Back in January, Carrie Nelson and I were on a road trip and stopped by to see Kimberly at The Fat Quarter Shop. Kimberly decided to start a series of Q& A with Kimberly videos and we were the guinea pigs. We had a great time visiting and answering questions from online viewers. I mentioned the log cabin quilt that I made back in the 80’s. I have had several people ask me to show the quilt so I dug it out of the playpen from my grandson’s house.
What can you make with a Moda Charm pack, a moda candy and a few yards of bella solids?
I am pulling this blog post out of my draft section because I share a free little pattern download at the bottom of the post but also wanted to share the incredible quilting.
A charm pack (42-5″ squares) and a mini charm pack (42-2 1/2″ squares) So easy. Start sewing with the precuts to make a quick project during balancing all the summer schedules. Plenty of room for autographs for a family reunion project.
WOWSER! Feathers Galore!
Hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of summer.
Here in Texas the heat and humidity has hit us.
If you want the pattern, click here for a free download.
Pattern includes a larger version that uses 2 charm packs and 2 mini charms.
I would love to see what you make. Share your pic on FB or IG and tag me, @modalissa.
How super cool is Lisa Bongean of Primitive Gatherings? She is the first person to be shown on the cover of American Patchwork & Quilting. This does make her the official cover girl of quilting. Nick, her husband, thought she should do the photo shoot in a bikini, until everyone informed him it was not that type of cover girl. (just kidding, Nick!!)
I was tickled to see Lisa on the cover and then continued to flip through the pages to see some of my other friends. Vanessa Goetzen of Lella Boutique’s bright shiny face on page 5, Betsy Chutchian‘s reproduction quilt, Just Toasty on page 35, Pat Sloan, Bonanza of Baskets on page 54, and then on page 79 I almost wet my pants. There was my quilt, Kettle Corn. You know I love scrappy quilts and mixing all kinds of Moda designers fabrics into one quilt. I also love fall and I can be found munching on kettle corn regardless of what time of the year it is. 
My family must think I am a bit of a mad scientist. I am always dipping, dying, bleaching and messing with fabrics. I had a variety of fabrics and wondered what they would look like bleached and overdyed. I loved how some of the modern lines turned almost vintage with a dunk into bleach. Shown here is the quilt top before it was sent to the quilter. It really shows off the variety of prints.
Everything including fabrics from Sandy Gervias, Urban Chics, Zen Chic, Vanessa Christenson, Barbara Brackman, Fig Tree and Sweetwater. I guess I could have named it Kitchen Sink since many of the fabrics have spent some time there and I threw in such a variety. Love it!
To be in such good company with all the people in this issue warms my heart.
Can’t wait for the season to change to fall and be surrounded by all things pumpkins.
Look for the October issue of American Patchwork and Quilting!!
Also a thank you shout out to Carrie Nelson and Elizabeth Besse. I was recouping from surgery so they jumped in and wrote the article for me.
I had the easy part of making the quilt.
-modalissa
Vin DuJour Stars
Sounds like a peaceful evening under a sky full of twinkling lights drinking a few glasses of bubbly.
Hello and Welcome,
I am thrilled and nervous at the same time to kick off Melissa Corry’s Irish Chain Blog hop. Melissa has all kinds of fun things planned for this hop. Each day you will be visiting 2 different stops and I guarantee there will be so much color throughout.
Did you play with Pick Up Sticks as a kid? I found them quite challenging and spent hours balancing those little buggers. Melissa’s pick up sticks quilt is a realistic interpretation of thin colorful sticks balancing end to end throughout the quilt. Melissa used Carolyn Frielander’s collection which also gave this quilt an architectural feel.
I wanted to mix mine up and started with the classic colors of Red and White but was not to happy with my choices. I kept coming back to Melissa’s version. We have all agonized over color and fabrics, right? I wanted mine to look exactly like the one I saw, Exactly. Please tell me you have done that.
I did 15 jumping jacks to get my heart pumping and blood to the brain.
Then I decided I would do a positive – negative version of her quilt. I still wanted an architectural, yet almost industrial look so I went with an assortment of greys and used whites as my sticks.
My quilt top looks like steel buildings with reflective windows climbing the skyline.
If you squint at the picture above it almost looks robotic.
Squint again and there is a chunky plus sign shape that will be quilted as an overall design. I think this will give the quilt a sleek secondary look.
The fabrics are a combination of greys, whites and cremes from Amy Ellis and Zen Chic. They are so perfect for a quilt for a man in your life.
Hop on over to Fat Quarter Shop to see the quilt that Joceyln is making.
Check back every day as these talented quilters each share their Irish Chain.
Melissa has some goodies lined up for her Grand Prize Giveaway
-Modalissa
One of my previous posts mentioned that I was going to document a few of my quilts and share their stories. so in no particular order……
This is probably one of my best loved quilts, really I should say best USED quilts. It is also one of the first quilts that I had machine quilted in a wonderful all over snoopy loop design. At the time commercial machine quilting was fairly new. Machine quilting and the talented machine quilters have single handedly reinvented the art of quilting. Machine quilting has also helped facilitate making more quilts. Thank you for that!!
The general poop about this quilt is as follows:
The strips are 1″ finished. The layout of these blocks is done in a big barn raising style. The border is a mission valley woven. Traditionally the center of log cabins were red or yellow representing love or warmth in the home. A friend of mine hung this quilt in her den for years. She needed something to cover the wall while decorating for a party and we both thought this quilt was just the thing. Since her home was like my second home the quilt stayed there for years until I pointed out to her that the corner of the quilt still needed the binding sewn down.
Since then this quilt has been on many a family picnic, fort building adventure and now resides as a play mat for my little grandson.
Another tidbit about this quilt is that I used all kinds of fabrics. In the 80’s I was a young mom and a fairly new quilter. There were not very many quilt stores around at this time. I would go to any fabric store and buy fabric by the inch. Can you believe that?
Right?
That would be insane now.
I would go and buy a few inches of as many different fabrics as I could possible find. Since the selection was limited this also meant that not everything matched or maybe I was not yet very confident in my color choices or both.
I sent the quilt top to a machine quilter in another state. This was in the early eighties and keep in mind, the quilting resurgence started in 1975. There were not many quilt stores, and there certainly were not many home machine quilters. I found a company that quilted fabric for those big puffy bedspreads.
I convinced them to quilt my patchwork and NO, I did not want 3″ tall batting.
I am sure they thought, oh this poor young thing, she has no hope or sense of color.
Little did they know that I had a plan all along. I wet the entire quilt and threw it in my washing machine along with a little bit of tan rit dye. I thought what the heck, and loved the look of the quilt when I was done. Some how magically the tan dye made all those calicos “go-together.”
You could possibly say this was the beginning of my love of jelly rolls. And I do still love to experiment with bleaching and dyeing fabrics!!
enjoy,
modalissa