100 Blocks, vol 4

November 15th
Karen in Breezy Point  (Aztel2000) won the collector's issue. I appreciated everyone's comments -Anita

November 10, 2011

Jester

#356, p 45, pattern sheet 4

Star light, star bright, the first star I see tonight... 

Anita's Design Door. My sliding closet doors are metal so I "pin" blocks to it using magnets 

I have been obsessed with this block for ages. Now that it's seeing the light of day in Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks, and since I will not be teaching this December, I intend to make more blocks next month. Or at least cut the fabric for them. IF I can find my project box. Jodie Davis and Mark Lipinski of the Quilt Out Loud show visited my studio last August. To make room for their video crew I stashed my stash and works in progress. Thank goodness I had the foresight to bring some fabric home from Houston:

You might make cutting templates for the background. Make 3 photocopies of  the foundation pattern (p 45) and add ¼" seam allowances beyond the sewing lines of each patch. I "laminate" each patch with wide transparent shipping tape before cutting it away from the photocopy.

Over five years ago my friend Susan pieced 8" blocks. Yesterday when she saw I'd set them as the digital quilt below she smiled slyly and said she'd be sewing them together.

Susan's fabric serves her well.

If you are having difficulty with the "comments" feature, accessing this post rather than the entire blog may be a solution.  Quiltmaker sent will send a copy of 100 Blocks to a random commenter. I am glad for your thoughts and ideas.  My gift to everyone is my NEW pattern, Anita's Unbiased Bock. Refer to the sidebar, on the right column,  for a link to my  PDF. It's about a technique that calls for Interfacing.

Previously, in Quiltmaker's Quilty Pleasures, an interview with Anita

Quiltmaker Magazine teaser

November 9, 2011

My Jester Block

While attending Quilt Market in Houston I got my hands on 

Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks from today's top designers, vol. 4

Anita's Unbiased Block

Houston, November 4, 2011

The Candy Striper

I'm pleased to share Anita's Unbiased Block which I demonstrated yesterday at Quilt Festival. At the moment it's dawn in Houston and I'm on my merry way to teach my signature Old Italian Block method in the convention center. Now all of us will have something new to work on.

Anita's Arrowhead pattern

For a limited time, Quiltmaker Magazine has posted their PDF version of Anita's Arrowhead. 

The link is here There is no charge for the magazine version.  Alternate block sizes for Anita's Arrowhead are available here

Anita's Arrowhead is in my eBook:  Rotary Cutting Revolution  and included in my Craftsy Class: Traditional Blocks Made Simple

One step at a time

The No-Waste Windmill technique is part of The Quilt Show, episode #905, posting August 29, 2011

Sign up and see

The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson, Ricky Tims and Me

For a few days in September, 2011, watch this episode, #905, at no charge courtesy of The Quilt Show. I  published a special access code to it in my newsletter. My Quilt Show newsletter was sent on Labor Day. Links to it and my archived newsletters are in the upper sidebar. The Quilt Show code is valid only through Sunday, September 11. In the meantime, here is a thirty second peek.

NEW The Super-Sized Square on Point Quilt

"Two squares, two quilts, too easy!"

Quilts by Carolyn Beam

Are you familiar with my CuttingLines™ baby quilt, The Super-Sized Nine Patch? Countless community quilts have been made from that pattern. My newest quick baby quilt, the Super-Sized Square-on-Point is similarly made.This new pattern appears exclusively in the September/October 2011 issue of Quiltmaker Magazine 

Photo courtesy International Quilt Festival, Long Beach, CA

It took me less than a minute to explain my method two weeks ago at the Long Beach Quilt Festival Theater. Coincidentally, that's how long it takes to make one cut to yield one center square and four triangles.

...with a little help from my friends

Two months ago I taught the Two-Color Pineapple block at The City Quilter shop here in Manhattan. A new-to-me student in the workshop, Nicole, blogged about the class. I like her perspective on quiltmaking.

One of her images was of my trimmed and untrimmed pineapple blocks-in-progress.  They were made to illustrate every step in the book. For a book, each stage is created individually, unlike a blog where one can continuously photograph one block in progress.

Now, thanks to an idea  from my girlfriend Jan Krentz and a hand from Kristin, above, all of the step-outs are fused to interfacing. It will be simpler to install the step-outs, starting next week, in my class at the Long Beach Quilt Festival.

Jan and I met in the summer of 2002. She drove me over to C&T Publishing in an SUV. Big car for a big time. 

 These days, several books and hundreds of workshops later,  we meet at dawn on Skype or wherever the subway may take us for memorable times

On the Bus and On Point, Part II

With an agreeable nephew in tow, I got off the bus, transferred to the subway and rode off to the 1:00 p.m.  Quilters' Guild of Brooklyn meeting. Except that the Guild meets at 11:00 a.m. Oops.
No wonder the bagel platters were empty.

Squares on Point

Now the previous Saturday I'd gone to the Empire Guild meeting in Manhattan to see my favorite sister act, Mary Mashuta and Roberta Horton. That's a 1:00 p.m.meeting from which we traipsed to the Doughnut Plant outpost on 23rd Street to sugar out. I blame the sugar.

While in my Brooklyn state of disbelief at missing 99% of the meeting, I was awestruck as Micki Segel unpacked her Square on Point quilt for me. Look at what I nearly missed. She cut squares from eighth yard pieces. What a knockout. I smiled all the way home on the subway thinking about her phenomenal use of fabric.

Micki Segel (right) and her marvelous Square on Point quilt top

I recorded my original Square-on-Point technique in January 2005 with Alex Anderson
which is available to computers in the United States. It will open in a new window

I improved this 2005 technique and detail it with more than thirty photographs in my 2010 book: Rotary Cutting Revolution Using my new CuttingLines™ pattern, the mat is no longer marked. Use any size squares, the finished blocks will be 1¼  inches smaller than those squares. Just cut on my lines.

On the Bus and On Point, Part I

Multitasking in Manhattan includes window shopping from the bus

I was seated  across from the back door on the 57th Street bus a week ago headed to my guild meeting. When the door opened at the Fifth Avenue stop I looked up from my reading to see the display window below. My Weekly Reader these days is a smartphone with a camera. [click to zoom in on the images]

I immediately thought of the captivating "Leaves" summer spread (circa 1850) pictured in the inaugural edition (1983) of The Quilt Digest. I wonder if the window dresser was influenced by such a quilt. Now I see Roderick Kiracofe, who published the Digest with the late Michael Kile, autographed my copy in October 1994. If only I could remember the occasion.

The Old Italian Block: Then and now

All in the same New York week: At Ming's baby shower

and at the "Infinite Variety" exhibition

(top center)

The Old Italian Block is a classic signature block, one of my favorites, whether multicolored or in the ubiquitous Red and White.  Tomorrow my friend Ming begins her westward migration to Portland with personalized blocks as women on the Oregon trail did over one hundred and fifty years ago.

The Old Italian Block is the cover quilt of Rotary Cutting Revolution
April 2, 2011    Older posts

Electric Quilt Block of the Month

EQ January Jumble

Andrea Bishop of the Electric Quilt Company announced the irresistible EQ 2011 block of the month program. She  provides PDFs each month for rotary cutting, templates and foundation patterns in various colorings and EQ7 project files. You can make the blocks without EQ7. I made two blocks.

EQ February Frolic

That I am fond of paper piecing is an understatement. So I pieced them my Make It Simpler® way: each on a single sheet of Simple Foundations vellum. Because, if you don't cut a foundation apart, you never have to put the pieces back together. 

Five steps to February Frolic

The February block is a nine patch. I scored the vellum foundation that I printed into nine subunits before sewing. The construction was similar to the Nine-Patch Variation that I demonstrated here in 2003. The demo is viewable only on computers based in the US.

Above is the back of my six inch block, before I sewed the remaining four seams, my "Tic Tac Toe" seams. Here's March

EQ March Medley

Alexander Henry Imperial Kiku
was used for trapezoids

and above are my EQ BOMs for May, June and July 2011

Wouldn't it be nice to sew together?

I'll be teaching my Scrappy Pineapple Workshop March 20 -25, 2011 at the renown "Empty Spools" where week-long quilting retreats are held at "Asilomar" in Pacific Grove, California. Good Vibrations

View several "Empty Threads" teachers live online Wednesday, March 2nd at 6:00PM PT