Quilts, quilts and more quilts

On January 19, 2026January 19, 2026 By Erickson's HeirloomsIn Batik, Minnesota State Fair, Quilting, Scrap QuiltLeave a comment

I admit, I have been really terrible at posting for the last few years. While I have been taking photos of my projects, I really haven’t had the motivation to write a post. And, when I would think about posting, I would look at my photos and become overwhelmed because I didn’t know which project to start with, so I would just give up.

This morning, I finished another quilt. When taking a picture of the quilt, I thought I should write a post. But, then the old feeling of being overwhelmed came back – will I every catch up on my posts.

So, I am going to try another approach. Instead of posting a lot of details about my projects, I am going to post a lot of photos, with just a little bit of the details. Hopefully I will catch up on posting. So, here goes…

Granny Square Quilt

When sorting through my mother’s fabrics, I ran across a pack of fat eighths (9″ x 21″ pieces of fabric). In the pack there were 16 batik blenders in a rainbow of colors. Most fat eighths bundles have 18 pieces. And, since there was only one blue piece in the bundle, I think my mother must have used the other two pieces of blue for one of her projects. After looking through the numerous ideas I have on my computer, I settled upon a granny square block quilt.

While planning out the quilt, I realized that I would need to be extremely careful with my cutting because the amount of fabric needed was nearly exactly what I had available. From the sixteen pieces of fabric (2 yards total), this is what I had left over.

For the backing, I used another piece of fabric from my mother’s stash.

Measuring 38″ x 54″, this will be a nice quilt for a young child.

Hexagon Quilt

A few years ago, I made an asymmetric Burst quilt. Since then, I have wanted to remake the quilt but with the starburst centered on the quilt like the matching doll quilt. However, I wanted to try something different. So, I designed a similar quilt with a hexagon shape.

This makes a nice complement to the original quilt.

While sewing it, I thought that a pastel version of the design would be nice to try. So, I made a smaller, baby quilt with a hexagon shape. And, I was happy to receive a blue ribbon at the 2025 MN State Fair.

Donation Quilts

Every year, I donate several quilts to a local chapter of Sleep in Heavenly Peace. This year was no exception. In addition to the Sleeping Family quilts that I wrote about last year, here are the images of the other quilts that were donated this year.

Pencil Quilt (and a couple doll quilts)

On May 7, 2024 By Erickson's HeirloomsIn Batik, QuiltingLeave a comment

A friend recently asked me whether I had stopped making quilts since I haven’t posted about any new quilting projects for several months. This is definitely not the case. In fact, last year I gave away nineteen quilts to various organizations. Most of these nothing fancy, just easy scrap quilts to use up fabric I have been given over the past couple of years. I still have a lot of fabric yet to use, so I will continue to make quilts to give away.

In talking with her, I realized that I have made a couple interesting quilts that I forgot to post about.

Pencil Quilt. The idea for this quilt came after seeing an advertisement for an adult coloring book with pencils. These books were sold a a way to reduce stress. Not needing any more crafts, I did not purchase a book. But, I did make my idea become reality.

To make the pencil tips as precise as possible, I used a variation of a technique called Paper Piecing. However, to avoid having to remove the paper, used dryer sheets were a better alternative. When ironed and taped to a blank piece of paper, these sheets of thin unwoven polyester can be used in any regular printer. But, since the softener sheets are lightweight, the sheets do not need to be removed.

After sorting through my batik fabrics, the quilt top was pieced in a color gradient order. For the quilting, I pulled different doodle designs into a graphics program and settled on how I wanted the quilting to look.

The end product was very close to the idea I originally had in my mind – a fun, colorful quilt.

I also made a matching doll quilt.

Another Doll Quilt. When my niece graduated from high school, I made her a quilt as a gift. She now has a two year old daughter that is using this quilt.

For Christmas, I made a doll quilt to match the original quilt. So, my niece’s daughter and her Baby Lissi doll have matching quilts.

One of a Kind Quilts

On November 19, 2021 By Erickson's HeirloomsIn Batik, Quilting, Scrap Quilt1 Comment

Scrap quilts often bring to mind the image of a resourceful pioneer woman cutting up worn clothing to create bedcovers for her family. But the truth is that scrap quilting didn’t become as commonplace as we think until the Great Depression when hard-pressed seamstresses were forced to use every bit of fabric they had on hand. Along with feed sacks, these women also used bits of old clothing, worn-out bed linens, and anything else they could get their hands on. Thus, scrap quilting is probably one of the first examples of “upcycling”.

When I made my Kaleidoscope quilt earlier this year, I did a lot of “fussy cutting”. With fussy cutting, the fabric pieces are cut in such a way as to emphasize a particular pattern or design within the printed fabric. This was necessary to create the repeating design of each hexagon shape that this quilt included.

By doing this I ended up with a lot of leftover bits of fabrics. I hate to throw away any fabric – it costs money. So, these bits were added to the other scraps that were accumulating in my sewing room. When quilting, any piece bigger than 10″ x 10″ is sorted and stored on shelves according to the main color of the fabric. Anything smaller than 10″ x 10″ and bigger than 1″ x 1″ gets put into a wicker basket for future use.

Saving scraps allows me to to get the most out of my fabric purchases. And, when using these scraps, I get to make beautiful one-of-a-kind quilts. This summer, my basket of scraps was over flowing. It was time to do something with these bits and pieced.

When first looking at the basket, it was a bit daunting as to where to start. First, I sorted the fabrics into two piles, batik scraps and printed cotton. Then I sorted each of these fabric piles by color and size of the design on the fabric.

Once sorted, I needed to pick a couple quilt designs to use. Having dozens of quilt designs on my computer that I had created in Electric Quilts, I selected several that would work well for scrap quilts.

To avoid having a design that appeared cluttered, I used a few design guidelines. In some quilts, I focused on a specific color to tie the fabrics together. In another quilt, I used the negative space to offset the chaos of the scrap pieces. And, in still other quilts, I used a design that called for larger pieces of fabric. These quilt designs were used for prints that were large to make the quilt seen less busy overall and thus allow for the prints to be highlighted rather than being lost in a bunch of small pieces. And, sometimes you just gotta have fun and forget any design rules.

Quilt with specific Color – Grey

Quilt with specific Color – Red

Quilt using Negative Space

Quilt using Large Prints – Florals

Quilt using Large Prints – Black/ White and Red

Quilt using Large Prints – Batiks

Quilt with No Rules

English Paper Piecing – best enjoyed when making small projects.

On December 14, 2020October 14, 2023 By Erickson's HeirloomsIn Batik, Flowers, QuiltingLeave a comment

We have five members in my professional study club, and I have previously written about two of the quilts I made for these friends. Continuing with quilts for my other study club friends (who actually don’t retire for a few more years), I needed to come up with two additional designs.

The parents of one of the other friends is originally from England. So, I decided that her wall quilt would be a good opportunity to try English Paper Piecing.

EPP involves placing a paper template onto the wrong side of the fabric, folding the fabric over the paper template, tacking the fabric to the template with water soluble glue and then hand stitching the various shapes together. It’s almost like a fabric form of Tetris!

Five years ago, while attending the Minnesota Quilt Show, I purchased a book “The New Hexagon – 52 Blocks to English Paper Piece” by Katja Marek. The beautiful blocks really caught my eye and since it was 52 blocks, I originally thought I would just try to make one each week for a year. Well, unfortunately, other projects always came up and the book sat on my shelf unopened.

Then, last year, while browsing various quilting sites on-line, I saw a posting by the same author about a Millefiore Quilt Along. This quilt along was completed a few years earlier, and the pictures were stunning.

Because the technique involves hand stitching the pieces together, I thought that a wall quilt would be a good place to start to learn the technique. This project would not be too large and intimidating, and would be easily carried in a bag to work on when I was not at home.

Since this particular friend has beautiful flower gardens at her home, I started out by doing some simple flowers. Many of my quilting friends will already know that hexagon flowers are commonly made using paper piecing.

Unbeknownst to my friend, I was stitching the flower pieces together when we were working in the same office on several occasions. I’m not sure she realized after receiving the quilt that I had been sewing the pieces together right in front of her!!

Once I had a few hexagon flowers sewn, I needed to figure out the rest of the quilt design. To personalize the quilt for my friend, I played around with creating my own paper piecing designs. She is an avid biker, so with the help of her husband, I found a photo of the type of bike she rides. Using Electric Quilts, I created the paper piecing design to make a bike for the center of the quilt.

With the bike designed, I next needed to figure out what to do for the background of the quilt. After playing around with a couple ideas, I decided to make it look like the bike was on a trail. The flowers would then be stitched into groupings on either side of the bike.

Hand sewing the pieces of the bike together was time consuming. And, the background was going to be larger pieces with straight seams. Thus, I settled for machine sewing the rest of the background around the bike and the flowers. After machine quilting, I added some hand embroidered stems for the flowers and some ribbons.

I enjoyed learning this new technique, it is much more “portable” than machine quilting.

After this project was completed, I thought about what paper piecing project I could try next. Since the millefiori quilt idea really stuck with me. I spent some time designing my own take on a Millefiori quilt. Early November, with two weeks off of work and I started out with great intention of creating a full sized quilt using English Paper Piecing.

However, I quickly realized that I am not a fan of hand piecing quilts. The amount of time needed to cut out the paper templates, glue them to the fabric and then hand sew the pieces together was overwhelming. And, I really wondered how durable my hand stitching would be. I certainly didn’t want to spend hours and hours sewing together a quilt that would easily pull apart at the seams.

Thus after finishing one section of the quilt (the center section in my hand drawing), I decided that the rest of this quilt would be sewn by machine.

There will be many difficult seam junctions to line up when sewing this design by machine. But, I am much happier with the way the rest of the quilt is coming together (more on that in a couple weeks). And, while I enjoyed learning English Paper Piecing, I am also happy that I learned that this is not something I will use for designing larger quilts.

Quilting with Shadows

On November 24, 2020October 14, 2023 By Erickson's HeirloomsIn Batik, Family, QuiltingLeave a comment

Earlier this year, I wrote about a wall quilt I made that depicted the skylines of Minneapolis and St. Paul. This quilt was made as a retirement gift for a friend who spends a lot of her time volunteering with various organizations, serving on foundations and helping her friends and family members within the Twin Cities. She truly has a heart of giving and I was hoping this quilt would show her that the people around her appreciate all that she has done.

After completing the quilt, I decided to make a few more wall quilts before giving it away. Being in a study club with five members, I realized that if I were to give her a wall quilt for retirement, the others in the group would know what to expect when they retire. Thus, four more wall quilts were completed over the summer and fall. And, while she retired at the end of 2019, I was recently able to gift this wall quilt to her.

One of the other wall quilts I created was for a friend who will be retiring at the end of 2020. When thinking about a theme for her quilt, I kept coming back to how often she posts pictures of her family, especially her children, and the great ways the all interact together.

Her family represents several heritages and she loves to travel. So, the quilt design I selected was a piecework pattern called “Trip Around the World”. This classic piecework pattern involves using uniform squares, radiating out from a center. While this pattern looks time consuming with all the squares, using strip quilting makes this pattern super easy!

The colors of the quilt were based upon colors in a fused glass plate that she purchased from me a few years ago. At the time, she said the colors matched her home.

I also wanted to depict her family in the quilt, but without detracting from the beauty of the piecing. To do this, I decided to use the quilting to show her family.

The entire quilt was first quilted with a rather simple swirl design.

After that was completed, I quilted a shadow of a family. To design the quilting of the family, I used a photo of a family of five jumping and expressing joy. Each person of the “family” were quilted with a different color of thread.

A sixth member of their family is also included in the quilting. Eighteen years ago, at just under the age of three, one of my friend’s daughters passed away from childhood cancer.

I know that she is still in the minds of her family, so I wanted to include her as well. In the shadow quilting, I stitched a girl on a swing. She is seen swinging on each side of the family, thus, creating somewhat of a circle around the rest of the family members.

This was an enjoyable quilt to make and even more enjoyable to recently gift it to my friend. I wish her a wonderful retirement!

My Cat loves my new Jelly Roll Rug

On August 18, 2020October 14, 2023 By Erickson's HeirloomsIn Batik, PetsLeave a comment

I love fabric, and so does my cat. She will crawl under, lie on top of, and occupy any surface that has fabric on it.

Whether it’s a pile of quilts…

A quilt on my sewing room sofa… img_2256-1

My footstool…

A drawer of fabric that I am trying to find something in…

A quilt on my sewing frame…

Or just a basket of scraps.

She pretty much spends her entire day in my sewing room, sleeping on one soft surface or another. This weekend was no exception. She was my constant companion (for good and bad).

Having ended a long week at work, this weekend I really wanted a “mindless” project that didn’t require much thought but would make me feel like I had accomplished something. A Jelly Roll Rug seemed like the perfect project to work on. For a nice tutorial on making a rug, see Erica Arndt’s video. I had never made one before and surprisingly, it was a rather quick project and perfect for my weekend.

I’ve seen Jelly Roll Rugs in the past and have thought that I would like to make one. In fact, nearly two years ago, I sorted through some of my scrap batik fabrics thinking that they would make a lovely rug for my sewing room. The fabrics were stacked in my closet, and promptly ignored because of other projects that I wanted to make.

Taking this pile of fabric out of the closet and placing it on my sewing desk was “heaven” to my cat. She kept wanting to lay down on top of the fabrics. To make the rug, instead of using a Jelly Roll, I sorted my fabrics into a rainbow gradient and cut my own 2.5″ strips. I used a total of 22 different fabrics. Rather than doing a standard jelly roll rug pattern, I wanted each fabric to make one complete circle around the quilt. This meant I needed to complete each round before added the fabric for the next round to the project. I also pieced my fabric with straight seams rather than cutting at an angle (I hate to waste fabric).

Starting with one strip of the first fabric, each round increased in size. The last round used 3 strips of the darkest fabric. Thus, I used anywhere from 2.5 inches to a maximum of a quarter yard of fabric.

For the batting, I cut 2″ strips from scrap batting until all of my leftovers were used up (Yeah – I emptied an entire storage container of odd sized pieces of batting!). When I ran out of leftover batting, I decided to try using a precut batting spool. This was an easier and quicker way to work on the rug. To manage the roll, I clamped a wooden rod to my sewing desk. With the roll on the rod, the batting came off without twisting. This also kept the roll off the floor where my cat would try to play with it.

I found a handy folding tool that I used to make the project go faster.

All in all, this was a fun project that I was able to complete in one weekend. If I had used a precut jelly roll and precut batting, I could have easily completed it in a day.

I now have a colorful rug on my sewing room floor.

And, my cat seems to enjoy it as well. Luckily she has no claws!

Home

On March 28, 2020 By Erickson's HeirloomsIn Applique, Batik, Family, Life, Quilting4 Comments

Over the past days, the governor of Minnesota has issued numerous executive orders that have impacted my life, the latest of which is Emergency Executive Order 20-20. This order directs Minnesotans to “Stay at Home” for the next two weeks. Since my dental office is shut down and my son returned from NYC, I have already been staying home.

With some of my unexpected free time, I have finally finished a quilting project that I started a while ago. The inspiration of this quilt came from my sister-in-law. Last summer, she asked me to design a wall quilt of the Paris skyline for her to make.

ParisPattern — Brief directions to make the background of a skyline quilt.

After I designed her quilt, I thought I would make something similar – a wall quilt of the twin cities – Minneapolis and St. Paul. For the background of the wall quilt, I followed the instructions I had written for my sister-in law, except I used blue batik fabrics from my stash, rather than purple.

The background was loaded onto my quilting frame and quilted with evenly spaced horizontal lines.

For the skyline, I found several images on-line. By combining ideas and removing most of the white areas, I had a nice skyline of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

After importing these images into my Cameo software, I cut the pattern of the skyline out of starched black cotton fabric that was sandwiched between Heat-N-Bond Lite and freezer paper.

These silhouettes were then ironed onto the background. Using several different quilting fill patterns, I then quilted detail to differentiate each of the individual buildings.

Because the Twin Cities are known for the numerous parks and parkways, I added green fabric along the bottom edge to depict the landscaping of the cities.

The wall quilt was then bound and ready to hang.

Over the past week while looking at the wall quilt, I felt it needed something more. Last night I augment the design with some “bling”.

Elatan'sStarmap

With the help of one of my sons, I found a Star Constellation Chart. Using 3 mm heat transfer rhinestones, I replicated the constellations that would be visible over the Twin Cities. I also added some rhinestone on a few of the towers.

Hometown wall quilt complete!

As I went for my walk this morning, I was reminded that this may be my “hometown” for now. And, my home may be impacted by the events of today. But I need to look past today’s news and worries about tomorrow, and take comfort in the fact that my hope is not bound to the circumstances of this world. In short – this world is not my home – my home is indeed in Heaven.

Blended Cultures

On September 26, 2019September 26, 2019 By Erickson's HeirloomsIn Batik, Minnesota State Fair, QuiltingLeave a comment

Of the four quilts that I entered this year in the Minnesota State Fair, I have described three of them previously. Now that the busy summer schedule has settled down, it’s time I describe the fourth quilt I entered.

This quilt was made a the request of someone I know. He asked if I could make a quilt for his new grandson. My response was “sure – what kind of quilt was he thinking of”. Further conversations helped focus my design ideas. He said he wanted the quilt to be twin sized and to incorporate the cultures of his son, who is Swedish, and his daughter-in-law, who was adopted as an infant from India. This sounded like a fun quilt to work on.

design

First, I needed to figure out the main piecing theme of the quilt. After sending several ideas to him, he selected a large eight pointed star pattern. My design incorporated blue and yellow points for the Swedish half of the star and red, orange and green points for the India half of the star. At the top of the quilt, one of the blue points was adjacent to a red point to bring the two cultures together in an American section of the quilt.

After selecting several batik fabrics, I started piecing the quilt. While piecing, I was drawing out ideas for the quilting. I wanted to incorporate, with just thread, some images that reflected the heritage of the child. By using thread and not applique, the main design of the quilt would not overwhelmed by too much going on with the fabric. For inspiration, I sought some advise from several friends who are from India and Sweden.

For the Swedish heritage, I stitched out a moose, a fox and some rosemaling. For the India heritage, I stitched out an elephant, a peacock and some paisley patterns. For the American heritage, an eagle was stitched. Each of these designs were stitched out in the background sections between each point of the star with a thread color slightly darker than the fabric. In the other three sections, I put the child’s birth month, date and year. The designs were surrounded by a diagonal hatch fill in the same color as the fabric to help the images show better.

Around the star, several circles was sewn. Between the lines of the outer circles, I thought it would be nice to include the child’s name – so that was sewn in the bottom section of the circles. To fill the rest of the circle, I once again consulted my friends. I thought perhaps there would be a phase that was specific to each culture that I could stitch out. I asked my friends if they could give me a list of three phrases that might be said of or to a young child, or more specifically a young boy. When I compared the lists, I was surprised to find one of the phrases was on both the Swedish list and the India list. That phrase “May you live long, my son” was included in the quilting. The phrase, in English, was stitched at the top of the circles on the quilt. Then, on the Swedish side of the quilt, it was stitched in Swedish. And, on the India side of the quilt, it was stitched in Hindi. To fill in the space between the name and phrases, paisley patterns were stitched.

The rest of the background was filled with some stitching to replicate Scandinavian rosemaling. This was then highlighted with some straight hatch fill.

I had not intended to enter this quilt in the fair. However, while working on it, the design was coming together so nicely that I asked permission to enter it. My quilt entry was named “Blended Cultures – Swedish and Hindi heritage in an American Boy” and was enter in the Commemorative Quilt Category. The blue ribbon the quilt was given was a nice surprise for a “last minute” entry. This was such a last minute entry that I forgot to take some close up pictures of the finished quilt before dropping it off at the fair. And, the day I picked it up from the fair, I had promised to deliver it to the family that it was made for. So, some of my photos were taken rather poorly while in my car. But, alas it’s still a really fun quilt and I am glad I had a chance to make it.

Sunshine in St. Kitts

On March 16, 2019 By Erickson's HeirloomsIn Batik, Flowers, Travel, VacationLeave a comment

Spring Break has been a great escape from the snow of Minnesota.

Day One: MSP – MIA – SKB

We left behind the snow in our front yard…

Good Bye USA (leaving Miami)

Sunset over the Atlantic Ocean

Flying over Puerto Rico

Flying over US Virgin Islands

Day Two:

…and after settling into our villa, we awoke to sun, sand and beautiful landscape.

Day Three: Tour of the Island

Overlooking the Southeast Peninsula of St. Kitts

Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Ocean, Frigate’s Bay and Basseterre.

Atlantic Ociean

Caribbean Ocean

Frigate’s Bay

Basseterre

Basseterre’s sites and Wingfield Estate.

Romney Manor and Caribelle Batiks

Brimstone Hill Fortress

Convent Bay

Lots of Sheep

Day Four:

My Birthday – Time to relax in the sun

Sunset Dinner in Frigate’s Bay

Day Five: More relaxation in the sun

And some really cute cats to play with.

Day Six:

Ferry to Nevis

First Hotel in the Caribbean and Bathhouse (the water was really, really hot!)

Montpelier Estate – really quaint hotel!

Hermitage Plantation Inn – another really nice hotel.

Lots of old churches – all still active.

Back in St. Kitt’s

We have one more day of sunshine before heading to back to Minnesota.

Hopefully Spring will arrive soon.

Fractured Tree

On January 21, 2019 By Erickson's HeirloomsIn Batik, Fall Colors, Quilting, Scrap Quilt, Trees1 Comment

I enjoy reading historical fiction books. When reading, I like to look up information about the events happening at the specific time in history. This helps me understand the book’s story line better.

I enjoy these books even more when there is a reference to the art of the era. Having recently I read the latest book by Jennifer Chiaverini, I did some additional reading about the history of quilting.

One of the sources talked about Depression Era quilts. Many of these quilts were string quilts made of small fabric scraps stitched together to make a piece of fabric large enough to cut a pattern piece. These larger pieces were stitched together to make a quilt block. The quilt blocks were put together to make a quilt top. This method was used during hard times when money and fabric were scarce. Scraps of all sizes were utilized.

Over the past decade, this method has also made a resurgence within the art quilt community.

stringtreeidea

There were several pictures of a string quilts that have caught my attention.

tuxzkrr

One of the quilters that I really liked was Ursula Kern. Her string quilts are breathtaking. The illusion of movement and shape that she creates is absolutely amazing.

birch

I decided that I wanted to try to make a string quilt wall hanging for my sewing room. With wall space limited, the only spot I had left to hang something was adjacent to my four seasons landscape quilt. So, in keeping the the landscape theme, I thought a tree might fit the area well.

Looking at tree clipart images, I selected one, traced it out on pellon, and then divided the pellon into a 7×11 grid. Each section of the grid (2″ x 3.75″) was used as one block of the string quilting.

Since I have a lot a scraps from various other quilts, and not wanting to purchase more fabric right now, I pulled out my scraps, sorted them by color and started creating each of the blocks.

Sorted blue and green fabrics.

Sorted red and brown fabrics.

The seventy seven blocks were sewn together (with numerous changes to match my design better). The illusion is somewhat like a stained glass window – I really like it!

For the quilting, I used one layer of Quilter’s Dream Cotton batting. To create texture for the tree and shrubs, I placed pieces of Quilter’s Dream Wool batting in these areas between the cotton batting and the pieced top. The background sky was quilted with straight lines and the tree was loosely quilted to allow the depth of the batting to show.