Quilts by Julie Ramsey
patterns
To-do
Jan 10th
Now that I’m almost finished with the Tennessee Waltz quilt, it’s time to get a new project or two started up.
The first is a pattern using charm squares I bought from Connecting Threads using their “Impressions of Kyoto” line. I haven’t gotten it put into Electric Quilt yet, but I’ll be taking “in progress” pictures soon.
The second project is a bit more ambiguous, as I don’t have a pattern yet. I spent an hour and a half wandering around the fabric store without any sort of inspiration, until I discovered a few “jelly rolls”* sitting around in a hidden corner of the store. The set is made up of assorted blue and green batik fabrics, so I figure I’ll do something scrappy with them, probably along these lines:
I haven’t seen a whole lot of good jelly roll patterns on the Internet, so I imagine I’ll write up a step-by-step tutorial for this one as I work my way along the pattern.
As I mentioned in my last post, I’m newly unemployed, so I’ve got a lot of spare time for sewing (when I’m not busy updating my resumé and searching for leads). I haven’t had a lot of time for quilting as of late since I’ve been busy with life in World of Warcraft, but now I’ll have plenty of time to catch up on the projects I’ve been hoping to start for a while.
Quick stripe quilt
May 2nd
An LJ friend is learning to quilt and was interested in a pattern sort of like this:
So I’ve taken the basic idea and made it into a beginner-friendly pattern that will end up something like this (black lines indicate seams):
Colors are just for instructional purposes, feel free to change them!
SHOPPING AND CUTTING LIST:
MIDDLE
1/3 yard of blue
cut 4 strips 2.5″ wide
1/4 yard of green
cut 3 strips 2.5″ wide
1/4 yard purple
cut 1 strip 6.5″
1/4 yard orange
cut 1 strip 4.5″ wide
INNER BORDER
1/4 yard red
cut 2 strips 2.5″ wide
OUTER BORDER
3/4 yard white
cut 4 strips 6.5″ wide
BACKING
2 yards any color
Do not cut!
== MIDDLE ==
Cut each strip in half and then trim so that each are 20.5″ long.
To make the “half-green” strips, trim…
two green pieces to 12.5″
two blue pieces to 8.5″
Stitch end-to-end.
Stitch the rows in order (like in the trip around the world) as follows:
blue
green
purple
blue
half-green (blue on left side)
blue
orange
half-green (blue on right side)
blue
purple
blue
Press that piece flat so that all seams point in the same direction.
== INNER BORDER ==
From the red, cut two strips (44″ long) that are 2.5″ wide.
Stitch one piece to each of the long sides of the center– there will be a lot of extra, trim it off.
Now stitch the remaining pieces of red to the short sides of the piece, making a full border around the middle.
== OUTER BORDER ==
From the white, cut four strips (44″ long) that are 6.5″ wide.
You’ll be making outer border in the same way as the red one, but “backwards.”
Start by sewing a strip to each of the short sides from edge to edge. Trim off the extra.
Take the two “extra” pieces and attach one to the end of each remaining strip.
Now stitch each of these strips to the long sides of the piece.
Voila! You’re done!
Baby Blocks
Dec 12th
Yeesh, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything! I got myself caught up in some fairly hardcore raiding in WoW, but I took a break fairly recently and now I have time to sew again.
I finished this project about two months ago for a co-worker who gave birth to her first kid. I took the new mom shopping for fabric, and she found three reproduction prints in both pink and blue that she really liked. While I had one design in mind at the quilt store, I ended up doing something *completely* different… funny how that happens sometimes!
The quilt was fairly straightforward to make, especially considering that I made it up as I went along!
Abby’s Baby Blocks
Finished size: approx. 35″ x 43″
Fabric:
1.5 yards background (white)
.25 yard each of six colors (three blue and three pink)
1.5 yards backing
.5 yard binding
* I used quarter-yard cuts for the blue and pink fabrics, since this was done with strip piecing, but it could be easily done using fat quarters!
Cut:
White:
2 X 2.5″ strips
~16 x 1.5″ strips
Colors (each):
1 x 2.5″ strips
3 x 1.5″ strips (2 for blocks, 1 for border)
1. For center/sides, sew two outer and one inner strip together. Press seams to center and cut 2.5″ pieces. You’ll have 42 pieces with white borders (7 per color) and 7 blocks with white centers and each color on the outside.
2. Chain-piece these against a strip of the outer color. Clip and repeat on the other side. Press seams towards the middle.
3. Lay out blocks and stitch top together one column at a time, leaving connecting threads between rows.
4. For the border, alternate remaining 1.5″ strips of colored fabric with 1.5″ background strips. Press to one side and cut into 1.5″ strips.
5. Stitch this piece to another 1.5″ strip on each side. Press seams outward.
6. Attach border to quilt, trimming border and adding corner squares as necessary.
7. Sandwich the quilt and finish (tie, quilt) as desired. I used a non-pre-shrunk cotton batting and stitched a medium-sized meander in white thread. Not only did the quilting go quickly, but the batting’s shrinkage after washing gave a neat effect.
Morse code quilt pattern
May 29th
I’ll be the first to admit that my morse-code quilt was quite an undertaking, and there are certainly aspects of it that could have turned out better. That being said, it’s not nearly as complicated as it looks– it just takes a bit of planning and a lot of strip-piecing!
For a roughly twin-sized quilt, you’ll need:
* ~6 yards background color and binding
* 4 x 1/2 yd pieces in different colors for the “letters”
* ~6 yards for the backing
* batting of your choice
* plenty of graph paper (you can print some out here
* several colored pens/pencils/crayons/etc.
* a Morse code chart
Step 1: figure out your quilt size and message length
- decide on a finished size for your quilt
- subtract the width of your borders all around; for a 4″ border, subtract 8″ from the width and length
- divide the length by 2 (for 2″ blocks) and the width by 3 (for 2″ blocks plus 1″ sashing)
- multiply those numbers to determine the number of squares in your “grid”
So for a twin quilt with 4″ borders:
63 x 87 – (8 x 
= 55 x 71
divide length by 2 = 36 (rounding up)
divide width by 3 = 24 (ditto)
36 x 24 2″ blocks with 1″ lengthwise sashing = 864 squares
To figure out how many letters you’ll have, we’re going to assume that one letter takes up about 6 spaces, using one square for a dot, three for a dash, and one square space between them. Divide your total grid size by 6 to get a rough estimate of how many letters you can use– in my example, you might get around 144 characters.
Step 2: compose your message
- start scratching out your secret message and counting the characters, including spaces. You might want to try a few versions of differing lengths, just in case.
- convert the text into code, either by hand or with an online translator
Step3: get the message to fit
Prepare for some trial and error here! This part took the longest of any of the planning steps.
- grab your graph paper and mark out an area that matches what your quilt top will contain.
- start marking out your message on the graph paper, using the morse code chart as a reference. Use one space between characters, and three between words (if you like).
- rather than just shading in squares, start by writing the letter inside each square.
- mark each letter with a different color. Not only does it make things more colorful, but it helps to distinguish characters when they “break” to a new line in the quilt.
You should end up with something like this– keep rearranging things until you have the entire grid filled, which may take a while!
This will be your piecing reference, so you may want to enlarge it. I found white tagboard with an “invisible” 1″ grid at the $1 store, and transferred my final layout in magic marker.
How to make a Tetris Quilt
Feb 10th
Want to make your own Tetris quilt? I’m working on a “fancy” version of the pattern in PDF, but until then, here are the basics 
Materials:
I hope you have a big stash, access to lots of FQs, and/or very patient cutting-table ladies at your local quilt shop, because you’re going to need a LOT of different pieces of fabric! You’ll need sets of fabric in red, orange, yellow, light blue, dark blue, green, and purple; for each color, get one quarter-yards each (FQ or yardage, either one works) in five gradiating shades. Small prints work best, though larger tone-on-tone patterns are fine if that’s all you can find.
If you have difficulty finding enough pieces at once, break your fabric shopping and sewing into separate sessions. I ended up working on these blocks one color at a time, as fabric discoveries (and the cash to purchase them) permitted.
With so many fabrics to deal with, I found it was helpful to glue a scrap of each to a piece of tagboard and mark the color number with a sharpie.
Block Construction:
In order to get the 3-d effect, each 4″ colored block is made as a nine-patch with the five different colors; for reference, 1 is the lightest, and 5 is the darkest.
For one block, you’ll need the following:
Color 1, 2, 4, and 5: one strip, 2.5″ x 1.5″; one 2″ square, cut across the diagonal
Color 3: one 2.5″ square
You will also need a stack of 4.5″ squares in a black tone-on-tone print.
Color Counts
For this layout, make:
12 red
20 orange
18 yellow
18 green
18 light blue
12 dark blue
13 blue
39 non-pieced black
1. Assemble the cornerstones:
for each block, you’ll need:
1 and 4
1 and 2
5 and 4
5 and 2
If you need more than one block of a particular color, layer the two squares together, draw down the diagonal with a marker (sharpie is okay, since the ink will be inside the seam allowance) and sew 1/4″ from each side of the line.
TIP: use a 4.5″ square quilting ruler to trim each block when you’re finished sewing and pressing. With so many small blocks, it’s important that everything be square!
2. Assemble each row:
Following the diagram above, attach one corner to each side of the middle strip for the top and bottom rows. The middle segment can be speed-pieced with two 1.5″ strips and one 2.5″ strip, which is then cut into 2.5″ slices.
3. Assemble three rows into one block, pressing seams towards the center.
Top Construction
Following the layout above, assemble the top, chain-piecing the first two columns of each row together without clipping the threads, Do this for each column, and then fold the rows together to finish the horizontal seams. Having the blocks connected helps to line up all of the seams!
For this top, I finished with long-horizontal grey borders measuring 2″ wide, a 6″ border of small, multicolored dots on a black background, and another 2″ border in bright red to tie all the colors together.
Quilting
An easy way to machine-quilt the top would be to simply stitch in the ditch between each block and outline the borders.
Alternately, you can freehand an all-over pattern in either single-color or variegated thread. A meander pattern would work well, though for my top, I used angles instead of curves for a neat effect.
Finishing
Finish the quilt with a red binding and make sure to add a tag. Congratulations! Now you can play too much Tetris, dream about it, and have it decorate your bed, too!
If you make one of these on your own, I’d love to see it! Send me a pic, and I can start a gaming-quilt gallery!
