Getting Things Going

I'd be fibbing if I said that I just jumped in and started sewing the blocks for Miss P. The block has a number of steps - 5 pages, to be exact - and I spent more than a little time pouring over them before finally taking the plunge.

There's also an excellent video tutorial from Sew Kind of Wonderful and it too got several views just so that I was comfortable with the process before starting anything.

Both Roberta and I made each of the four quadrants of our blocks from four different fabrics and that mixing and matching part makes for SO much scrappy fun!

Add in selecting the strips and corner triangles and it's a little piece of scrappy heaven in every block.

That little 1" centre square was just the icing on the cake.

Where I struggled a little was using the slightly darker backgrounds for a block as I tend to use a soft neutral most times.

But once I saw them combined with the lighter blocks I could really start to see how they provided depth and interest (there might have been a few little squeals of delight happening at this point...).

The thing that really makes this quilt special for me is that it combines fabrics from both of our stashes, creating something truly wonderful. Interestingly, this phrase from a selvedge was tied around a bundle of neutrals that Roberta had wrapped up for me: Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower. How apt....M 

Miss P: The Early Days

It wasn't until I started digging into my Posh Penelope pics that I remembered that Roberta had started one in the spring of 2022 and then convinced me to join in, which I did in July.

She has such a fabulous stash. Lots of time was spent trying to figure out what her colour palette might be, borrowing a lot from Lori Holt and then adding in her own touches. 

This was a trial run - a wall hanging - to see if she was prepared to make a full sized quilt. Very soft and dreamy.

And after it was quilted it took on another layer of softness.

A summer quilt if I ever did see one....M

Say Hello to Miss P

Not only do many of my projects take a long time, I also seem to have a genuine knack for dragging my heels on sharing them. Case in point, Posh Penelope by Sew Kind of Wonderful, or Miss P as she is known to Roberta and I. Like we did for Holiday Forest, we decided to work on this one together hoping that the buddy system would keep things moving (I need all of the help that I can get!).

Believe it or not, we started this quilt three years ago and I don't think that I have shared anything about it with you. It is made using the Quick Curve ruler but 'quick' is a bit of a misnomer for me (Roberta's a different story) as my blocks are all sewn but still need to be sewn into a flimsy.

Wanting to have as much variety in our fabrics as possible because we needed 168 assorted fabrics for the petals, we decided to each cut and then swap pieces; three years ago today was the date of our swap. We had more than enough variety so each of our final fabric choices were far from identical.

This was my fabric pull.

And this.

And these are the neutrals/low volume, mostly solid prints that I used for the bands that cut across the corners.

It was like klepto quilting (basically 'shopping' in someone else's stash for free) but even better, because everything was cut to size! These are some of the 1" squares needed at the centre of each block.

Where we differed in our approach was how we treated the narrow strip that runs across each corner - Roberta went with strong prints...

and mine were more neutral/low volume. It's interesting to see the difference in the final product.

More to come in the next few posts...M

The Borders Make All the Difference

Autumn Leaves is not a pattern that I would have chosen for myself, but once the borders were attached it really came into its own.

A narrow brown border and a wider multi print piano key border finish it off. From the fabric bits that came in the box it appears that the brown print on the left was intended for the narrow border but it just seemed a little flat. There was a piece of the orange that you see in the upper right, but it wasn't going to work either, so I dug into my stash and found the brown in the bottom right corner. It was warmer than the first option and went nicely with all of the prints.

The pattern shows that brown border as being 2" finished but I narrowed it down to 1" and was happy with the effect - no so clunky. 

Little or no thought was needed when sewing the slabs for the outer border together, which things along nicely.

And the corners required no special treatment which was another stroke of good luck. Soon it was all together.

I took it back to the gals at the church before taking a shot of the flimsy, but apparently it's all marked now and ready to be quilted so it's time to make the backing. I'll have photos of the entire quilt for you later, but this beautiful Jacobean print is what I will be using for the backing, which was also provided. A sticker is still on the bolt and it looks like she paid $7/metre for it - bargoon!

All in all, I think it's going to be a great raffle quilt for the Holly Bazaar later this fall....M