Medina Dots Table Runner & Matching Placemats

 I'm excited to share my latest project for Oakshott Fabrics! Everything you see here was made from one F8 stack of the Lipari and one F8 stack of the Ruby Reds collections (a total of 16 super-sized Oakshott F8's which measure 10" x 27"). I set myself the challenge of creating a pattern that would not only let the fabrics shine, but let you feel good about your purchase by using up all of the precious cloth in the two F8 stacks. The result is a super luxurious set of table linens with playful shapes and vibrant colours reminiscent of Moroccan market stands.

The table runner features 60 degree triangles of the blue and green Liparis, appliquéd Ruby Reds circles (by hand, or machine) and a unique diamond-shape that is sure to fancy-up your table! The 6 coordinating placemats make use of the remaining F8's from the Lipari stack with leftover triangles pieced as a border accent. Everything is beautifully bound in a scrappy Ruby Reds binding using up almost every inch!  And because I have a feeling someone will ask...the binding went these angles in the exact same way it works on right angled quilt corners. It just takes a little finesse when turning to the wrong side to create the mitre.

I used a regular cotton blend batting in the table runner, but for the placemats I wanted a bit more structure that would stand up to more regular washing (by hand). I chose heavyweight fusible fleece by Pellon and am very pleased with the crisp finish. 

Everything is pieced with Aurifil 50wt and quilted with a luscious green Aurifil 40 wt thread. I give all of the recommended thread weight and colour info in the pattern. I didn't want to compress those pretty circles with quilting, so I chose to simply quilt 1/4" from all of the piecing lines with my walking foot and repeated the same angles and double lines on the placemats. A Hera marker works a treat for chemical and chalk-free marking on Oakshott shot cottons.

If you're looking for some luxe and would like to make your own set, the .pdf pattern is available in my Etsy shop here and you can purchase the full fabric pack directly from Oakshott here. I've also got a limited number of full kits for sale myself that include all fabric for front and binding of the runner and 6 placemats, the full colour printed pattern + die-cut cardstock circle templates for a great price of $125 Can shipping to North American addresses for $20 Cdn (or available for local pick from my front porch). Please contact me via my email address (upper left corner under my headshot) to claim one! ONLY FOUR AVAILABLE AS OF DECEMBER 4.

ZOOM Lectures

1. **NEW LECTURE** Fall 2023

Mini Quilt, Major Inspiration: Nurturing Small Projects into Spectacular Quilts

This 60 minute Powerpoint lecture is available on Zoom, or in person with an accompanying trunk show. Krista will take you through the design concept of a maquette, or model, in the form of mini quilts using real examples of her work. She'll talk about her process of testing design ideas and workshop concepts through starting small as well as sharing unexpected success from design and swap challenges. See how you can expand your quilting practice without breaking the bank or suffering a quilt math crisis by first testing ideas, colours and techniques in small studies.

    

2. Poppyprint: The Search for Signature Style

Krista can present this Powerpoint slide show live at your meeting on ZOOM (60 minutes with question period), or send a pre-recorded .mp4 file to overseas guilds in not-so-convenient time zones* to share with their members (45 minute recording).

As a traditionally-informed modern quilter, Krista has explored many different styles and techniques since she began quilting in 2000. In this photo-rich presentation, Krista shares simple yet effective strategies that have worked for her in the search for a unique creative voice while remaining connected to myriad inspiration sources like print and social media, quilt shows, conferences, local quilts shops and guilds.

3. Who Gives a Flying FQ About Accuracy?

Krista can present this Powerpoint slide show live at your meeting on ZOOM (60 minutes with question period), or send a pre-recorded .mp4 file to overseas guilds in not-so-convenient time zones* to share with their members (50 minute recording).

In this live Powerpoint slide show, Krista presents an update version of her webinar originally produced for the Modern Quilt Guild. In it, she discusses the why and how of cutting, piecing and pressing accuracy, then follows up with the “but when is it really important?” part. This presentation is chock full of information, myth-busting tips, many detailed photos, notion recommendations and piecing tricks. We may even get into the side vs open pressing debate!

4. AURIFILOSOPHY

Krista is a certified Aurifilosopher, having trained with Aurifil's owner/President Alex Veronelli and Master Thread Educator Karen Miller. She can deliver a live, professional Powerpoint lecture on the origin, history,
production and uses of all Aurifil thread weights with photographic samples of projects and specific threads stitched out onto quilt sandwiches for comparison. Each Zoom attendee will receive one small spool of Aurifil thread in a random colour & weight and a product catalogue (shipped after the presentation directly to a guild representative for distribution).

Threadplay Pouch AufilosophyWorkshop

To support guild programming, Krista also offers a half-day (3 hour) workshop to follow the presentation. Students will make a Quilt-as-you-go zipper pouch. The pouch is designed to show off stitch patterns in multiple thread weights. Participants may purchase custom Poppyprint Aurifil sample thread packs in advance that include 5 small spools of thread in weights 12, 28, 40, 50,  & 80 wt. A minimum of one month lead time is required to order and ship sample packs to the guild representative for distribution to members.

*Krista lives on Bowen Island near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada in the Pacific Time zone.

For current lecture fees and availability, please contact Krista directly at poppyprintcreates(at)gmail(dot)com 

Varietals - A Monochromatic Improv Study

Here's a recent finish, the second in what I hope will be a series of three quilts all based on improvisational (free cut) hourglass units. This mini-obsession started with the
"Try a Triad" design challenge (still open!) issued by the Canadian Quilter's Association to make a modern mini quilt using only red, blue and yellow fabric. I really loved the resulting design and composition of my challenge quilt but the colours are not at all 'me'.   I decided to hit my Oakshott fabric stash and try a monochromatic version.

Varietals 25" x 25"

Oakshott fabrics are shot cottons, which means they are woven with two different colours of thread. One colour for warp, the other for weft. In the photo above, it may appear that there are more than 3 colours of fabric used. Had I been incredibly diligent about piecing the fabric with the threads always in the same vertical and horizontal orientation, the quilt would appear more uniform, but it wouldn't be as interesting, in my opinion. That is just one more delightful aspect of Oakshott fabric; it gives quilts added visual interest and depth because as you change your viewing angle on the flat, two dimensional artwork, the colours subtly change as the different threads some into view and the fabrics absolutely glow. 

These are the 3 colours I used to make Varietals. Iris is black + purple thread, Grape is red + navy thread and Mallow is red + purple thread.

The tricky aspect to all of this fabric awesomeness is photography. Everyone who loves working with Oakshott will tell you the same thing: it is really difficult to adequately capture the depth in photos. Every time I share one of my quilts in a show or lecture, I hear the same thing, "wow, that quilt is even more incredible in real life!". The best way to describe the sheen and depth is to compare it to Dupioni silk, another fabric you may be familiar with. In the case of Varietals, I could have made this quilt with regular quilting cottons, but with only 3 shades of one colour and no real value difference, the quilt would probably have a flat, less interesting appearance. 

In terms of construction, I first cut sets of squares in a few different sizes from each fabric. The squares were stacked and then free-cut on both diagonals using a rotary cutter but no ruler. Swapping triangles out, I then pieced a lot of improv hourglass units. For me, the challenge of quilts like this is the puzzle-piecing of all the units into a pleasing composition. These are techniques I teach in my Speed Date with Improv workshop. Here, my desire was to portion the quilt into three colour sections that blend toward the center. Keeping like-sized units in groups prevents the quilt from having a completely chaotic appearance. 

As an Aurifil Artisan, I am very lucky to have access to the 270 colours available for my projects. To add more dimension to the piece, I purposely didn't try to exactly match the fabrics, but chose thread colours that I thought would shine on the fabric. I've been using Aurifil thread for about 17 years now and have settled on 40 wt as my go-to quilting weight. I used to stick with 30 wt for quilting (and still do sometimes when I'm not quilting so densely), but I've come to love the look of 40 wt on closely-spaced straight line walking foot quilting. These lines are eyeballed using the edge of my walking foot as a rough guide, about 1/4" to 3/8" apart. I don't try to keep the lines perfectly straight, or perfectly spaced. After all, this is an improv quilt! The lines run at different angles for each colour section. My stitch length is set around 3.0 on my Juki. I've had quilt judges say that my stitch length is too long, but for a wallhanging that isn't going to get any wear and tear, I think this looks much prettier than tiny stitches where I really notice the holes more than the thread.

Aurifil colours from L-R: 2581 Dark Dusty Grape (on Grape), 1100 Red Plum (on Mallow)

 and 2745 Midnight (on Iris)

I used almost every scrap of the supersized Oakshott FQ's that I had for each colour (Oakshott is milled at 55" wide and cut by the meter, so you actually get a luscious piece of shot cotton that is 19.5" x 27"!). That meant a binding was out of the question, so this quilt is faced using most elements of this great tutorial on my friend Terry's blog.

I got the name from my visit to Naramata, B.C. at harvest time last fall. I'd never been when the vines were laden with grapes and it was a gorgeous sight to see!

Any day now, I'm going to find the focus required to start my third version, which I plan to make a bit larger and using 3 different Oakshott reds. I hope it will turn out as beautifully as this one!

Thank you to my friends at Oakshott Fabrics and Aurifil for the fine materials they share with me so that my projects can look their absolute best.

Local Courthouse Colourplay Workshop

The Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild invites non-members to join us for my Courthouse Colourplay class on Sunday, April 28th at the Croatian Cultural Centre in Vancouver from 10 am to 5 pm. All of the info is here. The price for non-members is $80.

Explore the possibilities of colour expression and free-cutting without rulers while you create this wonky, nested Courthouse Step quilt (reminiscent of paper lanterns) in your own personal colour story.

I made this wallhanging for the MQG miniquilt swap at QuiltCon2018

We’ll work intuitively from the center out, creating a dynamic quilt with loads of personality. There will be no squaring up with this one — instead I'll show you how to “build out”, finding the fit between adjacent blocks and using up all of your scraps in the process.

This one is a baby or small lap quilt with 25 blocks.

As in all of my workshops, I'll share loads of tips while encouraging all students to find confidence in new techniques.  Put your patchwork and rotary cutting skills to work and explore improvisational design and piecing in a fun, supportive environment!  The supply list includes ideas, resources and tips for selecting your colours. Make a wall-hanging with F8's or a lap quilt with FQ's or 12" WOF cuts.  A layer cake of solids or tone on tones like grunge could even work with some prudent cutting ; ) 

This one, Emerald Court, has 16 blocks with slightly wider strips. It's about 40" square. It's made entirely of Northcott solids that I loved working with! No fraying and a lovely hand.  I'm currently hand-quilting it with Aurifil 12 wt and Aurifloss. 

To register, please email workshops@vancouvermodernquiltguild.ca 

Vancouver Special

On Saturday and Sunday August 25/26, the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild will proudly present our second Modern Quilt Showcase. Once again, I'm coordinating the show alongside a few other dedicated guild members who've been working super hard to pull it all together. It takes an enormous effort to plan a multi-day public quilt show in a large, industrial setting. We love the Pipe Shop venue in North Vancouver because it is flooded with natural light; the wide open space featuring huge timber posts is the most perfect backdrop for our colourful, modern quilts.

Unlike most contemporary quilt shows taking place these days, we've once again decided to forego the usual "drape" approach to hanging. Our quilts will hang directly from cross bars and dowels suspended from overhead wire. Many of the quilts will have backs visible, which is also rather unusual for a quilt show. It'll be a stunning show of about 140 quilts. I really hope to see you there!

We issued a challenge to our members this time: create a modern mini quilt for the theme "West Coast Modern". The quilt must be made of solid coloured fabric and not exceed 80" total perimeter.  I'm enjoying challenges more and more these days as my confidence in designing original work increases year after year.  I've also learned that it's possible to make just about anything you like and figure out a way to make it fit the theme.

I considered lots of modern landscape interpretations because, well, Vancouver is a coastal city on the edge of B.C., with ocean on one side and mountains on the other. Then out of the blue, I decided to take the "modern" more literally and create a little quilted version of a well-known (somewhat controversial) house design built throughout Vancouver's east and south sides. These homes are known as Vancouver Specials: they feature two full above-ground floors built on grade, maximum square footage, shallow sloping roof, typically a kitchen on each floor, front balcony with sliding glass door, brick bottom with stucco top and an off-centre entranceway.  They often fill their city lot, leaving a small front and back yard.  The homes were built relatively quickly (some came in kits) and provided multi-generational housing that suited the influx of new Canadians to this city who were used to living this way in their home countries and cultures.  While not the most attractive homes, they served an important purpose: to welcome new families to Vancouver and provide affordable housing in a rapidly growing urban area.

As families have aged out of these neighbourhoods, many of these 70's built homes have been purchased by younger professionals and renovated into expansive, spare modern spaces for family living. There is even an annual home tour featuring such houses.

image source: weloveeastvan.com

I created my little version entirely with Oakshott shot cottons and quilted it with the new Aurifil longarm 40/3 cotton thread on a cone. I love the weight of this thread for quilting!  I'm thinking more and more about minimalist design and trying it out. This may be my first step...making this quilt a true challenge for me. It's definitely one aspect of modern quilt design that I find the most difficult to wrap my brain around.

I sewed a little sleeve and label on the back yesterday. My mini is all ready for the showcase. To make the mini challenge even more fun, we'll be asking visitors to vote on their favourite. The quilt with the most votes will receive the most beautiful miniature ribbon, handmade by a guild member.  All other quilts in the showcase are also up for Viewer's Choice ribbons, so please come by, enjoy some incredible modern quilts, buy a lucky raffle ticket on our charity quilt and vote for your favourites.

VMQG Modern Quilt Showcase

August 25, noon  - 8:00 p.m.

August 26, 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Admission: $5, children <12 free="" p="">

The Pipe Shop, 115 Victory Ship Way, North Vancouver, BC

 (just one block east of the Lonsdale Quay Seabus Terminal)

Accessible with washrooms onsite

Free parking nearby in the ICBC parkade, pay parkade at the Pinnacle Hotel & Lonsdale Quay.

1 hr and 2 hr free street parking in the neighbourhood

The Penultimate Lonestar

Just a quick share of this mini-Lonestar Circle quilt I recently finished up on a retreat. You've seen a few of these here before. This particular one has been lying around in my sewing room in pieces since the Alaska Cruise almost 2 years ago. It was time to get this UFO pieced, quilted and bound!  A friend once indicated that she wanted to make one, but she's a busy gal and I know she's got plenty of her own ideas brewing, so I gifted her this one for her sewing room wall.

You can find the pattern in my book Make It, Take It. The original quilt was designed by Lynne Goldsworthy and I've shared cutting instructions to make this mini version here.

made with Cotton & Steel, Essex Linen and quilted with Aurifil 40 wt thread

It just so happened that the chicken coop on the retreat property was painted a perfect colour as a backdrop for this quilt.  Lucky me!

This is the penultimate because there is still one more full sized version awaiting quilting in my sewing room. It's a Christmas one, so I have time....

New Work for Workshops

This weekend I'll be teaching in Nanaimo, B.C. for the brand new Nanaimo Modern Quilt Guild ! On Saturday (Feb.25), we're going to have some fun with Speed Date with Improv and on Sunday (Feb.26) it'll be time to play with my Quarter Round block and create some fun secondary patterning. There are still a few spots available in both workshops if you are on Vancouver Island and fancy a day in Nanaimo hanging out with modern quilting enthusiasts learning new skills playing with colour, shape and pattern. Contact & workshop info is on their blog.

Here are my latest creations using the versatile Quarter Round block. In the green pillow, I really changed things up by substituting electric lime green and green for the 'background' strips and ombre grey in the main strips. It turned out a little different from the the digital drawing I initially posted here due to mixing up my greens during cutting.  You can see that half square triangles are used instead of a solid corner square and I rotated the blocks so each half square triangle is in the centre, creating a pinwheel. This gives the composition a concentric square effect with the green background strips meeting along the central vertical and horizontal seams.

I used up my strippy scraps to make an improv backing for this pillow and quilted both the front and back with parallel lime green lines using Aurifil 40 wt. thread.

I installed an invisible zip along one edge of the pillow. You can see that even though this was a 20 1/2" block sewn together with a 3/8" seam allowance, a 20" commercial pillow form isn't quite enough to puff out the entire pillow cover. Before gifting this, I'll stuff a handful of polyfil into each corner of the pillow.

And this is my attempt at an abstract rose. Yes, this is the same block! In my Round Peg, Square Hole pattern (link to my Craftsy shop at the top of my right sidebar), this is referred to as the "Basic ombre Block". In this 20" mini quilt, I constructed 4 identical blocks, however 2 have reversed ombre strips. In this one, you can see that the blocks are rotated so that each corner square of "background" white fabric is on an outside corner of the quilt top and all of the widest strips meet along the central vertical and horizontal seams.

I taught this workshop for the first time last weekend for my traditional guild and it is so fun to see how people work with colours and prints in this pattern. I can't wait to see some quilts come together!

Improv Christmas Pillows

First things first: WE HAVE SNOW!!!! Happy dance.

Ok.

Over the past two + years I've been making these little improv trees with samples of Improv Under the Influence piecing from my workshops. After demonstrating the technique to students using these beautiful Oakshott fabrics (leftover from my Chess on the Steps quilt), I would then piece sections into little trees with an Essex linen background. It was a great way to show people alternate ideas for the piecing.  I'd been contemplating a modern table runner, but settled on pillows instead. I finally pieced the tops together at one of my recent day retreats.

The compositions needed a little something, so I added the tiny wonky stars, which are so much fun to make. Both pillows are totally reversible, each with a strip of improv piecing on the back. I tackled invisible zips for the first time after finally finding my special invisible zipper foot (if any of you have a newer Pfaff, you'll know that this clear plexiglass foot is itself pretty invisible in whatever container you store it in!). I typically bind my pillows, but I think I'm a convert now. It was super easy! There are plenty of tutorials online, but I like Katie's succinct one here.

The pillow tops and backs were squared to 20" and backed with fusible fleece (no fabric backing or lining in these pillows). I quilted the fronts with straight vertical lines about 1/4" inch apart using coordinating 40 wt. Aurifil thread in green and red. The backings are quilted with lines 1" apart in the Essex and 1/4" apart in the improv strips.

(I've just gotta say, taking photos in winter here is so hard. It's either light-sucking grey overcast or brilliant sunshine and shadows!)

Most of my handmade Christmas decorations in the living room are 12 or more years old and tend towards folksy designs that were popular in the shop I was working in at that time. I'm loving this modern update, although the pillows are bit incongruous with our 100 year old cottage!

I hope you are enjoying your holiday gift-making, decorating and baking. I've seriously cut back on baking the last couple of years and I must say, it is incredibly liberating. I'd much rather sew gifts. I think I have the only family that left cookie exchange bounty untouched on the kitchen counter for weeks! My mom kindly sends our Christmas dessert of plum pudding, so I'm even off the hook for that.

If I don't make it back here before the 25th, Merry Christmas and happy  holidays to all of you! Thanks for another year of hanging out with me here at Poppyprint. xoxoxox

Tiny Quilts and Inspiration

August was my "me" month. I didn't have any deadlines or commitments, so I kept sewing plans loose. My thought was to spend some time reading, researching and re-grouping.  I decided to work on two small projects for the American Made Brand Solids Tiny Quilt Challenge.  I really like the concept of the AMB company (read all about their "farm to fabric" process on their website).  Two small (less than 15" sides) and original compositions sounded like a fun exercise.

In order to qualify for the challenge, quilts had to be made of 100% AMB solids. I had some pastel and grey fat quarters purchased at Island Quilter a couple of years ago and two rainbow mini-charm packs (2 1/2" squares) from QuiltCon 2015 at my disposal.

Still working on exploring ideas with my Improv Under the Influence piecing technique, I thought I'd give it a try with the 2 1/2" squares. I didn't have a a concrete idea of what I would do with improv-pieced border units in rainbow colours, until one day inspiration struck in the form of a photo on Instagram. Heather Jones posted a detail shot of a log cabin, showing the horizontal logs separated by white chinking. On the left side of the image, you saw the rounded square ends of the logs forming the adjacent wall.  I grabbed my sketchbook and drew this:

Looking at those rainbow stripes reminded me of some a quilt block I'd seen on Instagram. It was made by Susanne Woods (craftyeditor) for the #lovewinsquilt project, commemorating the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in June that effectively legalized same sex marriage.

After having a lot of fun piecing skinny strips with tiny 1/8" seam allowances, I came up with this final composition, which I call The Five, measuring 12 1/2" x 14 1/2". It represents the five Supreme Court Justices in their sombre robes, their weighted decision, and ultimately their landmark ruling for equality. Not everyone is happy about this decision, in fact I lost about 20 followers on IG after posting the story of this quilt. Quilters have been using their art to honour their values and commemorate important milestones in history for over 100 years and I'm excited to make my own tiny contribution to this tradition.

With coordinating Aurifil thread in 30 wt, I quilted straight lines with a 3.5 stitch length, simply following alternate seams in the pieced strips as my guide. 

Somewhere along the way, I got to thinking about rounded squares and sketched a few ideas for achieving the look with a log cabin construction. It took quite a bit of math! In order to make The Five, I had to drive across the border to buy reds as there weren't any in the mini charm packs I had. With left over hunks of tomato red and fuschia, I made this Long Cabin Study 1 quilt, which is 15" square.

The binding had to be AMB also, so my options were limited and ultimately I chose this pale mint colour over dark grey. Again, I quilted with coordinating Aurifil 30 wt thread and a long stitch length on my new Juki  TL2010-Q (using the regular sewing foot with minimal pressure, since the walking foot that came with my machine was faulty).

You can see that I carried the thread right through to the edges of the quilt over the alternate coloured fabric.

This quilt wasn't selected, either. I've since made another one in a slightly larger size where the proportions work even better for the secondary pattern of the rounded square. I'll share that with you next and I think I'll create a pattern for a bed-sized version because I just love the bold colour study and resulting graphic design. I find it reminiscent of those illusion text fonts with 'unfinished' letters that your eye automatically completes so that you can read the words, like this one by German designer Alexander Tibus where letters are defined by their shadows.

source

I've just returned from a wonderful long weekend of teaching in Juneau, Alaska and have lots to catch up. I'll work on my Sweden photos this week and share those with you soon!

My Favourite Thread Deal

I'm happy to pass along the news to you lovely readers that my blog partner Sew Sisters has a fabulous special on this month!

This is the only piecing thread I use, ever. I've been piecing with Aurifil 50wt (orange spools) for over 10 years and all of my quilts are wearing perfectly fine with no broken seams (side-pressing works, people). I've been growing my collection of 40 wt Aurifil (green spools) colours as well and am enjoying it immensely for quilting!  28 wt (grey spools) remains my top-stitching thread of choice for work on bags, pouches, sashiko by machine, and anywhere that I need a punch of colour.

The special is for a multi-pack of these three perfect peicing staples: white, dove and black. I'll be buying one right after I post! Get them while they're hot, right here.   I think I'll also check out Tula's extra wide Free Fall backing fabric in 6 different colours and have a peruse through Jeni Bakers Curiosities line that just arrived!

108" wide Free Fall - navy

Look, it's George!!

Happy Shopping!