Working with a new design of an old block, plus an old favorite

The pattern that Kaffe Fassett named Jiggery Pokery in his book, Quilt Romance (Taunton Press, 2009),  is a variation of the Jacob's Ladder block generally known as World's Fair.  Here's a link to an antique quilt in the pattern.


This blogger made the quilt in the size Kaffe Fassett designed.  I decided that the size in the book was a little too big for me, so I reduced it slightly.

In the beginning, I was making it as a baby quilt, but was not at all happy with the way several of the fabrics worked with the overall pattern because they weren't reading light or dark.  Sometimes a void in the light and dark is interesting, but not so with this.  Long story short, I decided to pick out the fabrics I didn't like and had to disassemble the quilt by rows to do that.  Don't try this at home.  Ugh!

An interesting side note on this:  The text in Quilt Romance says that Jiggery Pokery is based on an antique quilt in Kaffe Fassett's collection.  If you look at the photograph, you will notice that there is a mistake in the way one of the blocks in the bottom are set, also as you go through laying out the blocks, there are several mistaken fabric assignments.  My guess is that someone other than the original quilter finished this quilt who didn't quite "get" the pattern and then may have run out the of the fabric that was needed to correctly finish the blocks.  Not to deny the whimsy of an antique, Fassett goes right along with the mistakes in his design.  I'm OC enough that I needed to do it correctly and that's how I drew my pattern design.

One of the first cars I owned was a red VW Beetle.  When I saw this fabric, I had to use it for the back.  The bias binding was made using one of the fabrics in the  blocks.

The baby quilt that I ended up making, was another baby bento box--my new favorite baby quilt pattern.

My Old Favorite, the African Stripe Baby Quilt

 A new baby girl is coming into the world later this spring and I'm creating yet another African Stripe Baby Quilt.  I found this wonderful inspiration fabric at my local quilt shop, the Studio Stitch.  It's called "Fairy Magic" and is part of the Riddles and Rhymes collection by Tina Givens for Free Spirit by Westminster Fibers.  It will be the wide border around the striped fabrics center.  The dark blue thin border is from my stash. The addition of the borders parts from Kaffe Fassett's original design, but the striped fabric set in alternate directions is all his genius.

I'm getting ready to pin baste the layers together.  The backing fabric is flannel print of sky with fluffy clouds.

Another new baby

Here I go again! There's more of the Robert Kaufman circle fabric for the back and I have a multicolored stripe for the binding.

Baby quilt update: Top with borders and a peek at the back

The top of the new baby quilt is finished.  That large polka dot fabric is  a Denyse Schmidt design.

This is the backing fabric.  I just love the trucks and construction vehicles.  I grabbed the black on white fabric for binding because it looked like tires to me.  Hopefully, this will be a quilt that will go beyond babyhood.

First New Baby Quilt of 2012

One of the babies I made a quilt for in the past has a new baby brother, so I got busy yesterday.  This is the top chain pieced in rows across.  Next I will sew all the rows together.  Follow this link to some older posts about this Kaffe Fassett African Stripe Baby Quilt pattern. I'll update through the day to report my progress.

Update: 15 January 11:43am

Only five rows to go and the blocks will be all pieced together.

Kaffe Fassett's African Baby Stripe quilt: A new version of an old favorite

The fabrics for tiny baby Flora's quilt are pre-washed and ready to be cut out.  There's a lovely, soft flannel for the back with pink, blue, and leaf green flowers, two kinds of polka dots for the borders, and nine striped fabrics for the body.  I'll also bind it with a striped fabric.  By this time, I have made more than twenty of these African Striped Baby Quilts using Kaffe Fassett's pattern (with a little tweaking on my part) and it's the random nature of the pattern that most appeals to me.  I never get tired of making them because each one is so unique.

The body is laid out on my work table and ready to be chain pieced.  You can see this old post for more detailed information.

Babies, babies, babies!

School is finally out.  I scanned my last item around noon yesterday to finish an inventory of our entire collection--14,000 and change and I scanned every one of them.  Now I can get on with the really important tasks of finishing baby quilts because two more tiny ones have joined our little friend, Henry on this earth and a little ahead of schedule.  This one above is for Demos and will go in the mail today. It was made with the Kaffe Fassett African Stripe pattern.

This is Demos with his beautiful mommy.

This little miss is Flora with her grandmother, my dear friend Diane, and her big brother, Angus who was also the recipient of a baby quilt.

These are the fabrics I've chosen for her quilt which will also be in the African Stripe pattern--all PRE-WASHED, I might add!

Finally, little Henry will get both of his quilts by the end of the week.  (The ruined one will make a great beach blanket.) For those readers unfamiliar with this little drama, this quilt and its brother where made using the Denyse Schmidt's Single Girl pattern.

Henry and his friend look blissfully happy.

Weekend in review

The Piedmont Triad was treated to a glorious weekend.  After a wonderful breakfast at the Smith Street Diner on Saturday morning, Jim and I went to the Greensboro Curb Market and then spent the afternoon on the screened porch.  He was reading and I was finishing up the quilting on this African Striped Baby Quilt.  To see more baby quilts, click on Kaffe Fassett or baby quilts or African Striped Baby quilts in the labels.

Since I had finished piecing Henry's new baby quilt, I pieced a back and made bias binding. I'm using the bamboo/cotton blend batting that I got at JoAnn Fabric with my 40% off coupon.

The big table on the screened porch makes a great place to baste.  Here's the back taped down with the centers marked.

The quilt sandwich is made and I am ready to baste. You can see more examples of Denyse Schmidt's "Single Girl" pattern by clicking on that phrase in the labels.

A doll-sized version of the African Striped Baby Quilt

One of the little girls for whom I made a baby quilt is now an active toddler who loves to take care of her dolls.  She is particularly fond of tucking them in for naps.  When I discovered this, I determined that I had to make a doll quilt for her upcoming birthday.  Using Kaffe Fassett's African Striped Baby quilt as an inspiration, I cut the basic block size down by an inch and came up with the perfect measurements. (Click on the tags at the right to see previous quilts from this pattern.)

These are the fabrics I chose from the back, binding, and the two borders.  My palette for the striped fabric was pink, brown, cream, and yellow.

Here are the striped fabrics.

The top comes together.

The center is quilted and I'm working my way around the edges now.  This has been great fun.

Second generation baby quilt: A First for Me

This incredibly cute little guy is Abbott and I am making him a baby quilt.  The really amazing thing about this is that one of the first baby quilts I ever made was for his mother, Molly.  This will be my first second generation baby quilt!

This is the wonderful Kaffe Fassett's African Stripe Baby Quilt pattern that I'm doing again.  It's so colorful and scrappy.  The Winnie the Pooh fabric will be the back.  The plaid will be used for binding and the shamrock and blue circle fabric will be the borders.

The pattern calls for nine different stripes.  This is the front all laid out and ready for me to chain piece.  You can read about the construction of this quilt here, here, and here.  Quilted Librarian is back to work in Safety Pin Studio.

Another baby quilt

I spent some of the weekend working on both the One Million Books quilt (all titles now are written on the border strips) and cutting out a new Kaffe Fassett African stripe baby quilt.



Baby jungle animals for the back, polka dots for the border, and plaid fabric for the bias tape. I'm chain piecing and have about three rows completed. More pictures soon. I've posted about making this quilt pattern before. These are the posts on chain piecing, adding borders, pin basting, quilting, and adding bias binding.

A new baby quilt

One of Anna's good friends just had a baby boy named Finn so I'm making a new baby quilt. Finn's nursery has a nautical theme and is done in blue and yellow so here's the pull from my stripe stash. I did a series of tutorials on making this quilt. You can check the rest of them out here, here, here, here, and here. It's a Kaffe Fassett design that I've tweaked a bit.

My favorite baby quilt

I have made a lot of baby quilts over the years. For about the last ten years, I've made variations on one pretty exclusively. FromKaffe Fassett's Patchwork and Quilting Book Number 2, (ISBN 0-9672985-1-2) published by Westminster Fibers, Inc. of Amherst, New Hampshire; ©2000 in Great Britain by Rowan Yarns, it's called the African Stripe Baby Quilt.

I add borders to make it a little larger, but follow his recommendation of using nine different striped fabrics. I now have so many different striped fabrics that they have their own bin!

Often, I will find a backing fabric that I like and then I'll let that suggest the color scheme for the quilt. That was the case with this one. The quilt is for a baby boy born right before Christmas, and when I saw the polar bear fabric, I grabbed it. I chose nice tone on tone polka dots for the borders.

Yellow, blue, and red are a perfect a perfect triadic harmony.

I found lots of nice combinations of the colors in striped fabric. All fabric is prewashed. I like to make baby quilts that can be used and thrown in the wash.

The basic unit is a two and a half inch square. In most cases, one can get 16 or 17 squares from a two and a half inch strip of fabric.

One of the things that makes the design interesting is that the number of squares of each of the nine fabrics is different. The book includes a color coded design for their arrangement to which I've added numbers. I line my piles of squares up on a piece of adding machine paper and then look at the diagram to arrange the squares.

Here's the top about halfway in the layout.

The whole top is just the right size to fit on my work table.

In my next post, I'll talk about speed piecing techniques I use to put the body of the quilt together.