Tag: Quilting

Learn How to Quilt Hourglass – 99 Designs Episode #49

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For this week’s tutorial we are back in business with free-motion quilting! This design, Hourglass, is basically a geometric and modern version of an earlier design: Cursive L’s. The technique of these two designs is very similar, so if you got one down, you can easily do the other!

Dot n’ Dash Quilt – Pick Up Piece and Quilt With Precuts

I admit I haven’t actually made a full-size quilt with Hourglass – that is on my bucket list! However, I’ve quilted a similar design on Dot n’ Dash, the featured quilt of this week. I call this a my Modern Jelly Roll Quilt since it can just be made with strips from a jelly roll! If you are interested in making this quilt for yourself, the original version of the pattern comes from my book, Piece and Quilt with Precuts.

Machine Quilting detail on Dot n Dash

This book is currently out of print. Click here to get the PDF download version.

I remade this quilt with some of my newer fabric, udpated the layout, added borders and more sizes, and renamed it Ticker Tape!

99 Designs Episode #48 – Straight Lines & Decorative Stitches

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Want to level up your walking foot quilting game? Try combining straight lines and decorative stitches to create unique motifs that are super easy to do! Click below to watch my latest video tutorial and be sure to leave a comment letting me know what you think!

Get My Book – The Ultimate Guide to Machine Quilting

In the second book I ever wrote – The Ultimate Guide to Machine Quilting – I first explored this idea of combining straight lines and decorative stitches. The book itself includes 10 patterns and 20 quilts (each pattern is made 2 different ways). It was fun to explore lots of different domestic quilting ideas, while my co-author Angela Walters explored lots of different long arm quilting ideas.

This book is currently out of print. Click here to get the PDF download version.

In 2 of the quilts I combined straight lines and decorative stitch ideas in 2 different ways. In the quilt called Directionally Challenged (shown below), I stitched straight lines in every other block, with decorative stitching in the alternate blocks.

Directionally Challenged by Christa Watson

Here’s a closeup image of the quilting so you can see more of the detail:

Directionally Challenged quilting detail

In another quilt, called Fractured Squares, I quilted it like a round robin design, with a different walking foot motif in each part of the quilt.

Here’s a closer shot of the quilting detail:

Let me know what you think of combining these two walking foot quilting ideas. It takes just a little bit of planning, but it’s a unique way to stitch and add lots of texture to your quilts!

99 Designs Episode #47 – Free Motion Quilting Square and Triangle Spirals

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For this week’s tutorial, we have two geometric spiral designs: Square and Triangle Spirals. These two free-motion designs can be used separately, or you can combine them in the same quilting plan to give lots of texture to your quilt. If you want to check out this video, click the link below:

Piece and Quilt with Precuts

The quilt I feature in this week’s video is called Starstruck. I used both Triangle and Square spirals on this quilt, but you can choose any designs from this series, as the busy pattern for this quilt and fabric choice can help to hide inconsistencies. This quilt comes from my book, Piece and Quilt with Precuts. If you want to get this pattern, as well as 10 other quilt patterns that come with this book, check out the link below for a digital PDF download.

Click Here to Grab the Piece and Quilt With Precuts PDF

I made the original version of Modern Starstruck with black and white fabrics. I later remade a version with bright, colorful fabric that I designed. You can use either color scheme, or make up your own, using any color combination you want. The pattern works with any choice of fabric, so let me know what you put together!

Bonus Video – Setting Yourself Up for Machine Quilting Success

Just getting into series? I’ve made an introduction video that goes over how to set up your machine and the basics of walking foot and free motion quilting. If you want to get started, check out this video for machine quilting success!

Bling Quilt Along Week 2: Block Sewing

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I named this pattern “Bling” because the main part of the design is an abstract representation of a sparkly ring. Can you see it?? Last week we cut out our fabrics and this week it’s time to sew them together to make Bling blocks! I like to lay out all of my pieces stacked up in order next to my sewing machine.

I’m making the scrappy background version, so as long as there’s good contrast between my lights and darks, these are going to look great! You can also use all of one background fabric for a more consistent, cleaner look.

In the Bling quilt pattern, I give you a couple of options for arranging each Bling block. You can use all of the same fabric for each Bling like I did above. Or you can use more than one fabric for a bit of a scrappy look. It’s totally up to you!

I like to press my seams open so the blocks will lie super flat. I sew with a shorter stitch length (2.0 instead of 2.5) to add more thread to each seam for extra strength. Click the image above to watch a short video of me sewing the units together using pins to line everything up. I assembly line sew, aka “chain piecing” to make this process faster.

The pattern tells how many blocks you need to make for each size. So your homework this week is to follow the diagrams and instructions in the pattern on pages 2-3 to make your blocks. The be sure to share pics of your progress in my Christa Quilts group on Facebook!

If you are just joining us, you can grab a copy of the Bling quilt pattern and choose your own fabrics. Or you can grab one of the optional kits if you want to make one just like mine!

Machine Quilting My Colorful Chaos Quilt

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After a hiatus of entering quilt shows the last couple years, I just got the exciting news that Colorful Chaos was juried into the international quilt show in Paducah, KY!! There’s no pattern for this quilt because it’s part of my renewed push to make new and exciting experimental work that pushes me out of my comfort zone. I’m thrilled with how it turn out. Read more about it below….

Colorful Chaos, Front and Back
It will be hanging at the American Quilter’s Society Show April 23-26, 2025.

In this post I thought I would share more about my machine quilting process and how I decided to quilt it. I hope you enjoy all the quilty eye candy!

Step 1 – Make a Quilting Plan

Before I begin quilting, I always start off with a quilting plan. I printed off a few color copies of my finished quilt top and then sketched out several different possibilities. These were simple pics I took from my phone and printed on a regular piece of paper. I wanted to emphasize the circles with the quilting and then fill in the other areas with some fun, geometric designs. This is just a roadmap, and I usually change it up a little when I get to the actual quilt.

I always make a quilting plan before quilting, and it’s totally ok to deviate from the plan!

Step 2 – Choose Thread Colors

For most of my quilts, I usually just choose 1 or 2 thread colors, and I always use the same thread in the bobbin. For this colorful quilt, however, I wanted to quilt each colorful section with a matching thread color.

Click here to get my favorite Aurifil thread groups in neutrals, colors, or variegated.

I chose 12 different thread colors from my Piece & Quilt Neutrals and Colors collections.

Step 3 – Quilt Your Heart Out

When I’m doing custom quilting, I take my time and focus on one area at a time. For this quilt I did some light stitching in the ditch between sections to anchor or secure the quilt. Then I went to town with different motifs in each colored area.

Above is what it looks like when I’m scrunching and smooshing my quilt under the machine. I’m using my Christa Cabinet to hold the weight of the quilt and it’s a game changer for domestic machine quilting!

Below I’m using pieces of painters tape to help me quilt straight lines using my dual feed system, which performs the same function as a walking foot.

Straight lines are super versatile because they can be stitched at lots of different angles, and they always look great! My secret is to quilt them in an irregular pattern rather than trying to have an even amount of spacing between the lines.

I also used walking-foot style quilting to stitch spirals inside and outside of each inset circle. To jazz them up a bit, I then went back and free motion quilting pebbles in between each of the spirals. It was a fun challenge figuring out how to make that work, but I love trying new things with every quilt I make!

This year it’s been my goal to work on what I call my “runway” quilts in between other projects. These are quilts that are a bit more edgy and push the boundaries of what I can do. There’s no pattern for them so that frees me from the need to be able to replicate everything I do.

But just like runway fashions inspire colors and style you’ll see at your local department store, my experiments will show up in bits and pieces, such as this practice sample that I’ve added to my “Spirals and Swirls” machine quilting workshop:

Previous Blog Posts: Colorful Chaos in Progress

Part 1 – Making Soul-Fulfilling Work
Part 2 – Piecing Inset Circles
Part 3 – Improv Quilt Backing from Leftovers
Part 4 – Spray Basting Tutorial

I continued the rainbow colors around the edges with matching binding. I pieced the binding in sections and then added one section at a time, splicing the seams together roughly were the colors overlapped.

About This Quilt

Christa’s Soap Box – Thoughts about Doing My Own Sewing (while relaxing at the beach…)

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This week I’m having a fun beach vacation with the family and since I’m not sewing, I’ve had a bit of time to think about sewing instead. Recently it occurred to me that whenever I travel and teach, I often say that I do all of my own “stunt sewing” – and I know I’m somewhat of an anomaly when it comes to professional quilters that do this full-time.  There’s nothing wrong with busy designers getting help, but I just love sewing my own stuff and don’t want to give it up!

view from the beach

View from my “office” this week at Hermosa Beach, CA where I’m writing this blog post.

Recently, someone asked me “now that you are successful in your business – when are you going to hire me to sew for you?” I know she meant it as a compliment and really wanted to help me out, but my gut reaction was – if I ever get to the point that I don’t have time to sew or quilt my own quilts, what’s the point of HAVING a quilting business??

For reals, I’d rather hire out my cooking and cleaning than ever give up sewing. In fact, I already have a team in place that helps me with some of the other tasks – a graphic designer helps lay out my patterns, and I just recently started using the services of a virtual assistant to help me with some of my pattern editing.

Family bike ride

We’re starting off each beach day with a family bike ride; we love great views and great exercise!

From time to time, I’ll enlist other designer friends to make quilts to showcase my fabrics using their patterns, and sometimes enthusiastic fans and followers will pitch in and remake some of my older patterns using my fabric. In all of those cases though, they are making THEIR quilts, not MY quilts.

In fact, it was kind of funny that when I was working on creating the projects for my second book The Ultimate Guide to Machine Quilting, the deadlines were VERY tight. I had to make about 10 quilts in 4 months so my publisher offered to pitch in and help. Because the book focused on machine quilting, they offered to help with piecing or binding to help reduce my load. I looked at them like I thought they were crazy pants and politely turned them down. I’m not sure if it’s my control freak tendencies or what, but the fact of the matter is, I simply like to do each step of the process myself, LOL!!

Quilts on the bed at the beach

One of the guest beds at the beach house is our “flat” staging area waiting for photography.
FYI – Dot’n Dash will be the quilt-along I’m doing next month– so stay tuned!!

Now that I’m designing fabric, I have even less time to sew because much of my time is spent with a sketchbook or at the computer. But all that really means is instead of mass producing large quantities of new quilts and patterns, I’ll be very thoughtful about the quilts I choose to make, and I’ll continue to enjoy every step! The other thing it means is that I can take more time to tell you about the quilts I am making, and share more than just one picture or blog post of each.

Surfboards at the Beach

Jason loves scouting out interesting places for photographs. He saw these surfboards and thought they’d make an interesting backdrop. See the photo below…

Speaking about being more thoughtful about how I share my finished quilts, Jason had the brilliant idea of bringing a few of them with us so we could photograph them in cool beachy locations on vacation. I loved that idea, especially since there wasn’t much time for photography before quilt market. 

So be on the lookout my official “Ta-Da” blog posts a little later on. I usually like to have a landing spot for the finished quilts I make which includes all of the pertinent details: size, materials used, quilt designs I chose, etc. I also enjoy writing up a little more about the process of making them so at least I can get a little more mileage out of each quilt, since there are fewer quilts to share. For some people, their quilt isn’t finished until it has a label. For me it’s not done until I’ve blogged about it.

Quilts on the Beach - Dot n Dash made from Fandangle by Christa Watson

This is an “outtake” of our photo session showing my son’s feet, who’s our official quilt holder.
He’s pretty good about hiding all of his body parts while we shoot, LOL!!
Kits for this quilt are available here.

While we are having a great time at the beach, (after a super busy spring and summer of teaching), you can be sure I’m also planning out the next round of quilts and patterns I’ll be working on later this year – and how I’ll be able to finish step of the process in a limited amount of time. After two rounds of fabric design (and working on my third!!), I think I finally have a handle on what a realistic timeline looks like, and feeling happy that I’m not biting off more than I can chew!

Now I’m curious – which parts of the quilting process do you enjoy most? Do you like to just piece, quilt, or do the whole shebang like me? Remember – it’s your quilt so there’s no wrong answer!!

The Quilter’s Planner 2017 – Now Available for Pre-order

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Let me tell you how I met my friend Stephanie Palmer, creator of The Quilter’s Planner. We both had been invited to tape a series of machine quilting demonstrations for QNNtv’s Quilt It – The Longarm show back in the summer of 2015.

We were picked up from the airport at the same time and immediately connected. By the end of our 30 minute car ride we had swapped life stories and become instant friends! She told me all about the creation of The Quilter’s Planner, and it was such fun to listen to her describe her project with such passion and enthusiasm.

stephanie_quiltit

Stephanie shows me one of her projects in the large “green room” while we take turns being filmed.
Several quilts from my books  are laid out flat on the table beside her.

When Stephanie invited me to participate as one of the designers for the 2017 Quilter’s Planner, of course I jumped at the chance to participate. Not only is the Quilter’s Planner perfect for keeping track of day-to-day things like a regular planner, it has specialty planning pages just for quilters.

quilters-planner-2017-cover

The 2017 Quilter’s Planner features this awesome cover, which will also be included as a pattern!

And to top it off, The Quilter’s Planner comes with a pattern pack of 14 downloadable PDFs. I was thrilled to make Feathered Chevrons as my contribution. It’s a remake of my older Charming Chevrons design, updated with a new layout using my Kona Solids palette.

feathered_chevronsPhotography taken in scenic Maine by Kitty Wilkin of Night Quilter.

I was even more thrilled with the photography, beautifully taken by our talented friend Kitty Wilkin (who can photograph your quilts, too if you are interested.)

feathered_chevrons_styledPhotography taken in scenic Maine by Kitty Wilkin of Night Quilter.

I especially love how Kitty got some great closeups of the quilting on this quilt. I used two of my favorite machine quilting designs, “Switchbacks” and a variation of “Swirls ‘n Pearls.” As I do with all of my quilts, I love to include machine quilting suggestions with my patterns.

feathered_chevrons_quilting

Photography taken in scenic Maine by Kitty Wilkin of Night Quilter.

feathered_chevrons_swirls

To learn more about each of the featured designers, click each name below to go to their blog and follow them!! Many have already included pictures of their quilts that will be included.

Amy Friend of During Quiet Time, Amy Sinibaldi of Nana and Co., AnneMarie Chany of GenXQuilters, Cheryl Brickey of Meadow Mist Designs, Karen Lewis of Karen Lewis Textiles, Kari Vojtechovsky of Craft-Happy, Katie Blakesley of Swim Bike Quilt, Lee Monroe of May Chappell, Lindsey Rhodes of LR Stitched, Rita Hodge of Red Pepper Quilts, Stephanie Palmer of Late Night Quilter, Yvonne Fuchs of Quilting Jetgirl

igg-monthlyspread-1

Order your copy of the quilter’s planner today!

 

Book Review – Splash of Color by Jackie Kunkel

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Today I’m excited to tell you about Jackie Kunkel’s brand new book, Splash of Color! Both Jackie and I chose Martingale/That Patchwork Place as our publisher (because they are the best) and our books both released at about the same time. So we thought it would be fun to tell our readers about each other’s books this week. (Check out her blog on Wednesday for her review of my book.)

splashofcolor_coverSplash of Color by Jackie Kunkel, Hip to Be Square on the Cover

First a quick background if you haven’t met Jackie yet. She runs the super awesome online store Canton Village Quilt Works, is a certified Judy Niemeyer Instructor, and she’s also a pilot. Isn’t that cool?

jackieJackie Kunkel standing in front of Lava Lamps – such an awesome quilt!

Jackie’s Book, Splash of Color really hits home with me because of its graphic combinations of black and white prints with color. In fact, I love the book’s subtitle: A Rainbow of Brilliant Black and White Quilts. I love high contrast, geometric quilts and this book is just full of them. To see what I mean, check out these gorgeous images (photography by Brent Kane):

01-80_B1319_Finals.inddSeeing Spots

My favorite quote from Jackie is in the introduction to this book: “When I combine black and white with bright fabrics, something magical happens. My heart begins to sing. It’s like eating candy – I want more. I hope the projects in this book will affect you the same way.”

Yes, Jackie, they do affect me in the same way. I couldn’t have said it better myself!

01-80_B1319_Finals.inddJumpin’ Jax

In her book, Jackie successfully teaches you how to combine a splash of color with black and white prints without it all looking jumbled up or too busy. She also includes several techniques that are a must have for every quilter: paper foundation piecing, curved piecing, strip piecing, and applique.

01-80_B1319_Finals.inddTwirling

The book includes a total of 12 fantastic quilt patterns and most of them include alternate versions for inspiration, so you can really see how versatile Jackie’s designs are.  I think the alternate version of Proud Mary, shown below is my favorite quilt from the book, but really they are all fantastic!

proudmary_altProud Mary

I also like that Jackie mentions it took time to collect her large stash of blacks, whites and brights. I love it when designs are versatile enough to use any prints so you can recreate them even if you don’t have the same exact fabrics.

01-80_B1319_Finals.inddCrossroads

Be sure to add Splash of Color to your book library, you’ll be glad you did. And now I want to know – have you ever made a black and white quilt?

Video Review – Why Quilts Matter

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I am extremely pleased to review the DVD series, Why Quilts Matter: History, Art & Politics presented by the Kentucky Quilt Project. I first heard about this series while reading designer Thomas Knauer’s blog and thought it was pretty serendipitous when the folks from Why Quilts Matter contacted me a few months later to share my thoughts about the series with you.

Why Quilts Matter DVDOriginally produced by renowned quilt expert Shelly Zegart as a PBS television series, it’s now available as a 2 disc DVD set. This fabulous series has a total running time of just over 4 hours and is broken up into these nine episodes:

  1. Quilts 101 – Antique and Contemporary Quilts
  2. Quilts Bring History Alive
  3. The Quilt Marketplace
  4. What is Art?
  5. Gee’s Bend: “The Most Famous Quilts in America?”
  6. How Quilts have been Viewed and Collected
  7. Empowering Women One Quilt at a Time
  8. Quilt Nation: 20,000,000 and Counting!
  9. Quilt Scholarship: Romance and Reality

Why Quilts MatterThis series will truly change the way you think about quilting! Each episode takes you on an amazing journey and gives you a feel for for the scope, depth and influence of American quilting culture.

It features video interviews with some of the most amazing quilting artists in the industry as well as museum curators and quilt collectors. It’s enlightening to listen to their take on the quilting industry as a whole and why they think quilts matter.

Click the video below to watch a preview of the series, and be sure to visit the WQM website for a host of other resources including discussion guides, summaries, and images of quilts from the series. It’s a lot of quilting “eye candy” to explore!

My favorite episode of the series was the one about Gee’s Bend quilts since they are considered one of the major influences of the modern quilting movement. I gained a lot of new respect for these quilts as well as plenty of inspiration to make one of my own!

Be sure to stop by my blog later in the week for your chance to win a copy of this fabulous series!

My Word of the Year for 2014 – Quilt!

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Have you read about this trend of picking a word for the year? It’s been catching my notice recently, but I was finally inspired to pick a word for myself after reading Pat Sloan’s recent blog post about her words for each year.

Christa Quilts

Christa’s word of the year for 2014 – Quilt! (Duh!)

I thought about many ideas for what my word could be: health, patience, love, balance, organization, timeliness, etc., but finally realized that “Quilt” embodies all of this for me in this new year. “Quilt” really will be at the forefront of my thinking 24/7 as I strive to meet my goals for 2014. I will need to incorporate all of these other words in order to achieve them!

So how about you? What is on your mind for this year? Can you sum it up in a word?