Pine Needles - McCall's Quilting July/August 2022

 My quilt Pine Needles is in the July/August issue of McCall's Quilting

Pine Needles

39 1/2" x 39 1/2"

Designed and made by Connie Kauffman

photo courtesy of McCall's Quilting

The quilt was made with Evergreen and Pine fabrics from Island Batik that have lovely forest greens and browns.

Triangle Tricks

 

Four Cornered   35" x 35"  Designed and made by Connie Kauffman

The May Island Batik Ambassadors challenge was all about triangles.  The challenge was called Triangle Tricks and we were encouraged to see what we could create with triangles. What a fun challenge!  It was hard to decide what design to work on.

The first thing I decided was that I wanted to work with the 2 1/2" strip pack of the Island Batik Savannah Collection.  This collection will be shipping to stores this June, so look for it!  I love the 2 1/2" strip packs.  They are great for a lot of things, but I especially like them for doing paper piecing.  I also used a dark purple IB basic for the background.

I looked around at a lot of triangle paper piecing patterns.  There are some great ones!  I finally decided to work with one of my own designs.  I have a pattern called Cornered that was to be in my book Little Gems published by Martingale.

Unfortunately there were too many patterns to fit in the book, so Cornered wasn't included.  Martingale saved the pattern and added it as a free online pattern to accompany the book.  I've never felt like many people saw that it was online.  You can find the pattern here.

Cornered

Cornered is only 12" x 12" and I wanted to make a larger quilt using the 2 1/2" strips.  I decided to enlarge the pattern and make four of them.  I also changed the center just a tad with the dark purple triangles.

Here is the small Cornered quilt and the larger Four Cornered quilt.

Paper piecing this scrappy quilt is especially fun with a package of 2 1/2" strips.  You just pick up a strip and sew.  No worries about color placement.

I stitched in the ditch around the triangles with a purple Aurifil thread using Schmetz Microtex needles and I also used Hobbs Cotton Batting to finish the quilt.  It was wonderful only using one color thread - unlike my Row by Row Garden Quilt where I used 20!

After enlarging the pattern and making four of them, I still only used less than half of a package of 2 1/2" strips.  So now I have half a package to make something else!  If you knew someone else who wanted to make this, you could buy a package and split it between the two of you!

The colors look nice on the love seat.

Look for Savannah fabrics shipping to stores in June and have fun with some triangles!

*Many thanks to Aurifil Threads, Island Batik, Hobbs Battng and Schmetz Needles for providing materials to make this project thru the Island Batik Ambassador program.