Louise Naples Quiltmaker

This quilt began with an all-over pattern of single flowers. I decided to fussy cut them out and use them as sashing for pastel crazy quilt blocks. They just seemed to fit together. For the horizontal bands I chose a darker print matching the leaves of the flowers. For the border and backing I used a dark green print with tiny pink flower; and the binding is a pink print of small flowers. I free-motion quilted large flowers to fill the blocks. It is a sweet quilt.

Cutting scores of apple-core shapes with my GO Baby made quick work of this quilt top. I drew on the reds and blues of Kaffe Fassett’s fabric families, and alternated the patches in each row. The GO Baby creates small notches at all the matching points insuring precise piecing, even with curves. I made yards and yards of bias binding of another coordinated Fassett stripped fabric to finish it off. No way was I going to cut this down to a neat rectangle. This is a real show stopper.

This pattern in pastels (rare for me) required precise cutting and curved piecing. I acquired a new machine, the GO Baby by Accuquilt, which cuts the pieces precisely, saving wear and tear on this post-middle-age quilter’s shoulders. It was a pleasure to spend more time sewing than cutting. The soft greens and pinks rendered a very pleasing quilt.

Using only 60 and 30 degree triangles, this design by Paula Nadelstern challenges the maker to find motifs that together create a stand-alone design. I cut the plastic templates, then had fun locating desirable and complimentary aspects to meld together. Some accented sashing frames each block to dramatic effect.

This is a Pauls Nadelstern design, using her fabrics. By “fussy cutting” stars, and parts of stars, and sashing them with dramatic borders, I managed a dramatic wall hanging.

My all time favorite fabric and quilt designer is Paula Nadelstern. This is one of her designs, using her bi-laterally symmetric fabrics. Using self-made plastic templates, carefully placed to create mirror images, and cutting precisely, I made dozens of butterfly wings. Cuts of another fabric created the bodies, and black patches completed each block. This makes a powerful wallhanging.

I won a packet of solid-color five-inch patches at a Quilters’ Guild meeting. I challenged myself to use only those colors with the addition of black bordering. I used another set of two and a half inch solid patches, sewed, flipped and cut them onto two angles of the patch, creating lozenges, that gave me the secondary pattern small stars at all the intersections. I used all the left-over bits making small accent pieces for the border.

During another “art week” with my daughter Nikita in Denver, she taught me how to make the Mariner’s Compass. We used special rulers created by Robin Ruth, which facilitate sharp and precise points. I decide on solid colors on a muted grey terra-cotta field. Setting them into the whole cloth was even more tricky. Some had to be ironed into submission! Still a work in progress….

The simple cutting process for this interesting quilt block makes easy work of

assembling an array of colorful images. Sashing isolates the blocks and sets them off.

The fabrics are all from Kaffe Fassett who works in astounding color ranges.

Making these blocks was so addictive; I made sets of four, and putting them together yielded

wonderful small pieces, good for gifts. Here are three examples.

Following are photos of the process…