Shadow Box Tutorial

Shadow Box Quilt

Free Tutorial!

A lot of my quilting buddies wanted to know how this was made, and since it's such an easy quilt, I decided to share it as a free tutorial!

You'll need to decide what color you want to use for your shadows and border, and what color you want to use for your background. (I chose black shadows and a white background.)

From your background fabric, cut:

48 squares 1-1/2" x 1-1/2"

5 squares 2" x 2"

28 strips 2" x 9-1/2"

30 strips 2" x 11"

From your shadow fabric, cut:

24 strips 1-1/2" x 7-1/2"

24 strips 1-1/2" x 8-1/2"

(Outside border is cut 4-1/2" wide on my quilt.)

Next, cut 24 squares from all different fabrics @ 8-1/2" x 8-1/2"



Now you'll sew one of your small white squares to your 7-1/2" long shadow strip

for the bottom of each square:

Next you'll sew one of your small white squares to your 8-1/2" shadow strip

for the side of the square:

Sew the bottom strip to the scrappy square, and then the side. It will look like this:

Now you'll add your sashing parts. First, to the bottom of the square above,

you will add one of your 2" x 9-1/2" strips of background fabric.

Then to the left side of the square you will add one of your 2" x 11" strips of

background fabric. Sew 4 blocks together per row, and finish the row with a final

2" x 11" strip of background.

Make 6 rows like that, and sew them together, adding a final set of 9-1/2" background strips with 2" squares of background fabric to your top row, and then your outter border, so that it looks like this:

Your finished quilt will be about 51-1/2" x 72-1/2"

Happy Quilting!

Jean MaDan

Another great quilt by Candace Wragg, using my tutorial. Terrific job, as usual!



This one is made by Gloria Hooker. Wonderful! Love that red!!

Loretta Webre made hers in shades of blue, and  one block wider. 

Loretta said: 

I'd like to tell you a little about why I made this quilt for my Godmother.  You see, my mother died when I was 9, and I have always been very close to my Godmother, my mother's sister, as she was always there for me.  I really consider her my 2nd mother, and don't believe I would be the woman I am today, were it not for her love and guidance.  Her favorite color is blue, and she celebrated her 75th birthday on the 6th of Sept.  I wanted to make the quilt for her as soon as I found your pattern, but Hurricane Isaac intervened and really messed up my plans.  I had a house full of people, who could not get home due to flooding, no power for 6 days, and no running water.  A very stressful time, to say the least.  Making this quilt was great therapy.

I delivered it to my Aunt yesterday and she and my Uncle absolutely loved the quilt.  She asked about the pattern, and I explained how I saw it on your blog.  I named the quilt Out of the Blues. 

I think I'll make another one using LSU purple and gold, with tiger faces as the main blocks.

Thank you, again. 

Loretta

Ellen Boisvert sent me this brilliant adaptation of the idea she did, using panels. I thought mitering the corners of the shadows was pretty cool looking, don't you?? 

Bricks and Boxes

I decided to take one of my "flimsie excuse" unfinished tops and make it into a reversible quilt. So... the first side is the "Brickworks" quilt, and the other side is "Shadow Box"

Happy Quilting!

Jean MaDan

Christmas Gold Sofa Throw

I finally managed to finish up one of the flimsies (unfinished quilt tops) I posted last week. I sure hope it doesn't take me as long to do the rest of them! This was made using sampler blocks from several years ago that I had never gotten around to finishing. Luckily I was able to find enough of the red fabric still in my stash to do the binding. I have a bad habit of putting a flimsie aside to finish up later, and when I get back to it I find I've used up all the appropriate fabric in newer scrappies and have to scramble to find something that works. I'm trying really hard to finish as I go on any project that needs to stick with a particular fabric. It's just too frustrating to know that I HAD the right fabric but then forgot and used it on something else!
Happy Quilting!
Jean MaDan

Did you make my quilt?

I got an interesting phone call a couple of days ago. There was an elderly gentleman on the phone who asked for Jean MaDan. I answered "speaking!", and he asked me "Did you make my quilt?" I told him that I did make a lot of quilts, but in order to know if I made his, I'd need more information. So here's the story he told me.

 

One of the quilts that I had made for my soldier guys was given to a man who had fought in WWII, and he had since passed away. His granddaughter said he loved that quilt, and all he knew about it was who made it. (On my love quilts, the embroidered label only says my name and the year. I almost never add more info than that. But on THIS particular quilt, for some reason I had gone further and added the words "From a grateful citizen of the United States") He told her that when he passed, he wanted the quilt given to another soldier if possible. So, when the time came, the granddaughter gave the quilt to a man who had fought in Korea. That man owned the quilt for two years, and when HE passed, the quilt was given to ANOTHER soldier who had fought in Vietnam. Seems it had now become a tradition to pass the quilt on to other soldiers!! The current owner told me he had already made arrangements for it to be passed on again when he dies, but this time it would stay in the family, as he has a son who fought in Desert Storm.

 

I was speechless to know how much impact one simple sofa throw had made on these various gallant warriors! And let this be a lesson to those who never put labels on their quilts! I would never have known any of this if I didn't make a habit of adding a simple label with my name on it when I finish each quilt. (Of course, it helped that my name is kind of different, so I wasn't impossible to track down. LOL!)

 

I've been unable to sew for several days due to extreme chest pain, so this was just the thing I needed to perk me up. (And get me off the self-pity train! LOL!) Anyway, I wasn't going to tell anyone, but it seemed this was just too happy a story not to share it, so now I want to tell EVERYONE! LOL!

 

Happy Quilting!

Jean MaDan