What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

When we describe anything as vanilla, it means plain, dull or lacking in imagination. However vanilla is a perfect plain canvas to build upon. Add warm chocolate sauce with a sprinkle of nuts and you have an ice-cream that is elevated beyond other fancy flavors. Have you considered adding chopped mango to vanilla ice-cream? You are welcome :-)

Such is this Plus block. Yes, it is plain. But that is exactly why there are so many layout possibilities. 

Here is ...

I am, of course, fond of all of my quilts and quilt patterns, but you guys, I am really especially pleased with this one. Introducing Helix, a paper piecing pattern for wallhangings in two sizes featuring DNA, the fundamental molecule of life on Earth!

I have been thinking about a DNA quilt for a very long time—not long after I started thinking a lot about science quilts, which was not long after I started thinking a lot about quilts in general, but somehow it never got made. I got hung up on the curves and the thought that I ...

For those of you who have my book (if you don’t have it, you should! Pick it up a signed copy here!), today I’m sharing a bonus pattern for a second quilt made using the templates from Jewel Drop.

Both Jewel Drop and this quilt are based on a traditional block called “Red Peony Buds.” For Jewel Drop, I used the disintegration technique to design the quilt; this one uses the technique of setting blocks in rows. As with the original quilt, the blocks form an interesting secondary zigzag pattern, and ...

The second pattern that’s new this week is Zigzag Fade. This pattern was featured in Modern Quilts Unlimited a couple of years back. Unfortunately, the magazine is now shuttered, and back issues are no longer available, so it was high time I re-formatted and re-released it!

(I know several of you are looking for other patterns in a similar situation—please know that I am working on them! With a 10-month-old, everything seems to be taking a lot longer than it used to these days!)

This quilt is pretty minimalist—just three sizes of squares in three different solids ...

I have a new pattern out in this month’s issue of American Quilter, and this one is another design that you might have seen in my book, although it was a little bigger and the design was shown in a different color scheme. AQS thought it might make a great holiday quilt, and I agree with them!

Canoe Sparkler is based on the traditional “Crossed Canoes” block and is a wallhanging that comes together super quickly. The Canoe blocks are paper pieced, but there are only 10 of them, so this is a great ...

Hello dear reader,

Today is my turn on The Quilter’s Negative Space Handbook blog hop! If you’re new here, feel free to pull up a chair and have a look around.

Courtesy of C&T Publishing

I’m so tickled that Sylvia Schaefer of Flying Parrots Quilts asked me to review her new book. She has done an amazing job of providing step-by-step instructions on how to design quilts using negative space.

The book walks you through nine design techniques. The techniques range from removing parts of quilt blocks to supersizing quilt blocks. With these techniques, Sylvia makes ...