Love All Around

Love All Around Blocks

I came across a tutorial for these blocks at http://www.maychappell.com/2017/01/20/love-all-around-tutorial/ last weekend, and immediately thought of a bundle of floral prints waiting for a project. Those fabrics didn't make the cut, instead this mix of reproductions and modern prints came together. I sized up the block to use my die cutter, and these finish at 12". They'll get sashing, possibly scrappy to make a small wall or cuddle quilt. The tutorial is excellent.

The die cut pieces gave me some challenges, and only after finishing the blocks did it become clear that keeping in mind the direction of the fabric came into play. It's recommended to have the length of grain (warp) going parallel to the length of the die, and since several of these fabrics were directional, that was overlooked.

Two charity quilts are ready for batting, one more ready to quilt. All of them are the scrappy strips from 2.5" pieces.

My collection of fabric strings is being thinned, organized and cut into ~7" lengths. Using them as leader/enders, as well as testing tension on a new-to-me straight stitch machine, 23 blocks were pieced this week. First in line is a lap-sized tumbler quilt, using pink, yellow and orange strings.

Outtakes

Usually the cat tries to get in on every photo shoot. A few days ago it was the puppy, and right now he is sitting behind me at the computer, demanding attention though his treat ball was just loaded with kibbles.



Arne, almost 7 months, American Lab

He is also a big fan of yarn, having chewed the edge off a small wool blanket that lived on the sofa, and investigates any project in progress (knitting basket on the floor instead of out of reach.) Last night he climbed on my lap while I was in my low comfy chair reading, and settled in very quietly.  Time to go outside and make some snowballs with the remnants of snow before it melts.

Handmade Holidays 2016

It just doesn't feel like the holidays without a few last-minute projects. Narrowing down gift ideas brought me to several smallish projects, and one large quilt. Having some larger than expected work projects kept me busy late in the month.

Microwave bowls - made from cotton batting and fabric, using an excellent tutorial written by my local quilt group's leader. I had missed a retreat where she gave a demo, but had seen some of the completed projects. The bowls are used under dishware to act as a hotpad when removing the heated food. I made three sets, each with a larger, flatter bowl and a slightly smaller, deeper bowl. I plan to make a set for us and also for a friend who saw them and thought they looked useful.

Deep stash - Patrick Lose

My Sister placed the large bowl on her head...had to explain what it was

Pattern weights - to accompany some sewing notions. Many of the online tutorials made larger weights, and used squares. I used a single rectangle cut 6.5" x 3.5".

Pattern weight pyramids

The largest project was finished today - a quilt for my nephew. He is quilt-worthy, as he told me how much he enjoys the graduation quilt I made him (which his parents told him was "too nice" to take to school.) On Christmas Eve he opened a box containing some of the blocks, but I kept the overall design a secret. The Fractured design is from Making Quilts by Kathy Doughty. The sub-block has been around a long time, and I have several templates cut from plexiglass in different sizes. I did mirror some of the shapes as in Kathy's quilt, though I drew it up for sizing with all blocks (except the center column) the same orientation. I pulled the colors from the backing, Animal Spirits by Robert Kaufman (I was gifted just under 5 yards of it.) Some batiks, some hand-dyes, Fossil Ferns and others, all from stash.

Fractured, 82" x 69"

Fractured backing

Two other finishes include the quilting and binding on Flight Path, and a small Homespun Scraps chair seat cover (a utility quilt.) This uses the same block as the Pink Jelly Roll Scraps quilt, not yet quilted.

Homespun Scraps, 30" x 30"

Flight Path quilting - spirals

I would really like to play with the Christmas Sweater block that I purchased from xxx, but have several clothing repair projects and some serious sewing room cleaning first.

I've completed five knitted charity hats in the past two months, and have the 6th on the needles.

Jelly Roll Scraps

Jelly Roll Scraps are blocks made from leftover 2.5" strips. I tend to group scraps by color, and also have a small stack of 2.5" strips that are full width of fabric. Pulling one busy yellow paisley fabric with pink, green, orange and white in it gave me a color palette. In a scrappy quilt the more the merrier, and there were several pinks and yellows that gave some pop. Soft greens fit too, and a cream with a sage green print gave some light to the mix.

Block layout step 1

Initially planning on 16 10" blocks for a small charity quilt, I stacked up 16 piles of strips to spread out the colors. Each stack was sewn end-to-end with a straight seam, pressed then cut into 10.5" strips. Rather than trying to sew sets of 5 strips together, I started with 4 strips, sewed the pairs, then each pair together, and pulled a 5th strip. When chain piecing it's much easier with even numbers.

There were enough for 20 blocks. After pressing the blocks it was apparent that some of my strips had not been a full 2.5" wide, so the blocks were trimmed down to 10.25" so they were square. Every other block was rotated in the layout to give a bit of a woven effect.

Jelly Roll Scraps top ready to quilt

This was another fun and satisfying project. It's great to work on casual, fun sewing. Pink flannel is ready for the backing, and it will probably be quilted with a butterfly pattern.

I've pulled fabrics already for a small chair cover for the living room with this block, using up a collection of brown, blue and red homey fabrics.

Project Leap Frog

New quilt projects always want to be at the top of the project list. Lately I've been dividing other projects into segments to trade off with working on new things.

The Flight Path blocks are an example. The trimmings from the flip-and-trim flying geese in these blocks became more interesting than these somewhat fussy blocks. Working on small blocks is just so fun and addictive! Plus I found a box of narrow Christmas print strips that really wanted to be used with the small pinwheels.

Christmas Pinwheel block layout

The border is going to be a red print, so the green blocks are in the center and outer ring.

Flight Path top

The Flight Path top is finally ready to be quilted. My stash yielded a pale green crosshatch that will fit for a backing when pieced with a diagonal seam (John Flynn's method.) None of the fabrics are actually Christmas prints.

Finishes, Part 2

Bento Box/Jelly Roll Rescue

This project came to me in a large bag of fabric, gifted to me by a quilter. It was an abandoned jelly roll project, some pieces cut, a few sewn together, all wadded up in a small produce bag. It is not fabric that I would have purchased, still I took the time to take the pieces apart, iron everything and store in a box. The Bento Box pattern seemed like a good option, as many of the cut pieces were already 2.5" squares. I had a lot of fun with this pattern last year (3 Christmas quilts.)

This is not really Christmas fabric, but the colors do read that way. It sat for a long while, the blocks finally came together, and the layout & assembly was worked on at my last quilt retreat. The real bonus was finding the border - in my stash, leftover from a quilt made several years ago, and it is the same print in some of the center's fabric, in red instead of green or white. This photo shows the solid red binding sewn to the top but not yet turned. Again--sunny and dry today so the quilt stand went outside for photos.

Size is 69" x 57" The backing is a Windham soft gold from my studio, and the quilting pattern is "Plain Paisley", which fit since many of the prints are paisleys, including the border. This will be a gift quilt.

It's Sunny, Time for Photos

Many Trips - 100" x 100"

Close up, 2.5" finished squares

 

Backing and Spilled Ink quilt pattern

My largest quilt in a long while is a variation on Bonnie Hunter's "Many Trips" pattern. The goal was to work with my favorite fabrics--the ones that I've been saving. Some are even less than a year old.  The start was a bundle of Da Gama indigo prints that had been purchased from Reproduction Fabrics at least 10 years ago, already pre-washed and treated with Retayne. They became the strong diagonal through the blocks.

 

Playing with layouts in EQ7, I discovered that with 5 strips instead of 6, I could make rectangular designs rather than square. This is most visible looking at the light squares. The other bonus was that all the blocks have the same color order, and the rotation alone created the effect. 3" cut strips show just a bit more of some of the patterns.

 

The backing fabric was the only new purchase for this quilt. It is Luxe Vine Maze by Michael Miller. It has a nice soft hand, and I like that the background is not white. It shrank a lot - 6" in width, plenty of length was purchased fortunately.

 

It was very fun to work with favorite fabrics! The light grey in each block is Aboriginal Dots by Kaffe Fassett, and there was just enough in stash for the quilt.

 

 

Blue Woven is a small charity quilt made from strings. I devised a cardboard template that allowed me to wrap the strings around it and cut many at once. The strong patterned strips were distributed among the 36 blocks. Borders and binding are scrappy too, the backing is a light blue flannel star. Quilting is "Stars and Loops", and it's 39" square.