The Scrambling Ernie Quilt

Last Saturday was National Sew A Jelly Roll Day and my plan was to make an Ernie Quilt which uses 2.5” strips in memory of Mary Etherington/Country Threads late cat Ernie who passed away in late May. Even though I didn’t sew a Jelly Roll which I had a few in my stash, I think my bases were covered by using all Moda prints and Mary’s latest pattern Rambling Rows which is a variation of an Ernie Quilt. What’s especially nice is that Scrambling Ernie only took me six days to finish despite having a busy weekend involving Hubby having two band gigs and  an outing with the Peeps and our husbands.

First, a little background on the Rambling Rows pattern. Back in July, I sent Mary a pic of my FALLoween II quilt which was my July finish for Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge. Several of her followers asked her for a pattern for this quilt which was my own design based on the Sandy Gervais fabrics I had in my stash.

I gave Mary the measurements of the blocks and then she tweaked, wrote and drew up the pattern and she made the above quilt. When she first sent me the photo, I thought it was a Jelly Roll Race quilt but it’s the pattern we named Rambling Rows. I love how scrappy Mary made hers with Denyse Schmitz scraps and how much more random her layout is versus FALLoween II. This pattern really is versatile since you can improvise by changing the size of the blocks/strip sets which Mary did since she ran out of Denyse Schmitz scrap and used other fabrics in her stash. I love how her strips sets are not like the usual Ernie strips which uses only two fabrics,  which contrast with each other by color or value and looks like stripes, but four different fabrics. 

I wanted to make a Rambling Rows quilt using my Moda’s Sweetwater stash of different collections: Authentic, Pure, Hometown, Sew Noteworthy, Make Life, Road 15, Wishes, Branded, etc. and needed some help with the gray and black fabrics which are from Jen Kingwell, Basic Grey, and Blackbird Designs. I love Sweetwater fabrics and they have a special place in my quilt memories since I used their Hometown Christmas fabrics for the Jelly Roll Charm Chase Quilt I did for Moda Bake Shop. I love that their collection always include some text prints and the special green I call Citronickle. I thought I had a lot of Sweetwater fabrics as my bin is full, but apparently I missed buying fabric from forty of their other collections.

After my blocks and strip sets were made, I first laid them out randomly and did not like the way it looked. To me the problem were the red blocks which after looking at Mary’s quilt, I should have used two different fabrics for the top and bottom strips and not just one. So, I was scrambling to make what I had work which meant putting back the red and yellow strips I had taken out and adding more blue and green blocks. BTW, the yellow strips reminded me of scrambled eggs which is another reason for naming this quilt Scrambling Ernie. At first, I wasn’t happy with the layout I ended up with thinking that it was too planned but realized that this is the layout for Rambling Rows. It helps to make the strips sets with four different fabrics instead of two. I already have another one in the works and this time for it to look more random,  I will use four different fabrics in four different for the strips so it will not look like stripes and two different strips for the blocks.

Here are some close-ups of the fabrics from different collections which played so well with each other. The multi-color orange peel print on the bottom right, just above, was what I used to based my fabric selection. Machine quilting using CT Essential Thread in Stone and there was no problem with my usual straight and wavey line quilting. I had wanted to use a black/white mini check by Urban Chix but I did not have enough and was resolved to used another Moda print for the binding which ended up to be the gray and white Pinwheel print by Sweetwater. The backing which is the only print not by Moda and is a print I purchased several years ago from Joann’s. I thought it went well and there’s less yardage now in the backing vault. Scrambling Ernie measures 56” x 80”. 

Here are the three Rambling Rows together where you can see how the layout and fabrics used makes a difference. I can see for myself now that making the strip sets with four different fabrics does really make the Scrambling Ernie fun. I remember when I finished FALLoween II, I wasn’t too thrilled with it and probably because planning and balancing the layout was so tiring. I really love the improv look and randomness of Mary’s Rambling Row. The Rambling Rows patterns can be purchased by sending a $5.00 check with a SSAE to: Mary Etherington, 2345 Palm Avenue, Garner, IA 50438. This really is a fast and fun pattern which can be used with scraps or stash. There are other patterns in her shop and purchasing a pattern helps supports her blog, which I found out fees can be expensive, as well as leasing a copier, etc. You can read about Mary’s blog about “Nothing” Here. This is not an affiliate link, just introducing someone who is fun to know.

I was hoping to take some outdoor photos of  Scrambling Ernie at home or at the GP House but it’s been rainy at both places so I only have indoor photos. Now that we’re at the GP House, I realized that Scrambling Ernie will be staying here in our bedroom where it will hang on the quilt rack directly across from the Sweetwater Road 15 wall hanging. Sweet, right?

Update: Of course the day after I posted, the Sun came out so I could finally take a photo outside.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation/NTT

A Razzle Dazzle Finish

Let me start this Post by saying how much I love my Razzle Dazzle quilt which I finished just less than two months after the flimsy was made in late July. I love the Ruby Star fabrics and the Razzle Dazzle pattern of 18” blocks with a fun twist on a Churn Dash block. I think this quilt lives up to the definition of Razzle Dazzle which means “noisy, showing exciting activity displayed and designed to attract and impress.”

The fabric and pattern are from the Fat Quarter Shop’s Ruby Star Society Quarterly Club I received earlier this year. I belong to several Fat Quarter Shop Clubs and do have to admit that I love receiving monthly or quarterly shipments of fabric. However, there has only been very few times that I actually have made a project using both the pattern and fabrics. When I received this pattern with the 12 fat quarter bundle of fabric from the Linear Floradora and Petunia collections, I knew I wanted to make this quilt because the fabric was fun plus I love big blocks especially when I can die-cut all of the patches. I did make one slight change to the pattern by not using a solid light as shown but instead I paired the fabrics with other fabrics, mostly lights, I had in my Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society stash. This made for a very low contrast or “mush” as I call it and like how busy Razzle Dazzle looks.

The only challenge I had was making sure all of the blocks were made and laid out correctly which was sometimes difficult to determine because of the many prints used.

All of my fabric combinations for each block were fun but the above two are my favorite. You wouldn’t think that a color combination of gold, red orange, lilacs and pinks would work but it does.

Machine quilting with both straight and wavey lines using a medium gray Aurifil thread went well until I was thinking this quilt was Razzle Dazzle with No Frazzle. Then, of course afterwards, came a few rows have tiny puckers here and there. You can’t see them but I know where they are. The backing is a Robert Kaufman wide back print. Surprisingly, one of my favorite parts of my quilt is the gold stripe binding which is a Ruby Star Society Warp and Weft print and was not my first choice. I was going to use a fuchsia print from  another Ruby Star Society collection but decided it wouldn’t look bold enough against the warm prints and glad I found the gold stripe binding in my stash. Razzle Dazzle measures 54” x 72”.

Now that Razzle Dazzle is my second finish for September, I am ready for my next project. I didn’t realize until a few days ago that September 16th is National Sew a Jelly Roll Day. I thought it wasn’t until next weekend which meant I would be at the GP House. I was already planning on making a Ernie Quilt in memory of  Mary Etherington’s beloved American Farm Tiger cat, Ernie.

Mary Etherington designed the first Ernie Quilt which was made with a Denyse Schmidt Jelly Roll back in 2016. Here is the link to Her Post.

I will be making a variation of an Ernie Quilt called Rambling Rows and you can purchase this pattern by sending a check for $5 with a self addressed stamped envelope to Mary Etherington, 2343 Palm Avenue, Garner IA 50438. (Not an affiliate link). Once I make my version, I already know that there will be an explanation behind my quilt. Hopefully, I will be able to explain next week.

Jack In The Box 23 Quilt

Jack In the Box 23 is my September finish for Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge which I finished on September 2nd but couldn’t Post until today. I have once again have befallen to what seems like an annual “knee/sciatica/piriformis” pain during this time of year and sadly the culprit seems to be Quilting.  I really did not expect that pressing a flimsy and backing, basting and machine quilting a small quilt and then pressing another backing and flimsy would cause a flare-up. But anyhoot, after the usual five days of resting, taking OTC, no studio time, a few Pajamazon Days and finally a visit to the Chiropractor after Labor Day, I am back on the quilting saddle although I have imposed some time limitations for awhile.

There is a lot of story about the Jack in the Box 23 which is the second quilt I’ve made of the Jack in the Box pattern from Sue Pfau’s One Bundle of Fun. This book was published in 2016 and there are so many great patterns which uses fat quarter bundles, jelly rolls and layer cakes that I’ve already have another quilt or two planned. 

The first Jack in the Box flimsy was made in 2017 and I used a Jenn Ski Tiki Tok layer cake which was perfect for this pattern  as it works well with large scale or novelty prints. It was finally finished in January, 2020.

Sometime after the Tiki Tok flimsy was made and since I loved the Jack in the Box pattern so much, I planned to make another one with another fun modern graphic fabric line, Julie Comstock 23 fabrics which I had a charm pack and yardage. Soon after I cut the strips and squares I forgot all about it. In my defense,  2017 was a busy year for me which I finished 24 quilts, 5 wallhangings, 12 baby quilts for the Blanket Ministry at my church and probably the biggest distraction of all, this was the year my darling Granddaughter was born which numerous projects were also done for her.

It wasn’t until December 2020, when I made my Mori Girls flimsy on the right that I finally made the Jack in the Box 23 flimsy. It was only made because while I was making Mori Girls I kept thinking that the colors of the fabrics reminded me of another fabric collection so I did some searching around my studio and found the Jack in the Box 23 project. Of course after finding this and feeling guilty about forgetting it, I had to make the flimsy. I added Jack in the Box 23 on my Dirty Dozen UFO list for this year since the Mori Girls Quilt was a finally finished a year earlier in August, 2022. Is it me, but 2020 seems to be just last year but really it’s two to three years depending on how you look at it.

After our return from the GP House last week and finding out that #4 was drawn for the DD Challenge, I knew Jack in the Box 23 was my pick out of the five projects to finish. It helped that the backing was already sewn which I must have done last year when I was finishing Mori Girls. The backing fabric which is the Dots on yellow fabric on the left is the one that kept coming to mind when I was sewing Mori Girls. The machine quilting was vertical straight and wavy lines, the same way I did for Tiki Tok, and I used CT Essential Thread in Parchment. The binding, safely stored in the binding drawer, is a pink/red orange mini check which I thought would work well with the fabrics. Jack in the Box 23 measures 42”x64”, approx.

I thought my last pic for this Post would be of the two Jack in the Box quilts which is a great pattern for fun fabrics. It’s a nice size for keeping the lap and knees warm and would make great gifts for the “golden babies” who are retiring, celebrating a milestone birthdays or new grandparents who will have a quilt for cuddling. I’m glad the Jack in the Box 23 is a Finally Finished after six years and also glad I’ve finished my September UFO. But I still have at least another finish planned, maybe more, but I have to remember I have limitations at least for awhile. I really don’t like pain nor having to spend time away from my studio, but have I learned my lesson, maybe……