Never Too Miuch of a Good Thing

I love Sujata's take on the Rail Fence.  I've made it four times. Here's the most recent, a bright quilt for a friend who's undergoing treatment for leukemia. She loves bright colors, and we wanted something to bring a smile to her face.

Very bright bright with black-and-white.

When you go over the top, you should just keep going.

I just love these blocks.

Here's the finished flimsy.  The blocks are 16" square, so this quilt will be 42" x 64", a generous lap quilt to keep our friend warm while undergoing chemotherapy.

I kept all the leftover trimmings when I cut the blocks apart, and resewed them into a long, fun strip.

I added our friend's name to the back, and had a lot more fun with fabrics from my stash. It was a quilt made in a week, and it's away being quilted for a quick turnaround. I sure do hope this young lady beats cancer and can enjoy this quilt for a very long time.

Blue Boy Rail Fence

I'm making a quilt for a friend's baby boy, due in the fall. Since I love the Rail Fence so much, I'm making my third Rail Fence quilt from Sujata's book.

I went through my stash to find fabrics that seemed to have been neglected over the years. I wanted mostly blue and whites, but I wanted some with a bit of color, too. I'm very aware of contrasting prints, linear versus rounded, busy versus calm, organized versus scattered.

As well as the gentle curves on the strips on the left and right edges of this photo, I really like using strips with a more pronounced curve, then I cut the strips to give me blocks with extreme curves, and both thick and thin areas.

This is an example of a block made with a very subtle curve. You can hardly tell the block has curves in it.

This is an example of a block made with strips cut at an extreme curve. Not only can you tell the smaller squares have curves, but I arrange them to emphasize the thick and thin areas the blocks create.

These three photos from my first Rail Fence quilt (below) show how I move pieces around until I get the look I want. Five of the sixteen squares change places. Three on the bottom row change places, as well as two in the upper right corner.

Version One. The bottom left corner is too heavy.

Version Two. I like the bottom right, but that upper right corner is too heavy now.

Version Three. I moved two pieces in the upper right corner. Now I'm happy.

Here are all twelve blocks on the design wall. I haven't sewn them together yet, but I think this is the final layout. The blocks are 16" square, so this will be a good sized quilt. I don't think it needs a border, but I'll see. Quilts have a way of telling you what they want, and this one may not be done talking.

Lightning in the Night Sky

This is the quilt I made for my nephew. He asked for Orange and Purple. I made a Rail Fence quilt from Sujata's book.

Some of the curves in my strips were a little more than "subtle,"

and I built the blocks to emphasize that craziness, after all the quilt is orange and purple, a color combination that has nothing to do with "subtle."

I made left leaning blocks, and right leaning blocks, then rotated and alternated them. At least, that's what I think I did.  Anyway, the result is called "Lightning in the Night Sky."

and because this quilt is going to a college-bound kid,

I made sure to put his name on it.