Mill House Quilts

Hello, I'm Diane from Millhouse Quilts. Today we're going to talk about rearranging the same block and getting a lot of different looks out of the very same block. My inspiration was t And in our miniature scrap quilt talk, t It was on the wall, it was in pieces, but you could kind of get the gist of it. Now it got done and it's, I love to say it, it's the king size layout in miniature. So the basic block for t I have t I'm doing another one. T What started all of t And the same time I was trimming that one, we had another red and w And I looked at these two fabrics together and I thought, oh, I What can we do with those? And then I thought of t So I thought, well, let'see what can happen. At that time, my red scrap was really small. So I decided to go in miniature because I didn't have much red. As you can see, I have more red now because I But that's a different story. I had orange and red, orange, red, and green and they all went with these are corduroy, w So I have made little blocks and I have green ones, orange ones, and red ones. The constant is t It's very splotchy, but you'll see I'm going to play with putting these in different orders. And as they get put in, the color of the corduroy dominates over the multicolor, even though they're kind of equal balance. So we're going to first of all start with, I have piles here. You can see I did a bunch. I'm going to make blocks where I have four of the same color. You'll notice t It has an outside corner and an inside little corner. So you can turn it different ways. And as I do t So here we have complete squares made out of four of each of the blocks. And I have arranged them so that the little square in the center comes together as a center of each one and then the bigger outer border makes the square. And I've alternated just so that the same color doesn'touch next to each other. Now you notice the orientation of the block. If I take the top of each block and just turn it so that they all go up, it's going to create a little different look too. Now instead of squares, we still have our square. We still have our four together. But there's more of a stacked look and it's more of a stripe and a row, even though it's exactly the same now if we do it another way, we can do this time, I still have the very same n And what I did was put them in pairs. I have the top going up, but I have alternated so that the same color doesn'touch and it's a whole different look again, but it is still the exact same now I'm going to take these and I'm going to arbitrarily create a couple of full squares again T We still have the everyt So it's almost the same, but just a little bit different. Now there's another way. I'm going to create diagonal rows and I'm just going to turn them so they all go down t I'm going to have a red row coming down next to an orange row. T Each block stands alone. What I have done is I've pointed them all t Each one stands alone. T So I want to plant the seed that there's a lot of options out there. There's just no way you can try it all, but it's really fun to do what you can. Happy quilting from Millhouse Quilts.

Hello, I'm Diane from Millhouse Quilts and we're continuing on in our Scrap Quilt series and today's topic is what I call Generations. When I say Generations, I'm starting with a parent quilt and then t Sometimes when I get done with the quilt, I look at that pile of fabric and I just want to do somet I've coordinated everyt So what we have here is t And when the c Now if you remember, we had gray sewed to print. So I took some of those scraps and I cut them all the same width and I just randomly sewed them together. And I have col I had some of the print leftover so I don't know where I'm going when I start these, they just kind of happen. And t So I have two rows of piece, two solid, two piece, two solid. And then I took chunks of the print at the end and I just randomly put chunks around because these are cut the same size as the big chunks were in the original quilt. I had enough of the gray to bind it in. T Especially when you're making a smaller quilt out of the bigger. You can't make the same size or you've gotten way too much fabric to start with. So whatever you make is obviously going to be smaller than the one you started with. And in t We had an assortment of prints and then you pick one constant and the constant is sewed to the side of each print and then your pieces are cut and then just sewed together. All of the scraps from t So I analyzed my scraps that were left and I decided, I love these fabrics. I want to keep them together in somet Let's try to make a table runner. I had some of the pieces, so as you'll see here, here's my solid sewed next to the print, solid print, print, solid print. I had scraps of the prints left over and I decided to just sew strips of those together and then cut them the same length as my scraps with the solid sewed to the print. So I alternated rows and these just whatever size block is, it just happens. However much I need to get that length. When I got t So I figured out how many strips I would need if I was going to put a border on and I needed three strips. I looked at the piece of blue that I had left and I divided that width by three and that told me what size borders I was going to cut. So it wasn't any kind of a standard size, I couldn't predetermine. I took the piece I had divided by three, that's what I had. So I sewed those on and then I had one other print left that was almost enough to be the binding. So I got as much as I could and I had to sub in, there's a couple pieces here. I tried to be casual but there's a couple pieces where I subbed in some of the dark so that it was long enough. So these are some of the t You don't know before you start always if you have enough, if you don't know where you're going when you start. I didn't have a pattern for t So you have to keep winging it as you go along. But I t And now with t Black and w So what it is houses with different colored doors. And all of our scraps were black and when were working on t So I had a little additional scrap from these are the ones we rejected and we thought they looked too gray after we started instead of black and w That's why we rejected them. So It's just so fun to have those solid colors with the black and w So I pieced the center, I was looking for a table runner and then somebody said hmm it'd be nicer if it was longer. So I thought alright. So I went back to the solids and I made inner borders on the two ends and I decided it's more fun to have more colors than just one. So I pieced those half, half and half. And then I put one more row of blocks on the end and I t Now t Because we rejected some of those first fabrics I had parts of houses left over. When I picked those triangles off, if I put them down here and put four house peaks together I came up with another mat. So here we have their houses without their roof and just a half square triangle in the corner. And then I took my scraps of the solid colors and just made a scrappy binding to go around it. So you can keep playing with the same scraps as far as you can go. At some point, at t Now these are going to go into my general scrap pile. But I had a great time making generations before they went to the generals. And I'm going to start quilting from millhouse quilts.

Hello, I'm Diane from Millhouse Quilts and today we're continuing on our scrap series. T Sometimes when you're done with the quilt, you have t You look at that pile and you t It's called Mesmerize. It's by Basic Gray and it's just a moody quilt. You've got these optics that are created. You almost make a square, but you don't ever quite finish the square and it's got t And we have had so much fun with t Now another more retired sample was one of our bucka blocks from a couple years ago. T So if you'll follow me into our bargain room, we have w It's a Thangles program. It's a bucka block program where you make, t But again, when I got done with t Let's just see. The thought came into my head. Let'see if we can make a miniature, but I honestly didn't know what size to use. T So t If I don't know, I just start. So I went to the smallest pile of Thangles, the smallest package they have and that's half inch and three quarters inch. And I thought, I'll try one block. If it works, it works. And if it doesn't, I'll t So I made one block and it worked. The proportions were w So when we go back upstairs, you will see a miniature version of w So here is our smaller version of w And you can see that the two different sizes of triangles, the three quarter size made the blocks and the little half inch ones make these little corner blocks. So I went ahead and kept the same sash. I used all the same fabrics. It's exactly as the original was. I didn't know for sure if the stripe would look too big to go with the little, but it doesn't because I t And the little squares along the side, they're not maybe all exactly the same size because my strip had to end up a certain size. So I don't It's the point that counts and it works out. Here is mesmerize in progress. Here again, I was in love with the fabrics. And when I was done, I had, it's all done in strips. I had some strips left over and then I had little bits of yardage of some of the fabrics, not much of some and maybe t And I thought, I wonder, I wonder if I could. Now I knew right away the key t Each of these blocks is one print, but the background, the alternating strip is the same fabric in all of them. I didn't know exactly what size to do, but I decided to cut my strips in half. I didn't want to have to figure out the math for all the blocks. So I thought, OK, just start it and do it. So I knew the blocks started with squares. So that was easy. Cut two squares, sew those together. Then I measured that size and I knew that was the size of the next block. And that was my safe way of making a block without having to trust that I might mess up on the math. So I made a block or two and it seemed to work pretty well. So then I looked at my half yard almost of background and I thought, OK, t How many strips of background can I get? And I figured I could get three blocks out of one strip. So I started going along and then at the store I found a remnant of the background fabric. And I thought, ha, coast is clear. I'm not tied by anyt Because I was getting so much out of my strips I didn't even have touch the extra scraps. So then I got out the pattern again and looked at it. And my plan, and I t I'm not exactly positive yet. But I t And when I say to people, I'm using the king size layout. They look at me I said, no, but it's the blocks that go along. So stay tuned and someday you'll see the final miniature version of the mesmerize. Now down here we have, t And t My mother-in-law made a quilt for each one of her grandkids. And after a w And then sometimes she'd give me the scraps. Every kid got the same pattern. It was trip around the world. So this time, again, I thought I had enough. So I made a miniature version of trip around the world. I don't even know w But it's been very special to me because I know that it was from one that she made. So whatever you've got, try it. The worst thing that can happen is, is it doesn't work and you just have to take it and d But sometimes it'so fun if you end up with an exact miniature of what you started with. Happy quilting from Millhouse Quilts.

Hello, I'm Diane from Millhouse Quilts and today I want to talk to you a little bit about quilting, the actual attac Every quilt has a back and when you go to layer them together you have the right side facing down. Then you take a batting and put a batting on top of the back and the batting should be about the same size as the back and then you take your finished quilt top and layer that on and t So that's the basic idea. This is called a sandwich and what we're going to do with the quilt stitch is actually attach all three layers together and every time a quilt gets quilted there is some magical moment when all these separate pieces all of a sudden feel It's great. So I have here an old quilt based on the fabrics. It's mostly I t It's hand quilted and you can see some of the quilting stitches here. I t So quilting changed a lot of it depended on the time of year you were making a quilt. If you had a so this was a big thing and then at some point people started quilting on their home sewing machines and they stopped doing all the hand quilting work and it'so back to hand quilting this is another example of being able to be far apart you can see these big distances here and this is a case of not marking the line but just kind of eyeballing going right diagonally through everything so it's a case of it sticks together do minimal This is an example of T

Hello, I'm Diane from Millhouse Quilts and today we're going to have a series of lectures on scrap quilting, w Our traditional scrap quilting, miniatures, what I call generations, odds and ends and fun stuff, and then anyt So first of all, we have to define what is a scrap quilt. And the most obvious definition is it's a quilt that's made from scraps left over from some other project. But then you have to figure out, well, what's a scrap? If you purposely buy extra fabric, it still counts as a scrap. If you keep it a long time, you have to have really old ones to be a scrap, or can it be all new? But I there's also somet They may be old, they may be new. A scrap quilt may be a combination of old, old scraps or new. And it's actually a really good way. If you have some old fabric, you can sneak it in, you t But if you mix it with new, and if you play, you can tease the eye as to thinking of this as light, dark, too bold, too medi I personally, when I'm storing my scraps, if I have a piece of fabric that is a quarter yard or more, I consider it yardage. Something And on my shelves, I put my yardage, and I file that by color. And sometimes by type. I might take all my woven's and put them together. I might put all my batiks together, but I organize them by color so I can go and find it. Now, the drawers in the middle are organized by size of piece. And it helps if you're disciplined enough, when you get finished with the project, if you deal with the scraps at that point, you'll be happy later on. I have the luxury of drawers, and one of the t Everyone has their own sizes that they will keep or not keep. You have a point where you consider it junk, and you'll throw it in the trash. A point where you consider, t And sometimes what you keep depends on how much you I find I'll keep a smaller piece of my favorite fabrics and throw one if there'some reason I don't So the smallest piece that I would pre-cut or that I will work with is cut one inch wide. But in my drawers, I have sections. And I will start with, actually, my first section there is an inch and a half. Then I go two, two and a half, three, and on up to six. And then I have sort of a catch-all pile that's kind of between six and between my quarter yard. And I had told you before, quarter yard is what I consider yardage. You will also have a point where you may say it has to be a half a yard or more to be yardage. Or maybe anyt Whatever works for you works. With my one inch, I have a series of quilts I have done out of log cabins, cut one inch wide. And I have pre-cut because they are a lot of pieces. T And so I pre-cut some of the logs for the cabins. And I have little boxes. And I have a label on top of the box. T So whenever I'm ready to do one of these, I can go to the boxes. I have all my, it goes up to one by six. That's the biggest. But these are pre-cut. And they're lights, darks, medi And when I go to do the blocks, I will sort them out by shade, by color, light, dark, whatever I want to use for that project. Now you can, there'so many different kinds of ways you can organize. T You can do something These are plastic boxes you can put together. And then you can get several and they hook together. There are all kinds of plastic containers. You can use shoe boxes. Anyt Big bins, little bins. But what really, really helps is to know what's in those bins. And when I talk about organizing it by size, if you have a pattern you're going to use, it's going to say you need three inch strips, four inch squares, whatever. If you have your pieces organized by size, you can go to the size, you can grab a chunk of pieces. You can go through that stack and very quickly see the color, see the size of the print, the style of the print. But If everyt So if you had Do I have to cut everyt So it's much, much easier if you decide a point where if it'smaller than t Some people will take odds and ends and just throw them in a jar. And t If you have scraps, say from when you do binding pieces or you just want to d So whatever style a quilting fits you, but I've really, really found that it's nice if I pre-organize some of my scraps. Happy quilting from Millhouse Quilts.

Hello, I'm Diane from Millhouse Quilts and today we're continuing our talk on scrap quilts and our topic is traditional scrap quilts. Now I find before I start a project I always t And whenever you're t It's a little too bold, the print's a little too big, but it almost, almost, almost always makes it the perfect the quilt I have be And t Now we have lots of different shades of cream, beige, and we have mostly dark navy. But in our navy we have different sizes of prints. We have sort of a big, So you'll notice with t You can over balance or over coordinate a scrap quilt so that it gets boring. It's way more fun if you spice it up a little bit by having a little bit of contrast in your fabrics. We have another one over here that is the traditional log cabin block. And a log cabin block is half light, half dark, and traditionally it always started with the red square in the center. And that was to be Now my color palette for t So all of my lights in here are really mostly darker lights than lighter lights. And my darks are more of the medi And I even had the fun of playing with trying to tease the eye and using some of these in-between ones in both the light side and the dark side. And that's the fun with some of these scrap quilts is if you please it right, the person looking at the block sees the block that you're making. You can play around and have, I also played with it in some of the borders here. You can see the light and the dark. The dark makes t But I very purposely took two corners and put them into the outer border. And what I was doing was teasing your eye. You can see the point coming out. And you see it because the fabrics here are different from the fabrics there. These are darker. They're a little more solid print. These have a little bit more brightness in them so that they stand out. I did the same t A lot of people will look at t And I said, nope, that's what I was after. Some of the blocks are all light. Here I have green. Here I have gold. But you see the light and you see the dark. We have another one over here that was the cover of a book on neutrals, knockout neutrals. I absolutely love the color palette is all beiges and darks, but just the two colors. You need a nice contrast. These are my darks, and they are nice and dark. But I have a lot of different prints, a lot of different colors, and it's just a real traditional nine-patch block. Very, very easy. T And woven means they haven't printed the design on the front. They've actually woven colored threads together. And the block is just a traditional block. It's four triangles, two one side, two on the other side. And the fun with t You can create lines here by how you sew it together. But that's all just one little block, and then you might not have thought of it. But if you frame a single block or a small quilt, if you give t You don't have to talk about hang sleeve. You don't have to say anyt Just say, here, I have a nice present for you. Here's another one. T It's the Stash Buster 2014. And when I was looking for fabrics for t So I have about 20 different fabrics, maybe in t And then different teals and different purples. And I consciously looked to have some that were darker, some that were brighter. T It blends into that. But your eye sees it in the middle here because it's got enough teal, enough purple, and I've put it next to those ones. And then the accent teal seemed to be the perfect accent here for totally fun. T And I believe it's about one inch square. What I did was go to my stash and I pulled fabrics that blended together. And I was t My theme here, I've got pink, purple, greens. And then t So t And it kind of blends the dark green and the mauve. So t It's a paper piecing pattern. And when I did t And I wanted the creamy contrast. And then I picked some other greens and t So I started piecing t And all of a sudden, I was running out of my background fabric. T You don't always know how much you're going to need if you're picking scraps and whatever. So I went back to my stash and I looked to see what else I might have that would still go with these fabrics. And I found t It's got that kind of a gold, but it has a So it went right in. So I used that background in the corners and my creamier one in the middle. And then when I started using my green, I had almost enough of my green. So I have t And you can'tell unless you can look really close. But in some of these, I've got two different greens here. I found t So it ends up looking planned, looking coordinated. And it started almost planned and coordinated. But t How much seam allowance you use has a big factor in how quickly you're going to use up the fabric. So happy quilting. Do some traditional piecing. Put those fabrics together. T Don't be worried if you run out. Have a plan B, a plan C, a plan D. We've never had to go to Z and we've always made it work out. Happy quilting from Millhouse Quilts.

Hello, I'm Diane from Millhouse Quilts and today we're going to talk about backgrounds for your quilts. Picking the background fabric is somet You want it to be somet You notice it, but you don't really notice it because it's not usually ever the focal point. I have Granny's Garden on the wall. T It's almost w But t It's paired with 30s fabrics and it complements the whole quilt without drawing attention to itself. It's just very nice. Now there's many shades. You can go, mostly people t I also have a version of Granny's Garden though with a black background. Black backgrounds can be every bit as good, sometimes better than w I'm going to put it on the wall so you can see it too. Here we have Granny's Garden again, the prints are flowers instead of 30s, but what's really fun, the vine is the very same fabric in both. Some of the leaves are the same, some are totally different, But you can have a lot of fun tweaking fabrics and making them look great in a lot of different ways. That's the key then, secondarily, you kind of see the flowers and the 30s fabrics here. Now, I have another pattern I'm going to show you. It's called Modern Millie. It's another Thornberry pattern. I have a light background, a dark background, and a surprise background. T It's a modern block where you just slice and dice and put it back together. What's fun with t If you'll notice, we have candy cane, we've got fish, we've got polka dots, we have sock monkey, vegetables, stars. It really doesn't matter. The piece is so little that you see the color and you get the effect against the black, but you can pretty much put anyt Now, down here, I have the traditional light background version. T We have the light background, has snowflakes in it, and the stripe, it's a diagonal stripe that is reminiscent of candy canes. T It's the very same pattern, but we're done with only two fabrics. All of the diagonals in here are the same candy cane stripe, w Now we did it also in a yellow background, w T It's very multi. This is what it looks We took the splatter, mixed it with yellow for somet If you need bright, sunny days, if you just want somet Now, I do have to tell you, when I was trimming the back of that one was backed in red corduroy. When I saw these two fabrics together, I thought, oh, I t Stay tuned and you're going to see these again in another YouTube. Happy quilting from Millhouse Quilts. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Bye.