Disco Squares Quilt

 In my ongoing quest to blog the quilts I've finished, but not yet shared, I'm happy to finally share Disco Squares with you!

Disco Squares was the Stash Artists pattern back in November. When I finished making it, we had a run of bad weather, so Paul and I were only able to sneak out one afternoon between rain showers to snap a quick picture for the pattern cover before it was released to the members. We had to be very careful the quilt didn't touch the wet, muddy ground and laying it down anywhere was definitely not an option. I figured it was no big deal, I'd just get the pictures for a blog post the next chance we had...and then promptly set it aside and didn't get around to taking those pictures until last month. Better late than never, right?

I loved digging through my scraps for the pinks, teals, and blues. Some of the black pieces came from my scraps, too, but I don't think I had enough to cut all of the black from scraps. That's one of the downfalls of waiting so long to write the post, I forget some of the details of the making. 

I do remember that I bought the cream solid because I wanted something softer than white. Cream isn't a colour I use a lot in my quilts, though I'm actually using it right now for the background of another quilt that will also be a Stash Artists pattern.

Finding enough blues was no problem, of course! Nothing seems to ever empty my blue scrap basket, or even get it down to just full, rather than overflowing 😅 I'm not complaining, though. Making scrappy blue quilts always makes me happy, so I'd probably be very sad if I ever ran out of blue scraps.

When it came time for the quilting, I decided to go bold and use bright pink thread (Aurifil 2530). I quilted a meandering spiral, intentionally not traveling directly over the same path in and out of the spiral. I love the randomly doubled look that gives the spiral. With the same cream solid on the back, the pink quilting shows up beautifully.

The day we went to the beach for this photo shoot was a little windier than is ideal for quilt pictures, so I caught this shot of the quilt trying to escape!

And here's the picture I was trying to get. I do love a quilt picture with the ocean in the background!

And pictures of quilts laid out on the beach rocks. Really, I just love any excuse to go to the beach!

The binding is scrappy, but it's all teals that are pretty similar, so it looks like it's one fabric until you get up close.

When we had a team of guys putting mini split heat pumps in the house in June, one of them spotted Disco Squares sticking out of a stack of quilts and commented that he really liked the colours in it. I do, too! Pink and blue together can sometimes feel childish, like a gender reveal or something, but I feel like I avoided that here by adding the black and cream. And because there aren't a lot of pastels, the combination of pinks, blues, and teals feels like it has a lot of energy.

Want to make your own Disco Squares quilt? Come join us in Stash Artists! Stash Artists is for quilters who want to use the fabric they already own, and new members get access to the Disco Squares pattern as soon as they join, along with the full pattern library of scrappy and stash-friendly patterns. There are virtual sew days, too, and we'd love to have you join us!

I'm still finding it hard to balance my work as a virtual assistant (which is all on the computer), my pattern business, (which requires a lot of computer work), and blogging (which obviously also has to be done on a computer), without feeling like I'm spending all day looking at a screen. I find it helps to do something active in between sessions on the computer, or to do some sewing. I still have a few more finished quilts to share, so I'm going to make it my fall project to try to get caught up 😊  Hopefully I'll be back next week with another one!

Friendly Wave Quilted Cushion

Sometimes vague ideas stay in my head for a long time before I figure out how I can translate the thought into a quilt design. This little cushion is one example of that, so I'm excited that now I get to mark it as a finish. Meet Friendly Wave, the Stash Artists Mini of the Month pattern for August.

I've been wanting to make something with a whale on it for years. Then, when I was first thinking about doing a Mini of the Month series in the Stash Artists membership for 2026, I made a list of all the possible themes/ideas those minis could explore and I added 'a whale quilt' to the list. That rattled around for a while before the idea of a strippy background made the whole thing start coming together.

If you want to make a Friendly Wave cushion, too, join us in Stash Artists! When you join, you'll get access to the full library of scrappy and stash-friendly patterns, including Friendly Wave and so many more.

Stitching my background together meant I could use some of the long strips of blue fabric that have been trimmed off quilt backs after quilting. Nowhere near all of them, of course, but it was a great way to use up some of them! I cut my strips anywhere from ¾" to 1 ¼" so I could get the maximum number of scrappy strips into my 16" cushion.

I probably should have used slightly lighter blues for the 'water' portion of the cushion, to help the whale stand out a little better, but I didn't think of that until after it was all pieced. When choosing the fabrics, I was more focused on making sure there was a lot of contrast between the water and the sky, so I had a moment of panic when I realized the dark grey tone-on-tone print I wanted to use for the whale was going to disappear more than I wanted. Fortunately, using lighter grey thread (Aurifil 2600) to quilt/stitch down the edge of the appliqué made it a lot more visible.

Real whale flukes (that's the proper name for their tails) have lots of bumps and ridges along the edge, so I replicated that as well as I could without making it too hard to cut out. I'm really pleased with the effect!

As usual, I had fun with the quilting. First, I stitched all around the whale several times to create a nice, thick line. When I'm stitching around appliqué shapes like this, I intentionally don't try to stitch exactly on top of the previous lines. That way the wobbles end up looking like they were supposed to happen, because they were! I don't know about you, but I could never stitch perfectly around an outline even once, let alone three times, so making the wobbles an intentional part of the design makes the process a lot more relaxing.

After the whale was stitched, I used the same Aurifil 2600 to stitch some splash detail where the tail is coming out of the water. I pretty much just scribbled elongated, overlapping figure-eights until it looked right.

For the water, I used Aurifil 2785 to quilt random, overlapping, wavy lines from side to side. This took the most time, but still didn't take long since it's such a small piece.

The clouds in the sky portion were Paul's idea. Random is hard! Did I quilt enough clouds? Are they close enough...far apart enough...properly cloud-shaped? 😅 After quilting a few, I told myself they were good enough and left it at that!

I put my cushion together with an envelope backing, which is the only method I've ever used for a cushion. For some reason, I can never remember which way to layer the pieces so the backing piece on the outside will be the one on the top, and this time I got it wrong. It looks so weird to me that the outside piece is on the bottom, like the cushion is upside down. It doesn't bother me enough that I took it apart to redo it, though!

A whale cushion definitely has to go to the beach for its photo shoot! Unfortunately, no real whales came to visit while we were there.

And thanks to Yvonne of Quilting Jetgirl, I've been trying to remember to take pictures of myself with my makes more often. The sun was really bright, so I'm squinting, but here's me and my Friendly Wave cushion 😊

We're not 'cushions on the couch' people, which is why I rarely make cushions. But at Christmas I had my Stay Cozy cushion displayed in our entryway, at the base of this table I made in shop class in junior high. After the Christmas decorations were put away, I decided the space needed a cushion for the rest of the year, too, and now Friendly Wave looks perfect there.

Dad carved the fabulous wood sprite sitting on the table. He also named this pattern, after I put a couple of options in the family group chat asking for opinions and he immediately chimed in with Friendly Wave. Apparently I need to get his help naming patterns more often!

Remember, you can join us in Stash Artists to get the Friendly Wave pattern and lots of other scrappy, stash-friendly patterns, along with monthly sewing sessions and more. We'd love to have you join us!

TGIFF and Sea Glass Star Quilt Top

Welcome to another Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday party 😊 I'm playing catch-up today and posting a quilt top that was finished back in April, but I hadn't taken pictures to be able to share it until now.

I'm doing a Mini of the Month pattern series in the Stash Artists membership this year and the May pattern was a fun one. Meet Sea Glass Star!

I combined a few different inspirations together to create this design:

1. People make art with actual sea glass, gluing the pieces to canvas or paper to create images, sometimes with the addition of painted or drawn lines. Scroll through this Pinterest search to see examples.

2. Ali of Exhausted Octopus makes beautiful sea glass quilts and teaches her method in a class (which I've never taken, so I'm not sure if my method is the same as hers). Her sea glass quilts tend to have a colour-wash effect and don't form an image.

3. The ticker tape-style quilts I've made in the past, like my Ticker Tape Heart Rainbow, creating a shape with square, rectangular, and triangular pieces of fabric.

Put all that together, shake it up a bit, add some hand embroidery, and you get my Sea Glass Star mini quilt.

I have a whole series of sea glass art mini quilts vying for attention in my head. They've been gathering for years while I worked on other things and I'm so happy I finally made the first one. I'm working on another one now for an event in the fall, and I'm really looking forward to sharing that when the time comes.

Believe it or not, I wasn't aiming for my Sea Glass Star to be blue. I tried about a dozen colour combinations in EQ8, but nothing really grabbed me until I tried the light, medium, and dark blues. That immediately had me nodding my head and pulling my blue scrap basket off the shelf. I shouldn't be surprised, since I really love my blues, but I swear I tried to use other colours!

I was happy to see I did have light, medium, and dark blue Aurifil 12 wt thread in my stash. I used 2720, 2735, and 2784 to embroider a simple backstitch to outline the sections of the star.

I ended up doing most of the embroidery while we were on the road, some of it while going to a surprise birthday party for my in-laws, who both turned 80 this spring, and some while going to move Zach out of his dorm room. I wasn't sure embroidery would work well as an on-the-road project, especially considering the dismal state of our roads, but it was perfect. 

Cutting the sea glass pieces was like doing a meditative puzzle. I worked on one section at a time, leaving the paper backing on the pieces until I had them all puzzled together to fill the section.

I used Lite Steam-a-Seam 2 for the fusible, which is slightly tacky, so after I peeled the paper backing off I finger pressed the pieces onto the background and that held them in place temporarily. Once all the pieces in the section were ready, I fused them down with my Oliso project iron.

For the medium and dark fabrics, I tried not to repeat a fabric in a section, but most of the fabrics are used in multiple sections. It was fun to use some of my really small scraps! My pieces range from ½" square(ish) to about 1" square(ish) and 1" x 1 ½" rectangle(ish). The fun thing about making fabric sea glass is there's no wrong shape since real sea glass comes in every possible shape. 

I've made a few blue quilts lately, though they haven't all made to it the blog yet, and my blue scrap basket is still overflowing. I guess I need to keep making blue quilts!

I'm looking forward to eventually quilting my Sea Glass Star. The question now is, when will I take the time to do that instead of chasing after the next shiny new project?

That's my recent(ish) finish! What have you finished lately? Link it up below and be sure to visit some of the other links to celebrate their finishes, too.

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