Yes, it's Black Friday but I am NOT going shopping! That's for the brave and I'm such a chicken when it comes to crowds, packed parking lots, crazy people grabbing stuff off shelves. How in the world did we get from being thankful for what we have on Thursday (Thanksgiving) and then getting into a panic (and credit card debt) the next day because we want more stuff? I'm just saying . . .
Quilts with black in them. I have a lot of those. And in fact, my first book featured them: Bold, Black and Beautiful Quilts (2004, AQS). I won't be showing all of them here, but just a few. But my favorite still remains my Royal Star quilt. And it was the cover quilt (wonder why!). Rotary cut center 9 Patch with paper pieced corners.
You can make those star point "float" on the black by using triple sashing of black-color-black. Pretty cool, huh?
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| Royal Star single block mug rug |
Then there's Ezekiel's Crown. A recent workshop I taught for many cities with the Sewing Expo. I should really make it a pattern online. Not hard (but it is paper piecing - you either love it or hate it.)
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| Ezekiel's Crown: 40" x 40"; 9" block |
Then there's my Classic Amish Shadows, inspired by a vintage Amish quilt.
I shared Orange Crush yesterday and said there's a companion quilt using black. Here she is: Black Licorice. I sell this pattern with Orange Crush, along with the multi-sized acrylic template at my Etsy store. I haven't quilted it yet, but I love it with the red borders.
Yes, you can see that I began to run out of one red fabric, so I found a similar red (the top and bottom center diamonds) and was able to finish my quilt! And, if you were in my workshop (or I happened to bring it to one of my trunk shows) I would turn it over and show you that I even pieced a few of those diamonds!
Now for another oldie. This is a Double Irish Chain incorporating some sewing machine embroidery motifs. Pink and black (yes, we covered pink on Wednesday).
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| Double Irish Chain: 31" x 31" |
And another oldie quilt is my Carpenter's Wheel from the early 2000s. It was one of those stolen quilts. I'm sure it's hanging on the Giant Quilt Rack in the sky!
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| Carpenter's Wheel (paper pieced) |
I wanted to see if I could recreate gingham using shades of the same fabric. I chose Bedrock by Windham and gave it a try. I went about it the long way - only after I finished the blocks did I realize there was a MUCH simpler approach. Here are the blocks and you can see the process steps here:
Gingham Blocks
And I added a little red and have the quilt top here. Click the link below the quilt for detailed steps on how to make this (FREE). There's a chart and lots of pics!
An oldie but goodie quilt is my Folded Hexagons quilt with dragonflies in the border. I shared how to make these Folded Hexagons in some other blog post in the past; the green strips are gros grain ribbon! I am teaching these Folded Hexagons in an upcoming set of workshops for the Sewing Expo in 2020.
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| Folded Hexagons and Dragonflies |
How about some jeweled hearts on black? This quilt was made by my dear friend Jan Jolly when I was living in Atlanta. It appeared in my first book (Bold, Black and Beautiful). The hearts are precut and I think we ordered them from the Keepsake catalog. That was back in the early 2000s!
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| Jeweled Hearts on Black |
And a quilt I made using Lakehouse fabrics when I was an editor for Quilt Magazine. The block is King's Crown and it creates a secondary design when it's set block to block.
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| Lakehouse King's Crown |
Spinning Waterwheels is a remake of a green quilt that appeared in my 3rd book. I used a lot of different black and white prints and threw in a few reds. My class sample is still a top, but here is a picture from one of my students!
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| Spinning Waterwheels (paper pieced) |
OK. I'm ready to stop with just one more group of pics. These use Paula Nadelstern's kaleidoscope fabrics (Benartex). First, some large Grandmother's Flower Garden blocks using 2" hexagons.
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| Grandmother's Flower Garden blocks |
And the beginning of my Winter Solstice block. I shared it last year and I've since quilted it. I'm so anxious for the days to start getting longer, aren't you?
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| Winter Solstice block center |
We have a few more weeks of losing the daylight and then we begin adding a minute each day. My husband thinks I'm nuts because I look forward to December 21!
So, now that you've seen all these quilts, you really don't want to go shopping on Black Friday, do you? I know you want to go sew and that is a comfortable thing to do on the day after Thanksgiving.
Tomorrow, another color. Not telling you which one!
Lovely quilts. Something about black always draws my attention.
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