In Full Bloom Mini Quilt Pattern

I'm excited to share a new mini quilt pattern with you today for TGIFF! This one was brewing for a long time before all the various elements came together and I really love how it turned out. Meet In Full Bloom!

Ever since I made my Grateful table runner, I've been wanting to design another texty pattern with the words coloured with crayon but I couldn't come up with the phrase I wanted to use. I've also been admiring the various home décor things I've seen with circles or partial circles with flowers and/or leaves along part of the circle. I wanted to translate that style into a quilt, but couldn't get beyond the basic concept.

Then last September we were in St. John's to move Zach back into his dorm for another year of university and the Airbnb we stayed in had a mug with the phrase 'Live life in full bloom' on it. I can't remember anything about what the mug looked like - what the font was, what colour the words were, even if there were flowers on it (though I assume there must have been) - I just remember reading the phrase and thinking, "That would be perfect inside a circle on a quilt!"

I design my quilts in EQ8, but the options for text in the program are really limited. I started playing in Canva instead, where there are a lot more font options and it's so much easier to manipulate the blocks of text. It took a while to settle on the combination of fonts, colours, and the angle of the words, but eventually the wordy part of the design was exactly what I wanted. I created the partial circle as part of the Canva block, too, then I could import that whole piece into EQ8 to add the flower appliqués. 

Actually making the mini quilt involved playing with different techniques. First, I coloured the words with crayons. I have a tutorial for doing that here, on another wordy mini quilt.

I love how colouring the fabric brings out the texture of the threads woven together to make it.

After colouring the letters, I used Aurifil 12 wt thread to embroider their outlines with a simple backstitch. I love how it gives extra definition to the letters. It also gives a little texture to the quilt. A simple tip to make your backstitched lines look neat - make the stitches shorter. Longer stitches tend to look more jagged or uneven, while short stitches make a smooth line.

Fusible appliqué flowers were next. As always, I had fun digging through my stash to find just the right fabrics for each flower.

At this point, Paul saw the quilt top on my design wall and suggested we hang it in our entryway when it was finished. We've struggled to find just the right thing for one small wall in the entryway, and he thought In Full Bloom would be perfect. There's something about having someone else look at what I've made and like it enough to want it displayed that just feels amazing. 

Once the flowers were fused to the background, I embroidered the partial circle with a chain stitch. I did that after the flowers were on because I didn't want any embroidery under the flowers, so this way I could stitch right up to the edge of them.

For the quilting, I used Aurifil 50 wt thread and started by stitching around each flower and leaf with matching thread.

I used white thread for the rest of the quilting. I outlined the letters. I was quite proud of myself for stitching very close to the edge of each letter and only catching the embroidery once! I outlined the edge of the embroidered circle, too. Then I quilted a dense stipple in the background.

I even went in and stitched the tiny gaps between the flowers (seen here from the back).

As usual, I love how all the quilting looks on the back.

I especially love the way the letters pop!

In Full Bloom will be traveling to Chicago with me on Monday, for the H+H Americas trade show. I'll be doing demos in the Oliso booth Wednesday and Thursday, showing how to colour quilt blocks with crayon and remove the wax, and showing off the wordy possibilities of the technique with both In Full Bloom and Grateful. It's my first time attending an industry trade show and I'm crazy excited (and nervous). I'm hoping to get my patterns in front of lots of quilt shop owners while I'm there!

The In Full Bloom mini quilt pattern is in my shop now, so you can make your own version to adorn whatever wall in your home is needing a bit of inspiration. It would make a great gift, too!

That's my finish for this week. What have you finished recently? Link it up below and be sure to visit some of the other links to celebrate their finishes, too!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

How I Make Bonus Half-Square Triangles

While working on the May Stash Artists cover quilt (to be revealed soon!), I made a lot of stitch-and-flip flying geese. Whenever I make stitch-and-flip flying geese, I also make bonus half-square triangles (HSTs), because I hate wasting those corner pieces and I know that if I don't sew them together in the moment, they'll never get done. Aren't they pretty?

After they were all done, I realized I should have taken pictures so I could share how I make my bonus HSTs, but thankfully my current leaders and enders project is also stitch-and-flip flying geese, so I stitched up one of them for pictures instead.

I have to start by acknowledging that I learned this method on Bonnie Hunter's blog years ago, so she's the genius behind what I'm about to share. This method results in bonus HSTs in sizes to fit with the other common size units we make, making them much more useable.

How big will the bonus HST be?

The size of your bonus HST is determined by the cut size of the squares for your flying geese. The unfinished size of the bonus HST will be 1" smaller than the square.

For this tutorial, I'm using 2 ½" squares. That means the largest bonus HST I can make is 1 ½" unfinished (1" finished). The flying geese I made for the May Stash Artists pattern used 3 ½" squares, so I could make 2 ½" unfinished (2" finished) HSTs with them. 

What you need

• your rectangle and squares cut to the sizes needed for your stitch-and-flip flying geese
• a piece of template plastic, cardboard, or paper
• a ruler
• a sharp pencil or a pen
• scissors for cutting the plastic or cardboard
• pins
• rotary cutter

Make your template

I've made my templates for the bonus HSTs a couple of different ways, so I'll share both here. First is the method Bonnie Hunter calls a 'triangle buddy.' If you have template plastic, or any plastic thin enough to cut neatly with scissors, that's the best thing to use. If you don't have a suitable piece of plastic, a piece of cardboard from a cereal box or something similar will also work, but it will need to be replaced more often as the edge softens with use, making it less accurate.

To make your triangle buddy, draw a square the same size your unfinished bonus HST will be. Remember, that's 1" smaller than the cut square for your flying geese. For this tutorial, I'm making 1 ½" unfinished bonus HSTs, so I draw a 1 ½" square. I don't have any template plastic at the moment, so I used cardboard from a cracker box.

Now draw a diagonal line from corner to corner.

Cut out the square, then cut it in half along the diagonal line. You now have two triangle buddies. I usually write 'triangle buddy' on them so I don't throw them out, thinking they're just random bits of cardboard.

The other way I've made a template was to draw a square on a piece of paper the same size as the square for the flying geese. So for this tutorial, that is a 2 ½" square.

Along the top of the square, measure 1 ½" (or the unfinished size of your bonus HST) from the right corner and make a mark. Along the right side of the square, measure 1 ½" (or the unfinished size of your bonus HST) down from the top corner and make a mark. Use a ruler to draw a line connecting the marks, extending the line past the square.

Draw the lines on the squares

Now we're ready to draw the lines on the back of the squares. First, draw the diagonal line from corner to corner. This is the standard line for the stitch-and-flip flying geese.

Next, draw the line for the bonus HST. If you're using a triangle buddy, place it in the corner, lining up the edges of the template with the edges of the square. 

Draw a line along the diagonal edge of the template.

If you're using the square drawn on paper, place your fabric square on top of the template, lining up the edges exactly.

Line up your ruler with the diagonal line and draw the line.

Make the flying geese and bonus HST

Just as you normally do for stitch-and-flip flying geese, align a square with one end of the rectangle, with the drawn line as shown. Make sure the second line drawn for the bonus HST is towards the corner. Pin the square in place.

Stitch directly on both lines. Normally I chain piece these, stitching one line on all the units I'm making and then stitching the second line on all of them.

Cut ¼" away from the seam for the flying geese.

Now trim the seam allowance on the bonus HST to ¼" as well.

Press both units open.

Repeat with a second square on the other end of the rectangle to give you a finished flying geese unit and two bonus HSTs. Trim the dog ears off the bonus HSTs.

That's it! Now you're ready to make bonus HSTs whenever you make stitch-and-flip units like flying geese or snowball corners. 

I've been pondering how to use this batch of HSTs and I think they might show up in a future Stash Artists mini quilt pattern. If you love scrappy and stash-friendly quilt patterns and want sew with virtual friends, come join us in Stash Artists!

My First Quilt with Hillary Cooper

It's the last Friday of April, which means it's time for another My First Quilt interview! This month Hillary Cooper shares the story of her first quilt.

Hillary is a quilt pattern writer from Vancouver, British Columbia. She's a lifelong maker and serial crafter whose modern patterns often reinvent traditional blocks through colour and improv piecing.

You can connect with Hillary at her website and on Instagram.

And now, here is Hillary's first quilt!

What year did you make your first quilt? What prompted you to make it?

I made my first very basic quilt in 1997 when I moved to Vancouver and was looking for ways to fill my time while my husband was at work. We had just moved across the country from Toronto and I had no friends or family nearby. I hoped starting a new hobby would help me to find community. That year I fell in love with quilting and followed up that first quilt with a quilt sampler class that I finished and gave to my sister as a wedding gift when she was married in 1998. 

What techniques were used in that first quilt? Did you quilt it yourself?

The first quilt was a basic 5" square block where we alternated colours in a checkerboard format and then tied the quilt at each intersection. Great quilt for practicing a 1/4" seam and many people were gifted one that year for their new babies.  

The sampler that I made tried many different techniques including traditional piecing, using templates and applique. I cut all my pieces with scissors. I'm pretty sure I didn't have a rotary cutter back then. The wedding quilt was quilted by a longarmer (must have been among some of the first) in order to make sure it would be ready for the wedding.

Who taught you to make the quilt?

I took classes at my local quilt shop called The Cloth Shop. Back then they were located in a beautiful brick and mortar on 10th Avenue. They serviced machines in the back and had classes in the basement. I actually recently found the pattern instructions from that very first quilt and the instructor had given us her home phone number!

The book Hillary used for her first sampler quilt

Are the colours you chose for your first quilt ones you would still choose today?

The very first quilt was light pink and blue which are often what I use today but the quilt for my sister which was my first "real" quilt was very much a quilt of the 90s using browns, forest green, maroon, and navy. That is not really my colour palette today. 

Did you fall in love with quilting right away? Or was there a gap between making the first quilt and the next one?

I actually did a rent to own with the first sewing machine because I knew I didn't always stick with all the crafts I liked to try. However, I was an actress back then and I loved how making a quilt allowed me to be creative but had a beginning, middle and end. The issue with acting is that most of what you do is audition and that can be frustrating and demoralizing to never get to see the work progress. I loved quilting and loved that everyone was excited to receive a piece of my work. I became obsessed and quickly moved from learning to experimenting and doing my own thing with the fabric. At the beginning that meant creating picture stories with applique. I have an early one where I found a panel and then paired it with Sunbonnet Sue and Sam as a baby quilt. That recipient is now 27 and still travels with the rag that it has become everywhere.

This early quilt of Hillary's has been well loved!

Where is the quilt now?

The very first quilt with the squares, I have no idea. I don't even remember who I gave it to. Probably a cousin. The wedding quilt is in my sister's cupboard (see my eye roll here). And the Sunbonnet Sue as I said is with my friend's daughter and I have seen it and I'm pretty sure that calling it a quilt now would be generous.

Is there anything you wish you could go back and tell yourself as you made that first quilt?

Enjoy the process. This is something that is going to bring you so much joy later in life.

Anything else you want to share about your first quilt?

If we are talking about the squares I think I might go back and make some more because it's such a great way to use scraps and play with colour. With the wedding quilt, I'm so glad that was the first major quilt I tried because it covered so many different techniques and helped me hone skills that would give me confidence.

Thank you, Hillary for sharing the story of your first quilt(s)!