Click on any of the thumbnails below to expand the pictures.
Millennium Ninepatch Mosaic (designed December 1999, 70" x 70")
This quilt is my answer to the millennium quilt craze. I don't know if I'll get around to using 2000 different fabrics in it, but it will have 2000 patches (including the two borders). I started with Jinny Beyer's Spectre Star pattern and expanded upon it to include multiple star blocks, and I changed the design of the outer blocks in order for the quilt to have the right number of pieces. I used EQ4 to design this quilt and am currently collecting fabrics for it (although my kids think I already have PLENTY of fabrics to do this quilt!!!)
Change in the Wind, Changed Again (January - May 1998; not yet completed; approx. 96" x 108")
This quilt started out as a mystery quilt, "Change in the Wind", designed by Debbie Caffrey. This mystery quilt was offered by Carriage House Quilts in Berthoud, Colorado in 1998. After a few months of cutting fabric, sewing strips, cutting things apart again and sewing them back together in a different order, the mystery quilt began to take shape. At some point I had a pretty good idea of what the blocks were going to look like, so I put them into EQ3 (EQ4 wasn't available at the time) so I could get an idea of how the quilt would look. There were some pieces that were obviously going to become the corners of blocks, but I didn't know yet whether the triangles were going to point out away from the blocks, or whether they would point in toward the centers of the block. So, I put both versions into the EQ3 program, and picked the one that I liked best. I also decided I didn't want to have big fat 4" squares in the middle of my blocks, so I pieced together a whole bunch of 4" Unfolding Star blocks to use in the centers instead (and then I picked apart my previous efforts and sewed the stars into the centers of the blocks).Well, I got the last step of the mystery quilt and of course the block corners were supposed to go the other way. I said, "Heck with that, I like mine better" and left it. I sewed borders on the quilt, and I made a big wide border and used up most of the extra "unfolding star" blocks that I had made. On the due date, I submitted the quilt for the people's choice voting at the store. Well, the owner of the store called me up that afternoon (it just happened to be my birthday that day) and said that she had to disqualify my quilt because I changed the design. But, here's the good part -- all the other entries were displayed folded up in the classroom of the store. My quilt top was displayed, fully unfolded, on the back wall of the store's main area (it took up the whole wall), with a big sign on it! And, I was asked to design the mystery quilt that would be offered the following year.
Northeastern Mosaic (September 1998 - April 1999; not completed, 68" x 80")
I designed this as a six month mystery quilt that is entirely foundation pieced. It was offered by Carriage House Quilts in Berthoud, Colorado in 1999 The main block is the "New England Beauty" block from Judy Martin's "The Block Book". In the mystery quilt instructions, I showed how to pre-cut the fabrics being used in order to minimize waste. I used EQ3 and EQ4 to design the blocks and the resulting paper foundations, and each step of the mystery included sample foundations that could be copied. The quilt shown here has a 3x4 layout; I also included instructions on how to do a 2x3 layout for a smaller quilt. The picture shown here has the original borders that I sewed on the quilt. Later, I expanded my EQ4 design to include half New England Beauty blocks as a border. Click here to see the EQ4 design I came up with. The finished dimensions of the large quilt with the improved border are 68" x 80", and the smaller quilt will make up to a size of 56" x 68".
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