Another season is now upon us and yet another reason to decorate with quilts!! A few weeks ago I put away the Valentine quilts and dug into my stash of Easter decorations. I found out, however, that it has been a long time since I have added to this collection. These quilts do not even have labels on them, so I can’t even be sure when I made them. Nonetheless, here is a tour around my house to show you how these quilts have brightened up these dreary pre-Spring days.
This is a quilt called Color Splash that I have on a table in my sewing room this year. I found this pattern in the August 1999 issue of Quick and Easy Quilting and have made it several times in a number of different colorways. It is a great pattern in which to use a colorful and detailed border print -- in this case, beautiful Easter eggs. Then you just choose four colors from the border print and use those in the center and the inner border. The only quilting that I did was machine-quilt straight lines through all of the small squares to form an “X” and a diamond pattern.
This quilt has found a home on the coffee table in our living room this season. Unfortunately, I do not have information on where I found the pattern, but think it was probably also from the Quick and Easy Quilting magazine. It also has a fun Easter Egg border print, just not as bright as the one in Color Splash. I hand-quilted this piece with hearts in the middle pieced border, in the corner squares in the outside border, and in the center of the square-in-a-square blocks. I also hand-quilted ⅛” around the outside of the square-in-a-square blocks. I added tiny white bow-tie buttons the complete the quilt.
This is a miniature quilt that I made using scraps and the border fabric from the previous quilt. It is a simple pattern that I found in the June 1999 issue of Quick and Easy Quilting. I have it hanging on the wall at the bottom of the stairs in our family room. I love using the metal hangers from Ackfeld Manufacturing to display all of my miniature quilts. They can be purchased at most quilt shops or ordered directly from the company. This quilt is machine-quilted with an “X” in the center blocks and stitch-in-the-ditch in the inner border.
This quilt decorates our kitchen table this season. I have no idea where the pattern came from, but I do remember purchasing the fabric for this quilt. I bought it at a quilt shop in Lincoln on O Street that stocked a lot of Thimbleberries fabric. The weather was getting bad and I was sure that we would be having a “snow day” the next day. I wanted to get the fabric so that I would have something to stitch on my day off. The fabric that I purchased matched the fabric in the magazine. I remember being very nervous about cutting out this fabric as it was much more expensive that what I usually purchased. I did some hand-quilting and some machine-quilting on this piece.
This quilt is made from the leftovers that I had from the previous quilt. It is a small table runner that works well on the buffet in our dining room. It is a pattern called Taffy from the August 2000 issue of Quick and Easy Quilting. No fancy quilting here -- just stitch-in-the-ditch.
This is another quilt in which I used the border fabric from the Color Splash quilt -- I must have had plenty of that fabric!! The fun colors add brightness to our family room as this quilt decorates an end table. I’m not sure where this pattern came from either, but most likely from the Quick and Easy Quilting magazine as that was the one I subscribed to at that time. It is entirely hand-quilted -- nothing very intricate again, just more stitch-in-the-ditch.
It is definitely time to make some new Easter quilts! That is what I love about quilting -- there is always something new to make!! It is interesting, though, to see how my quilting style has evolved since I made those Easter quilts 10-15 years ago. Those quilts would look so different now!