Gingham Zen

In a week chock-a-block with meetings and appointments there was little or no opportunity to sit and stitch. Until Friday. I had my car in the shop for a brake job and when they called to say that they needed more parts and I wouldn't have it back for a few days, it sounded like house arrest to me, but in a good way. The perfect excuse to slow things down.

I wasted little time cutting a hot pink gingham bias binding for the yellow star quilt. It felts SO good to sit and be soothed by a little hand stitching.

As I worked my way around the quilt I came across a few joins in the outer binding that I'd forgotten about. There were three in total, and as luck would have it, the way that I had cut the strips allowed me enough flexibility to get great joins on two of them.

I'd also taken a stab at joining the butterscotch check that I used for the backing. It's not perfect but I was pleasantly surprised with how well that went too because it was done while burning a little midnight oil to get it ready for the quilters.

Here's a close-up of the narrow striped border. It just makes me smile that there are little red stars in it, a nod to the larger white stars scattered throughout the quilt.

The quilting is simple diagonal lines with a little bit of an echo within each of the stars so we were able to get this one quilted in record time. It might be a pattern to remember when we're looking for a quick finish in the future.

The last stitches went into the binding today. I'm delighted that it's finished and itching to have more hand stitching to work on. But there's the blue and yellow QFS flimsy on the design wall and I think I'll focus my attention on getting that together to free up some head (and wall) space first....M

My Latest QFS Quilt

And here is the yellow Quilts for Survivors star quilt that we just took off the quilt frames at the church.

It's based on Pat Sloan's Oh My Charming Stars pattern, with a few modifications. You will recognize it because it seems to be a frequent visitor to my TO DO list, sometimes as a quilt and other times as table runners. 

It's such an easy pattern and it always produces a lovely result. And I never seem to tire of making those stars.

It also proved to be a great excuse to try out my new Folded Corner Clipper ruler (say that fast three times!). Initially, I wasn't convinced that I had actually needed to buy it, but once I got into it I was very happy that I had. 

You simply place your large and small blocks right sides together, as usual, line up the block size that you want to cut - in this case 3.5" - and trim the corner; then you sew your seam. Easy, peasy.

And you still end up with a beautiful pile of HST made from the trimmings (sometimes I just eyeball my trimming with scissors so my seam allowances can vary a bit). It makes for very, very little trimming to get them squared up to use in another project.

My quilt is slightly larger than the pattern so I just laid squares out on the design wall and then played around with where I wanted my white stars to go.

I didn't know what I was going to do for borders so you can see with the top star that I opted not to run my stars into the first border, as suggested in the pattern, though I do like that look.

In the end, my first border became a narrow white and blue stripe and then I finished it off with a large yellow floral. Love that fabric. There are now only a few scraps of it left. The butterscotch check made for a nice backing....M

When You Just Start Cutting...

This is the Quilts for Survivors WIP that generated all of the blue HSTs in one of the blocks in my last post. It's been on my wall for a few weeks and was going swimmingly. Until I looked at the pattern again. Ugh.

Just to back it up a bit, I've been trying to find a pattern that I could use for these two prints, blue and white versions of the same print. Several times I thought I'd found it only to back away from each idea. 

Then I remembered this photo that I'd found on Pinterest (no pattern that I could find). I'd saved it to remind me to try making a runner similar to this for the Holly Bazaar. I had a large piece of a medium blue that I could use for the corners so before I changed my mind again I found coordinating blues, yellows and and a bit of green and started to cut.

The block is very straightforward - just a square with two sew and flip corners placed on point.

In no particular order they started to go up on the wall and the more that I made the more I liked it.

As it grew I started thinking about setting triangles and what to do there because I was running low on the blue. Then I looked at the pattern again.

There are no setting triangles to speak of. The edge blocks should only have a blue triangle on one corner leaving a relatively small setting triangle to give you a straight edge. Similarly, the top and bottom edges appear to be blocks cut in half horizontally (haven't done a test of that yet). 

Soooo, Jack and I have started spending a little time together, ripping things out to make it work. So far, so good. It's the blue that I will need for a border that could be an issue.

For the time being I'll focus on getting four straight sides. If the quilting gods are on my side there might just be enough blue for a border!....M

Big Blocks

On Friday, our church quilters took another Quilts for Survivors quilt off the frames. It's ready to be bound and I will share it with you soon. We're also making great strides in our fundraising efforts to help cover the cost of boxes to ship finished quilts to individual survivors and it looks like we will reach our goal tomorrow, so I've been busy putting together a small bundle of 16" blocks to display alongside the quilt top that we will be showing.

I started with Intertwined. It looks more complicated than it is - it's just four of the same 8" block rotated in different directions and comes together quite quickly. I made two like this and a third with a tulip floral and turquoise corners that you can sort of see peeking out in the image above. I had thought that the turquoise would end up being the square that runs through the centre of the block but I liked the look of the floral square.

Then I spied a pile of HSTs cut from another QFS quilt top that is in progress so I trimmed them up and did a basic 25-block layout bordered with green. There are enough HSTs left for at least two more blocks but only one made it to the finish line for tomorrow. I'll share a little bit more about this one in a future post.

Wanting to have a little variety, I moved on. I believe that this one is called Potato Chips. It's one of those blocks where just about anything goes and proved to be a great way to use up some leftover 2.5" strips from other projects. There are 32  2.5" x 4.5" rectangles in the block so I cut a few additional 'chips' leaving me with only one or two duplicates.

And I just couldn't help myself - I had to make a star or two. 

Make that four. I love these Sawtooth Stars. There are lots of possibilities with this one. You could make them all the same, make positive and negative versions using only two fabrics, make them all different - you get the idea. I landed on two coordinated stars and love the look. 

It's interesting. I have been trying to use up that soft green because it didn't seem to play well with other fabrics, but I am loving it with that gold/red floral. Now I'm wondering if I need a few for me!

And finally, just to clean up some of the mess that will still surrounding my machine, I whipped up one last Potato Chips block. 

It was a full agenda but a great way to spend a rather cool and dreary day....M