QuilterGeek
Quilts by Julie Ramsey
Strip Twist
Feb 22nd
Since I’ve got tons of brightly-colored scraps sitting around, I tried the strip twist pattern at quiltville with dizzying results! I think is looks crazy, but in an organized way, and it looks very happy.
I think I did a pretty good job on the binding for this quilt; rather than tacking it to the back by hand, I finished it with a zig-zag in extra-fine invisible nylon thread. The corners aren’t the best, but I figure that’s okay in the big picture. If Amish quilters can have one deliberate flaw in their quilts (since only God is perfect, so we shouldn’t bother trying), I figure that wonky corners aren’t all that bad 
Baby Quilt #1
Feb 16th
I’ve recently discovered that two of my friends will be having babies in October, which means I get the fun job of making baby quilts! This is a sketch of the one that will be for the lady I work with, though she doesn’t know what colors (beyond “pastels” she wants). This is a fun and easy pattern, and I’m sure I’ll have lots of fun with it!
EDIT: sadly, this project will be put on hold for a while 
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!
Tetris Quilt
Jan 15th
It’s finally finished, after six months of off-and-on piecing and a year and a half sitting in the closet, waiting for the sandwich to be finished:
“Quiltris,” in a “Tetris DS/ Tetris Worlds” color scheme.
I’m really happy with the way this turned out. It’s far from perfect, but the overall effect is really great, especially with the 3-d shading.
I’m still practicing my machine quilting, but I really like this freehand design. I approached it like a curvy meander, but turned 90-degree angles instead. I was a bit wary of using the variegated thread, since any wonky quilting would show up very clearly on the back fabric, but I really like the way it turned out.
Since the quilt’s gotten such a positive response, I’ll probably be putting together an instruction sheet in the near future. While I doubt I’d be able to actually publish it, I’d like to share with other geek quilters out there!
Chocobo pixel quilt
Jan 14th
This one has been sitting in my closet for quite a while now, but I’ll be picking it up soon. I wanted to do a video-game sprite, but wasn’t sure how to manage all the little pieces. The solution: fusible grid! I cut 1″ squares that will end up at .5″ by the time all of the seams are put together, so the finished project should be small enough for a wallhanging.
At the moment, the rows are sewn together and I still need to trim the seam allowances before the columns are pieced.
EDIT:
After sewing the columns together, I tried to sew the rows, but I think the seam allowances are going to be more than I can handle; for each 1″ cut square, I’ll have .5″ of seam and .5″ of block! Next time, I’ll do this with 2″ fusible grid and end up with 1.5″ blocks instead. Maybe it’ll be a chocobo, maybe it’ll be a Yoshi, who knows?
Diamond Pinwheels
Jan 14th
I had originally planned to donate this to a charity raffle at work, but my sewing machine died the night before the fundraiser and the quilt didn’t get finished in time. Fortunately, I got a new machine, finished up the project, and sent it off to a friend.
I finished this one with a wide meander pattern. I used a cotton batting, which shrunk a bit and gave the quilt a very neat texture!
The pattern came from an Eleanor Burns book and came together very quickly. I’d definitely recommend the book and the pattern both!
Stars and Four-Patches
Jan 13th
I started this one a year and a half ago with the intent of donating it to a breast-cancer fundraiser. I pushed myself to try and hand-quilt the entire thing (despite a total lack of hand-quilting experience), only to burn out and put it on the shelf.
A few weeks ago, I pulled it back out and cut out all of the hand-quilting, which covered about half of the thing in (very uneven) stitches. I’ll be re-sandwiching it again soon and doing some quick machine quilting, though I’m not sure how complicated of a pattern I’ll do.
Dissertation Blues
Jan 13th
I made this lap-sized quilt as a gift for a friend who finished his dissertation last spring. I had lots of random yardage in different blue shades, so I used them to put together a modified log cabin block in two color schemes; I believe this pattern is called “friendship knot,” though the block is a lot like a log cabin.
The background was put together with more yardage and scraps. I pieced together a long strip of pieces 22″ wide, then cut that into sections and attached them to the sides to make a funky color-block pattern. This was the first time I tried a meander pattern, and I think it turned out very well!
Log cabin star
Jan 12th
Yet another quilt made for a friend who defended her dissertation and now works as a professor of sociology in Texas. She asked for subdued colors, since her house is decorated in beige and light green, and I think the light blue and bright red squares work very well.
I ended up doing a fair bit of straight-line quilting on this one; my walking foot certainly got some exercise here! It doesn’t show up very well in the original picture, but it adds to the clean lines of the quilt.
Scrap Basket Surprise
Jan 11th
The first of three quilts made for friends’ graduation gifts. I needed a way to use up all of the brightly-colored scraps from my Tetris quilt, and this did a good job of it without being overwhelming.
The pattern is Chunky Churndashes from Quiltville, which has lots of great scrap patterns!
