I love the idea of making an “enders and leaders” quilt during the year. I don’t have a huge problem with threads tangling on my Juki, but I know that every time I’m clipping threads, even automatically, I’m using up thread. I’m trying hard have less waste in my quilting process and also trying to maximize my sewing time. But honestly putting little bits together and slowly seeing a quilt come to life while working on others is super fun. Here is one I finished not that long ago.
Bonnie over at Quiltville has a lot of info on Ender and Leader quilts (here is a link to one of her past challenges). I find the site a little hard to navigate with all the moving ads so I suggest one of her fantastic books: Adventures with Enders and Leaders, More Adventures with Enders and Leaders, and Bonnie Hunter’s Scrap-Savvy Quilts (I haven’t read this one yet, but I’ll be asking my library to buy a copy!).
ANYWAY I had started a fun one last fall of low volume + colorful crosses. I had decided to set it on point mostly because I didn’t want to press seams open and decided to put the filler blocks between the pieced ones. I decided to cut all the filer blocks (finished size of blocks were 6″) so I laid it out like this to figure out exactly how many nine patches I needed.
Well my friend saw it when it was in progress and told me how much she loved it. I’d never made her a quilt and had no one in mind for this one so I said, how about I finish this one for you? When she mentioned she wanted it for their queen sized bed I had her send me the exact dimensions she liked, including drop. Then I told her it would be a long time before it was done because I had a lot of these 9 patches to make and I was just going to be doing them in between other projects.
I had a nice stash of 2.5″ blocks cut and rainbowized from cleaning up my scrap stash so it was fun to make up a handful at a time to sit by the machine and pass under the needle before or after other blocks. Sadly her husband had a stroke in the spring. I decided my slow ender and leader quilt needed to be moved up to the top of the pile!
After the top was pieced I had this and another quilt that had time sensitive finishes. I had been wanting to learn to long arm and thought this was the perfect opportunity. I had LOTS of tops that needed to be done (please see my 2026 quilt page to give you an idea!). I had a great teacher and realized a of the skills I utilized for free motion quilting on my Juki would translate well to long arming. I learned most of those skills from Christina Cameli, if you ever have the opportunity to take a class from her I highly recommend it, she’s so encouraging! She also has some amazing books, a beginner one, a step-by-step book, free motion combinations, and step by step texture.
I did an all over design from one of Christina’s books and it really fits the quilt well. You can see the design pop on the solid colored back I used.
I bound it in a sweet little white dot on dark grey.
I was able to deliver the finished quilt to my friends when he came home from rehab after his stroke. It also happened to be his birthday, a very happy one indeed! I love it when quilts bring such comfort. I’ve heard from them often that they notice new fabrics all the time. That’s a great thing about scrap quilts. I need to get my next ender and leader project picked out. I’m sampling some block right now to see if that have the right mix of easy, short passes under the needle and a good use of scraps. I need them not to be too fussy because I’ll sew them over a long period of time.
