Sister's Choice Quilts

Hodge Podge

Well, this is a mess.  My sewing room has so many projects going on, it doesn't know what hit it.  I have three block of the week projects in process, and enjoy seeing my completed blocks on display, so there you are. 
A big mess.

Thank you all so much for your kind comments and wonderful response to my post yesterday.  Hartman was, as one reader said, "an angel who passed through my life".  I truly believe that and am so grateful to those of you who related to my story.  I was absolutely thrilled to hear from one reader who had taken a university course from Hartman's wife!  I am so happy he found a kindred spirit with whom he could share his life.

I finished two of the three Piecing the Past "Comfort and Joy" blocks for this week.  And they were doozies.  (Does anyone say "doozies" anymore?).  They were the most difficult so far in this sew-along, particularly the blue block on the right.  It is called "Sparkler". The block instructions are for a 9" block, which I thought was too big.  I am reducing my block size down to 6", and for the life of me could not find instructions for this block in any of my books.  All the others I have been able to reference in other quilting block reference books, but not this one.  Lord help me, I had to do the math.

It came out pretty accurate.  Don't look too close or you might see a tiny pucker I am doing my best to ignore.  It took me all afternoon Monday to get that block finished.  The block on the left, "Windmill", had a lot of little pieces and it was tricky to get all the intersections to line up, but in the end, it was a success.  

The remaining block is a simple Ohio Star, so I will whip that together at some point this week.

If you are interested, here are my tried and true quilt block reference books.  They contain a plethora of blocks with instructions to make them in various sizes from 3" up to 12".

This is my go-to, tried and true reference book for quilt blocks.  And I am so so sorry to tell you that you cannot get this book anywhere unless you pay over $100 for a used copy.  If you see one at a garage sale or thrift shop, do not hesitate, snap it up.

This one is readily available and is quite good, but not nearly as comprehensive as the one above.  

Please, do share--if you have a favorite quilt block reference tool, can you tell us about it?

Scrap Quilt

Greetings fellow shut-ins.  Hope you all had a good weekend.  We cleaned the house from top to bottom, spent a lot of time on the front porch, planted some summer annuals, and got in a wee bit of sewing.

I tidied the sewing room as part of the cleaning effort, and somehow the project box with my Scrapbusting blocks ended up on the top of the pile.  I listened to book review podcasts while I stitched up a few more blocks. I will actually be really happy to use up this fabric, which has been taking up a lot of space in my stash bins.

To refresh your memory, the instructions for this block can be found at Border Creek Station, Ontario, Canada.  They call the project "Bust That Stash", and it is their 2020 Stashbusting Challenge.  There are so many ways to put these blocks together.

I have been using this BlocLoc Strip Set Ruler to cut out my little sections for the four patch units.  It certainly does keep your units nice and straight.  There is a groove in the ruler that nestles right into the seam "ditch", which keeps things perfectly lined up.

I think the Typepad issues are mostly worked out by now.  The technician suggested I publish my post manually, so it had to wait until I got up this morning at 6:00 rather than posting at 4:00 PDT as usual.  With luck I will be back on schedule tomorrow as usual!

Getting Outside

I had to take a break and go outside today.  The weather still isn't very nice, but my pansies seem quite happy with the rain, grey skies and cool temperatures.  I am longing for warmer days spent out on the porch.  I see myself surrounded by hanging flower baskets, wearing my white jeans...Oh wait, they don't fit anymore because I have spent the last month indoors eating comfort food.  Am I wrong, but doesn't it seem harder to eat fresh healthy salads when you can only go to the store once a week?  I have been ending up with enchiladas, stuffed shells and tamale pie.  Chocolate cake, scones, ice cream bars and pound cake.  This.Must.Stop.

I've been stitching away making more of these little blocks, and now have a total of 120.  For a full sized quilt I need something like 357, so I have a way to go.  I had an unfortunate realization after I had made a couple dozen of these blocks yesterday.  I had forgotten that the corner units need to be pressed toward the darker fabric in order for the blocks to nest nicely together when assembled.  I had been merrily pressing them all outward, as one does typically with these corner units.

That was fun, re-pressing all those blocks the right way.  Arrggghhh.

I started in on one of my new books, The Guest List by Lucy Foley, and it is really good.  In the style of an Agatha Christie Who-done-it, the story is set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland.  A house party assembles for a wedding and one of the guests gets murdered.  The twist is, the reader doesn't know who got murdered for quite a while because the story is told in flashbacks.  You understand that one of these characters is going to get what they deserve, you just aren't sure which one.  And they are mostly all odious, so half the fun is not only figuring out who did it, but who it got done to.  

As always, I hope your week is going well.  We are headed into the weekend now, but it doesn't feel any different than any other day, does it?  Wherever you are, whatever it is you are doing, stay safe and well.

What Exactly Was I Doing With This?

Well, this would be a one block quilt that I started over a year ago, packed up into a project box and put away in the closet.  As you see, I had made a bunch of blocks.

I certainly had cut out a lot of strips.  But where were the instructions?  Was the block from a book?  Maybe a magazine?  I had no recollection.  At first.  I started thinking maybe I had gotten the idea from Instagram, and that it may have been a sew along hosted by a fabric shop.  I thought The Quilted Moose may have sponsored a one block sew along.  They had indeed, but not this one.  I finally Googled "One Block Quilt" and what do you supposed popped up?  Why my very own post on Sister's Choice Quilts about a fun sew along Temecula Quilts was hosting.  Hello.  Honestly, getting older is the pits.

So, here we are.  I found the instructions online, still available and free for anyone.  Back in January 2019 Temecula Quilts started a sew along called "One Block Wednesday".  As usual for me, I thought, 'I certainly have a lot of fabric to use up, I should do that".  And I started it, and it ended up getting put away.  

After I copied out the online instructions, of course, I found my previous notes from 2019 put away in a drawer.  Why I did not include them in the box with the fabric strips and completed blocks is a mystery.  Further proof of my diminishing mental capacity I am sure.

This turned out to be an enjoyable afternoon after I figured out what I was supposed to be doing.  It will be a fun project to pick up and stitch a few blocks on when I have a moment.  It does use up fabric.  You need to be able to cut one 2" x WOF strip each of a light and a dark fabric, or two 2" x 21" strips of both a dark and a light fabric for four blocks.  Easy peasy and what fun it is to put the different scrappy combos together.  It would be great in any type of fabric you have leftover from other projects.  How often have you cut into a fat quarter bundle for a new project and had tons left over?  There you go.

The blocks are only 3 1/2", so you could make a quilt any size depending on how much fabric you have.  The blocks are small enough that it would make a fantastic table topper or runner.

You might be wondering why I am not showing you my latest block from the Moda BlockHeads 3 sew along, which came out yesterday.  No.  Just no.  Not my cuppa tea this week.  I've made a few extra blocks, so I think I will sit this week out.

Hope your week is going well.  For me, I will be getting back to homeschooling Eva next week, so I am making the most of all my free time this week.

 

Productive Weekend

I did not set foot outside my house for the past three days, and got a lot of sewing done!  My husband being glued to the tv watching various football games also helped my productivity level.

What have I been working on?  Well, a couple of things.  My main sewing project is First Flake in navy and white.  It is simple strip piecing, but you have to have your wits about you when you are laying out the pieces because it is very easy to turn one of those half square triangles the wrong way and end up spending some time bonding with your seam ripper.  I speak from experience.  I have 18 rows completed, sewn into two nine row sections.  I think this is such a striking looking quilt and cannot wait to display it.

I've also done some wool appliqué, which was fun, but ended up looking like a ten-year-old did it.  That's ok, I am enjoying myself and know I will get better with practice.   In 2020 I want to listen to more audiobooks, and these little projects are a good thing to work on with my hands while I do that.

That super cute mug is one of my favorite new things, from Anthropologie.  Only $12 and worth every penny.  I love the look of the tiny subway tiles and the beautiful initial.  Don't worry, if your name doesn't start with "N" they still have you covered.  It makes me happy when I have my coffee!

Bindings and Buns

I think I will be hand sewing bindings on for the next little while.  I was so provoked that I did not have enough of the dark green border fabric for the binding on the Corn and Beans quilt.  It was a little kit, and you would think they would have included that fabric in it, but they didn't.  Or if they did include it, I misplaced it, which is entirely possible.  At any rate, I had to "make do" with what I had on hand, and I am not really happy with it.  I made it really narrow, so with luck, it won't stand out too much.

Do you remember a few months back I was complaining that I was very disorganized with keeping track of my binding fabrics?  You all gave me lots of great advice, including the suggestion that I cut and press the binding strips the minute I finish a quilt top so it will be all ready to go when the quilt gets back from being quilted.  I am still not that organized, but I do have a system.  I dug out a little storage basket and as I finish a quilt top I put the required fabric for the binding right into that basket.  All my future bindings are right there all together waiting for when I need them.  At least I am not losing my binding fabric or heaven forbid, using it in another project.  Sometimes I have quilt tops sitting around for years before they are quilted, so in the past, there were many opportunities for the quilt and its binding fabric to go their separate ways.

This is the project I am really anxious to get back to.  Those bat blocks are nice and complex and require a bit of thought to put together.  Luckily I am only making a table runner consisting of five blocks, so there is an actual chance that this will get finished before the end of the month.  

How is your week going?  I am getting a much needed hair cut today and expect that I will be feeling like a new woman the next time I chat with you.  Honestly, it has been months since I cut my hair.  The only thing to be done with it is to put it in a bun or a ponytail.  I must make a better effort.  Honestly, I look like my Grandma Agnes, who wore her hair in a bun for 80 of her 98 years on earth.  Who knows, she could have been born with a bun.  I never saw her without it.

Dazed and Confused

Oh boy.  This quilt has been a process I tell you.  I started it one, maybe two years ago and it has had me scratching my head from the get go.  The instructions are fine.  It is just me being super confused about the diagonal layout and frustrated by my choices of fabrics.  It is supposed to be a scrappy quilt, but man, trying not to have the same prints or colors next to each other has been making me absolutely twitchy.

The pattern is gorgeous, and the instructions are pretty clear.  It is a Miss Rosie pattern called "Into the Wind", and when she was producing them herself there was admittedly more text and explanation, which I kind of miss.  However, the instructions are all there and just needed a smarter person than me to decipher them.  I took it step by step and still had a number of hiccups along the way.  I just could not seem to wrap my head around the layout.  There are also some partial blocks around the border that threw me for a loop for some reason as well.  And all those prints...well, I really tried not to get the same ones right next to each other, but it was hard.

I also ran out of light background prints and had to order more.  I packed the project away for months and months and when I dragged it out again it was like re-inventing the wheel to get back up to speed as to what I needed to do next.  Ugh.  The fabric is Larkspur by 3 Sisters by the way.  It is a kind of random assortment of pink, red, aqua and gold.  The effect from a distance is interesting, up close, I am not so sure.

i am in the final stages of sewing the rows together and will be thrilled to get this off my design wall!

 

 

Stars and Baskets Christmas Quilt Setting

I am making a lot of flying geese.  A lot. You see 140 of them in the photo above, and I have at least that many more to make.  

I absolutely love this setting, which makes the quilt as far as I am concerned.  It ties all the different blocks together cohesively in a beautifully unifying way.  The blocks started out as a sew along that Primitive Gatherings sponsored a couple of years ago.  There were 25 different 6 1/2" blocks, each one a star, with lots of tiny little pieces.  It was the first time I had tackled making 2 1/2 inch stars or 1 inch half square triangles in any sort of quantity.  I definitely learned a lot about piecing with mini sized block units.  And my blocks weren't really very good when I re-examined them two years later.  It was a learning process and I am grateful for the practice.  

I needed 48 blocks for the setting shown above, so I needed to make more blocks.  And I also needed to re-make most of the blocks I had constructed two years ago.  So here is what I have learned for making successful and accurately pieced blocks:

1)  Starch your fabric before cutting
2)  Make your units a bit larger and trim up each one to an accurate size
3) Use trimming tools such as specialty flying geese rulers such as BlocLoc or Fit to be Geese
4) Use triangle papers for making half square triangles- they are a godsend for those tiny 1" ones
5) Trim your final block to the designated size

I have to give a big shout out to Carrie Nelson who designed this brilliant setting.  She used it for her Moda Blockheads 1 sew along blocks, but honestly, it works fabulously for any type of sampler blocks that you want to look tied together.  For my extra blocks, I wanted to have a basket block in each quadrant, and those patterns came from several different sources.  I used a couple of sources for block ideas.  Both have instructions for blocks in several different sizes.

I'm so pleased with how this project is coming together--maybe I will get a finish this week!

 

Aurora Coming Together

I was running out of room on my design wall, so I decided to start sewing my Aurora stars together so I could fit more on the wall.

I cannot tell you how much I am in love with this quilt.  The stars are precious, and exactly the right size.  It is completely worth the effort to make a gazillion of these little 4 inch square stars.  Also, and it doesn't show up so well in the photo, the outer setting triangles in the blowsy taupe rose print are just perfect.  The background squares have the same taupe figure in them, just a bit more subtle.

This one is going to be a real favorite I think!

In other news, Eva is back from theater camp.  She was in a youth theater production of Esther.  I am not totally up on my Bible stories, and had to Google Esther.  It's complicated, but basically, she saved her people, the Jews, from slaughter.   Eva managed to learn her lines and the dance numbers, but was in it for the fun of being with the other kids.  She came home at the end of the week totally exhausted, and honestly still hasn't quite recovered.  We have been taking it real easy around here.  We did some reading and school activities to keep things fresh in her mind over the summer, went to the pool, did a fun watercolor and salt art project.  We had the nicest lunch outside Monday afternoon.  She is at the age where she can help make her lunch and loves taking part in whatever I am doing.  We cut up fruit and made sandwiches and carried them out to the back porch and enjoyed a nice conversation while we ate.  I am really enjoying my time with her.  That is Eva, fourth on the right, next to Esther.

Sewing Blahs

I am kind of stalled out on this project, to tell you the truth.  Not long ago, I finished a Double Nine Patch quilt that called for many nine patch blocks, and it was probably not the best idea to start another project involving nine patch blocks so soon.  I have really been putting off sitting down at the sewing machine.

I have purchased the border fabrics and have about 2/3 of the blocks done, but I am feeling so blah about sewing right now.  What do you do when you are feeling like that?  Do you fold up the project for another day and move on to something else?  Or do you buckle down and get going?

Maybe I have Post Vacation Blues?  All I want to do is sit outside with a book!  The weather has been in the 80s and so lovely outside.  It is hard to stay indoors.