Gieszler - Fantastic stash quilts: 8 projects 2 ways using yardage or scraps

Publisher: Amy Marson Creative Director: Gailen Runge Editors: Karla Menaugh and Liz Aneloski Technical Editors: Nan Powell and Debbie Rodgers Cover/Book Design: Page + Pixel Production Coordinators: Tim Manibusan and Zinnia Heinzmann Production Editors: Jennifer Warren and Nicole Rolandelli Illustrator: Kirstie L. Pettersen Photo Assistant: Carly Jean Marin Instructional photography by Diane Pedersen, unless otherwise noted Published by Kansas City Star Quilts, an imprint of C&T Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 1456, Lafayette, CA 94549 Dedication This, my second book, is dedicated to my students and every person who has ever attended one of my lectures. Every time that I teach or speak, I learn something as well. I cant begin to list everything Ive learned from the students Ive taughtsometimes it is a new ruler, tool, or technique; better time management; color combinations I would never have tried; new blogs to visit; or yet another way to make half-square triangles. Sometimes it is a comment made after a lecture that touches me.

I am continually awed by what a loving, caring community we have in quilters. Need something? Just ask a quilter. Better yet, ask one of my students! Acknowledgments Theres such a large cast to thank that I feel like someone may usher me off stage before I get finished! Dont let anyone try to fool youthe supporting cast and crew are the reason all the work gets done! Id like to thank my mother for my love of sewing, my family for supporting my endeavors, and my group of quilting friends for their encouragement and help. Id also like to thank my pattern testers and my binding experts. When friends found out about my second book, they came out in great numbers to help. All of the following deserve awards for helping me make this book a reality: Betsy Biller, Karla Brokaw, AnnMarie Cowley, Donna Duckett, Cheryl Ferris, Annette Mandel, LoisMarie Mayer, Anna Munsey, Donna Pastori, Muriel Peterson, Leanne Reid, Cathie Smith, Marge York, and Christine Young.

My team at C&T made writing a book with a new publisher much easier than Id imagined it would be. In order of appearance, my thanks go to Roxane Cerda, Karla Menaugh, Nan Powell, Kristy Zacharias, Carly Jean Marin, Zinnia Heinzmann, Jennifer Warren, and the host of others who participated. C&T truly is a family and Im proud to be part of it! Introduction I was very surprised last year when a student said, I signed up for your class, but I dont do scrappy. What else have you got? This question, probably more than most factors, led me to design patterns in two optionsone scrappy version and one controlled version. Sometimes just the coloration changed, and sometimes the look of the quilt changed completely. At the same time, my fabric collection reached proportions that started weighing on me, and I knew it was time to make quilts by shopping at home first.

My fabric stash is a little like abstract artit always makes me feel something! When looking through my stash, I alternately feel awe, shock, embarrassment, thrill, bafflement, love, dismay, and many more emotions. Some of my earliest memories are of shopping with my mother and touching fabric to make sure it was of good quality. I feel closest to my mother in a fabric store. While I could use that as an excuse, I dont really have one for amassing a large collection of fabric. I just love it all! Sometimes I buy three yards of a fabric, thinking it would make a great border on a large quilt. Sometimes I buy just one yard each of several fabrics because I love them so much, even though I dont have a plan in mind.

Last year I started working on a quilt with tiny 3 stars made with Civil Warera reproduction fabric. A friend and I both thought the quilt would look good if I used a dirty pink fabric for alternate blocks. Since I was making a large quilt, I calculated I would need five yards of this pink. I am now the proud owner of more than twenty yards of pink fabricnone of which works for this project! It turns out that the project looks better with blue. (Yes, I just designed a new quilt starting with the pink I already had on hand.) I also have to admit that I sometimes buy fabric by the bolt! Yes, the bolt. Sometimes I share the fabric with a friend, but at other times I just want to keep the fabric on handa great white background, a favorite gray, anything that I know will work with a lot of patterns.

Youll see throughout the book that I have used a lot of white backgrounds. Many of the patterns in this book began their lives as line drawings of quilts. I love looking at the lines of a quilt drawing to see the possibilities in the design before I start thinking about colors. The line drawing lets me look at the flow of the design. That, in turn, frees me up to think about color. To plan my quilt colors, I color in the line drawings just as you would color in a page in a coloring book.

Frequently I have a color scheme in mind, such as the black, blue, red, pink, and cream in Chain and Bar. I didnt know how well the colors would play together or which would look best next to each otherI just knew that I loved them all and wanted them in a quilt together. I have included a line drawing with each pattern so that you can test the colors for yourself. Maybe youll even find a new design within the interplay of the blocks! Some of the instructions in this book are written for the scrappy version and some for the controlled version. All of the projects contain the yardage for both options (separately if they vary), so it will be easy to shop your stash for new projects. Mind you, I sometimes bought new fabric to freshen a quilt or the stash, but most of these quilts came right out of my fabric closet.

I hope you enjoy my experiments in color and design as much as I did! Betsys Quilt Finished unit: 4 4 Finished quilt: 64 64 Betsys Quilt, 64 64, made by Joyce Dean Gieszler, quilted by Cheryl Ferris, 2014 MaterialsThe feature project uses yardage for a consistent colorway. For a scrappy version, see Betsys Scrappy Quilt. PINK yard (includes binding) PURPLE yard BLUE yard GREEN yard YELLOW yard RED 1 yards ORANGE yard WHITE 1 yards BACKING: 4 yards BATTING: 72 72 This project actually named itself. My friend Betsy loved it so much that she tested the pattern before it was even written. She had a chart with cutting instructions and some very general sewing instructions, and off she went. Betsys longarm quilter loved the quilt so much that she posted it on her blog with the title Betsys quilt.

Unfortunately for me, the longarm quilter lives in my area, and I had planned to use this pattern as a mystery quilt for a class for my local guild. I ended up waiting nearly three years to use this quilt for the mystery class in case anyone had seen it online! Cutting PINK Cut 1 strip 5 the width of fabric. Subcut 6 squares 5 5. Cut 7 strips 2 the width of fabric for the binding. PURPLE Cut 1 strip 5 the width of fabric. Subcut 4 squares 5 5.

From the remainder of the strip, cut 1 rectangle 4 12. Cut 1 strip 4 the width of fabric. Subcut 3 rectangles 4 12. BLUE Cut 2 strips 5 the width of fabric. Subcut 10 squares 5 5. GREEN Cut 1 strip 5 the width of fabric.