Who Am I?

Not surprisingly, Roberta was the first to the finish line with her Miss P, and what a masterpiece it is! The multi-coloured petals seem to shimmer on the breeze and the various depths of the block backgrounds make it appear as though it is being seen through dappled light. It is spectacular.

The real piece de resistance is the backing that she chose. She's a longarmer so there were a lot of options at her disposal. She chose a very vibrant and graphic one - an absolute explosion of bright and colourful blossoms with lace doilies scattered throughout. This is interesting because she's a devout Kansas Troubles kind of gal, always drawn to very traditional colours and prints, so when she landed on this as her backing no one was more surprised than her. I seem to remember receiving a "Who am I?" text 😉.

It is just so perfect.

And just to prove it, Miss Ivy gave it her seal of approval.

What's even more perfect is the black and white striped binding that she finished it with. Lots of squealing going on over at her machine...

So her quilt has been finished for several months now and mine is still a pile of blocks. Seeing these photos again has just reconfirmed that the time is nigh to put mine together....M

Tricky Curves & Batch Processing

Four pairs of petals build out into a beautiful blossom in each block of this quilt and choosing which four prints to use in each block was a lot of fun.

I started out making one block at a time to ensure that I got things right but after a considerable stall, and needing 42 completed blocks, around 15 blocks in I moved to batch processing to get things moving along faster, first four at a time and at some points, eight at a time.

As more and more blocks were sewn it seemed a good idea to decide on all of the colour combos for each block to ensure that I had fabric mixes that suited rather than doing that as I went, so eventually I did that.

It was a great way to visualize how much was left to do and also helped serve as an incentive to keep moving (not that the box didn't often get set to the side).

You can see where the colours in Roberta's blocks were much stronger than for the wall quilt she had made.

And she didn't seem to have as much of an issue as I did with integrating those darker backgrounds.

Sewing that long curve is actually very forgiving. Thanks to a little help from the bias cut, it felt almost like a straight line when the pieces were matched up.

It was when you went to match the two pieces that the fretting set in. I am a pinner so I worked very hard to make this seam work, but there was often an inevitable fractional slide. 

Initially, I was very concerned when they weren't absolutely perfect, but eventually I realized that they were close enough. Once it is quilted it will be even more difficult to tell if there is a slightly bigger gap between some of them....M

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