Debby Brown Quilts: October 2016

Friday, October 28, 2016

Deja Vu

This quilt is going to look familiar because it is made from one of my favorite patterns. I make it from scraps and boy do I have a lot of scraps!

This time, I chose FabuLux Meditation thread. It's a blend of olive, tan, and gray and I hoped it would appear neutral on the black fabric. I think it worked!

I stitched pumpkin seeds in the cornerstones:

and tons and TONS of ribbon candy in the sashing:

and feathers in the squares:

I love how this quilt turned out! This quilt doesn't have a forever home yet, but I'm sure I'll find one for it soon!

Monday, October 24, 2016

New Cutie Pattern -- Summer's End!

I try not to play favorites, really I do, but this is one of my favorite Cutie Patterns. I am tickled to introduce Summer's End:

This quilt is 80"x92"and will eventually live on my bed; it needs to travel a bit first, though. I used Victoria Findlay Wolfe's Mostly Manor fabrics because they are happy and bright. I had been saving these fabrics for something special and I think they've found the perfect home in this quilt.

I really, really wanted the star points to stand out on this quilt. I left them unquilted so that the batting would puff them up. I also quilted diamonds into the sashing to emphasize and elongate the star points.

I wrote a short tutorial about how I marked the white fabric to quilt this sashing.

I'm already hard at work making another copy of this quilt with some April Cornell fabric. Stay tuned for more photos!

Friday, October 21, 2016

Scrappy Sweet Tooth quilt

This summer, I opened up a beloved fat quarter pack of Pat Sloan's fabrics and have been slowly sewing my way through it ever since.

So far, I've made a

Oh My Stars! Bedspread, currently on my bed!
Matching pillow sham (link to machine quilting tutorial)
Squared Away lap quilt, given as a gift
Squared Away placemats (link to machine quilting tutorial)
Stepping Stones lap quilt, currently touring as a Cutie Pattern sample
Matching pillow sham (link to machine quilting tutorial)

After all of these projects, I still had fabric left so I made a scrappy version of one of my Cutie Patterns, Sweet Tooth:

I made the border scrappy because I didn't have enough of any one fabric for a solid border. I think that the scrappy border totally makes this quilt!

Another thing that made this quilt was ribbon candy. I quilted lots and lots of ribbon candy into this quilt:

I was testing out a new-to-me thread, Master Quilter from WonderFil. It worked GREAT! Expect to hear more from me about this thread.

When I was searching for fabric for the backing, I pulled out the leftover bits from the backings of the other quilts in this series and stripped them together:

Adorable, right?

I still have fabric left, so expect to see even more projects!!!

Monday, October 17, 2016

New Cutie Pattern -- Go With The Flow!!!

I love when I finally get to show you the quilts I've been working on in secret. Today, I get to show you my latest Cutie Pattern -- Go With The Flow:

This quilt requires a Cutie Pack (16 fat eighths) and border/binding/backing fabrics.

I had so much fun designing this one, deciding how many of each shape could be cut from each Cutie and then seeing which blocks could be pieced from those different shapes:

For this first sample, I decided to quilt a simple overall swirl in one thread color. I find it so hard to choose the thread that I asked my internet friends for help:

The color on the left (Noel) was the overwhelming favorite and looked great on this quilt.

Stay tuned -- I plan to make many more Go With The Flow quilts!

Friday, October 14, 2016

Baby, Baby Oh Baby!

It's a boy! And another boy!

I was privileged to watch a sweet girl grow into a lovely young lady and now I'm even more privileged to help celebrate her expected twin baby boys!

I made a quilt for this young lady when she graduated from high school. I don't have a photo of the exact quilt, but this LINK will take you to a similar one. Nearly 15 years later, she still lists this simple quilt as one of her most treasured belongings.

When she got married, I knew she would never share that quilt with her husband so I made a quilt for them to share LINK. I am not convinced her husband has been allowed to use their wedding quilt, but that's between them!

Now that babies will make four, I needed quilts for these sweet boys to grow up with. I found two perfect quilts hiding in my pattern sample stack and, for once, gave the presents in a timely manner!

Quilt one:

Quilt two:

The expectant mom and dad loved the quilts, and these quilts couldn't possibly have a better home!

Blessings to the happy family!

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Oh Say Can You See?

When you are quilting, do you ever have trouble seeing your stitching?

I'm working on a quilt this week and it has some "hard to see the stitching" fabrics. The fabrics are LOVELY!!!, but difficult to see.

Check out one of the April Cornell prints:

Can you see the beautiful feathered wreath I'm quilting in that square using bright green thread? No?

Me neither!

I am quilting this quilt on my Handi Quilter Fusion. I added a Handi Light goose-necked light to my machine so that I can change the angle of the light. I swung my light so it was aimed at the side of my block (rather than from overhead). I was able to see my stitching this way:

Side-lighting works! The next time you can't see your stitching, light your quilt from the side so that you can see the shadow of where the stitching is.

Happy quilting!

Friday, October 07, 2016

Unknown Origins: Or, How Old is this UFO?

A million year ago, maybe longer, I started a scrappy quilt at a quilt retreat. I pulled it out a few years ago and put it all together, but the top has been languishing, unquilted. Until now:

I was saving this quilt top for someone special, and someone special has been on my heart a lot lately. I shopped the Quilt Basket sale a few weeks ago and bought some gorgeous backing/binding fabrics.
I designed this quilt which means I intentionally left some space to let the quilting add to the design:

I stitched Xs through the one-inch squares and feathers in the borders. Two patterns, alternating, make a really strong statement!

I love this quilt. I love it a lot. I love that it might bring some comfort and joy to a special lady.

Wednesday, October 05, 2016

A New Spin on Drunkard's Path Giveaway!

My dear friend John Kubiniec wrote a book, A New Spin on Drunkard's Path:

John did an ah-ma-zing job with this book! I was tempted to treat this book as a work of fiction since it involves curved piecing (I'm a machine quilter, Jim, not a curved-piecer!), but I trusted my friend John and decided to try a block using his instructions.

I picked my favorite pattern from the book, Bowties:

I used Marti Michell's templates and discovered that my 28mm rotary cutter cut the curve the best.

I pieced up a few squares from my scraps, just to see if I could sew curves:

I can! I can sew curves!!!!

Now I need to make this quilt for real. Leave a comment telling me what color scheme I should use (pastels, red, primitive, dots, etc.) for my Bowtie Quilt and you'll be entered to receive a copy of John's book (e-book outside of the US) and a set of Marti Michell's Drunkard's Path templates. I'll draw a name after the blog hop ends and notify the winner!

Hop around all of the blogs that are celebrating John's new book!

September 26, 2016

Jenifer Dick www.42quilts.com

C&T Publishing http://www.ctpub.com/blog/

September 27, 2016

Sara Lawson www.sewsweetness.com/blog

Heather Kojan http://www.heatherkojan.com

September 28, 2016

Bill Volckening http://willywonkyquilts.blogspot.com

McCall’s Quilting http://www.mccallsquilting.com/blogs/

September 29, 2016

Teri Lucas https://terificreations.com

Bonnie Hunter http://quiltville.blogspot.com