Yes that's right — I am still playing catchup on quiltalong projects. This is the pink and purple Carly Quilt that I made during the Carly Quiltalong. Purple is my favorite color and there aren't nearly enough purple prints out there, so using up this much of them was a little painful but I think it was worth it.
For the colors, I tried to get a range of pink-ish purples and slightly more blue-ish purples plus a good dose of purple-y pinks. This range of colors is really my happy place.
I'm on a roll with finishing up quiltalong quilts! I recently shared this finished Penny quilt that I had made in the Quiltalong, and now I have finished up the rainbow/solids quilt that I made during the Carly QAL.
My stash of solids is pretty large - many of the fabrics are leftover pieces or small scraps, but I keep them all together for projects just like this. When I was deciding what I wanted to make during the QAL, I decided to make one two stashbusting quilts, one with prints and one with solids. Since I have so many different shades of solid colors, I made the solids version scrappy and rainbow-y.
We have reached the final week of the quiltalong. If you aren't ready to finish up your quilt, just go at your own pace! This blog post will stay right here waiting for you.
I am a pretty strict pin baster (you can read more about why right here), but do whatever works for you. I have two quilt to finish this week (fingers crossed) and will try to document the process of finishing them up on my Instagram stories.
We have reached Week 5 in the Carly Quiltalong. It's time to start piecing our blocks together!
Before you get started, make sure to lay your quilt blocks out and double check that they are all facing the right direction. Now go back and check it again. You should also check that there aren't too many blocks with similar colors or values right next to each other.
I like to take a picture of my quilt with my phone because it can be a little easier to see issues in a photo rather than in-person. Then I take a black a white photo, which helps me make sure I have a good distribution of values. You don't want too many dark fabrics or light fabrics clumped up together.
For the Carly QAL, you are going to be trimming a lot few half square triangles. There are so many different ways to trim HSTs and you should do whatever way works best for you. I have tried most of the methods over the years and have my personal preferences, but I will list some of the options here.
For the past several years, I have used option number one - just a square ruler with a diagonal line. A few months ago, I discovered that I could use my Stripology XL ruler to trim squares and found that I got significantly better results with this method. Since that ruler is quite large, I then bought a smaller QuiltCut ruler. But then I discovered that they make an even smaller ruler and I have ordered that one and it is supposed to be delivered today - I will report back on how that goes.
Ok guys - we have a busy week ahead of us. We need to make our half square triangles and trim them (or at least get started on trimming them).
We will have one post this week about making HSTs and one about trimming them. I will be discussing the HST construction method used in the pattern, but I will go over a few different options for trimming. Both of these tasks are pretty monotonous, so I like to break them up into stacks and do one at a time.
Are you guys ready to get started? While I don't love cutting fabric, I always get excited when it's time to actually get to work. I'm going to answer some questions that you might have about cutting your fabric for the Carly Quilt pattern and I have a video of me cutting fabric to show you what I do.
We are nearing the end of week 1 of the Carly Quiltalong and we are almost ready to start cutting into our fabric, we just need to decide the fabric placement in our quilt. If you are making a rainbow-y or scrappy quilt, you have less freedom (for a rainbow quilt) or more freedom (for a scrap quilt) in deciding where your fabrics will go, but I think you will find some of these guidelines helpful.
We will have to deal with placement twice - once when we place fabrics into the quilt block and then again when we arrange the blocks for the quilt top. Hopefully this will help you with both steps.
There are two mockups here - they both use the same fabrics, but with some of the fabrics shuffled around a bit. I'm going to walk you through what I think works or doesn't work about each one.
I know we are all doing our own thing for the Carly Quilt Pattern - some people are making scrap quilts, some are using collections, and some are working from their stash. Today I am going to walk you through how I pull fabric from my stash.
My original plan was to use a variety of spring-ish colored prints. I worked and reworked the fabrics and no matter what I did, they felt too sweet. I just couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to do with them.
While I had originally planned to make a regular old scrap quilt for the Carly Quiltalong, I revised that decision after sorting through my scraps. Out of the giant stack of squares that I have in the right size, about 1/3 of the squares were solids and there was a pretty good distribution of colors and shades.
I have to do it. I have no choice. I'm making a rainbow scrap quilt with solids. It will be reminiscent of this quilt. My original mockup looked like this:
Yay, it's finally here! Let's get started on our Carly Quilt patterns. This week we will talk a little bit more about fabric selection and fabric placement in the quilt to make sure your project is a success. I will also be sharing my fabric choices with you and discuss a little about how I chose them.
If you are on Instagram, this would be a great time to share your fabric choices and a little about how you chose them. It can be so valuable to listen to different thought processes and how or why you picked your fabric. Make sure to use the #carlyqal hashtag.
I get this question so often: how do you make a scrap quilt look good? There isn't once answer to this question, but I'm going to give you a few guidelines to help you out.
Remember that these are my thoughts - they aren't rules and you can do whatever you want. These are guidelines that I roughly use to pick fabrics for scrap quilts and I break them all of the time.
If you are thinking about using a single fabric collection for your Carly Quilt, I wanted to give you a few more mockups using collections that are currently available. You can view previous mockups here.
This quilt uses a combination of fat quarters and fat eighths. The fat eighths create the smaller diamond shapes (Fabrics A and D). You can use all fat quarters by using these fabrics for twice as many blocks (use each Fabric A for twice as many blocks, etc.). It will give you less fabric variety, but requires fewer fabrics. The "More Pie?" version below does this.
Are you ready for a quiltalong? Starting March 14th, we will be quiltalong-ing with the Carly Quilt Pattern.
I am still working out some of the details, but here is a tentative schedule:
Hi, my name is Erica and I love to make quilts! Click the photo to read a little more about me and how I started my quilting journey.
