of the rows will create a different look like these two examples: Aren't these blocks fun? So simple but effective! Make the Flying Geese even smaller by adding more rows for a busy flock of geese! You can also set Flying Geese on the diagonal: So pretty and perfect to use as corner blocks for borders or alternate their orientation and create patterns in a full sized quilt. These are just a few examples or how to use Flying Geese in blocks. I hope they have you plotting and planning blocks of your own. To end this week's post, I wanted to share my top four favorite Flying Geese quilt patterns with you. These quilts are stunning and the best part - they are all free patterns/tutorials. Yay! {photo from Robert Kaufman} The Remixed Geese Quilt from Robert Kaufman is stunning! I love its scrappiness, the alternating directions of the geese and those colours are amazing. A simply beautiful quilt! You can download the free pattern HERE. {photo from V and Co.} The Dutch Ombre Baby Quilt is one of my absolute favorites! V and Co. have a comprehensive tutorial for this quilt and it's so clever and such a beautiful quilt! You can find the free tutorial HERE. {photo from Piece and Quilt} Another one of my favorites is Northbound from Piece and Quilt. I love the scrappiness of this quilt with all the prints and the low volume fabrics! The formation of the flying geese is very clever as well. You can find the free tutorial HERE. {photo from AGF Studio} And last but not least is the Flying Colours quilt from AGF Studio. This one is gorgeous and a very clever layout that reminds you of swirling flocks of geese overhead. Love it! You can download the free pattern HERE. And that's it for this week. Are you itching to sew your own Flying Geese quilt yet? I hope so! Next week is the final week of this months series and I'm sharing something fun! I have a modern mini quilt pattern for you, featuring some gorgeous Flying Geese - it's bright, it's colourful and it's fun! I can't wait to share it with you! Happy quilting :)
We have a huge stash of free patterns in our Free Quilt Inspiration archive and we are excited to share them with you. T o go to a patte...
Get a free PDF quilt pattern! The Duval Star quilt pattern (previously named Reverse Star) uses fat quarters!
Here are five common methods of making a flying geese block. and I put them through their paces constructing a 4" x 2" finished flying geese unit.
Make a modern quilt block with Sew Modern Quilts. This stunning and unique quilt block is called Woven and what a fascinating block it is. This tutorial is a bit different in that it is a video tu…
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Here's the perfect example of ca. 1960 style Rules: Any color goes with any color In a time of new dyes giving us new colors quilters embraced every shade with enthusiasm. The pattern: A variation on Grandmother's Pride from the syndicated Laura Wheeler column. A kind of art-deco update to the fan design. "Laura" (a fictional human being) showed a triangle at the bottom of the design... Which the seamstress ignored in the quilt at the top of the page. She had some rules though. Plains in the center patches, prints next and the squares are all variations of geometrical plaids. BlockBase #3341 Quilters Newsletter named it Empress in 1978. It does look like a crown. The Laura Wheeler patchwork patterns began in the 1930s and were widely syndicated until the 1970s. This one seems to have been popular.
A snowy mountain scene inspired today's free pattern day. Scroll down to find two dozen free quilt patterns for winter white quilts! These c...
Classic Quilt Blocks have been sewn for centuries, are easy to recognise and are every quilters favorite. Let's celebrate these gorgeous blocks and add them to our quilting projects! It's a new month and it's time for a new block in my Classic Quilt Blocks series. It's always fun deciding which block I'll share with you, and this month I'm excited because I've chosen an absolute treasure - the Flying Geese Block. The Flying Geese block is fundamentally a building block that is combined with various shapes to construct other blocks (the sawtooth star for example) but used alone a flock of geese can make some very interesting blocks - this is what I want to concentrate on in this month's Classic Quilt Blocks series! It's a super simple block but there are lots of ways to piece them, so I'll share links to different tutorials as well, and you can choose the method that works best for you depending on the project you want to sew. I've planned lots of ways to share the Flying Geese block with you this month - it's going to be fun and hopefully very informative! Let's have a look at the Flying Geese block in a little more detail so we can appreciate it's history, it's versatility and its beauty. Block History: There's not a lot of history available on the Flying Geese block, so it's a fair assumption that it looked like geese flying and so it was named. We already know that quilters named blocks based on simple observations or common homestead items, so it's an easy conclusion. If you look at the theories of the Underground Railway, a Flying Geese quilt hung outside the home was said to be code for slaves to follow the flying geese to Canada and to freedom. It's also believed that the direction of the arrows indicated where runaway slaves could find water, food and shelter. Fact or fiction, you know I love these stories and I want to believe that people showed their compassion and strength by developing systems or quilt codes that saved many, many lives! Block Design: The Flying Geese block consists of one large triangle (the goose) and two smaller triangles (the sky). It's drafted using a 2 x 1 grid: The blocks need to be drafted twice as wide as they are tall - 1 1/2" x 3", 2" x 4", 3" x 6" etc. I put together a Flying Geese Cheat Sheet back in 2019, and this post includes a step by step tutorial and links to other tutorials, plus a cutting chart for multiple sizes so you don't have to do all the math! Make sure you have a copy of this chart in your collection for future reference! Colour Values: When choosing colours for the Flying Geese block, ensure there's enough contrast between the light and dark fabrics to make the geese stand out against the sky: If the goose fabric is dark, the sky is light and vice versa. Next week is my step by step tutorial, and we're going to be sewing the gorgeous Dutchman's Puzzle that you can see in the photo above. It's basically eight flying geese set in a fun formation and to help you prepare for the tutorial, I've provided a colouring sheet so you can plan your own block to sew. Simply click on the link to download and print: Grab your colouring pencils, crayons or pens and get creative! Antique Quilt Inspiration: I found these antique quilts on Goggle images, and aren't they stunning? The layouts are simple, but they showcase the Flying Geese blocks so effectively. I think my favorite is the one in the bottom left-hand corner - I love how the pairs of geese travel in alternate directions, and I love the colours of this one - so pretty! Which one's your favorite? It's hard to choose, but antique quilts are a good place to start when planning a layout for a Flying Geese quilt of your own :) I hope these examples inspire you! So, here's what coming in this month's Flying Geese Classic Quilt Blocks series: Week Two - a step by step tutorial for the Dutchman's Puzzle block, plus a Cutting Chart of six sizes of the block for future projects. I'll also include a list of links for other methods of sewing the Flying Geese block. Week Three - some fun blocks full of Flying Geese to inspire you, plus some of my favorite Flying Geese quilts that you'll want to sew. Week Four - a modern FPP mini quilt pattern you're going to love! Lots to share this month. I hope you're as excited as I am! So that's my introduction to the Flying Geese block. As we look at this block more closely over the coming weeks, I hope it shows you how versatile this Classic Quilt Block really is, and it inspires you to use it in future projects! Happy quilting :)
How to make a Hunter’s star Inspired quilt block? The video demonstrates how to make this very easy quilt block. Use strong contrast between fabrics for best results. How to use this block ? …
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I probably have a dozen photos of quilts made in this pattern from the 1930s and '40s. It was quite popular despite its set-in Y seams. I never know where to file it because it's so miscellaneous. But it has a number in the BlockBase Miscellaneous category. BlockBase #4052 The earliest publication I've found was in the Rural New Yorker farm newspaper in 1933. They called it Bride's Bouquet or Nose Gay Quilt. The Laura Wheeler/Alice Brooks company syndicated a pattern--maybe a year or two later. And in 1937 when the Kansas City Star was asking readers to send in their favorites Anna A. Threlkeld of Waynesville, Missouri sent The Nosegays. You could set it by rotating the blocks, which several quilters did. Pat Sloan found this pastel delight on eBay. Here's a variation. Cockcomb attributed to H. H. VerMehren's mail order business in the 1930s. An 8" finished pattern from BlockBase See Tim Quilts for a post. I am not surprised he has a top in the pattern. It's just the kind of thing he likes. https://timquilts.com/tag/brides-bouquet-quilt-block/
Reproduction Quilts & Fabric
Here are some fun and FREE patterns for PINK quilts! They would be perfect for Breast Cancer Awareness month (October), or for anyone who si...
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Get a free PDF quilt pattern! The Duval Star quilt pattern (previously named Reverse Star) uses fat quarters!
In the midst of making an all neutrals baby quilt for a friend, I thought I'd share some of my inspiration ideas. And to close it all out, the Alex Anderson quilt that started my infatuation with making a neutral quilt. Doesn't it look difficult? It's not so impossible if you see the 16-patch and the alternating pinwheel patches. Of course, Alex tossed in a few 9-patches with a large center just to mix it up a bit. She may have all three switching out in a definite pattern, but I can't tell for certain. Regardless, it's a beautiful quilt, and I wonder how long it took to gather enough browns, grays and beiges to make it.
Classic Quilt Blocks have been sewn for centuries, are easy to recognise and are every quilters favorite. Let's celebrate these gorgeous blocks and add them to our quilting projects! Welcome to Week Two of my Ohio Star Classic Quilt Blocks series! It's my favorite week because we get to sew a block together in my step by step tutorial. YAY! Last week I provided a colouring sheet for you to download and print, so hopefully you had a few minutes to plan your block/s and pull some fabrics. The Ohio Star block is made up of simple squares and QST's (quarter square triangles), and it's very quick and easy to sew. Beware though, these blocks can become quite addictive! So what are QST's? Quarter square triangles are square patchwork units comprised of four equal 90 degree triangles. The triangles are cut from a square of fabric, and you simply cut diagonally across the square, corner to corner, twice to yield four triangles from one square. When I'm sewing QST's, I like to cut the initial square a little larger than required and then trim the QST units to size once they're sewn. QST's can get wonky and I remember being very disheartened the first time I sewed an Ohio Star block because I lost most of my points. Cutting the triangles larger and trimming at the end fixes that problem and you should get perfect points every single time. The other important thing to remember is block orientation. Make sure your blocks are laid out as per the step by step photo's, and double check before you sew to avoid any pesky unpicking! This is extremely important if you decide to add another colour to the QST's - you want them all in the correct position. Today we're sewing a 6" block (finished) using two fabrics and at the end of the tutorial I've provided a Cutting Chart for you to download which includes cutting requirements for six sizes, so you don't have to do the math for future projects. Ok, that's all the business out of the way. Let's have some fun and sew an Ohio Star block together: From your background fabric cut: 4 x 2 1/2" squares (A) 2 x 3 1/2" squares cut diagonally twice to yield 8 triangles (B) From your print fabric cut: 1 x 2 1/2" square (C) 2 x 3 1/2" squares cut diagonally twice to yield 8 triangles (D) Sew a white (B) triangle to each of the eight print (D) triangles along the right short side. Press seams towards the print triangles for nesting. Carefully matching the centre seam, sew two units together along the long sides to make a QST. Repeat for the remaining three QST's. Press seams open to create a flat seam. Carefully trim each QST to 2 1/2" square - use the seam lines and the markings on your ruler to trim accurately and to retain those precious points. Arrange the four white background (A) squares, the four QST units and the print (C) square into three rows of three squares, as shown in the photo above. Please ensure correct orientation of QST units prior to sewing to avoid unpicking seams. Sew the squares together into the three rows, pressing seams away from the QST's for nesting. Carefully matching all seams, sew the three rows together, pressing seams open to complete your Ohio Star block which should measure 6 1/2" square. And that's it! A beautiful Ohio Star block to add to future projects! Did you have fun? I guarantee you'll want to sew many many more of these cuties - it's hard to stop at one! To make it easy for you, I've put together a Cutting Chart for six different sized blocks, so you can use this block in other projects and you don't have to worry about doing all the math. I've also included the trimming size for the QST's to use as a reference. Simply click on the link to download and print your chart or right click on the photo below and save it to your computer. I hope you enjoyed today's tutorial and if you have any questions please leave me a comment or shoot me an email - I'm always here to help! Next week in my Ohio Star Classic Quilt Blocks series, I'm sharing my favorite quilts using this gorgeous block. There's a lovely mix of traditional and modern designs and I'll give you all the links and information so you can make these quilts yourself. Thanks for sewing with me today! Happy quilting :)
We have a huge stash of free patterns in our Free Quilt Inspiration archive and we are excited to share them with you. To go to the orig...
Ever wondered what a Quilter's "Flying Geese" was and why its called that? See the simple steps how you can make them! - FREE Beginner Friendly Patterns!
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We're often focused on award-winning quilts and new designs. Then we realized that we have an album of photos of vintage and vintage-inspir...
One of my favourite things in quilting is hexagon blocks and I just love kaleidoscope blocks. To make a kaleidoscope quilt, you only need fabric with a large print and 6 print repeats. Each block is a
In this post you will learn what is filet crochet and how it's crocheted. I linked a lot of inspirations and free patterns, too!
My Classic Quilt Block for August has been the Sawtooth Star and if you didn't already love it, I hope you do now and you're off sewing a gazillion of these pretty little blocks. I've got another step by step tutorial for you today and this Sawtooth Star block is constructed a little different to the ones I've shared, and the best part is...you can't lose your points! One thing a lot of quilters struggle with is losing the points from blocks like the Sawtooth Star. It can be discouraging but don't let it stop you. Some of my earlier work has missing points (some of my recent work too, so don't look too closely) but you know, that has never altered the amount of love these quilts have received. There's a saying - "It's better to create something that others can criticise than to never create and criticise others!" Just keep sewing lovelies, lost points and all! But if you're really struggling or if you just want to sew without having to worry about the points, then this tutorial is just for you: This Sawtooth Star block is constructed as a nine patch and there's some simple sew and flip corners to make is super easy and lots of fun! You don't have to worry about points and the only problem you will have is choosing which fabrics to use and how many blocks to sew. :) This tutorial will yield a 9" square block (finished) and you'll be able to use it for lots of future projects. Ok, here we go: From your background fabric cut: 8 x 3 1/2" squares - (A) From your print fabrics cut: 1 x 3 1/2" square - (B) 8 x 2 1/2" squares - (C) Draw a diagonally line from corner to corner on the wrong side of each of the eight print (C) squares, using either a pen or pencil. This will be your sewing line. Position a print (C) square in the top left hand corner of four of the background (A) squares, right sides together and aligned along the raw edges. Use the photo to ensure correct orientation of the print square. Sew along the drawn lines. Trim the excess fabric from each unit 1/4" from the drawn line and press seams towards the print fabric. Position the four remaining print (C) squares in the top right hand corner of the four units, right sides together and aligned along the raw edges. Use the photo to ensure correct orientation of the print square. Sew along the drawn lines. Trim the excess fabric from each unit 1/4" from the drawn line and press towards the print fabric. It's important that these units remain 3 1/2" square so trim if required. Arrange the four star point units, the four remaining background (A) squares and the print (C) square into three rows of three units. Use the photo to ensure the correct orientation of all units. Sew the units together into the three rows, pressing seams in alternate directions. Sew the three rows together, along the long sides and pressing seams open to complete your Sawtooth Star block which should measure 9 1/2" square. And that's it! One simple, sweet Sawtooth Star floating in the block with all its points intact and isn't gorgeous? Now all you need to do is decide how many of these blocks you want to sew! ;) And that's the last of my posts on the gorgeous Sawtooth Star. I hope you've enjoyed this month's Classic Quilt Blocks series. I have another stunning block picked out for next month and I've planned a few different ways to share it with you. I can't wait! Happy quilting :)
It is time to introduce block 14, of the I dropped the button box quilt. I must admit to enjoying the process of documenting this quilt. As I write, I remember just how much I enjoyed stitching it. I think it was the ‘all pieces different’ aspect that was a …
Hello fellow Gypsies (and everyone following along)! It’s time to finish our sampler quilt journey. I’ve really enjoyed cohosting the 2019 Gypsy Wife Quilt-Along with @ScrappyViolet . It’s a quilt I’ve wanted to make for a long time.
Fun Poinsettia's! Isn't this a super fun runner for the Holiday's! We've got a free tutorial to share with you on how to make this simple "Fun Poinsettia" block, using the Quick Curve Ruler. Click here, to view and download your free pdf "Fun Poinsettia" block. 20 1/2" x 20 1/2" I made 3 blocks and put them together to make a runner, but I think a whole bunch of these would make a fabulous quilt. You could do up one for a darling pillow too! I wanted to make my poinsettia's to match my kitchen. Helen is making hers in more traditional holiday colors. They really take on a different look and I love the spinning petals created with this block! So if you are in need of a fun little holiday treat for yourself or need to make up a last minute gift for someone, than this is a perfect quilt project for you! Fun, fast and best of all....super easy!! We've started a Fun Poinsettia Flickr Group for those of you that want to share your Poinsettia's with us and each other! We would love to see what you come up with! Have fun and occasionally we'll check in to see how your "Fun Poinsettia's" are coming along! ~Jenny and Helen~
Hi there! Welcome to Mini Quilt Mania! We are kicking off our month long series today! We have a full schedule of mini quilt tutorials from...
Not all curves are created equal! Today, we're looking at quilts that feature quilt blocks incorporating wheels in some way. Plus, some technique tips!
It is time to move on to block 13, of the I dropped the button box crazy quilt. I know many people enjoy monotone crazy quilt blocks and I hope people will enjoy seeing it in more detail over the next week or so. As you can see there are 6 …
Quilt probably made from a Kansas City Star pattern in the 1940s or '50s. Mrs. S.L. Heacock of Hartford, Kansas (near Emporia) mailed the design to the Star where it was published as Flower Ring on May 29, 1940. It's an unusual version of the Pickle Dish, just like a Double Wedding Ring but with spiky points rather than the usual wedding ring arcs. BlockBase #459.2 Double Wedding Rings have truncated points. Ms. Heacock may have had an old quilt in the Flower Ring design. Here's a similar pattern from the book Texas Quilts: Texas Treasures called Pine Burr or Pickle Dish, attributed to Elizabeth Ruff Mitchell in Texas or Georgia. Quilt shows the fading and color schemes typical of the 1880-1920 era. I'd guess a fabric designer working for a feedsack company might have seen the Kansas City Star design as there is a similar pattern in a feedsack designed to be re-used as a pillow case with a border included. As the pattern is in BlockBase+ you can print it out any size. An 11" version fits on an 8-1/2" x 11" sheet of paper. A Challenge!
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The Modern Fans quilt pattern is incredibly versatile. By rearranging the unique quilt blocks you can make lots of different layouts and designs.
