Lotta TaDa—The Last Two Quilts Finally Finished

I thought this was a good title for my post about my Lotta Jansdotter quilts. Last August, I observed a”Ya Gotta Lotta” month with the making and finishing of the Lucky Jerry Lotta Quilt plus two flimsies using my stash of Lotta Jansdotter fabric. I’m participating in the 2022/23 Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge and have a choice of finishing a project that’s either a UFO or the designated color/pattern of the month. I’ve also included additional choices like a project with a designated fabric designer, scraps or a flimsy waiting to be quilted which is my preferred choice. 

Lotta Jansdotter was my August designer and although my plan was to quilt my Mori Girls flimsy, I was distracted by my Studio Squirrels who were chanting “Ya Gotta Lotta” inside my head so the Lucky Jerry was a start and finish way before mid August. After that, I did finally quilt Mori Girls and then proceeded to make four more flimsies, two of which from the still not depleted Lotta Jansdotter stash. 

Here are details of these two quilts:

The Lotta Love Bundle Buster quilt is a modified version of Quilting Jet Girl’s Bundle Buster pattern (not an affiliate link but one of my favorite patterns for strips).

When the Lucky Jerry Lotta Quilt was being planned and the decision made to eliminate the orange, blue, purple, fuchsia, pinks and lilac fabrics, I still wanted to make a quilt with these fabrics and the Bundle Buster pattern was perfect. This is the fifth time I have made a quilt with this pattern and it’s really easy to modify the size of the strips and blocks.

Here’s a pic of some of the blocks in the quilt and you can see the different colors playing well with each other.

Lotta Love is the third quilt I quilted with Jinny Janome and unfortunately I had some problems with what I call dragging but was soon remedied. Since I wanted to quilt straight vertical lines 1” apart, I used a quilt guide on the walking foot which put some pressure on the quilt sandwich and I should have set my pressure at zero instead of 1.5 which is my usual setting. Lesson learned for the future. I used Aurifil thread in Silver.

The backing was the blue bead stripe which I had in my stash for way over five years and the binding was my favorite stripe in Citronickle. Lotta Love Bundle Buster measures 64” x 80”.

Orangentina, so named way before Argentina won the Soccer World Cup, but I will admit singing the Evita song while this quilt was being made. Since I still had some squares and strips left over from Lotta Love,I decided to make a quilt like my previous Slinky quilts. I used the orange bead stripe as the setting strips on the side but alternated the direction to give it more interest and I like the look. I finished the flimsy before the Lotta Love flimsy which was my reason for quilting it first.

Here’s a close-up  of the quilting; I quilted wavey and straight lines with Aurifil thread in silver with no problems. I have to mention that there is a print that is not Lotta Jansdotter and its the blue stripe print with the gray Seals. I thought it went well especially since I thought the Cat print needed company.

And speaking of the Cat print, I was very proud of myself for using it as part of the backing. Good Quilt Friend, Carol, gifted me with three yards of this fabric, even after I threw her under the bus with Mary Etherington who started the Ernie quilts which were named after her orange Farm Tiger/Cat. Carol has an unique gift of interpreting quilt patterns and I happened to point it out to Mary. When I was given the fabric, I did plan on using it for a backing and may have been a little hesitant at first but decided it went well with the orange stripe. Do you see that organic shadow on the left photo? I hope it’s not bad woo-woo from Carol because I could not figure out what was causing this shadow to appear. The binding is the other navy stripe in the Lotta Jansdotter collection. Orangentina measures 60”x84”.

Here’s a photo of the three quilts together, the Lotsa Lotta Lovelies. These quilts have me thinking of Summer especially with the cold, wet weather we’re having today which is why all the photos were taken indoors. I can see these three quilts laying on porch cots during the Summer but in reality these will be my Summer quilts for the living room. I have to say it’s hard for me to pick which one is my favorite and also that I still have lotsa Lotta fabric left, especially scraps. It was hard to finally put these fabrics away but I really want to work on some new projects.

Linking up with: My Quilt Infatuation/NTT

The Lucky Jerry Lotta Quilt

August started a new month for Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge. After I finally finished one of the flimsies from the July Challenge, I was ready to start quilting the August flimsie this past weekend when I was distracted by my bundle of Lotta Jansdotter fabric which I had chosen as the designer for this month. I could hear the Studio Squirrel chanting “Ya Gotta Lotta” so I did.

These are the original fabrics I pulled maybe last year when I had planned to make another Strips, Squares and Brick Quilt,  similar to my Mackinaw Island Row Quilt which is a pattern I designed to use up charm squares and yardage of the same fabric collection which I seem to have accumulated, intentional or unintentional. I had several charm packs of the Follie prints and yardage of other Lotta Jansdotter’s lines such as Glimma, Mormor, Lucky, Lilla Prata and Homemade. These are fabrics from the 2010’s and I haven’t purchased any of her recent collections. The gray fabric on the left is a Figo print which I purchased on sale to use for the backing. I decided after looking at this bundle and then looking what was still in my stash that I wanted to use different fabrics for the bricks and strips and didn’t want to use all of the colors which were in the charm packs. After eliminating the orange, brown, blue, purple, fuchsia, beige and lilac fabrics, my palette for the Lucky Jerry Lotta Quilt is Black, Gray, Citronickle (yellow/green, not Lime), Golden Yellow and Teal. I find these colors to be a pleasing combination despite not having a focal print to tie these colors together in this quilt.

This pattern is what I called a stir fry; much time, almost the whole day was spent on die-cutting the strips, squares and bricks and then laying out the patches on the design board. Rather than sewing in rows, the quilt is constructed with 8”x16”(f) blocks which I found was easier to sew together rather than separate patches. The block on the top is (8) 4.5” squares in a two by four layout and the blocks on the bottom are the 4.5” x 8.5” bricks sewn with 6.5” x 8.5” strip sets. The bricks in this quilt are the Lucky Jerry Cat print, the inspiration for the name of this quilt, which paired so well with the Citronickle line print. Once the blocks were sewn, assembling the flimsy was quick just like a stir fry recipe. 

I should mention that I was first drawn to Lotta Jansdotter prints because of her use of Citronickle a name for the yellow/green which Wendy of Pieceful Thoughts and I came up with — a tomato/tomahto moment of our blog friendship. I also changed the strip sets to be the black/white and golden yellow prints from the Lucky and Lilla Prata lines which contrasted nicely with the bricks. Aren’t the teal prints a nice pop against the Citronickle prints? While I was laying the blocks onto my design wall I was saying to myself that this looked so Scandi/IKEA  that I realized another change to my plans needed to be made.

The backing for this quilt went from the gray Figo print to making this a patchwork throw by backing it with my favorite plush chenille to my Aha! moment that my long treasured and last yardage of the IKEA Nummer print which I’ve been saving for just the right quilt was to be used. You can see I quilted with a combination of straight and wavey lines. I think the Lotta Jansdotter and the Nummer print are a perfect and a great combination which was meant to be.

I used the black/white Lilla Prata print for the binding which at first I didn’t think would look right but now glad that I did. A light gray Aurifil thread was used for the machine quilting which went well with all of the colors. I thought I would include a closeup of the blocks and quilting. The Lucky Jerry Lotta Quilt measures 56”x74”, approx.

One last photo of the Lucky Jerry Lotta Quilt taken outside with the assistance of the Apprentice Quilt Holder. I can’t complain about his right hand showing because that’s his injured hand which is nicely healing and it’s good physical therapy for him to be holding up quilts, right? The Master Quilt Holder was resting after a long band practice so I didn’t want to bother him. We’ve been experiencing some rain this week so it was nice to take a photo outside.

Since I’ve been writing about squares and bricks in this post, I thought I should share the finally finished quilt of a flimsie from July’s UFO Challenge which is now ready to give to baby girl whose mother is sometimes a carer for the darling Granddaughter. This quilt is made from one of the first fabric collections by Lella Boutique and I had both charm packs and yardage of this collection. Once I saw the baby registry in March I knew this fabric would be perfect but sadly I could not find where I put the fabric and too stubborn to pick other fabrics from my stash. Once I started collecting projects for the 2022/23 UFO Challenge at the end of June, I finally found it. I didn’t have enough yardage of the floral print to do a complete border so the side borders were made with alternating bricks of the floral and pink print. I like the way this looked and will have to remember to do this again. The flimsy was finished during the last week of July and I could have finally finished it but was distracted with another quilt. I thought since the mother didn’t know I was giving her a quilt, the quilting could wait. But wouldn’t you know it, last week the  mother asked my son if she could pay me to make her a baby quilt so I knew I had to finish it and it will be a gift. I will be bringing the Baby B quilt when we leave for the GP house this weekend. 

Once we return, I will start quilting what I consider to be my #12 of the Country Threads Dirty Dozen UFO Challenge unless a squirrel brings me one of the other projects. This is what happens when I give myself choices.

Linking up with:My Quilt Infatuation/NTT