Showing posts with label 100 Modern Quilt Blocks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 100 Modern Quilt Blocks. Show all posts

Friday, September 10, 2021

Dear Tula With a Twist Quilt

My Dear Tula with a Twist (DTWT) quilt is my September finish for Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge but more importantly is the last of the three Dear Tula Pink quilts started in 2013. I posted about the Dear Tula Pink Quilts in 2017 in which my two Quilt Peeps (Mary and Linda, my 21st Century Bulls-Eye QALers) and I all made and exchanged quilt blocks from Tula Pink’s 100 Modern Quilt Block book. To make a long story short, neither of us made all 100 blocks and since we all used such different fabric combinations, there was no way one quilt could be made so I decided I would make three separate quilts. The first quilt comprising of Linda’s blocks was made in 2014 and my quilt was made in 2017.
Mary’s blocks were made mainly from a 2010 Sanae OZ fabric line from Moda which I loved and intended to purchase but never did. I was happy to see Mary used it for these blocks except for one thing; she also used a Thimbleberries print with is the cinnamon brown floral print which is also one of my favorite prints but wouldn’t use it with the Oz prints. I will say it did closely match with one of the colors in the print. When I describe Mary’s quilt style, I always say it’s mostly traditional but with a twist, thus the reason why I named this quilt Dear Tula With a Twist. I received her blocks in 2014 and later when I was in Arkansas and visited a small quilt shop by the resort, I was happy to find fat quarters and yardage of the focus print of the OZ collection. I still, though, was undecided with what to make but knew that strips and squares were going to be involved.
One of the challenges with making this quilt was to finally decided on the quilt design and the DTWT quilt is what I called making do with what I had; a two yard piece of the lovely focus print, yardage of the green and brown stripe, various fat quarters with twenty-one of Tula/Mary blocks. Not to throw Mary under the bus, but I will, before I could do anything, the blocks needed to be trimmed to a consistent size since they were not the 6.5” size as in the book and you know I hate making anything with increments that are not whole or half inch.
I’m quite pleased with what I came up with, a vertical row quilt with three rows of seven each of the Tula/Mary block offset with four rows of plain blocks made from the fat quarters. All of the blocks were sashed with the green and brown stripe fabric. Sadly, I only had enough fabric to make a quilt measuring 40”x52”.
The 40”x52” size turned out to be the perfect size because I only had two yards of this lovely focus print which I may have wanted to use for the front of the quilt. I could not bear to cut it and thought it would be best to save it for the backing.  This is really a big print, the flowers almost measure 12” tall and could be one of those quilts you want to show off the back.
Quilting was going to be tight since there was only a little more than an inch on each side and thankfully there were no problems.
I decided to machine quilt wavy lines, 1 inch apart, with #6001 Yellow Aurifil thread and love  the way it looks and feel.

Here’s another pic; I just love how this quilt turned out.
The size of this quilt is what I call a nice size for it to be a leg warmer or car quilt and I won’t have any problems using it for this reason. I am finding that during short/capri season my legs do get cold sometimes. As for the OZ scraps I have leftover, I promised them to Linda since she still hasn’t made anything with the Tula/Mary blocks yet. I’m pretty sure Mary has fabric for her quilt if she decides to ever make her quilt.
Just a reminder that next week is Kelly Young’s Blog Tour for her latest book Scrappy Improv Quilting and I am so excited to finally reveal my project on Wednesday, 9/15. I hope you visit my post as well as the other participants on this tour. I cannot say enough wonderful things about this book; the projects, instructions, the section organization, etc. and I bet you will find a project you will be inspired to make. You can check out the blog tour schedule Here.

Linking up with My Quilt Infatuation, NTT

Thursday, July 27, 2017

The Dear Tula Pink Quilt is Finally Finished

I started my Dear Tula Pink Quilt in 2013 right after I retired and this was going to be the quilt project to make sure I kept my focus on quilting and not waste any of my newly acquired "free time."   
I purchased Tula Pink's 100 Modern Quilt Blocks right after it was published in 2013.  To prepare for this project, I had the book spiral bound, purchased a Moleskine graph paper book to keep track of the blocks and the fabrics used for each block and I even set up a Pinterest board.  I called this project "Dear Tula Pink" because this was going to be, for me, like the "Dear Jane" quilt started by Brenda Papadakis which was very popular at that time, and may still be, and it was the quilt to make for those who like a challenge.
One of my favorite color combinations is black, gray, brown, tan, gold, taupe and beige. I used a mash of Civil War, Asian, Traditional, Modern, Blenders, Florals, Geometrics and Novelty prints for this quilt.  Luckily for me after I pulled these fabrics from my stash, I found a print online of the Skyscrapers which, to me, tied in all of these colors.  I was planning to use this for the borders.

These are some of the blocks which you can see the different fabric types used.

And now for some stories as to how my Dear Tula Pink was made and finally finished after four years.  First of all, I intended to make all 100 of these blocks.  After I had made a few of the blocks, I happened to show them to my two quilt peeps and they wanted to join in--it would be a nice group project they said.  Each one of us would make three of the same blocks and share them with each other. Unfortunately, this idea ended less than a year after one peep made around 30 blocks and the other one whose idea was to do this together only did 21. I ended up making 39 blocks.  I was disappointed, but understood, that the other two peeps didn't have as much time as I did and when you think about it, 39 blocks multiply by four (I made two of each for myself) is 156 blocks and I was getting tired of them, especially making four of the same blocks and they were 6" finished which is too small for me.  I do like to think if I did the project by myself and only made one of each block, I probably could have made all 100 blocks.
After the decision was made to discontinue making the blocks. I made this quilt using some of the blocks made by one peep based on one of the layout ideas in the book.  I used two shades of dyed muslin and a colorful stripe fabric I had in my stash.  It's only a coverlet, no batting, just a backing of tan corduroy with light quilting.

It took me around two years to finally come up with the layout for my blocks and the funny story is that I had just finished putting together my Gypsy Wife blocks last year and if you are familiar with this pattern, the blocks are set in strips of fabric which I just didn't want to do (I was mentally exhausted after making those GW blocks) so my blocks were laid in a Sampler layout.  But with my Dear Tula Pink quilt, I wanted to set these blocks with fabric strips and solid pieces of the Skyscraper print.  After a couple of false starts this year, I finally quilted Dear Tula Pink with straight line quilting using a variegated black, brown and tan thread.

While I was finishing up this quilt and I was on Pinterest, I noticed that someone had pinned one of the blocks I had on my Dear Tula Pink Project board.  It turned out it was a block made by my dear quilt blog friend Susan Snooks, PatchworknPlay, and I had probably pinned before we became friends.  I noticed her block had similar colors and fabrics like my quilt so I went on her blog to find her finished quilt and I was amazed at the similarities between our two quilts using the same colors and fabric designs and that her blocks were laid out in the skyline layout (remember I featured a Skyscraper print in my quilt).  I sent a message to Susan asking her for the link to her quilt so you can check it out for yourself: Susan's City Skyline Quilt.  Pretty freaky, don't you think?  Susan started and finished her City Skyline quilt in 2013.  Too bad I didn't know her back then, maybe I would have made more blocks, we definitely could have shared blocks.

On my Minus 100 Yard Challenge, I guess I shouldn't have been so over confident that I could reach this goal, maybe I should have tried for a Minus 10 Yard Challenge instead.  In defense of my fabric purchases so far this month, all I can say it's July and that means sizzling Sidewalk Sales.  Sadly I didn't have to leave the house to make my purchases.

Previous YTD Total:   -49.125 yards
Current YTD Total:    -38.125 yards

Linking up with:

My Quilt Infatuation: Needle and Thread Thursday
Crazy Mom Quilts:Finish It Up Friday
Confessions of a Fabric Addict:  Can I Get A Whoop Whoop?
Busy Hands Quilts:  Finish Or Not Friday