Project Quilting 16.3 Seacliff Beach

I think this is my favourite Project Quilting make ever and I’ve had several favourites, Winter Blues just last time! Here is Seacliff Beach, my lake quilt that holds my love of my favourite beach and marina, Seacliff, on Lake Erie.

I’ve had these fabrics for a few years, just before Covid to be more or less exact. Most were bought on one fun quilt shop trip. A couple were added, then subtracted, then substituted to become the final rendition you see here.

Here are the original fabrics I'd gathered.

Don’t you love the selvage of the main 'Coastal Breeze' fabric? Those little lighthouses—! And such a pleasing combination of print and monochromatic fabrics - pulling them out again gave me such joy.

Added in for reasons explained below.

The challenge this week was to use three common blocks within your project. Common blocks are those original basic quilt blocks that nobody owns, they aren’t copyrighted, they just are. Log Cabin is one, Sawtooth Star and Friendship Star are others. I went to my little quilt library and pulled out Eleanor Burns’ book, marked several blocks that I liked either because of their design or the possibility that they might work together well in a quilt, or because of their name. For example, Peace and Plenty: I’ve never heard of it, but it seemed fitting for what was going on in the political climate. Why can’t we have peace between Canada and the US? We each have plenty, and our free trade agreement which was redone during his last term works quite well. Jewel Box aka Hour Glass in EQ I liked for the diagonal movement, and Schoolgirl’s Puzzle aka Double X No. 3 because of the connection to school, since I was a teacher, (hmm double cross...need I spell out that thought?). It was at this point (also because I'd marked another star called Free Trade in Eleanor's book - can't make that up! - that I thought maybe I should name the quilt Lake Sorry Not Sorry, since I'd seen this meme on Instagram:

Any-who...

I went into EQ8 and pulled a few others that caught my fancy and started playing with putting them together into a quilt design. Here are the three I settled upon, each one originally seen in Eleanor's book:

Clockwise from top right: Jewel box (EQ calls this Hourglass), Schoolgirl's Puzzle, Peace and Plenty. The top left photo is explained below.

My renditions and Eleanor‘s book

The blocks in Eleanor's book are constructed with AccuQuilt dies, which I love, and of which I own several. However, as luck would have it, I didn't have all those required, so I needed to do math, as well as figure out just how to construct the Peace and Plenty block. I planned to make 12" finished blocks, set four by four for a 48" square centre, and then add borders with the Coastal Breeze fabric. Yikes, that would be a 54" square quilt, a huge undertaking for one week. This was Monday, where I'd come up with the design, and it made me so excited, the secondary patterns I got with a little bit of careful colouring.

You can see above that I originally had the brainwave to make the Peace and Plenty centre with four QSTs and tried a few renditions for size, a small one where I tested size and technique and another that wasn't quite the finished size needed... A search online led to a couple of sites for finished QSTs and square on point (do you see how the four QST blocks get turned on point so they form a square in a square?) size required for a 12" finished block, but finally, help arrived to confirm my measurements (hopes) from Yvonne at Quilting Jet Girl. She has a tutorial for the Square in a Square sizes needed, but better yet, a chart (and you do not have to sign up for her newsletter to get it) with sizes from 1" to 12" finished block. I was off! However that is not the way I ended up constructing this block. I made it with four HSTs!

Here the centre is together, and I'm placing the border (which had to be pieced very methodically for blending the images). The Jewel Box block is in the four corners, the Schoolgirl's Puzzle block are the four centre blocks, and the Peace and Plenty block are the eight blocks around the centre between the corners! Did I mention how much I adore secondary patterns?! Now although the three blocks are common blocks, so they are not copyrighted, my quilt design IS copyright, because it is what I came up with. Make sense? I thought so.😇

Did I mention how much brainpower and careful cutting was required to be sure all the directional fabrics were correctly oriented? Yeah, a LOT. (waves fabric, sand fabric, sea creatures fabric, even the geometric designs in the coral fabric all go in one direction...

So, the addition of the coral happened when I'd played around with rotating and flipping blocks in EQ8. You might also notice that instead of two-colour HSTs in the Peace and Plenty block, I did one colour. I could see the four arrow shapes formed where the HSTs came together, enhanced further by the squares in the Schoolgirl's Puzzle. The quilt needed a bit of punch; don't get me wrong: I love love love blue and green together, but adding some coral enhanced the beach vibe. It niggled at me as I sewed, that there was no coral in the Marina/Beach border fabric, though there was a bit of it in the footprints fabric. Still, I knew from Jinny Beyer colour theory discussions in her books one of the things you want in a quilt is to be a bit off the colours in a themed print for added interest (or zest - my word).

Well, maybe a year after I'd gathered the majority of the lake fabrics, I was in a quilt shop in Florida, and saw a cushion they'd made with turquoise and coral beach/ocean fabrics, so I bought the required amount to make a cushion, which hadn't happened yet, but it's a good thing now! I thought that's it! Make the medium star points using it to pull it all together! Originally I was going to make those star ports with the blue and green waves fabric. Yeah, it has seahorses on it, and sand dollars, not to be found at sea cliff Beach, but hey, it worked perfectly. Since I was sewing the quilt from the outside in, I hit upon the idea to bring in the turquoise shells fabric and teal fossils or feathers fabric into the centre by making that star with both rather than just turquoise as originally intended.

You might notice more than one background fabric. Since I bought these with no design in mind, just knew I wanted it to be my own, I picked up ½ yard cuts, except for the border fabric. So, I had to get creative: the Peace and Plenty blocks got the lightest, the shells fabric, the Jewel Box blocks in the four corners got the footprints. I carried what was left of the footprints into the four Schoolgirl's Puzzle centre blocks along with the cream sand on the shore fabric. I didn't use the beige sand on the shore fabric, nor the dock boards, try as I might, nor the net and shells fabrics. Another project!

 

Quilt centre complete! Friday afternoon.

I was squealing when I had the idea to fussy cut four favourite images to form the centre star!  Of course it got some special quilting treatment.

But I’m getting ahead of myself showing you that centre all quilted.

I was thinking after the photo of the quilt centre, ‘Let's get a back together and load this baby.’ Friday at 10 pm I had settled on (I was pretty sure) large swirls, evoking eddies in tide pools and the lake on calm days, fish coming to the surface for bugs, with large pebbles here and there. Went to sleep on it, thinking I could rip this first little bit out on Saturday morning and do my other thought: gentle flowing lines, (waves) à la Lorna of Sew Fresh Quilts.

I pieced the entire top with the darker blue, and quilted it with the lighter blue. It worked really well.

On Saturday morning, I got up and thought, yes, that's what I'm doing.  Here's a view from the back after the first roll and a half to see how those large eddies are looking.  Yes!

By 10:30 Saturday night I had it bound and she was toute finie. Fingers crossed for a little sunshine tomorrow, I thought.

And Mother Nature delivered, once I was home from teaching yoga. (No stress, no pressure here.)

We had another 2" or so of fresh snow overnight, and in the sun, it was just perfect on the crisp fresh snow!

The swirls are about ¾" apart, all free motion quilted. I did stick in the ditch along the horizontal seams and between the border and quilt centre to stabilize the quilt. I haven't even written on the label yet, and hadn't settled 100% on a name until half way through writing this post! I used the rich teal fabric for the binding, one of my favourite blues.

My signature: SW initials in the lower corner

Quilt Stats:

Size: 54.5" x 54.5"
Fabric: Coastal Breeze by Paul Brent for Moda, By the Sea Collection by Gillian Fullard/LondonPortfolio for Michael Miller Fabrics; Coastal Shells and Mermaid Seashells by The Henley Studio, Makower UK; North American Wildlife by Jody Bergsma of Robert Kaufman; Timeless Treasures are the sand and light blue water fabrics as well as the turquoise sea creatures fabric; cream seashells background is Exclusively Quilters Fabric; Starred by V&A Jones ©Victoria and Albert Museum London for Rowan Westminster Fibers

Batting: Pellon 80/20% cotton/polyester

Backing: By the Sea Collection by Gillian Fullard/LondonPortfolio for Michael Miller Fabrics

Pieced on my Bernina

Quilted: on Avril, my Handiquilter Avanté: 81972 stitches

Threads: pieced with Aurifil 2715; quilted with Aurifil 1128; Superior Bottom Line in the bobbin

Linking Up

Project Quilting

My Quilt Infatuation

Alycia Quilts

From Bolt to Beauty

Songbird Designs

Quilting & Learning What a Combo

I am so very over the moon to have not only completed the challenge, but to have designed this quilt, and used the lake fabric I've petted for six years! Yes there will be a pattern for it, coming soon. Now to link up with Kim and Trisha! Another terrific challenge! And yes, I have to admit I'm rather pooped - brings back memories of being an Island Batik ambassador with the pressure of creating a quilt from design to finish per month! All good; that was an amazing experience, a key component of my quilting journey!

Now to work on SAHRR #1 this afternoon. I got SAHRR #2 block done, and I know what I'm doing for the stars round of Project 1. I may just take a wee nap first...