Tag: Riley Blake

Late Summer Puttering

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It’s that blissful time of year when we spend quiet time at home tending to whatever happens to strike my fancy. Mornings are spent in the yard, talking to my little hummingbird friend when he hovers two feet away from my face while I’m drinking my morning tisane, and the sultry afternoons are spent in the craft room in air conditioned splendor. The squawking baby birds have flown from their nest tucked in the eaves of my neighbor’s porch, and I am low-key struggling to find new ways to get my family to eat ripe tomatoes and zucchini. I love late summer.

Rachel’s Graduation Signature Quilt

I was able to spend more time on this in the last week and the backing is almost completely done! As predicted, I ran out of the outer border fabric. I went to my local quilt shop to buy more, but they didn’t have any, so I put in an order at Fat Quarter Shop and it should be here next Saturday.

I shifted to working on the quilt front, which will be made from Riley Blake Confetti Cotton Solids that match the Crayola fabric I’m using on the back. I’m almost done cutting that fabric; hopefully I can piece the top this coming week? (Let’s be realistic, it’ll probably take three weeks…I don’t know why, but that’s just how things go in real life.)

Renaissance and I have been spending a lot of time together this summer, which has been awesome; we’ve even started watching movies and shows in the evenings in the craft room. That has been a big reason for the sudden action on Rachel’s quilt. I love this time with my girl. She works on her little projects, I work on mine, and we laugh at whatever we’re watching together. Most of the time we talk very little; it’s just nice to have another heartbeat in the room with me. I know I’ll cherish this extra time with her when I look back on this chapter.

Husband Christmas Socks

I did a lot of work on these this past week. These are the most complicated socks I’ve ever made (which isn’t saying much) and I am very proud of them. I think Michael will be very pleased with them on Christmas morning. I’m about 15% done with second sock?

Gardening

I woke up yesterday morning with an inkling to spend time in the garden and try to tame the craziness that it’s become after two years of being allowed to lie fallow. I figure, I may not get much out of it this year, but I can clean it up and it get prepped for an easier start next spring? That should work, right? Ha ha.

I came across a cute little bird’s nest tucked beneath the rhubarb stalks:

I have a cherry tomato plant that is sluggishly growing some tomatoes, and my container blackberry and raspberry plants actually produced a couple bowlfuls of berries in the past weeks. Not terrible for the zero amount of effort I put into them throughout the season.

According to my previous years’ notes, I could still sow some spinach, beets, turnips, and radishes for a little fall harvest. I’ve missed the date to sow carrots by a week or so, but I’m tempted to give them a go anyways. Wouldn’t it be lovely to get a little bit of produce out of this neglected garden before winter arrives?

I’m thinking about moving my blackberries or raspberries into the area of my garden where I usually grow beans. I think it’d benefit our family far more to grow berries than beans because we straight up like berries better and can’t get enough of them, while nobody around here is particularly passionate about beans. It seems like picking sugar over substance, though, so I’m having a somewhat Victorian moral dilemma over it all. I guess beans can grow the containers I currently have the raspberries in, so a swap wouldn’t be the end of the world…hmmm. It might not be the ethical quandary I’m turning it into in my head.

Autumn Approaches

I’m refusing to give space to autumn just yet. We’ve been so busy this summer that I haven’t felt like we’ve really gotten our share of the season! Hopefully we can find some meaningful ways to stretch out fully into these last days of summer break and be fully re-energized before school starts up again.

Methinks some homemade ice cream needs to happen, yes?

When Wildfires Cancel Your Plans, You Quilt

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Things are finally calming down around here; I feel like I can actually check in this week, which is AWESOME. I love me some good ol’ dog days of summer when we can just putter around the house!

Rachel’s Graduation Signature Quilt

I managed a few hours in the craft room this week, mostly due to the bad air quality provided by the wildfires in our region—many outdoor activities were cancelled on account of the smoke, so I spent my unexpectedly freed-up time working on Rachel’s graduation quilt.

Jelly Bars Quilt in progress for a graduation gift.

I am happy to report that the signature blocks are complete and assembled together. I next need to attach two borders. However, the original plan for this quilt was that the signature blocks would be the front of the quilt and then I’d use a simple backing. But now I’m going to use the signature blocks as the backing of the quilt, so the outermost border will need the extra four inches on each side for the quilt backing, and because of that extra four inches, I do not have enough of the fabric I’m planning to use for that border. I’ll need to hunt some down, oh dearie me! I think I actually saw a bolt of the fabric in one of my local quilt shops a couple months back, so I guess another visit in order, and soon.

Once those borders are in place, or while I am waiting to secure more of the outer border fabric, I will start working on the new front of the quilt. I do have the fabric for that. I also ended up with too many signature blocks, so some will be worked into the design of the front of the quilt, too.

Husband Christmas Socks

More time went into knitting these this week as well, yay!

I made the mistake of using some waiting-in-the-car time to work on them with the windows down, and eek, I had a raging headache from the smoky air within ten minutes.

I’m so glad from the temporary reprieve from the smoke, but it looks like the air quality will go back to yucky in the next week. I’m all for finding silver linings in challenges, so I am thankful when I get some free time due to cancelled activities, but it feels wrong to be getting so much personal good out of so much widespread destruction. I would happily give up the extra time to sew if it meant we got a miracle storm of rain to squelch out all these horrible fires.

We’re finishing up studying the story of Esther in the Old Testament this last week…maybe it’s overdue to look to the examples in that story and apply them to the current wildfire situation ourselves?

#craftygoals: August 2026

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July was busy, too; mostly with driving people places and trying to adjust to the different activities that summer brings. Good weather makes it difficult to stay indoors as well.

Debrief: July’s #craftygoals:

In-progress graduation signature quilt
  1. Rachel’s Graduation Signature Quilt: There has been progress. All signature blocks have at least two of their four borders.
  2. Husband Christmas Socks: Finished the first one! (It looks SO GOOD!) I’m only on the ribbing of the second one.

August #craftygoals:

Rachel’s Graduation Signature Quilt: I know myself. If I move off of this project before it’s done, it will languish. So I am not going to make goals for any other project, besides the Husband Christmas Socks, until this quilt is completely finished. Summer is a hard time to find crafty time, so I’m just hoping to get some work done on this; it was silly to think I’d finish it last month, but here we are.

Husband Christmas Socks: I’m just going to keep trying to find thirty minutes a day to work on them.

If I manage to finish Rachel’s graduation quilt, I’ve promised myself I can jump back into working on the Fat Quarter Shop Sewcialites 3 sew along. But not before.

Kind of a boring update, but there it is. Enjoy these last days of summer! Being in Washington State means we don’t start school until later than most, so we’ve still got a good month of summer vacation to enjoy, and I do mean to enjoy it as much as possible, preferably outdoors because the winters here are gray and wet and very indoor activity-oriented and I feel like I’m going to lose my mind by the time February rolls around. You have to balance that part of the year out with by using the summer months to engage in a frenzied amount of watching the sunrise while walking through the woods and eating dinner in the backyard until it gets too chilly to stay outside anymore. Doesn’t leave a lot of time for the craft room. How I manage to forget that every year is baffling. 😉

Block 16 "Kaleidoscope Star," designed by Tara Reed for the Riley Blake Designs Block Challenge 2026 sew along in shades of green and blue.

Riley Blake Designs Block Challenge 2026: May Check-In

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We’ve come to the end of this year’s Block Challenge sew along and all my blocks are done!

Block 15: “Center of Attention,” by Heather Peterson

Block 15 in the 2026 Riley Blake Designs Block Challenge "Center of Attention" designed by Heather Peterson, sewn up in Confetti Cottons solids in green, blues and pinks.

Not a bad little block. I’d like to see an entire quilt made of these. I threw this together in a short amount of time, so there’s not much to say about it.

Block 16: “Kaleidoscope Star,” by Tara Reed

Block 16 "Kaleidoscope Star," designed by Tara Reed for the Riley Blake Designs Block Challenge 2026 sew along in shades of green and blue.

I think this is a particularly striking block. Another block that I’d like to make an entire quilt out of. We shall see.

Finishing

The finishing instructions were released today, and they differ from how I thought they were going to go. I had preemptively started working on the setting blocks in the manner I thought they’d be constructed, so I’m just going to go forward with my method. I had made the goal to finish this quilt in its entirety by the end of May, but that will not be happening; and with Rachel’s graduation only weeks away, my focus is going to shift to preparing for all the festivities and preparations for that. Hopefully I can come back to this quilt before the end of the summer.

Thanks so much, Riley Blake Designs and all of its designers, for putting on a lovely sew along. This quilt is going to look so beautiful in my front room.

The block patterns are free and available on the Riley Blake website. If you want to download specific patterns, here’s the links:

Riley Blake Designs Block Challenge 2026: April Check-In

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I had the goal to get caught on this in the month of April and I’m happy to report that I did just that! Here’s the blocks that I sewed up in the last month:

Block 4: “Ribbon Star,” by Fran Gulick

I think this is my favorite block of the entire sew along, and just about everyone else agrees with me. My daughters comment on how pretty it is whenever they wander through the craft room. So pretty! Might make an entire quilt from it someday.

Block #5: “Ombré Dash,” by Beverly McCullough

I was surprised that I was able to get this ombré look to work with my limited color palette!

Block #6: “Square Knot,” by Jennifer Long

Bit of a heart attack-inducing block due to the “backwards is forwards” nature of construction. It all turned out fine, but I had many a moment of “Wait…OH NO!…wait…no, it’s fine…wait…no it’s not…yes it is…I think?”

Block #7: “Tulip Toss,” by Christopher Thomas

Bit of a devil block. Matching those cornflower edges to the snowball edges was torture. I managed it fine enough, eventually, but eek. Not a fun experience.

Block #9: “Center Pieces,” by Vicki McCarty

Ugh. I did such a good with matching up my HST points, only to botch the strips. And I suspected that that was going to happen and still didn’t adjust my seam allowance during construction. I might go back in and fix them at some point, but I got to the point where I was just so sick of this block that I don’t want to look at it anymore.

Block #11: “Pinwheel Pop,” by Amanda Neiderhauser

This is another darling block that everyone loves. The blue frame behind the pinwheel is delightful!

Block #12: “Cactus Blooms,” by ME

The schedule block for Week 12 is “Majestic View,” by Casey Cometti, but it just didn’t have the look I wanted in my quilt. So I poked around in the Electric Quilt Block Library until I found a block I wanted and then tweaked it to make it fit. I cannot remember the actual name of the original block, but I’ve been calling it “Cactus Blossoms.”

Block #13: “Patchwork Star,” by Liza Taylor

What a cute and easy block to make! I enjoyed this one.

Block #14: “Flower Show,” by J. Wecker Frisch

In the rush to get all the blocks finished and caught up, I lost track of this one and literally do not remember making it. Must have been an easy one?

The block patterns are free and available on the Riley Blake website. If you want to download specific patterns, here’s the links:

Only two more blocks to go! And then the setting blocks, which are looking kind of intense, but neat-looking!

Layer Cake Latte Quilt Fabric Choices, or “Why I Chose the Fabrics that I Chose”

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I had fun picking out the fabric for this quilt because there were A LOT of great collections that have come out in the past little while. So many that I actually got a little overwhelmed with my options and decided to poll my Facebook friends on what collection they would choose:

I was really surprised that the winner of the poll was #5: “Antoinette,” by French General for Moda, followed by a tie for second, with only one vote less, of #3 “Honey & Lavender,” by Deb Strain for Moda, and #6 “Lemon Bouquet,” by Timeless Treasures Fabrics.

I had already been leaning towards #1 “French Quarter,” by Maywood Studios because I’ve been slowly morphing my home’s decor towards a blue and white palette, but it really surprised me how few votes the collection got in comparison to the other collections. I love two color quilts and I assumed everyone else did as well. The only other collection to get less votes was #2 with all the reds. Two color quilts are not a favorite amongst the people I know.

So I decided to just mock them all up in the quilt pattern so that people could understand why I was going to go with French Quarter despite it not winning the poll—namely, because the contrast was going to be excellent. I thanked everyone for voting and promised them that I’d show them what each collection looked like once the quilt pattern was released, and so here we are. I present to you, dear friends, what the Layer Cake Latte quilt could have looked like in the different collection options:

#1: French Quarter, from Maywood Studios

#2: Heirloom Red, by My Mind’s Eye from Riley Blake Designs

#3: “Honey & Lavender,” by Deb Strain for Moda Fabrics

#4: “Honeybloom,” by 3 Sisters for Moda Fabrics
I mocked this up with two different background colors because I really liked the blue in the collection.

#5: “Antoinette,” by French General for Moda Fabrics

#6: “Lemon Bouquet,” Timeless Treasures Fabrics
I mocked it up with two background colors because I saw the Kona Color of the Year, Mint Julep, and thought it might work well.

I like my quilts to have a fair amount of contrast between the background fabrics and the showcased fabrics, so French Quarter was my ultimate choice, but I did think long and hard about going with Honey & Lavender because I really liked the look of that one as well. I don’t decorate with a lot of purple in my house, so I went with the blue.

But there you go, friends, the visuals that helped me choose my colors. Seeing them mocked up, which fabric collection would you have gone with?

Classic & Vintage: Double Nine-Patch Quilt

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Good morning, friends!  Today I get to FINALLY share Fat Quarter Shop’s newest pattern with you!  It’s from their “Classic & Vintage” series of patterns, and it’s called the Double Nine-Patch Quilt!

You probably aren’t aware that one of my most favoritest, favoritest things about quilts is NESTED SEAMS.  Seams that have to match perfectly, and so you press the seam allowances opposite each other so they’ll nest into each other and lock themselves into place…oh my goodness, sign me up for THAT.  You can imagine my exclamation of joy when I first laid eyes on the mock-up of Fat Quarter Shop’s newest pattern in their Classic & Vintage line-up, the Double Nine Patch:

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Just. look. at all of those nested seams.

Putting this quilt together is pretty simple–I’d even suggest that it’s accessible by a “gettin’ tired of making charm pack patchwork quilts” kind of beginner.  I actually kept track of how long each of my sewing sessions were with making this quilt, and I went from starching my pre-washed fabric to finishing attaching the borders in a little under twenty hours (spread over five days).  And the finished quilt is sooo beautiful:

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I just love classic patterns, and this is such a clean, pretty look.

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I chose to go with a fat quarter bundle of Riley Blake’s “Comfort & Joy” fabric collection, because, hello,  CHRISTMAS, and I decided that I was going to keep this quilt for myself and I have been in love with this collection since it was first released last year, so “Merry Christmas” to yours truly, mwa ha ha.  I love, love, love the red, green, and white together.  Oh, be still my Christmas heart.

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I had the quilting done by Utah Valley Quilting, in their “Holly AB” pattern.  I love how it turned out!

Fat Quarter Shop has a kit available with Sweetwater’s “Project Red” collection included (oh, it doesn’t get more classic than red and white, does it?), and also a backing kit to match.  (Seriously love the print they chose for the backing!)

You can download the free quilt block pattern here, or download the full pattern for a small charge here.

As always, there’s a cute little video explaining the new pattern, and you can watch it here:

Oh my goodness, I love this quilt.  Thank you, Fat Quarter Shop, for the opportunity to help you spread the fun news of this new pattern!

Linking Up:
Can I Get a Whoop Whoop? @ Confessions of a Fabric Addict

 

The Nutcracker Mosaic Quilt Story

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My mother and I adore decorating for the holidays, and we send each other new Christmas decorations most years, specially timed so that they arrive in the mail right about the day after Thanksgiving.  (Because it’s silly to give a Christmas decoration to someone to open ON Christmas–it just gets packed up the next day and you don’t get to use it for almost an entire year!)  My decoration theme is gingerbread men and woodsy greenery, and her decorating theme FOR YEARS has been snowmen.

But a few years ago she decided she was done with snowmen, and that she wanted to instead decorate with nutcrackers.

190e6f6925a9ba7931102d1122490416Last spring (think 2016) the fabulous “Nutcracker Christmas” fabric collection by Riley Blake came out, and the first time I saw it I thought, “Oh my goodness, that would be perfect for my mom!”  But money was tight, and it was softball season and I had no time to make anything anyway, so I told myself I’d revisit the idea at a later date.  Softball season came and went, and I kept catching glances of the collection and thinking every time that it really would be just perfect, but everything was working against me to buy the fabric.  But the pressure to make something with it kept hounding me.

Finally, one evening in July after having seen a whole bunch of mentions of the collection throughout the day, I had enough.  I was saying my evening prayers and I was so weighed down by thoughts of this fabric collection and really frustrated, so I decided to just be straight with God about my dilemma.  I told Him that I felt like He wanted me to make a nutcracker quilt for my mom for whatever reason, but that I just could not make the financial aspect of getting the fabric to work out, and if He really wanted me to make the quilt, then He needed to figure out how to get the fabric to me for free.  I was instantly washed over with a feeling of relief, and, thinking that the matter was settled and I was freed from the obligation, I crawled into bed, sighing with gratitude that I wouldn’t have to worry about the nutcracker quilt anymore.

The next day was quilt guild, and I set out for my meeting with a peaceful heart, settled into my seat on the front row, and chatted with my friends while waiting for the meeting to begin.  A member of my guild, Shannon, asked if she could make an announcement.  She walked up to the front of the room carrying a large basket and said that she had lots of scraps leftover from some quilts she’d made and that we could have anything we wanted that was in the basket.

Guess what was sitting on the very top of the pile?  Yep, a bundle of Nutcracker Christmas fabric.  I looked up at the ceiling and shook my head in humbled amazement.

il_340x270.1029714215_rds0Upon getting home, I measured the fabric in the bundle and I had roughly a fat eighth of every print in the collection, plus about a yard of all three colors of the border print.  That’s A LOT of fabric to get for free!

I decided to use the fabric with the “Mosaic” pattern found in Fat Quarter Style, and that I wanted to fussy cut the border fabric for the Christmas trees, gifts, and individual nutcrackers, using  the rest of the fabric to fill in the mosaic blocks.

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I chose to use Kona “Snow” for the borders and sashing, and ordered some more of my favorite print for the back.

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Utah Valley Quilting did the quilting; it’s “Christmas Pano 2009 SD,” using a light mint/seafoam-colored thread.  I went into the shop thinking white thread, but Kerri, the shop owner, talked me into a little bit of color and I’m so glad I listened to her!  The quilting really pops on this quilt!

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Last, but not least, the binding is made up of leftovers of the diamond section of the border print fabrics.

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I apologize for the photos–in my haste to make sure that the quilt got to my mom on the day after Thanksgiving, I rushed it to the post office and forgot to do a photo shoot!  “Draped over chair in living room so I could show the binding to my best friend in a Google Hangouts photo” is all I have of it in its completed state.  At least there’s that, right?

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I love how this quilt turned out, down to its cute little quilt label!  My mom phoned me half an hour after opening the box, apologizing that it took so long to contact me because she’d “been staring at it for twenty minutes” before remembering to give me a call.  She’s extremely pleased with her gift, and even more so after I told her the backstory of how this quilt came into existence.  Perhaps she just needed a reminder that God loves her?  It was fun to let Him work through me.  This has been a Christmas gift for both my mother and myself.