I’m starting a new feature on the blog…”Blast from the Past”. I’ll be showing off some of my “oldies but goodies” quilts.
Today I am featuring my Bubble Quilt.
This one was so fun and SUPER easy…no piecing required. At the time I had an Accuquilt Go! cutter and used the circle die and the dresden plate die to cut lots of different sized scrappy circles.
You can cut these by hand…a cutter is fun but certainly isn’t needed.
I have a long arm so I did mine on the longarm but this can be easily accomplished on a domestic machine. For me I loaded the backing and background onto my longarm. Then I placed the circles on the background. I would use a basting spray to adhere them…or any other type of spray that will temporary hold them in place but something that doesn’t gum up the needle. I experimented a lot. I even found that I could hold them in place with no glue at all.
I would lay a circle onto the background, stitch it down then come off of the circle into the white space and meander around…lay another circle down and continue on adding circles, quilting them down and then jumping off them to meander.
Randomly place the circles as you go. It’s fun and artsy. I loved doing it. As you can see some circles overlapped…others didn’t.
Doing it on the long arm was a bit of a challenge in that as the quilt would advance forward, I could no longer see the design and color placement. I would wonder, did I have a balance of color or circle sizes. Now I have a smart phone and could take pictures as I go. Then I didn’t.
Later on a friend of mine made her own version of this quilt. She did it on a domestic machine and it worked out great.
I loved that I could make the quilt AND have it quilted all in a day!!
This is a raw edge technique…the edges of the circles are raw and unfinished. Over time and washings, the edges will fray and get soft.
At the time I made this I was doing some promo work for Accuquilt. I have since stopped doing that. In the process I made a simple little video showing the technique. Check it below but promise…not a lot of laughing.
The quilt was so popular it went on and was in the Accuquilt booth at the Houston quilt show. This was the beginning of my public quilting life. I was always a quilter but didn’t share a lot of my quilting adventures.
This quilt happened so long ago that there was no beagle dog Ruby, there was Gracie our first beagle…Kalissa was in highschool…we lived at the farm…I didn’t have my APQS Millennium. Oh my we’ve come a long way. I think the quilt is still relevant though and would still be a great technique to try!
You can read my original post about the quilt here.
You can find MANY other free patterns on our site by looking under the free patterns tab at the top of the page under our banner.  Stop by again…
I loved seeing the video!!! How great. Let’s see more she. You have time
This looks like a fun quilt. I may try the technique, but probably not on a bed-sized quilt. I have the Go! and the circle die, so I’m good.
Just had another thought: this would be a fun I Spy quilt. Ooh! In Christmas juvenile prints!
Cute quilt! I bet this would work for triangles and squares also!
No, I have read thousands of your type written blog post and this video is my by far favorite! Getting to actually hear your voice and watch you in action! Was great I loved it. Hoping to watch and listen to future videos.
Jeri
Oops the 1st word in my comment was supposed to be “Jo”
I love it…My Mother made a couple of these quilts maybe in the 40’s—I never knew that they had a name—she turned the edges under–so much easier to leave them raw edge…The quilts are very worn out but I love to look at them…so happy to know the name of them…..I have to do one in the future…what a fun charity quilt this would be…wouldn’t a child just love it though…..