This is the latest quilt made using my Pickup Sticks pattern . It's 49" x 49" and it's been in the works for several years. (That means it was a UFO all that time . . .) Pickup Sticks using the Shoreline Collection by Windham Fabrics Here's a photo of the blocks on my design wall. It's a simple pattern that uses 10" squares in sets of 4 prints. NO TEMPLATES! (Hint: a freezer paper guide helps.) They're stacked, sliced and then shuffled. Thin strips of 1" inserts are added. Some tilt left and some tilt right. Pickup Sticks blocks I ran out of fabrics along the way. My thin inserts are not as uniform as I wished! I first made this about 15 years ago with a set of batiks: Stained Glass Pickup Sticks : 54" x 64" I went on to make several others. Click those links and you'll see them. I'm going to get this quilted and donated to my local quilt guild's charity endeavors. The fabrics are full of fun prints of crabs and beach chai...

I want to show you one more quilt that I made with a Layer Cake. And this one is REALLY yummy because it's made of chocolate and cherries. This is the Oh, Fudge! Collection by Benartex. I've shared it here before. First, the stack. Oh, Fudge stack of 10-1/2" squares I used them to make TWO quilts. First, my favorite Valentine quilt - I Love You. The inner border, cream block backgrounds and the binding are not from the Layer Cake, but everything else is! I Love You from the Oh, Fudge Collection Then I cut up the rest to make one more Bubbles and Hexagons quilt. I donated this to my quilting group for a local children's charity. Can you believe all those chocolates and cherries and fudge pieces? Bubbles and Hexagons using the Oh, Fudge Collection Now, let me show you some quilts I've made with stacks of 10-1/2" squares. Why that size? Because it's a number that is easily divisible by 3 and you can actually get four 10-1/2" squares from every length of...

You may remember this blog post from October 2019. I'm updating it with my finished quilt!  I received this bundle of 25 fat quarters from the Michael Miller  Tropical Batiks  collection in early 2019. I couldn't believe the motifs and the rich colors. Fat quarter bundle of  Tropical Batiks  by Michael Miller Oh. You want me to open it up and show you all the fabrics? I can do that! Tropical Batiks  in all their glory! I have worked with batiks for about 23 years and find that the simpler the pattern, the more the fabric gets to do the work. These are fat quarters and that challenges me to make the best use of the fabric. I developed a series of patterns in the early 2000s that I call Magic Stax. They all start with 10-1/2" squares and are stacked in a small pile and are cut at the same time (ie, stacks of 5 or 6 or 9). Then the patches are shuffled, swapped and stitched. I had several different quilts published in quilt magazines and decided to revisit one...