Grandma Town BOM #6 – Canning Jar

Posted in BOM, Home Accessories, Patterns for Sale by lorimillerdesigns

Can you believe that we are half way through the Grandma Town Block of the Month? Are you sewing along? If you are, post it on Instagram and tag me @lorimillerdesigns and #GrandmaTownBOM so I can see what lovely things you are stitching up. This month we celebrate the start of summer with a cute little canning jar. My Grandma had a large garden, grew her own vegetables and canned just about anything you can think of.

She made the most delicious pickles and relishes as well and they all went into canning jars we could savor all year long.

She even made sauerkraut in a great big stone jar, I love sauerkraut to this day.

You will need eight blocks of the canning jar for this quilt. They sit on either side of the little apron.

My friend, Carol, whipped up this little canning jar full of hot peppers for me as another example. You can fill them with whatever you like!

A comprehensive pattern and directions for the Canning Jar block along with the whole BOM is currently in development.

Enjoy!

Grandma Town Block of the Month

If you are new to the Grandma Town BOM, this row by row quilt was a labor of love to celebrate my Iowa roots. I spent my childhood visiting my Grandparents on their farm just west of Des Moines in Earlham, Iowa. It is especially a tribute to my dear Grandma.

When my sisters, brother and I were little and my parents would drive us to my grandparents farm, my brother would yell, “We are going to Grandma Town!”. It was a loving tribute that stuck. This little quilt is full of those reminders of the farm and of Grandma, who loved to garden and loved to cook. Each block is a sweet memory of my youth growing up on that country farm.

I hope you will find some shared love for your family, a cherished farm or your own grandma in my quilt. You can make all of these sweet blocks or pick and choose the blocks you like the most to make something special for yourself or a dear loved one.

Released Blocks – 2015

FEB Block 1 – Forget Me Not Flower

MAR Block 2 – Sewing Machine

APR Block 3 – Nine Patch and Color Block Rows

MAY Block 4 – Ear of Corn

JUN Block 5 – Sweet Hearts

23Jun2015

Quick and Easy Kids Dishcloth Apron (free tutorial)

Posted in Finished Projects, Gift Ideas, Patterns for Sale by lorimillerdesigns

Here is a quick and easy project for that special little one in your life — a cute kid’s apron that assembles in a jiffy using only a dish towel and bias tape. My son always loved to help in the kitchen, and I made this little apron for him when he was a tot. He liked to feel grown up and wear his apron right along with mom while we made dinner or a yummy batch of cookies. The dish towel was thick and absorbent for any spills and he loved the little pockets too.

Materials Needed:

Dish towel (preferably not a directional print or design)
1 package of double-fold bias tape/quilt binding (7/8 inches wide) to coordinate
Coordinating thread

Measure and Mark

Open up and iron your dishtowel flat.
Mark the center point of the top of the dish towel
Measure and mark 4½ inches to the left and right of the center point.
Measure down 7 inches from the top on each side of the towel and mark it.
Measure up 7 inches from the bottom of the towel and mark it on each side and in the center.

Cut

Now you are ready to cut the towel. (see diagrams above). Cut the top corners off of the towel according to your markings. Cut the 7 inch strip off the bottom of the towel, this will become the pockets.

Sew

With right sides up and raw edges even, layer the 7-inch pocket strip and the towel.
Sew them together with a ½-inch seam. Flip the pocket strip to the top of the towel and iron it in place.
Measure 5 inches from each side and mark them to sew the pockets.
Sew each side close to the edge. Sew each of the pockets at the 5 inch measurement. Double stitch the top of each pocket.
Now sew the ties. Measure 68 inches of the bias tape. Open up each end of the tape and stitch diagonally at a 45-degree angle from the open edge to the fold ending in a point. Trim and flip back around to form a neat point at the end of the tie.
Find the center of the bias strip length and measure down 8 inches on each side. Mark with a pin. Using the pin as a guide, pin the bias tape along the slanted raw edges carefully covering them with both sides of the bias tape. Pin together.

Starting with one end of the tie, top stitch close to the open edge of the bias tape. Stitch all around the tie, through the towel and back to the other side to the end. Trim threads.

Now you have a very cute, quick apron for all your little helpers. It was so easy, I put together another one with this adorable blue daisy dish towel too. Wouldn’t this be a great holiday gift idea for your children or your grandchildren? With so many dishtowel patterns, you could tailor them to every personality or to every holiday season!

Happy Stitching!

16Jun2015

Sunbonnet Sue 30’s Style

Posted in Work in Progress by lorimillerdesigns

I just finished this quilt top. I love my modern quilts and projects, but there is something about thirties quilts that really get my attention. Maybe it is the link to my Grandma and I certainly have quite a few of her vintage fabrics in thirties prints, but I just love them.

I bought a package of preprinted quilt squares that needed to be embroidered. They were called nursery blocks and I liked them because all of the scenes with Sunbonnet Sue were different. I gathered my embroidery floss and began to embroider. I usually sewed in the winter and took it along with me when I could do handwork, still it took forever. I missplaced it a few times. I wondered what I was going to do with them.

This year, I started an informal hand sewing group in my Modern Quilt Guild. We are called the Mod Squad and we meet at a local eatery, have dinner, and then spend a few hours working on hand work like knitting, crochet, embroidery… you name it. Kind of interesting that I was working on Sunbonnet Sue in a Modern group! Who cares? Well I got so much work done in that group that I finished the squares. Hooray!

Then Club EQ hosted by Barb Vlack on Electric Quilt challenged folks to design a 30’s quilt. I designed one with a Sunbonnet Sue Center. It gave me an idea to adapt it to use with my embroidered quilt squares, I just needed to match the 8′ squares. I had a very old jelly roll of 30’s prints and I was off and running. So I designed the quilt in EQ7 and it was a big help in figuring out placement, how much background fabric I needed and what to stitch together.

I just grabbed the 30’s print fabric squares randomly and sewed them into 4 patch blocks to begin with. Then I joined them to create 8″ blocks and the other parts of the quilt.

Here, I am starting to get the rows pieced together. Don’t you love how it starts to take shape when you get everything lined up and ironed?

The random squares of 30’s fabrics just seem to have the right combinations to match up with the embroidery colors on the squares.

Here is the finished quilt top. My next step will be some handquilting and then I am planning on using prairie points around the outside edge. That quilting will take a while since I am still working on handquilting my vintage hole in the barn door quilt right now. I still have a lot of the 30’s print jelly roll left too, so I think another quilt will be in order. Do you love 30’s prints? What have you made with them?

9Jun2015

Modern 4th of July Table Runner (free tutorial)

Posted in Finished Projects, Gift Ideas, Home Accessories, Patterns for Sale by lorimillerdesigns

Here is a modern patchwork table runner to stitch up just in time to celebrate Independence Day. It looks improvisational, but it is really cleverly cut strips that give that illusion. It is easy to piece and you can quilt with a free motion design or straight stitching. I wanted something festive for the holiday for my table at the cottage when we have company and this fits the bill. Fat quarter friendly too!

Finished size is 12” x 30”.

Materials needed:

2 fat quarters of different red cotton fabric
2 fat quarters of different blue cotton fabric
1 fat quarter of white cotton fabric (I found a white star on white, perfect!)
1/3 yd batting
1/3 yd backing, cotton patriotic print
1/4 yd red cotton for binding
Coordinating thread
Walking foot (optional)

Directions

Cut the Fabric

From first red cotton fabric, cut 1 strip 4” x21”
From 2^nd red cotton fabric, cut 1 strip 4 ½” x 21”
From first blue cotton fabric, cut 1 strip 4” x 21”
From 2^nd blue cotton fabric, cut 1 strip 5 ½” x 21”
From white fabric, cut 1 strip 6” x 21” and 1 strip 4” x 21”
Cut batting 12” x 31”
Cut backing 12” x 31” (I found this great patriotic print with an eagle for the back.)
Cut the binding. 3 strips – 2 1/2″ x wof (width of fabric)

Sew the table runner

Sew the strips together. The first 3 strips are the 4” red, 6” white, 4” blue.
The second set of 3 strips are the 4 ½” red, 4” white, 5 ½” blue.
Iron seams to one side and iron flat.
Place one combination strip over the other strip, aligning the edges. Cut 2” strips across them, you should have 10 – 2 “ strips.
You will sew 5 sets of strips together with the 4” blue on the left top, and the 5 ½” blue on the left bottom.
You will sew 5 sets of strips together with the 4” red on the top left, and the 4 ½” red on the left bottom.
Now sew 1 of each set together to form a quilt block. See picture above.
Carefully remove lovey dovey kitty who thinks you should be petting him instead of sewing.
Sew 5 of these blocks together.
Then sew all the quilt blocks together in the same pattern.
Make a quilt sandwich with the backing face down, then the batting, then the pieced top face up.
Pin baste the table runner.
Quilt it as desired. I tried using a free motion design with stars, but you could also just do straight line quilting. Use a stitch length of 4.0 mm and use your free motion foot for the straight line quilting if you have one to keep the fabric from slipping.
Sew the binding pieces together and iron them in half.
Stitch the binding to the front of the table runner. Then fold it over to the back and whip stitch it down. Or use your favorite binding method.

The perfect modern 4th of July Table Runner in red, white and blue to brighten up your holiday table, foyer or side table.

Happy Stitching!

1Jun2015

Grandma Town BOM #5 – Sweet Hearts

Posted in BOM, Home Accessories, Patterns for Sale by lorimillerdesigns

Well my sweeties, here is the next block in my Grandma Town BOM series – some lovely sweet hearts to share some love and joy this month. These are made from one basic small heart block and combined together to create multiple sweet hearts in three rows. You will need two of these multiple sweet hearts blocks. These hearts represent that wonderful, big hearted, unconditional and never ending love from Grandma. And she and Grandpa were married on Valentines Day too. There were a lot of grandchildren, but she had a way of making each of us feel special. She had an inner joy that made her fun to be around and a creative, clever heart as well. These beating hearts are pieced using lots of red prints to compliment each other. There are two blocks made up of eight hearts each. These hearts bookend the farm building row.