Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Edyta's visit, part 2--Antique Inspirations

We had blog posts all ready to go after Edyta's visit last May and never posted them, so here goes!

We recently welcomed Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts for an afternoon of fun, fellowship, and quilts!  Edyta started with this charming little quilt made from leftovers.  This is a traditional tumbler pattern, but Edyta used her acrylic template from her pattern Lollipops to rotary cut the scraps.  What a great memory, and a beautiful quilt!

Edyta loves antique quilts, and shows here how she used a vintage find as inspiration for other quilts.  You can see the similarity between the first two quilts...






...but what if you change the design a little and use batiks in stead of reproduction cottons?


This sweet little quilt is a great Lone Star quilt for starters.  Add applique and your quilt becomes a unique wall warmer.


Edyta has exchanged a lot of strips with other quilters around the world, and finds that she gets a lot of variety this way.  When the strips weren't uniform in size, she came up with a solution of alternating the pieced diamonds with plain ones.


She also strips pieces together, then cuts out the diamond shapes.


This is the cover quilt of her book, Scrappy Fireworks quilts.  It's a more ambitious version of the small quilt above,  but also includes appliques.  The diamond pieced border makes this quilt unique.


And you can use the smallest pieces to make a fabulous quilt!


Edyta finds inspiration all around her, from museums to vintage shops.  A unique antique quilt was the jumping off point for this fabulous quilt, made in Edyta's fabrics.  This sampler quilt really creates a lot of excitement, and yet the blocks flow into one another.


This sweet quilt contains a lot of Edyta's favorite things.  She uses triangle papers to make her half square triangles, and her papers come in 1-1/2" and 2" sizes.  These are perfect for a triangle exchange if you want to get together with your friends and make any of Edyta's quilts from her book, Friendship Triangles.


Even Edyta gets to do English Paper Piecing--in her spare time!