Chain Quilts

We’ve been browsing some of our photos and patterns and thought we might remind you about these two red and white chain quilts, the pattern for which can be found here. These two late 19th century quilts belong to Ann and Barbara. Ann’s is a coverlet (no wadding) and is simply quilted with a crosshatch design. Barbara’s has been well worn – the Turkey red squares have all but disappeared except at the edges which were presumably out of the sun. Hers is quilted with a simple curves and cross-hatch pattern.

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These chain quilts are really quick and easy to make if you want a graphic quilt for a bed or a wall-hanging and are ideal for the men in your life who don’t want anything fussy or floral. Make them in plains or tone-on-tone prints for the graphic effect. Try different colours too rather than sticking with red and white.

For the younger ones perhaps a print instead of the white – dinosaurs, tractors, trains, spaceships . . .

Or for girly girls try prettier prints with fairies, unicorns, flowers . . .

Fussy-cut big prints can look effective as well and the colour you choose for the smaller squares can make quite a difference to the look of the quilt.

If you want to have a play with this design you can download a colouring sheet here or, of course, you could buy the pattern and make one for real!

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Hannah Hauxwell’s quilts

Hannah Hauxwell was an amazing woman who lived on a remote farm in Yorkshire almost entirely cut off from the outside world until a TV documentary was made about her in 1972. She died in February last year and next month Tennants will be auctioning the quilts from her house. You can find out a little more about them (and Hannah) in this blogpost from UK Quilters United.

I was really taken with the six-pointed star quilt in one of the photos I found on the auctioneers website and wondered about making something similar. At first I thought the blocks were the standard square, but when I tried to draw the star I realised that the blocks had to be rectangles – the star is based on a hexagon and won’t fit into a square. Back to the drawing board (or EQ anyway!).

The original quilt has a lot of blocks and a bright pink binding. I have just drawn a quilt with a few blocks, but have tried to keep those blocks fairly small – 4.5 x 5.25 inches as I think they would need to be (whisper it quietly!) hand-pieced. At which point I decided that no way was I going to be making this quilt except in the virtual world. So I thought I would give you the chance to do a bit of hand-piecing and you can download the templates and a quilt to colour here. Have fun!

 

Patterns

We’ve been having a bit of a tidy up of our pattern store on Payhip as they now offer to sort everything into categories – much easier than scrolling through pages of random stuff looking for just what you want.

Heritage Quilts patterns are still available here, the other patterns have been sorted into categories such as bags, Christmas quilts, table runners, bed quilts and wall-hangings. You can either go direct to the category you want or go to the main pattern store page and click on categories to help navigate your way. Some quilts may be in more than one category.

Quilts Beneath Your Feet also have a separate category – and the Black and White Tiles quilt has been added. More are on the way – Chris just needs to get her act together! (could this be a New Year Resolution?)

Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas!

Simple blocks – Five Spot

With Square-in-a-Square units added to our Mary’s Triangle units we get a traditional block known as Five Spot. Download the instructions for the block here.

The addition of some careful colouring then gives us the bonus of a star in the middle of the block.

You can then have a lot of fun changing the colours around within the block.

Which in turn makes designing a quilt a lot more interesting too, as just using one colouring on its own doesn’t make for a very exciting quilt . . .

unless we have a bit of a play with the ‘background’ of the blocks and then we start to get something that looks a bit like an Islamic tile design . . .

. . . or we alternate different colourings . . .

or set the blocks on point . . .

And now some of these are starting to remind me of a Minton tile floor, so what happens if we change to those colours?

Download the instructions for the Five Spot block here, if you didn’t do so earlier!

Fans quilt

I’ve just had a copy of Today’s Quilter (issue 43) which has my fans quilt project in!

But on reading through it I realise that at one point I say to use the blank quilt to colour in and decide what colours to use for your own quilt. Except I can’t find the blank quilt in the magazine. So for those of you who bought the magazine and wanted a quilt to colour in, or for those who just enjoy colouring – you can download a blank fans quilt here.

And here are some of the ideas that I had come up with if you need a little more inspiration.

Simple Blocks – Aunt Dinah

Aunt Dinah is a variation of the Ohio Star – it has our featured ‘Mary’s Triangles units in the four corners. You can download the instructions for making the block here.

When I first coloured in this block I came up with this

Bu I felt poor Aunty looked a bit dull, so (as it is November and therefore nearly December) I decided to jazz her up a bit with some red and a few snowflakes and stars.

Like Ohio Star this block can be bit ho-hum just straight set on its own and you can lose the stars – they become a pieced sashing.

But add plain sashing between the blocks or alternate the colours of the stars and things look a better.

Or you could turn the corners of the block around and then alternate these with the original, changing the colours of the block as well

Even ‘dull’ Aunt Dinah doesn’t look too dull when given this makeover

Of course, given the time of year, you could always make something a lot smaller –

– give it a border, and maybe ‘pointy’ ends  . . . ?

Or you could head over to our Payhip shop and buy a pattern to make a runner – we featured it way back in 2014.