Changing Patterns

I’m sure many of you do this, for I can’t be the only one! You see a pattern you like, but you’d like it better in your own colors and/or fabrics. Or, in my case, you see a quilt you love – but you know you’ll never make the whole thing.

For the record, I do love to do needleturn applique. But committing myself to an entire quilt of needleturn applique is just asking for trouble. I know it will never be completed. So, I got a brilliant idea and decided to make just one block of the quilt. I’m talking about Wenche’s Christmas Balitimore BOM Quilt. It’s very beautiful, but in a rare moment of honesty with myself, I ‘fessed up and said, “Even at 1 block a month, I won’t get it done.” So, I decided to do 1 block but I wanted it to be summer like, so that I could hang it in my beach cottage. (haha – yeah, in my dreams, I do have a beach cottage but that’s as far as it gets.) Another thing I like to do is frame quilt blocks, rather than make them into pillows or a 1-block hanging.

Summer-like fabrics would be … Linen! Yup, that’s the one!

Summer Morning Glories a.k.a. Wenche's Baltimore Christmas

I printed the template pages onto freezer paper cut into 8.5 x 11 sheets. I turned on my new favorite TV show Bunheads and spent a nice 45 minutes cutting out all the pieces. It wasn’t a solid 45 minutes of cutting out pieces, sometimes I had to stop and watch the show!

Okay, so, I get all the pieces cut out, and laid onto the background. Pin and take it the sewing machine. I love to free-style straight stitch and that’s what I did. The flowers – I think they were supposed to be roses – I turned into morning glories. I added some veining to the leaves and kept it all very simple.

Close-up

close-up 2

Here are some pictures of a pillow I free-styled straight stitched. You can do this with just about any design. I didn’t do a lot of stopping and starting, I would just backtrack till I got to the new line to sew -

Pillow

white silk pillow with free-style straight stitching

Now, all I need is the right frame. I’ll hit the thrift shops for that. When I find it, and get the quilt block framed, I’ll do another post on that process.

This project took about an hour (not counting the watching TV or cutting), making it a quick and easy project. I might take a look at my Christmas list and see how many of these I could turn out before December!