Project Update: 05.08.2025

Hello Friends and Welcome Back!

With another week of Summer behind us, I'm feeling like the season is flying by!

This past weekend was a long weekend in Ontario, so I spent some time with friends at Canada's Wonderland, and visiting the cottage with family!

And though I thoroughly enjoyed my weekend, I didn't have much time for sewing and am happy to be settling back into my usual schedule! I can't wait to show off what I've been working on!

Ice Cream Soda Quilt

I've put a lot more stitches into my Ice Cream Soda quilt over the past few weeks, making this project feel as though it's absolutely flying together!

In my last update, I had only assembled a few blocks of the upper and lower corners of the rightmost chunk of the quilt. I continued adding blocks and joining shapes to those chunks, and to another central chunk, until I had three sections of roughly equal size.

Here are the three chunks pieced and aligned, with red arrows indicating where they haven't yet been sewn together.

Before continuing to stitch, I wanted to remove some of the basting threads from each of the smaller chunks. To prepare, I pressed the pieced chunks of quilt from the back side to set the seams and get all the dog ears facing the right way!

In the picture, the left half of this pieced section has been pressed, but the right half has not.

You can see how everything on the let side is laying much flatter and is more organized. On the right side, the seams are forming little peaks, still wanting to be folded the way they were when I was stitching them, and some of the dog ears are folded the wrong way or sticking straight out.

Pressing my seams at this point gives me confidence that the fabric shapes are stable enough to not mind having their basting threads removed! Even so, I don't take out every single thread from the pieced chunk.

My rule when removing basting threads is that, if a piece has a side or corner touching the outer edge of the pieced area, it will remain basted, but if the piece is fully contained within the centre of the quilt, the basting can be removed.

Looking at the picture, the pieces in the upper right corner have had the basting stitches removed, while the pieces in the lower right near the edge of the quilt are still basted.

Once most of the basting was removed, I finally joined the three chunks together to make the rightmost third of my Ice Cream Soda quilt!

It was really exciting to get to this point, because my pieced area is big enough to start looking like the finished quilt top!

But it's not finished yet! I still had a few partial shapes to add around the edges to square off the quilt!

For the most part, the shapes I needed were long trapezoids of focus fabric that would match the white to black gradient of the quilt centre. It was a lot of fun to look back through the fabric remnants from the blocks to find little bits that would fit!

And though I was out of the house for most of the weekend, I was able to find time to finish squaring off this third of the quilt!

I still have some pressing and basting to remove before this side of the quilt is properly finished, but that won't take long.

Once I've finished those last few steps, I plan to return to working on the leftmost third of this quilt, which I set aside back in May when I realized I would need some more joining fabric.

I wanted to wait until I knew whether the new fabric was the same colour as the fabric I already had.

If it was noticeably different, I could alternate the old and new fabrics evenly throughout the quilt so it the variation in colour would look more intentional. If I don't do this, I might end up with a hard line through the quilt where one joining fabric ends and the other begins.

As it turned out, the new fabric is slightly lighter than the old ones, though it's hard to see the difference in pictures, so it's a good thing I was being cautious!

And now that I've got plenty of joining fabric, I'm excited to finish piecing the left side of the quilt soon!

My Ice Cream Soda quilt is based on a design by Jodi Godfrey of Tales of Cloth.

Quilt Along Pattern

With the amount of progress I've made on Ice Cream Soda over the past few weeks, I'm surprised I found time for any other projects! However, I did manage to spend some time at the machine continuing to piece my upcoming quilt along pattern sample!

Since last week's pattern preview, I've finished piecing all of the units needed for my sample quilt!

With that success, I was feeling ambitious and wondered, if using quilt as you go, could I have the sample quilt fully quilted and finished before the quilt along begins in September?

Though I've tried in the past, I've never had a completely finished quilt to show at the start of any of my quilt alongs. I have usually managed a quilt top, though last year I was definately a behind on that too, but I'm hoping that this year will be different!

Keep your fingers crossed for me! And don't forget to visit on 02 September when the first step of this pattern will be released!

Potato Chip Challenge Quilt

The final project I've been working on these past few weeks is a challenge project for one of my guilds, the Potato Chip quilt!

You may remember from some of my earlier posts that the rules of this challenge state that I can't share any photos of my quilt or progress until the guild has a chance to vote in September. This keeps voting fair, encouraging guild members to vote for the quilt they like best rather than the person who made it.

With that explanation, I hope you'll forgive me for not sharing any pictures at this time! But I do have a little update on my progress anyway!

Throughout the Summer, I've been cutting pieces for my Potato Chip quilt, and I think I might finally have enough to start laying them out!

The pattern uses a bunch of rectangles all of the same size, and no other shapes, so you can cut a bunch of pieces, then lay them out to decide what kind of colour and value distribution you want your quilt top have!

Laying out my pieces is the step I've been most looking forward to, since it will be the step that will make my quilt truly unique! I can't wait to share pictures with you all when Autumn arrives and the vote has been taken!

My Potato Chip quilt is based on a design by Brenda Logan of Conquering Mount Scrapmore.

Though it's only been a few weeks since my last update, I feel like I've made a lot of progress on several different quilts!

Of course, there are other quilts that I haven't worked on in that time, so if there's a particular one that you miss seeing, please let me know and I'll give it some attention! You can leave me a comment, or ask about my quilts in an email, I'm happy to hear from you!

And I would love to learn about your creative endevours as well! Please share those with me here, or tag me on Instagram so I can see your posts! Updates on your work are always appreaciated!

For now, I'll be getting back to work on my quilts!

Until Next Time Friends, Keep Creating!

~VA