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patterns by carolyn friedlander

Rye Marmalade

By carolyn friedlander on November 5, 2019 in fabric, Featured on Home, my patterns | Comments: 1

My newest pattern is all about 2 tones, but it doesn’t have to be! This Rye Marmalade version starts to show how you can change things up.

One problem with selecting fabric pairs is that once you start looking for them, it can be hard to stop finding some that you are excited about. After sewing up some pairings that I was excited about, I decided to combine them together into the same quilt. I liked how the different sections and combinations interpreted the shapes a bit differently, and also how the different colors worked so nicely as a group.

Fabric can change the look of a design so much, and here you can really see that. There are 3 different sections; some use solids, some use nearly solids and some use more bold-ish prints.

Solids can give you super sharp shapes, like in the Marmalade section on the right. The left section uses 2 softer prints from my Collection CF line. This softens the shapes a bit, and I feel like it blends everything together nicely. It is a combo that makes me really happy.

The top right corner features a more bold print from Jetty, and you get a much more textured and less defined effect. Kind of neat, right?

There are 2 block sizes in the pattern that can be used separately or together. Here I mixed the block sizes together, and I also incorporated borders in to each color group to balance out the motifs and to give them some space.

Fabric for the binding was not as obvious a choice as it was in my previous Rye quilts. For the first two, I matched the binding to the border, because I wanted the binding and border to feel like a background for the design to rest on. In this case, I wanted a similar effect, but without an obvious background, I needed to audition a few of my choices. In the end, I chose one of the fabrics from Jetty that was already used in the quilt. I like the way it blends into most of the sections, while also giving it good texture.

There we have it. A different way to take my newest project Rye!

pattern: Rye quilt pattern

fabric: Jetty, Collection CF, Kona Suede and Marmalade

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Hunt QAL #5 Check In.

By carolyn friedlander on October 24, 2019 in Featured on Home, my patterns, Quilt Along, weekend projects | Comments: 0

We’re 5 months in! Crazy.

It’s been a good month, and I’ve been eager to lay everything out. Several of these blocks have been in hiding, because they use my new fabrics. Yay!

I originally started out with a narrower selection of greens, but now I’m including much more of a range, and I’m really liking it. Some are darker, some are lighter, some are more green or more olive–it’s such a mix!

The mix of neutral backgrounds is also making me happy.

Highlights this month have been embracing such a mix and getting it all laid out for the first time. I’d been working with everything in a stack, and so spreading it out to take these photos has been quite satisfying. I’m also really glad that I worked a little ahead for the month. Today is the first day of set up at Quilt Market, and I’ve been heavily prepping for the show!

In terms of entertaining things, I really got into the podcast Last Seen about the art heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It’s really captivating and very detailed, and it’s kind of making me want to read more about this heist and others in general.

Goals for next month? I’m happy to have quite a bit prepped, so I can probably mindlessly plug away or if I get inspired I may decide to prep the final blocks. We will see.

How’s your month been?

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Hunt QAL #4 Check In.

By carolyn friedlander on September 26, 2019 in fabric, Featured on Home, my patterns, Quilt Along, weekend projects | Comments: 4

Month #4!

I’ve made some progress this month, which feels good. How are you plugging away?

I don’t usually take the time to write down highlights, goals and achievements, but since making up the calendar, it’s been super easy and kind of fun to do so. (Makes me think I should be more diligent about this in other areas of my life…)

It’s also making it helpful to figure out where I’m at with the update. To date, I have the following:

-4 backgrounds cut

-6 blocks fully appliquéd

-1 block partially appliquéd

-2 blocks fully basted

-4 blocked pinned and ready to baste

This means I have an extra background to play with, and it means I have a lot of blocks at play–yay! A big help this month was that I gave myself a larger chunk of time spread out over a couple of days to lay everything out and to figure out what comes next. Because I could see what I had, it made it really easy to play with my options. Pulling fabric, cutting out shapes and making pairs with the backgrounds is definitely a step that works best when you can allow a bit of momentum to happen. I don’t know what I originally hoped to put together, but I ended up cutting out 6 more blocks, which was far better than I’d hoped! The great thing is that now I’ll be able to work from this pile easily and whenever I have some time no matter how much or little of it there is. Since I’ll be prepping for Quilt Market and traveling next month, I’m already glad to free up some mental space.