Quilt Block Cards

Make a Card for National Quilting Day!

March 19, 2021 by Robin

Card made with quilt block pattern — A Tulip Quilt Block Made with Stampin’ Up! Papers

What a great way to make a greeting card for a favorite quilter!

Aloha, all!

Several years ago, just on a lark, I decided I wanted to try to make a card front using a pattern based on a quilt block a friend was making. Every once in a while I see another pattern that I just have to try. I’ve now accumulated quite a few blocks and finally have written some tutorials so that you can easily create them, too!

The Tulip Block Card

No matter when I get the urge to try making quilt block cards again, the first pattern I come back to was that first one I tried – a Tulip Block. And isn’t Spring just the perfect time of the year to be creating that for a friend? For this card I chose to use a set of Stampin’ Up! patterned papers called Hydrangea Hill. It may be a few weeks get before Hydrangea begins to bloom. But some tulips should be thinking about blooming right about now.

Most of the blocks that I make with paper consist of little paper squares and triangles made from cutting those squares on the diagonal. But occasionally I’ll let a rectangle or two make their way into a design. The Tulip Block is one of those designs.

You may notice that I don’t have a sentiment on the front of this card. Sometimes when I make the quilt blocks, they just scream to have a bow attached. That was the case with the Tulip Block card. For this Spring-y card, I thought that a flighty double bow made with White Seam Binding Ribbon was just the thing. After that, I didn’t want to cover up any more of the pretty squares in the tulip design, as I would have done if I added a sentiment.

There’s A Quilt Block Tutorial For Sale!

The Tulip Block paper-pieced pattern is one of three quilt block patterns for cards in my tutorial booklet. Each of these tutorials includes a supply list as well as directions for putting the whole block as well as the greeting card together. While of course I love the papers I used for my samples, you can use whatever papers you like and the quilt blocks will be lovely.

Each block is sized so that it will fit on one or two layers over a 5″ square card base. This size card fits inside a standard A7 (5-1/4″ x 7-1/4″) envelope.

I usually sell this set of tutorials for $10. But today through Sunday, March 21st, it’s on sale for $5! Just click here (or on the picture on the right) for more details!

There Are Other Tutorials for Sale, Too!

At the moment I have four tutorial booklets for sale. You can see a list of each of them here. Just click on any of them to find out more about each. Going forward, I’ll be adding a new set of tutorials about once a month. The April tutorials are card layouts, and I’m loving all the samples I’m making to show them off!

So Happy National Quilting Day to all my Quilting friends – and all you Quilt lovers, too!

A Card for Any Occasion!

August 17, 2015 by Robin

Aloha, all!

A couple of years ago I was in a gift shop and saw a set of note cards that really caught my eye. On the front of each card was a quilt design. The designs all had pieces that looked just like a piece of quilting fabric might look. Of course I thought, "Why buy these? I can make my own!"

As we all know, that's easier said than done. Nonetheless I tried it out using Stampin' Up! products and came up with several designs that I shared with you, and I made my own box of quilt designed cards. You can click here to see that set, and just use the search function down at the left to search for "quilt" to find many more..

Anyway, up came today's Stampin' Up! Only Challenge theme, which is "Cards Without Words," and those quilt cards came right back to my mind. I love having a few cards around that can be for just about any occasion, and quilt patterns are perfect for that.

I'm sure you recognize this paper as being from the Stampin' Up! Pretty Petals Designer Series Paper Stack. I had never looked at that set as having the possibility of being in quilt designs. But now that I've looked more closely, I think I can see some more in the future!

As with so many of the quilt designs I've seen, I haven't a clue about what this pattern is called or even how to go about looking it up. It certainly has a Pinwheel around the center – or maybe not! But whatever it is, it was fun to make. With a pattern like this, I just go ahead and make a square card so that there's an even set of mats all around. I also like to texturize quilt block cards just to give the impression of some quilting over that paper piecing. For this card I used the brand new Fluttering Textured Impression Embossing Folder from Stampin' Up!

The colors in the butterfly patterned paper, besides the Basic Black Background are Old Olive, Mint Macaron, Calypso Coral, and Pacific Point. I decided to pick up the last three colors in the matting. The central square in the project is a Calypso Coral pattern, and is, in fact, the opposite side of the Butterfly pattern in the Paper Stack.

For the small butterfly in the center, after much trial and error with stamped and non-stamped images, I decided on a plain Whisper White butterfly, topped off with a Calypso Coral Candy Dot.

The squares are about 1-3/8" square. I trimmed the layer 1/16" all around to make the square design 4". The mats are 4-1/4, 4-1/2, and 4-5/8. I just wanted a sliver of white showing around the card. So I made the card base of Whisper White Thick Cardstock a 4-3/4" card.

I hope you find this to be a fun design and maybe even make one yourself! But whether you make this or another design, try making a card without words and entering it in the SUO Challenge! It is open until 6 am Eastern Time on August 29, 2015.

Sweater Weather Quilt Cards!

September 10, 2013 by Robin

Aloha, all!

Do you recognize the name of the Fall 2013 Stampin' Up! Designer Series Paper in the Blog Post Title? It's "Sweater Weather," and the colors in the set are so, well, cool! So when I decided that I'd like to participate in a Fall 2013 Blog Tour, that paper set from the 2013 Stampin' Up! Holiday Catalog came to mind as the theme for my blog post. And what better way to use it than to make a set of 4-1/2" square note cards featuring Quilt Squares as we're certainly going to be seeing lots of quilts to keep us warm in the coming months!

This is the design that got me started on this project. There are so many ways to make a Pinwheel Quilt Block. I like this one because I could use the plaid patterned paper in the four corners of the quilt and, no matter how I punched them, they formed a diagonal pointing to the center of the block with the pinwheel. With the way that I cut the remaining blocks, the plaid is not on the diagonal and it makes such a pretty contrast. For the center of the card, I "tied on" an Old Olive Button with some Linen Thread. The thread is just tied onto the button, of course, and I adhered the button to the center of the card using Mini Glue Dots. The Card Base is Tangerine Tango Card Stock and the mat is Old Olive Card Stock. I "quilted" the block, adhered to its mat, using the Sizzix Square Lattice Embossing Folder.

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Before I go any further, you should know that I've written a tutorial for making the cards, including a quick way to make the squares with two triangles, and instructions for laying the small squares out to make the 4" quilt designs. The tutorial also includes a list of supplies for making these four cards, using Designer Series Paper sets of your choice, and sketches for each of the four layouts. The tutorial also includes instructions for making a box that will hold all the cards and envelopes – and the box is so easy to make using the Stampin' Up! Envelope Punch Board!

How do you get the tutorial? I have a blog post all ready to go live this coming Friday that explains what you need to do to get it. Of course, it's FREE! Just come back to get all the information on Friday! Now back to my cards!

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There are no full squares at all in this second card. What caught my attention about this design is the impression that there are some nested diagonal squares in the middle of the card. I used Chocolate Chip Card Stock to mat this design to enhance the interior Chocolate Chip diagonal square. I used an Antique Brad to embellish this card. I cut the legs off the brad and adhered it to the center of the card with Mini Glue Dots as I had in the first card. The card base for this design is Old Olive Card Stock. The design and its mat have been "quilted" using the Argyle Embossing Folder.

For my third card, I returned to the Pinwheel theme, but with a different design, There are actually two pinwheels in this card – the darker but smaller Chocolate Chip design, and the lighter but larger Tangerine Tango design. While the plaid paper was a focus of the first two cards, here it just helps as an accent. Rather than place a central embellishment in this card, I decided to mimic how some quilts are tied together and added small pieces of Old Olive 1/8" Taffeta Ribbon where the pinwheels meet. This really accents the smaller of the two pinwheels even more than the dark color. I had to force some of the little "feet" of a couple of the ribbons to stay in place by applying some judiciously-placed mini glue dots! The card base is again Tangerine Tango Card Stock and the mat is Old Olive Card Stock. The quilt and mat are embossed with the Sizzix Houndstooth Embossing Folder.

For the final in this set of cards, I made a Texas Star type pattern. I really like the darker corner squares that help highlight the star pattern formed by the Tangerine Tango triangles. There is an obvious diagonal pattern from lower left to upper right with the Chocolate Chip squares. But the other diagonal, from top left to lower right, is nicely accented with the diagonal layout of the two plaid squares – just as in the first card. I introduced a new color of card stock with this card – Crushed Curry. That's one of the colors in the plaid design, along with the Chocolate Chip and Tangerine Tango. So I decided it needed at least a small introduction in this final square. This square and its Tangerine Tango mat are embossed with the Houndstooth Embossing Folder, and it's tied together with a bow made of Linen Thread. Yes, for this card, I acutally pierced the quilt block and tied the thread!

Here's a photo of the whole project, including the box that I made using the Stampin' Up! Envelope Punch Board! Come on back on Friday to find out how you can get the FREE tutorial for the whole project.