Sew Solid Sunday #10

Cooler Weather

Welcome back to Sew Solid Sunday! If you are new here, every month I share a project I’ve made using solid fabrics.  Sometimes there are tutorials and sometimes just some sharing, but I hope you’ll make your own solid projects too and share them here via our linky party.

My quilt this month is called Cooler Weather.  I love making quilts that reflect the seasons and fall offers such great colors to work with.

I added the inner rectangles on the sketch later.


So, I was sitting in bed the other morning, thinking about what to make for Sew Solid Sunday and thinking that Fall seemed like an obvious theme.  That led me to thinking that maybe I should make some flying geese.  I love triangles and haven’t made much with them recently.  I got out my graph paper and started sketching, thinking about actual geese flying south and falling leaves.  Since I already had a block in mind, as I was sketching, I just drew rectangles about the size the flying geese would be.  So this is where the plan took a bit of a left turn – I really liked the design with the rectangles.  Rather than using solid blocks of color, I used just the outline of the rectangles.  I also decided to appliqué the quilt instead of piecing it as it would give me the freedom to put the rectangles anywhere I liked.   I could have done something similar with improv piecing (not really my strong suit!), but I like the immediacy of this kind of appliqué – all I needed was a piece of background fabric cut to size and then to move my rectangles wherever I wanted them.

Once I fused the rectangles in place, I decided to stitch them down after the quilt was layered with the backing and batting – an idea I’ve wanted to try for a while.  I often use a satin stitch when I’m working with fusible appliqué, but that felt too heavy for these slim rectangles so I just straight stitched along the inner and outer edges of the rectangles.  I wouldn’t recommend doing this if you plan to wash your quilt as I did!  Quite a mess!  A few minutes with the scissors fixed the worst of it.

For the rest of the quilting I made a big “Z” shape across the quilt and echo quilted lines about 3/4″ apart.  I considered doing some more swirly, breezy looking quilting, but it just didn’t feel right to me with the hard angles of the rectangles.

A few of the quilt details:  the final size is approximately 24″ x 30″, the outside of the rectangles measure 3″ x 1 1/2″, they are 1/4″ wide and the fabrics are RJR Cotton Supreme Solids left over from this post (perfect colors!).

A head’s up for next month!  It will be a pretty busy time around here on the blog, so my friend Lynn Harris, from The Little Red Hen will be guest posting for Sew Solid Sunday.  I know she’ll have an amazing project to share!

Let’s see what you and everyone else have been up to!

3 Comments
  • James Watson
    Posted at 10:57h, 18 October Reply

    Depending on the fabric quality the quilts are selected according to the season.. look the cotton fabric wholesale dealers if wish to get the cotton fabric for winters.

  • Anne
    Posted at 22:27h, 14 October Reply

    I always love reading about your inspiration and process. Especially how this one evolved into rectangles.

  • Jayne
    Posted at 13:21h, 12 October Reply

    I love it! Especially how one idea leads to another! All part of the creative process. It turned out beautiful and of course, it inspires me! Thank you!

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