Tag Archives: valori wells

Radiant New York Beauties

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Radiant New York Beauties by Valori Wells

The other book I found on my shelf this week was Valori Wells’ Radiant New York Beauties.

Here’s an Amazon.ca buy link.

Here’s a buy link at C&T publishing.

And here is Valori Wells website.

I like her use of stripes and plaids, and also her playful freeform quilting. It’s a joyous little book. 🙂

Carnival Beauty is the quilt on the cover, although that only shows part of it. Here’s a picture from inside the book that I took:

Carnival Beauty by Valori Wells

I like that there’s a kind of a gradient in her quilt top, with the bottom being darker than the top, although I didn’t manage to accomplish that myself.

I was very excited to realize how much I’ve finished on my quilt top. Here’s my progress so far:

Deborah Cooke's Radiant New York Beauty quilt top

You can see that I need three more little suns to finish the top in this layout. Looking at this photo, I have a feeling that I was going to move that top yellow sun up half a row so it didn’t line up with the pink one so well (they’re not sewn together yet) then add more little suns around it. (That would also explain why there are two more blue background squares cut.)

Clearly, I prefer my suns being whole. 🙂 I added rick-rack around a few of them (to make them more radiant) and that’s fun, too. In the project stash, there is also some trim with mini pom-poms, so that might end up in the finished top. (Maybe around the border. Hmm.) I really like it so far and am pleased with the fussy-cutting and piecing.

This one also requires me to dig back into the stash and search for fabrics to finish up this top. Sounds like a trip to the attic is on the agenda for this weekend! This top is an exciting find as it’s almost done, and the size means I’ll be able to quilt it myself. I’m also excited that many Kaffe Fassett yarn-dyed stripes are available again, so I’ll be able to add some of them into those little suns that need making.

Tomorrow, we’ll have a look at a finished quilt. 🙂

Quilting Inspiration

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Last weekend, I picked up two of my quilts from the long arm quilting place. I’m binding their outer edges now and will show them to you when they’re done.

New York Beauties and Flying Geese by Carl Hentsch

In the meantime, I’m already thinking about what to quilt next. 🙂

Here’s the book that’s teasing me right now: New York Beauties and Flying Geese by Carl Hentsch.

Here’s a buy link at C&T Publishing

Here’s an Amazon.ca buy link

And here is Carl Hentsch’s website.

I particularly love this design included in the book, which is called Pandemonium.

Pandemonium by Carl Hentsch

Isn’t that gorgeous? I’m currently on the hunt for a fat quarter pack of Kaffe Fassett shot cottons, including 36 colourways. That’s what he used in the rainbow sections, but it looks like they’ll be tough to find. (I could build my own spectrum of fat quarters, but I do love KF’s shot cottons. I’ll look for them first.)

In the meantime, in the spirit of finish-itis, I revisited my unfinished projects. Actually, putting this book on my shelf reminded me of several other books I have. I found two different paper piecing projects which are incomplete.

Karen K. Stone Quilts

First up, this one. A number of years ago, I attended a workshop with Karen K. Stone. The quilt I pieced there is still being handquilted (it was New York Beauty, from her pattern sold at the workshop), but I subsequently bought this book of hers – Karen K. Stone Quilts.

The quilt on the cover is called Cinco de Mayo and it is stupendously gorgeous. There are 36 quarter circle blocks, all with different paper piecing combinations.

This book is tougher to find since it’s from 2004. The AMZ link is for used copies at crazy prices, so you might have better luck at a used bookstore.

Here is Karen’s website. It looks like she teaches workshops about making this quilt.

I started a Cinco de Mayo of my own and dug it out to see where I’m at. I’ll show you its current state progress tomorrow.

Radiant New York Beauties by Valori Wells

The other book I found on my shelf was Valori Wells’ Radiant New York Beauties.

Here’s an Amazon.ca buy link.

Here’s a buy link at C&T publishing.

And here is Valori Wells website.

What’s fun about this book is that she uses stripes and plaids (lots of Kaffe Fassett yarn dyed stripes and plaids here!), and that she sometimes changes the central circle to an oval.

Her free motion quilting patterns are also fun. Lots of swirls and leaves, all the better to inspire me to get better at free motion quilting.

The pattern I found particularly inspiring is called Carnival Beauty. It’s the one on the cover, although that only shows part of it. I can’t find a picture of the complete quilt online, so will take a pic from my book when I show you my progress.

Tomorrow, we’ll look at my progress on Cinco de Mayo…