Sister's Choice Quilts

Sewcialites Progress Week 16, Snow, and the COVID Vaccine

We find ourselves coming up on week 17 of the Sewcialites Sew Along hosted by Fatquarter Shop and Kimberly Jolly. These are the two most recent blocks I have made, week 15 "Genuine", designed by Lori Holt, and week 16 "Friendship", designed by Carrie Nelson.

I tell you, that block 16 had me reaching for my seam ripper quite a few times. I went into it full of confidence because after all, it is flying geese, my favorite block unit. But I had some issues getting the seam intersections to line up properly.

Look what greeted me when I looked out my window on Monday morning! We only get snow rarely, but here we are. Brrrrrr.  It is way colder than this girl likes it. And yes, those are our Christmas lights. Someone hasn't gotten around to taking them down yet. We are supposed to get more snow this week, which I am hoping I won't have to drive in.

Look who got a COVID-19 vaccine! My sister took our dad in for his on Sunday afternoon.  They are giving the injections in the underground parking structure of our medical clinic. Dad, being 95, is one of the first people I know to get one. He was extremely excited to get it. He says they had to wait in a line for about 45 minutes, but he had his wheelchair so he was good. The injection did not hurt and he has had no after-effects of any kind. So that is all excellent. I tried to schedule an appointment for myself, but it turns out I am not old enough. lol

Hope you are all having a great week!

Sewcialites Progress

I have made 15 Sewcialites blocks since I switched fabrics/colors a month or two ago. I do like this combination of reds, blacks, and tans. I have to say that I am really enjoying the sew along and also the Friday YouTube videos Kimberly of The Fat Quarter Shop puts out each week. They are nice and long and I can stitch along while she demos the week's block and shows sewing tips and new items in her shop. Next Friday she said she will show some upcoming Moda Collections plus some new books. One of the books is a collaboration by Joanna Figueroa and Carrie Nelson, which I cannot wait for.

It has been so nice to be at home. The weather is absolutely gorgeous and we have all our sliding glass doors open. I got an itch to reorganize my bathroom cabinets and drawers. Can somebody please remind me that I do not need to buy any more cosmetics for the rest of my life? I tossed out so many lipsticks and old foundations and dried out mascaras, it was ridiculous. It's a great feeling to be able to see what I have and have room in the drawers and on the cabinet shelves. 

I made a nice crockpot dinner, and as I am writing this, my house smells so good. I combined onions and red, yellow, and orange bell peppers in the slow cooker with some mild Italian sausages. We will have them on hoagie rolls. I also did laundry, ironed a few things, and played in my sewing room for a couple of hours. I feel as if I had a day off!

Hope your week got off to a good start.

Thrifty Me

I had a lot of leftovers from my recent Red Pineapple finish. Normally, I am not one to fret about using up leftover fabric, but I had an idea for what to do with them.

I have had foundation paper piecing on my mind lately and purchased a couple of the 6" Log Cabin paper pads from Fatquartershop.com. I LOVE these papers. Years ago, you could not have persuaded me to do paper piecing for love or money, and now I am obsessed with it. The accuracy is amazing and each block turns out just like its sisters. I sure wish they came in a 4" size.  I am also working on some 4" log cabin blocks and using a Creative Grids ruler.  It's going ok, but I sure do prefer the papers.

So I used my leftover French General strips and made a super cute Log Cabin table runner.  I am sending it off to be quilted this week. I doubt I'll get it back in time for Valentine's Day, but I may put it out anyway! It will look so good on my dining room table.

The colossal mess pictured above is my sewing table. I was using my little Fiskars cutting mat to trim the seams after each addition. I realized while I was using it that it is really beat up. I have never had to replace a cutting mat in my entire life of sewing, but I did order myself a new one. I have probably had this one for twelve years or so and have used it constantly for trimming small block units. Replacing it is sure cheaper than replacing the bigger mats on my cutting table, so I don't mind. The small size is so handy, so keep it in mind as a way to save your larger mats.

I had a very productive weekend, but we are commencing back to homeschooling today. My plan is to try to carve out a couple of hours of stitching each afternoon when school's out. Fingers crossed!

Small Blue and White Project for 2021

I enjoy starting out the new year with a blue and white project. Typically they are small table toppers. For some reason, I always associate blue and white with the month of January. This year Moda Fabrics is kicking off the first weekend in the new year with a Log Cabin sew-along. There is a post about it on the Fatquartershop's blog Jolly Jabber. 

I had some lovely leftover strips from a quilt I made in the summer of 2019 and thought they would be perfect for a small navy and white table topper composed of four or six log cabin blocks.

This was probably my favorite quilt made in 2019. It is a pattern by Thimbleblossoms called Sweet Escape. I used a collection of prints from Sweetwater called Sweet Tea. I am really pleased with how it turned out. Anyway, I have loads of navy strips leftover and it feels good to use them.

Making a small blue and white quilt in January has become a tradition without me even really being aware of it. Here are some of the little January table toppers I have made over the past three or four years.

This is a fun way to use those little house blocks everyone has been making. I used leftover blue and white Snowman Gatherings prints from a Primitive Gathering project. I even quilted this one myself.

And I still had fabric leftover, so I made another topper with square in a square blocks. See that beautiful little cardinal card? That was my daughter Sara's Christmas card this year. She actually painted a watercolor of the cardinal and had it made into her Christmas card. She is so talented with her watercolor painting.

This was last year's blue and white table topper. At least I was able to move away from my leftover Primitive Gatherings fabric! And it still needs to have the binding sewn down. I told you I procrastinate. I will finish it this week and put it under my January tiered tray arrangement.

What kind of projects do you like to do at the beginning of the year? Do you start something new?

 

Last Finish of 2020

Happy New Year friends! I hope you all started the year off healthy and full of hope for a great 2021. My husband and I managed to stay up, or should I say wake up at midnight to give each other a smooch and a Happy New Year wish. There was lots of banging and fireworks sounds going on in my neighborhood, so evidently, others nearby were giving 2020 a big send-off.

The photo above is of my Red Pineapple quilt. What a project that quilt has been. I can't tell you how happy I am to have this quilt finally finished. I started this quilt back in 2013 and used up most of my stash of French General fabrics on hand at the time. Which was a lot. I used a special trimming ruler called The Pineapple Rule, made by Possibilities, which you cannot buy anymore. Trimming the blocks was a horrendous chore, I don't mind telling you. In retrospect, I should have paper pieced these blocks. 

I would work on the blocks for a week or so, get totally sick of the process and put the project away. When I was reminded of how spectacular a Pineapple quilt can be, I was prompted to take it out again and work on it for a bit until I couldn't stand it anymore. I would always find myself thinking, I should have paper pieced these blocks.

Despite the supposed precision of the trimming ruler, the white strips along the edges were not all exactly the same length, even though the blocks all came out at 12 1/2" unfinished. Sewing the blocks and rows together was made much more complicated and unpleasant by that issue. I should have paper pieced those blocks.

I made 42 blocks and sewed them into seven rows of six blocks each. 45 pieces in each block for a total of 1890 pieces. It will fit nicely on my queen-sized bed. The best part of the quilt is that I didn't give up and waste all that beautiful French General fabric. However, it will be some time before I ever tackle a large Pineapple block project such as this.  Probably never.  But if I do, I can tell you I will paper piece those blocks.

Sewcialites Re-Set

I had a talk with myself over the weekend and had to admit that I was not loving my Sewcialites Sew-Along quilt blocks.  I was using fabric that just wasn't floating my boat. I think I'd like the Betsy Chutchian fabrics I had chosen in smaller bits, but not in the big 9" blocks I was making. I had made around a dozen blocks and decided not to invest any more of that fabric or my time making a queen-sized quilt top.

So I pushed my fabric re-set button, had a rummage through my stash, and came up with a new game plan. I pulled red, black, and gold/tan fabric from several designers (Jo Morton, Renee Nannemann, and Pam Buda) and remade 13 blocks in the 6" block size. It will be a smaller quilt, but I think the fabric colors are more cohesive and will make a nice statement together.

For reference, these are some of the blocks I had made with the other fabrics:

Pink, purple, black, green, and (inexplicably) blue. Hmm.  I am usually pretty good at this, but what the heck was I thinking? Just because a designer puts numerous colors in a fabric collection does not mean you have to use them all together. 

On another note, I have come to think that when making a sampler quilt comprised of 36 or more different block patterns, it might pull things together more to use just one background fabric instead of a dozen varied ones. That cohesive thing again.

I had an absolutely delightful Saturday and Sunday starching, cutting, and re-doing my 13 Sewcialites blocks and am much happier.

I was in my happy zone, binge-listening to a new reading podcast discovery.  A Strong Sense of Place is the name of it.  It is a blog and a podcast done by an absolutely charming husband and wife duo. They put out two extremely well-researched podcasts per month where they discuss and recommend books that have a strong sense of place.  For each episode, they pick a country or a city or a place, such as Paris, Germany, the Circus, etc. They also discuss books that are specific to a holiday or a setting.  They have a show on Halloween books, and my favorite so far: books that are set on Trains.  Their recommendations are not all new books by any means.  They often recommend older books that are dirt cheap on Kindle or readily available through your library. I highly recommend both their blog and podcast. Besides, they seem like super nice people you would like to know better. 

Hope you all had a great weekend.  Ready for Christmas this week? It will be different from the norm, I am sure, but I plan to try to find the wonder in it regardless.

My intention is to post Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week, then I will be taking a break between Christmas and New Year's. I'll be back to my usual posting schedule on Monday, Jan. 4. 

Cutest Mug Rug Ever

You have to admit this is the most perfect mug rug ever. I am just so pleased with this and want to make one for every woman in my life. If you need a cute, last-minute gift for someone, this might do the trick for you too.

The pattern is a block from one of Lori Holt's books, "Quilty Fun". I added a border to the block to make it a bit larger. It took no time to make, and is such a great gift for a girlfriend, a teacher, a stocking stuffer.  Who wouldn't love one of these? 

I apologize for the brevity of this post. My husband and I have doctor's appointments on Monday and Tuesday and are getting ready for a trip out of town to see the doctors. I have a busy few days coming up! 

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Red Pineapple Blocks, Apple Crostata, and Quiche

I could have sworn I posted Tuesday.  But when I got up in the morning to read my comments from you all, there weren't any.  What? Well, I hadn't posted anything for anyone to comment on.  I am losing it I tell you.  Our governor has issued another strict stay at home order for our area, and we are not supposed to mingle with anyone outside our household or go anywhere unnecessary.  There goes Christmas. My mind has been everywhere but focused on what it needs to be!

I have been working on my last five red pineapple blocks, and they are so gorgeous.  I have two more rounds to put on these last blocks and then I am going to sew those puppies together. What a great quilt this will be for next Christmas!

After, what, forty-some blocks I am getting pretty good at using the Possibilities Pineapple Ruler. Do you see how I drew diagonal lines on that center block? That is the key to keeping things from going wonky on you. You line up the center lines on the diagonal lines of the center block and make sure the diagonal and horizontal lines on the rest of the ruler line up. You just want to keep everything super straight. It is a challenge, but if you do your best, the blocks will turn out quite well.

ADDED LATER: A reader asked where she could purchase this ruler, and after an extensive online search, I am unable to find it. I am imagining that the company "Possibilities" must have gone out of business. Linda Milligan and Nancy Smith (who created the ruler) also wrote a book or too with "Possibilities" in the title.  Some of those you can still get, but since they feature the Possibilities rulers, they might not be so useful. Maybe eBay would be a source to find a used Pineapple Rule.

For our baking project this week, Eva and I made a Rustic Apple Crostata. It was an Ina Garten (The Barefoot Contessa) recipe and was delicious!  Her crust was a teensy bit hard to work with. I should have used my tried and true recipe for the crust, but I was honoring her recipe by following it to the letter. The crust was awfully flakey and kind of fell apart, but what the heck.  We served it with a spoon and called it lunch.

Since her recipe made two crusts, I saved the second one to make a quiche for dinner. 

And that turned out pretty well too.  The secret to quiche (and pumpkin pie) is that you need to partially bake the crust before you fill it.  No more soggy bottomed pies if you bake the crust for a bit before filling it.

Hope your week is going well!

 

Square in a Square Blocks

I always think Square in a Square blocks are one of the most difficult block units to make. There are so many ways to go wrong when attaching the triangles around the sides of the square. And when things go wrong, you have a wonky unit with inadequate seam allowance at your points.

I have had the best luck making these square in a square units using a tool designed by Deb Tucker called the Square Squared® ruler. It has marks on it showing the exact size to make your center square for a variety of sized finished units. The tool has the size for cutting your triangles printed on it as well. You end up with a slightly oversized unit, as you see on the right in the photo above. You then use the ruler to precision cut your final unit with the square perfectly positioned and the exact 1/4" seam allowance at all four of your points. My trimmed unit is on the left.

Deb has a great YouTube tutorial that explains way better than I can, just how to use the tool for perfect Square in a Square blocks.

This tool has been in my collection for at least 10 years, but I sometimes forget I have it and always regret it when I do. My Square in a Square blocks never come out as well.

The reason I was using it the other day was that I didn't care for the most recent Sewcialites Sew Along block offering. (Do you see a pattern here?) I made a substitute block that I preferred and my little block units came out so nicely with the Square Squared tool.

My source for this substitute block pattern was a little "book" of blocks called "The Quick and Easy Block Tool".  It is a funny little thing that reminds me of a book of fabric swatches or wallpaper samples. It is full of great quilt blocks in numerous sizes. I like the small size of it, and find it easy to follow. However, I don't think the book comes in this format anymore.  I found something similar that is an actual book on Amazon.

Hope you all had a great weekend and managed to squeeze some sewing in amidst all the holiday hoopla and preparations.

Sunsets and Quilt Blocks

Goodness, did we ever have a spectacular sunset last night! My husband took this picture and captured all the glory of it. Amazing.

So how is your Christmas shopping going?  I am finding it really hard to shop for a few people on my gift list because I can't physically go to a shop and be inspired by displays and suggestions. For most of the folks on my list, I have a specific item in mind and it's a no-brainer to shop for it online. Black Sketchers, size 12, check. Oxo cutting board, size large, check. American Girl doll, check. But for some family members, I don't have a gift list and want to do something creative and interesting. Under $100. Honestly, I have been having such a time. I may have solved it today, but what a struggle. I sure miss being able to shop in an actual store.

I've made three 6-inch blocks for my Moda BlockHeads 3 this week. I have to say that the last two block offerings have not been to my taste at all. I think the BlockHeads designers are running out of steam. Arrows? And a super primitive flower applique. They didn't seem to go with anything in the quilt so far. So I didn't use them. Luckily, I have several sources for 6-inch block patterns that did not let me down. Actually, I just used the Lori Holt book "Farm Girl Vintage".

Hope you all have an excellent weekend!