Prairie Patchwork; Treasured Quilts and Tales of Time

Prairie Patchwork: Treasured Quilts and Tales of Time is my newest book, published by Martingale Publishing, and just released last week! First of all, it was such a pleasure to work with all of the staff at Martingale. It is a very professional bunch, and my book was put together all along the way with the utmost care!

That being said, I'm extremely proud of the result!

 

Prairie Patchwork

You'll find patterns using a variety of techniques for making the quilts in Prairie Patchwork, from hand piecing to machine piecing, foundation piecing to strip piecing. You'll also find a variety of sizes as well: bed quilts, wall quilts and doll size quilts. A pattern for a sweet little wool applique needlebook is also included.

Fox and Geese

Back again to show you another quilt from Little Quilts from the Prairie collection. Fox and Geese is one of the larger quilts in the collection, although still only 35 3/4" x 44 1/2". Here at our house, wall space is limited (too many big windows), so I have to find creative ways to display all of the quilts I love to make. Fox and Geese just happens to be the perfect size to hang over this cabinet door!

Fox and Geese uses seven of the prints from A Prairie Journal, with the bird and berries print on the border.

As with the other quilt patterns in the collection, Fox and Geese is a PDF pattern to download. You can order the pattern HERE!

Until next time!

Martha

My Soddy Home

If you have attended one of my trunk shows, you know how much history, women's history, and sometimes even family history, play a big part in the inspiration for my designs.

One night I was talking to my Grandmother, when she was in her mid nineties, and I started asking her questions about her parents, and what it was like growing up on their Kansas farm. It was then that she told me that after her "Ma" and "Pa" were first married, they lived in a "cave", or in other words, a dugout, in the last quarter of the 1800's. I was amazed. It wasn't until later, when I read Willa Cather's My Antonia, that I got a bit of an idea of what that may have been like. In the novel, Antonia and her family are immigrants, living in a Nebraska dugout during the homesteading years.

I haven't seen any photos of prairie dugouts, but there are many photos of the next best thing, the sod house.

My Soddy Home, one of six mini or small quilts in the Little Quilts from the Prairie collection, has a low contrast color palette using seven of the prints from A Prairie Journal. I love the way the cheddar print glows in the sashing and border!

My Soddy Home is available as a PDF pattern you can purchase and download HERE. 

 

Do you have ancestors who lived in a sod house or dugout? I'd love to hear your stories!

Until next time,

Martha

Little Quilts from the Prairie

Since last June when I received my shipment of my fabric line A Prairie Journal, I've been having so much fun making quilts using the line. I had the quilts all designed on the drawing board, and all I needed was the fabric!

I have a collection of six new patterns now on the website, the Little Quilts from the Prairie collection, and in the interest of time, they are offered as PDF patterns for quick and easy downloading.

One of the mini quilts in the collection is the 26" x 32" Blissfully Blue mini quilt. The baskets are pieced, and the tiny sawtooth border is foundation pieced for accuracy.

Blissfully Blue uses the blue and beige prints from A Prairie Journal, and I just love the way they look together!

I also have a limited number of kits available to make Blissfully Blue (which includes the printed pattern). Otherwise, a quick check searching online, and there are several online fabric shops that still have A Prairie Journal fabrics available.

Click here to buy the pattern!

Until next time,

Martha

Pinterest

My friend Ingrid was over yesterday, giving me some feedback on a new fabric line I'm working on. She asked me if I was on Pinterest, and I told her I had opened an account, but had never done anything more. I didn't really know how it all worked, or how to get started. 

Well, she spent the next 2 hours helping me get set up, and showed me a lot about how it all worked. And I'm pretty sure I spent another 2 hours adding even more stuff. I'm still a little unsure of myself, but I was able to get a few boards started. All thanks to my Pinterest guru, Ingrid. She also said that now I have to get followers. Oh no, how do I do that? So, if you're reading this, Please help! I would love to have you follow my Pinterest boards!  https://www.pinterest.com/w9639/

I also figured out I need a few more things to pin, so I thought I would post a few photos of quilts I haven't posted here on my blog before.

So... here we go. This is one of my favorite quilts, "Celebrate Christmas", from Be Merry:

Celebrate Christmas

And here is a close up of Candy Cane Nine Patch, from Vintage Christmas:

detail, Candy Cane Nine Patch

My Pick up Project

In my last post I wrote about some of my quilting/textile adventures in London. When I returned home, mid-January, it was back to business! There was much to do to get ready for the upcoming American Quilter's Society Quiltweek, held for the first time here in Phoenix, Arizona. I had the finishing touches to complete for new patterns, a few quilts to finish binding, and a new fabric line with Henry Glass Fabrics to edit. It was almost impossible with all of this busyness to do a little stitching (save the binding), but thank heavens for my pick up project. More about that later...

Here is one of the new patterns I was able to finish just in the nick of time for AQS Quiltweek. It's called "Breakfast Tea", and it's completely pieced using my Elementary line of fabrics.

Breakfast Tea

And another pattern, "Bats in the Barn", a fun mini quilt -or it could be a table topper, too.

Bats in the Barn

AQS Quiltweek was a four day event, February 5 through 8. It was wonderful to see many old friends and to meet new friends too. Our booth was across the aisle from the Arizona Quilter's Hall of Fame booth, which was hosted by the nicest group of women I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time. We were all antique quilt lovers, and two of them came back one afternoon with some wonderful antique quilts they had just purchased from one of the vendors. Although I didn't purchase a quilt, I allowed myself to buy some sweet little quilt blocks:

 

Two of the blocks have a conversational print with little keys:

This key print was reproduced at least 15 years ago, and one I used for a quilt I finished in 1999. It was fun to find the original in my little quilt blocks. Here are some details from the blocks in my quilt where I used that reproduction print with keys:

 

Well, as I said before, with all of the busyness, it was hard to get any stitching in. But fortunately, I prepared what I call a "pick up project" last summer, that I can "pick up" and work on a few minutes at a time, if need be, when I don't have extended periods of time. 

If you follow my Facebook page, you may remember a block I pictured that I was working on during one of my airplane flights last summer. Below is that block on my design wall, in a more finished state. I'm auditioning the center circle fabric, and I'm planning (although it can always change) to use the brown stripe as a border. So far, I like the way it's turning out.

After making this first tester block, I decided to make the outer rings of each block first, and then follow with the inner rings. The outer ring is made up of 64 pieces, so it seems a bit less daunting to make all of the outer rings first. 

So far, I've completed enough outer rings for 3 more blocks - progress! And all of the piecing was done on planes, in hotel rooms and with 10 or 15 minutes to spare here and there during my "busy" times.


By the way, the name of this quilt block is Georgetown Circle.


Do you have a pick up project that you rely on when things get hectic?

Until next time,

Martha

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! (just a little early!)

It's never too early to start working on projects for Fall, and I have five new patterns out, three of which are Fall and Halloween themed.

Broomstick Hollow quilt pattern

Broomstick Hollow is a quilt pattern, made up of lots of different orange and black prints.  Really quick, and fun to make! This was my #1 bestseller at the recent International Quilt Market in Portland. Judy Danz did the beautiful quilting on this quilt and I'll try to show you just a little of it with this close-up. She quilted stars and pumpkins in some of the houses, and the border has a wonderful pumpkin vine winding through it.

Broomstick Hollow detail

Pumpkin Party wool applique

Pumpkin Party is a little wool applique table topper, and I have included full-size applique placement diagrams to make placement really easy. I used Aurifil Lana 50% wool/50% acrylic threads for the blanket stitching and whipstitching. I love how these threads mesh with the wool!

Happy Harvest punch needle pattern

And the last of the Halloween patterns is Happy Harvest, a punchneedle (also known as needle punch,) pattern. I used mostly Valdani 3 strand floss, with the addition of Weeks Dye Works and DMC embroidery flosses.
Each pattern includes weaver's cloth with the design printed on it, so you can get started right away. That printmaking class I took in college finally paid off!

In addition to the Fall patterns, I have two quilt patterns for any time of year. One of my favorite childhood nursery rhymes was "Sing a Song of Sixpence", where those blackbirds were baked in a pie....

And here is my "Blackbird Pie" quilt ....

Blackbird Pie quilt pattern

Judy Danz quilted Blackbird Pie, and again, did a beautiful job.


And last, but not least, is Boy Crazy, a scrappy pieced quilt with optional appliqued buttons. Included in the pattern is a sheet of foundation patterns for paper piecing all of the hats, but templates for that segment are included for traditional piecing, as well.

Boy Crazy quilt pattern

I hope that wherever you are this summer, whether staying at home or on vacation, you have lots of time to do some stitching!

Until next time,

Martha

My Big Fat UFO (aka unfinished quilt)

Since wrapping up production on my new book, Annie's Scrapbag, I have been working on a new project that, although quilting related, has left me little time for actual sewing/quilting. However, it is during times like these that I can always pull out my trusty "Big Fat UFO" to work on if I have a few minutes to spare.

I began working on this quilt in August, 2000, so it is an official 12-year-old work in progress. But, I'm in no hurry with this quilt. The quilt started when I was getting ready to take a trip and needed something to work on during my stay. That trip was an exciting one, as I had just won my first big prize for a quilt I had entered in the AQS Quilt Exposition Millenium Celebration contest. I was the Arizona state winner for this contest, for my quilt "Cloud County Memories" and it was my first published quilt as well. So I was on my way to Nashville, to see the show, another first as I had never been to one of the big quilt festivals! With four or five nights in a hotel, I needed some handwork!

I decided to cut out pieces for a block I really enjoyed piecing, the sunburst block, and thus began this quilt. Twenty-five blocks later, I had the center of a quilt. Next up, designing the border, which ended up being a very wide one - 16" each side.  It is very folk art - I have a blueprint of where each flower, bird and leaf are to go, but exact precision isn't needed here. It will have 500 or more berries, but that will be determined as I begin working on that part of the top border (pictured below).

The side borders are finished and sewn onto the center, and this summer I pulled out the top border to do a little applique. A few steps closer anyway!

Until next time,

Martha

Annie's Scrapbag

I have a new pattern book out, Annie's Scrapbag, and here is the cover!:

Annie's Scrapbag features 7 projects - four quilts and three wool applique projects, all of which are inspired by nineteenth century needlework.

Pictured below is a detail of "Annie's Scrapbook", a small crib-size quilt covered with appliqued birds, baskets, blooms and more and also pictured on the cover. The beautiful quilting was done by Judy Danz, who also quilted two of the other quilts in the book. I was truly in awe of Judy's creativity in designing the quilting for all of the quilts, as well as her execution!

 

And here is the back cover of Annie's Scrapbag which has "Blooms Doll Quilt" pictured:

One of the wool applique projects is "Countryside Needlebook". I had been wanting to design a needlebook that could hold and organize all of the different needles I use for various needlework tasks, and I finally got it done for this book! "Countryside Needlebook" features pages for each of the different needle types: betweens (for hand quilting), chenilles (for embroidery), sharps (for applique and piecing), and tapestry (for embroidery and cross stitch).

Here is the cover of the needlebook:

And here is one of the inside pages:

We started shipping books to quilt shops this week, so be looking for it soon at your local quilt shop! And if you don't have a shop nearby, we have it on our website too!

Until next time,

Martha

Boy Crazy!

I have always been a big fan of the magazine Quiltmania. So I am very excited to have one of my quilts published in one of their publications for the first time! "Boy Crazy" is pictured below, and the instructions to make the quilt can be found in Quiltmania's Special Children's Issue 2012, which should be reaching our newsstands here in the U.S. very soon. There is also a French edition, Quiltmania Hors-Serie Enfants 2012, which I have a feeling is already on European newsstands!

"Boy Crazy"

I like to design pieced quilts where I can incorporate a large variety of different prints. With my Boy Crazy block, it was so much fun to pick out the different prints for the shirts, hats, pants and backgrounds. You can add the optional appliqued buttons, too, just for fun! Each block in my quilt has a unique combination of prints. Here are some closeups of two of the blocks in the quilt:

Boy, that last picture is blurry! But we can be assured of beautiful photography in Quiltmania. I look forward to seeing my copy when it arrives from France!

Until next time!

Martha