Quilts by the Water Calendar

Looking for a Christmas gift idea? My second calendar, Quilts by the Water, is available for purchase. You can order here. The calendars are $25 (includes shipping, US only). 

One of the best things about living in California, even though we live in the arid Central Valley, is that the ocean and mountain lakes are only a couple of hours away. Quilting has always been a way to feed my need for creativity, while at the same time grounding me during times of stress and even grief. The water, especially the beautiful coastline of California with its never-ending waves, the quieter and calming beauty of a lake, as well as a friend's pool, is the perfect backdrop for colorful quilts.

Notecard sets are also available. 

Quilts and Classics: Christmas in the City/1931 Ford Delux Coupe

 This is the final installment of Quilts and Classics. It seems like the year has flown by!

The background stories of the new calendar, Quilts by the Water, will begin on January 1.

I firmly believe you can never have too many Christmas quilts. The blocks in Christmas in the City were designed by Tula Pink in her book, City Sampler: 100 Modern Quilt Blocks. The blocks are each 6".  I had this idea to work with very low contrast red and mostly white in the upper left corner, while simultaneously working with very low contrast green and mostly white in the lower right corner, then working toward the middle, gradually using less white, adding more green and red, until the middle diagonal rows had hardly any white at all.

Still just two colors (the dots are just fabric I used for background as I photographed the blocks).

Gradually starting the process of adding a touch of both red and green to the blocks.

Kind of an even mix.

More color, less white.

Not much white.

I think all the blocks are completed at this point. 

It was so much fun trying to make the transition seamless, with just the right amount of blocks in each category.

The backing.

You can never go wrong with a candy cane stripe binding on a  Christmas quilt. 

We took the first "fun" photos at a sporting goods store with this awesome deer.

One morning I was headed out of the house and walked past the dining room. Everything seemed just right to snap a quick picture. For some reason, this photo got some major traction on Instagram that year. 

It was reposted on the instagram feed of Make Modern Magazine and ended up with nearly 6,000 "likes"!! So I repost it every year. Haha. 

After seeing Christmas in the City, another quilter made her version using patchwork squares rather than pieced blocks. It's a much faster way to achieve the same idea and it's so very pretty.

It seemed the perfect quilt to photograph with the Christmas red classic car.

I hope you have enjoyed the back stories of the quilts in the Quilts and Classics calendar. It has been fun going through old photos of these quilts and sharing some of the background.

Quilt: Christmas in the City

Quilt designed by Cindy Wiens

Quilt blocks designed by Tula Pink

Quilted by Darby Myers

Size: 60" x 60"

Quilts and Classics: Foliage/1936 Ford

 This quilt came about when I wanted to use some beautiful fall-toned Oakshott cottons to make a version of Delta Breeze, this time with maple leaf blocks rather than bear paw blocks.

Long before I had the idea for the calendar, I had wanted to photograph it with the vintage orange truck at Hillcrest Farms, a Christmas tree farm which decked itself out with pumpkins around Halloween.

It is a popular place for school field trips and there are usually many school buses, so it is overrun with children during the week. On weekends it is crowded with families.

But on this particular day, it was early afternoon and there were no school buses. I parked and went to the ticket booth. They were just closing up for the day. I was so disappointed but I told them all I wanted to do was photograph my quilt with their truck. They said I could have full access to the entire farm as long as I didn't move any pumpkins. Deal. And they didn't even charge me an admission fee!

It was a gray, overcast day, so the experience was actually a little bit spooky. Especially when I turned a corner and saw this guy...At first glance, I really expected him to start moving and point that rifle at me. I noticed a few other "guards" as I wandered around. See if you can spot some of them...

You can see why this vintage truck was the perfect backdrop for this quilt. Can you see the "driver" in there?

But there were so many other photo ops--and I didn't have to ask a single child to please move. :)

Watch out--another guard...

Foliage is one of my favorite fall quilts and I hope you enjoyed the photo op tour around Hillcrest Farms.

Quilt: Foliage

Designed by: Cindy Wiens

Quilted by: Darby Myers

Size: 54" x 63"