My First Quilt with Jenny Kae Parks

It has been a busy July here in Devoted Quilter land, with the Merry Mini QAL and the work I've been doing on other patterns, not to mention starting a new job as a virtual assistant. Whew! No wonder it feels like the last Friday of the month snuck up on me quickly! It is the last Friday of the month, though, which means I get to share another My First Quilt interview 😊 This month Jenny Kae Parks is sharing the story of her first quilt. Jenny Kae Parks is a quilting teacher and designer.

You can connect with Jenny at her website, on Instagram, on Facebook, and on Youtube.

And now, here's Jenny's first quilt! Isn't it pretty?

What year did you make your first quilt? What prompted you to make it?

2021 I made quilted placements for a project with my kids. I fell in love with the possibilities. I dove in and never looked back!

What techniques were used in that first quilt? Did you quilt it yourself?

I made a log cabin quilt using strip piecing.

Who taught you to make the quilt?

Elinor Burns. No lie! I used her VHS lessons on The Log Cabin. Then a friend, Patty and I got together every week to quilt. I learned a lot from her. I used to record Quilt in a Day, Simply Quilts, Love of Quilting etc and watch them when I got time to myself. And I checked out SO many books and magazines!

Are the colours you chose for your first quilt ones you would still choose today?

Yes!  It took few years for me to realize that they were my color trifecta. Almost every quilt I made has blue, purple and green. I have branched out, using the quilter's secret weapon aka the color wheel. 

Did you fall in love with quilting right away? Or was there a gap between making the first quilt and the next one?

I fell hard! I was planning my next quilt while making my first one. 

Where is the quilt now?

It is hanging in my closet. I use it for presentations to guilds.

Is there anything you wish you could go back and tell yourself as you made that first quilt?

Plan more time for quilting! When I have the top done, I am irritated I am not finished yet! So I skimp on the quilting to finish faster. Instead, plan at least 30% of the time is spent on quilting. For example, if it takes me 60 hours to make a quilt top, plan 20 hours to quilt, at least.

Anything else you want to share about your first quilt?

I still love it! I love the colors, the arrangement, the blocks and the feel of the washed quilt. The log cabin is one of my favorite blocks! 

Thanks for sharing your first quilt with us, Jenny! I love it, too!

Merry Mini QAL - Week 4 - Quilting

Welcome to week 4 of the Merry Mini QAL! How is your Merry Mini coming along? I have to admit that this past week I fell behind on my own QAL. I was doing really well, even with three mini quilts underway, but then we decided to go hiking twice this week. No regrets, both hikes were great! It just means that now I have some catching up to do. (And if you'd be interested in seeing some of my hiking pictures, you can follow me on Instagram!)

Even though I don't have my Merry Mini quilt tops finished, I do have all my trees made! I love this little forest.

Week 4 - Quilting

If you haven't already joined the QAL, there's still time to join in for some Christmas in July fun! You can pick up your pattern here. From now until the end of July, the Merry Mini pattern is 20% off with the code MERRYMINIQAL, which should already by applied if you click on the link. Once you have your pattern, enter your email address here to have the weekly emails sent to your inbox so you don't miss any of the QAL blog posts.

As a reminder, here's the weekly schedule. Click on the links to go to the previous posts.

July 1 - Make the text block 

July 8 - Make the alternating squares borders

July 15 - Make the tree borders

July 22 - Quilting

July 29 - Binding

Now that your quilt tops are put together (and mine soon will be, lol), it's time to baste and quilt them! I love mini quilts for a lot of reasons and two of them are that I can use scrap pieces of batting for them and I don't have to piece a back to fit! I can't explain why, but I can put dozens of pieces together for a quilt top no problem, but sewing even two pieces together for a backing seems like too much work. Another bonus - with a mini, basting goes so quickly!

Have you thought about how you'll quilt your Merry Mini? I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to repeat what I did for my first two, or if I'll do something different this time. In case you don't have any ideas yet, here's what I did before. All of this quilting was done on my Janome 6700 with Aurifil 50 wt. thread.

For any quilt with embroidery or applique, the hardest part for me is figuring out how to deal with those elements. Outline them? Stitch over them? It's so hard to choose! Because the Merry Mini letters are so thin, I chose to stitch kind of loosely around them, without outlining each individual letter. I stitched a meander with random snowflakes in the background.

Here's how it looks from the back.

An option I'm considering this time around is to quilt a rectangle frame around the words, separating them from the quilting entirely. Another interesting option, especially if you used fabric markers or crayons for your words rather than stitching, would be to quilt right the whole quilt with an allover motif, going right over the words. Something like a crosshatch, straight lines, or some stippling would look great.

These trees were so much fun to quilt! It doesn't show up well in the pictures, but I used brown thread to stitch back and forth lines in the trunks (that wasn't the fun part), then I switched to green thread to outline the tree and stitch swooping lines to resemble draped garland. I love how they turned out!

Another option would be to stitch back and forth lines in the green part of the tree, too, or wishbones, or to echo the diagonal lines of the sides into the middle. Or maybe join me in getting lost in Pinterest searching for ideas for quilting in triangles (I can't be the only one, right?).

Apparently I didn't take any closeup pictures of the alternating squares rows after the quilting, and I've given these two away, so here's the view from the back. I treated the white squares as part of the background. In the red and green squares, I used matching thread to outline the square, then quilted a swooping line from corner to corner around the square. Yes, that meant starting and stopping in each square individually, but there aren't a lot of them, so it wasn't bad.

These squares are pretty small, but there are still other options - back and forth lines (can you tell they're a standby motif for me?), or maybe just outline the squares and don't quilt anything else in them. They'd stay kind of puffy that way.

I think the Merry Mini would also look great with some big stitch hand quilting, either as an accent along with some machine quilting or with only the hand quilting. I don't feel like taking on any hand quilting over the summer, but maybe some of you with air conditioning will do it so I can admire it.

I hope this post has given you some ideas for how to quilt your Merry Mini! Can you believe next week is the last (partial) week of July, and we'll be ready to move on to binding?

When you share pictures on social media, remember to use the hashtag #MerryMiniQAL and tag me (@devotedquilter on IG and @devotedquilterdesigns on FB) so I can see!

Scraps Take Flight Pattern Release

I made this quilt last year and since then it has been the one I reach for the most when I'm in the living room. Actually, when I was working on it, I intended to donate it, but that never happened because I fell in love with it and had to keep it for myself!

Scraps Take Flight was the first regularly scheduled pattern released to Stash Artists members after the membership opened last June (the first, first pattern was Reverberate, which was ready for members to download as soon as they joined). Since then I've had a lot of fun sharing stash-friendly patterns with members, like Ombre Twirl, Blooming Beautiful, Pinwheel Irish Chain, and more. If you love stash-friendly, scrappy patterns, join the waitlist so you'll be notified when the Stash Artists doors open again in the fall.

Stash Artists patterns remain exclusive to members for at least a year, after which they may be made available to the general quilty public. Since it's a year after its release to members, Scraps Take Flight is now available in my shop 😊

Did you know one of the names for a group of butterflies is 'flight'? I love the extra layer of meaning that adds to the pattern name - your scraps can take flight when you turn them into these fun butterflies, plus there's a whole flight of scrappy butterflies in the quilt.

The butterflies are traditionally pieced and the butterfly body is raw edge applique. One Stash Artists member also embroidered antenna on her butterflies, which was a great addition.

The Scraps Take Flight pattern has instructions for the 62" x 72" throw size I made, plus a 42" x 42" baby quilt and a 92" x 92" queen size. 

How many butterflies do you think you could make from your scrap bins? Head to my shop to get your Scraps Take Flight pattern, then dig into your scraps to create your flight of scrappy butterflies 😊