Did you catch our June 2021 Quilted Joy Clubhouse online meeting? 2021 is our year of grid designs! This month we looked at quilting in diamond grids! If you missed the livestream it’s available to watch (or re-watch!) whenever you’d like. Find it on the Quilted Joy Youtube channel or on the Quilted Joy Clubhouse page on our website!

Our main program for this month’s meeting was how to quilt grid designs in diamond grids. Watch the video below to see Angela quilt these designs, and so much more!

Quilting Diamond Grid Designs

So far in our year of the grid, we've talked about quilting grids in backgrounds, blocks, and borders. Now, let's change the shape of our grid and try quilting in a diamond grid. Specifically, let's put those diamond shapes in a border. Before you'd begin quilting your grid based design, you will want to stitch out the diamond shapes in your border. You can do that a few different ways. A diamond grid stencil will be super helpful. But if the stencil doesn't match the size diamond you want, you can always just use a ruler and fabric marker.

As you'll see in the video, I shared several diamond grid designs filling the diamond grid with shapes we're all familiar with like loops, curls, and straight lines! We were quilting these designs in a border shape, but you could easily adapt any of these designs to fit in a block or background grid too!

Kim's Sprawling Basement Quilting Studio

For this month's Looky Loo Studio Tour, we visited Kim Tocci of Quigley's Quilts in Broomfield, CO. Kim has set up her quilting studio in her light and airy walkout basement. She said she's a recent empty nester and has taken over her kids' former play and hangout area. I'm so jealous of all the room she has to store her fabrics, threads, and quilts in progress! She even had room for a sitting area next to her APQS Millie on a 14 foot table! Kim has lots of great storage solutions - many of which she said she found at IKEA - to keep her space nicely organized. Thanks again to Kim for letting us tour her fabulous quilting studio! If you'd like to keep up with Kim, check out her Quigley's Quilts website!

New Arrivals at Quilted Joy! Circle Burst Essentials 108" Wide Backing Fabrics

Our new spring fabrics have been arriving at Quilted Joy! We wanted to share with you the newly released Circle Burst Essentials 108" Wide Back Fabrics. These fabrics have a circular motif printed throughout the fabric and they're available in a variety of colors.

The circles remind me of a lemon or lime wheel, which also makes me think of fruity drinks by the pool. This fabric really is perfect for summer, right? :) I think my favorite is the Black Circle Burst because of the rainbow prints in the circles. But I also love the Teal Circle Burst fabric too!

How Would You Quilt It? Pat's Modern Icy Quilt

When I asked for quilt submissions in the Quilted Joy Clubhouse for our "How Would You Quilt It" portion of our meeting, I was immediately drawn to Pat's quilt. The blue and white color scheme reminds me of ice and snow. And the playful and almost improv piecing style is very modern and eye catching.

I shared two quilting designs for how Pat could quilt this lovely quilt. First, I wanted to lean into the snowy and windy feel of her quilt with simple undulating, serpentine lines. The lines wouldn't and shouldn't be echoed similarly, instead I want to add lots of variety of movement. The design is simple, fast, adds lots of texture, and has a windy feel to it. Alternatively, I created a large scale diamond grid using the quilt blocks as my guide for the diamonds. Then I filled some of the diamonds with an echoed line to create chevrons and other diamonds with the stacked curls and snowflakes we quilted earlier in the meeting. There were lots of quilty possibilities with Pat's quilt, and Pat already finished quilting it! Join us in the Quilted Joy Clubhouse so you can see which design Pat chose for her quilt!

Show and Tell

We love to wrap up the QJ Clubhouse meetings with a little show and tell. There are so many talented quilters in the Quilted Joy Clubhouse on Facebook and they share lots of amazing quilts. It’s fun to put a spotlight on their hard work!

The Quilted Joy Clubhouse live meetings occur on the first Wednesday of each month at 1pm Eastern. Our next Clubhouse meeting will be July 7, 2021 at 1pm Eastern/Noon Central and we’ll be taking our ladybug on a roller coaster. Don't know what I'm talking about? You'll just have to watch to find out! If you’d like to watch live, you can find us on Facebook in the Quilted Joy Clubhouse or subscribe to the Quilted Joy Youtube channel to be notified about our videos. Don’t worry if you can’t join us live. The video will remain available on both Facebook and Youtube afterwards so you can watch whenever you want!

Hope to “see” you at the next live meeting!