This and that

 Lately, I have been watching a lot of quilters online.  Hence, my Pat Sloan Sweet Dreams: which I am ready to redo the center.   I love making the blocks.  And I really love my Springbrook fabric. But I  am finding it very busy as all the fabrics are medium prints. I have been debating what to do.  

Last night I laid it on the floor with various colors as my borders .  I have decided to take it apart and put a white sashing between the blocks. The pairs of half square triangles in blue are ready to sew together and put as my last border.  ( I think.)   Here is a messy picture of where it is at. 

But my purpose in telling about what I have learned from the video and written blogs is that it is SOOO nice to hear that others are like me. ( Or that I am like others, whichever.)  I grew up having to do ONE project at a time.  I get it, times were hard and that is how my mom worked. But that is not like me. 

And I love what I do, but I have many projects going all the time. Yesterday I worked on 3 different things.   ( And sorted and planned another.)    If you get my drift, I may be a little abstract random in my mind. But it is O.K.   

Further, I love hearing Pat Sloan or others talk out loud. And by that I mean, share their decision making. The other day she discussed how she was selecting a border fabric. She laid out different options and still hemmed and hawed on which one to choose.  Sometimes, we make quick decisions and others, we fret over. Again, it is how I feel.  It is reinforcing how things work with me.  

As for other projects: 

This is Block 1 of the Blockheads 4 sew along by Moda fabrics. It is called Square Wheel and the pattern is on Kansas Troubles blog as well as a few other places like Moda and Bear Creek Quilting Company as well as many of the other Moda designers.  It also has a facebook page. There are so many samples already made and yesterday morning was when it was released. 

These are leftover Fig Tree fabrics with a warm light brown background. Nothing new has been purchased.  ( But another project started)

And the last block is for a friend's daughter in law who is moving to the east coast. 

Finally: binding to finish

 I have been working on the this finish  all week. Feathering Time!

The quilting has been fun and challenging. I have never done feathers before. Lots of research and lots of practice. What would we do without Youtube videos?  That and lots of drawing practice. Both really helped. 

And while the borders were kind of like fluid and flowed up and around, the center was a little harder. To plan and space it, I used a compass to draw the three concentric circles and then mark the subsections to get them evenly spaced.  I used the old bicycle leg clips to hold the rolled up borders and make the center more manageable to quilt.  I found that the weight dragged when doing some of the border sections. 

It was well worth the effort. And I will definitely keep using the technique. 

I did enjoy the relaxing hand sewing of the binding and rod pocket.  

And it is done and hanging in the front hall.  Hooray!

Thanks quilters!

 

Quilters are the best.  I love the support and comradery we give to each other. We bolster each other's accomplishments, sympathize with heartbreaks be it health, family, and various although issues.  We learn about the world through the eyes of people across the USA, and on into other countries. 

We make quilts for each other and for charities. We share blocks, ideas, fabric and more. 

And this has reached me and further emphasized the companionship that we hold. Thank you all for coming to my blog and I have loved seeing all of yours. 

New projects:

Quilters for Ukraine:  The instructions are from Pat Sloan.

I just need to add borders, quilt and bind it. ( As if I can do that in an hour or two...ha!)

Then I started the many many half square triangles I will need for a quilt donation due the beginning of May:

Lots of a bright colors and a grunge background that I am flipping to the back, because I do not like the white streaks in it, but do like the gray color.  I hope others will like it, too. 

Love the rainbow of slivers with the gray. Only at least 100 more to go. 

What a great response!

 I loved getting all kinds of good replies from the blog hop:  Carol at Just Let me Quilt organized it. 

Thank you. So many wonderful quilters from all over the world making such great projects.

But that is not all I have been working on:

Here are some of my blocks from Sweet Dreams by Pat Sloan.  I really do enjoy a good block to make. Easy to do in a day.  Or several if you have them cut out. 

And I had LOTS of leftover hourglass blocks after I scrapped the extra borders on my Timeless Tidbits quilt. So I started making these.  More to come. 

And this is what I made using the Quilts Plus blocks I purchased at a quilting rummage sale. 

Close up of the gorgeous border fabric I am cutting up. 

And Lastly  Ta da da DAHHHHH. I learned to quilt feathers this weekend.

I watched many videos from Natalia Bonner, Doug Lecko and more.  Bold Notion Quilting was instrumental in showing steps toward advancing technique albeit on a long arm machine. 

So I watched and then I drew and drew and drew on paper filling up pages with pencil practice. 

Finally I started practicing on a quilt sandwich. And it got better and better.

           

So my goal was to quilt the borders of this quilt. ( I had already done the stitch in the ditch through all the centers of the hourglass blocks. ) 

And I DID IT!  Not too bad. 

 It was really fun and I developed the muscle memory to keep doing it.  It did prove to be a little harder to wrestle the quilt which was not as easy or and more weighty to move as the sample had been 

 This is I close up.  WOOT WOOT!

Lastly my new door quilt for St Patrick's day!

Hourglass blocks

I am so pleased to be included in the Blog hop  by Carol Swift of Just Let Me Quilt.  I made 400 of these little blocks for a pattern.  And that is where the blocks sat. 

.  Now these blocks are 3 inches at this point and I kept making 10 matching blocks at a time. 

There is a pattern by Temecula Quilts and a quilt along from last year (Timeless Tidbits). And in case you couldn't tell, they are reproduction fabrics. I hope that doesn't turn you off to the process. 

Now, I have made these blocks before. And I will share my copied technique with you in case you want a  method to try.  Here is a video showing Pat Sloan making these blocks. ( I would rather you see it from an expert than have me recreate the process.)

 Pat Sloan making hourglass blocks.

Pat Sloan video on how to make the block.  from 8:34 to 12:46 shows how she  make them from half square triangles.

Here are piles of 10 prior to being trimmed with a ruler ( Cutting 5 squares of each color.)

This is the top I ended up making.   Colors not quite true to life.

So I am going to assume you understand that part and have or will see them from other bloggers. 

Instead I will show you some tricks I used to get my hourglass blocks together. My blocks are smaller. But I have found it is actually easier to work on smaller blocks. And then transfer the skill to larger ones. 

Here is a picture  showing how I carefully match the seams and pin them directly through one the center of both seams. It is very important to have both seam allowances going opposite directions. I will actually squeeze and wiggle  them together to "nest" them and make sure they the seams touch each other.  No gaps.

  

Then with the center point pinned straight down. I pin the seam allowances to the left through all the layers. The prevents them from shifting. 

I do remove the vertical pin when sewing. And I do keep pins in. But I also will sew on the machine slowly allowing the needle to slide one way or the other when it comes to the pin.  

I will also continue to squeeze the seams  together as I sew to keep the lengths of the blocks together prior to the ends of the blocks. 

Additionally, while pinning blocks I will try to have my intersections having the triangle corners align having the seam allowances facing opposite.  But you can't always get that. Some just have to be stacked on top of each other. 

I am not going to say this works 100 percent of the time. And I do frog the stitches and rip it, rip it, rip it. 

I also have some tricks for pressing seams. I assembled the quilt in blocks. 

First I would match pairs vertically, then twos to twos and so on until I got the width. ( mine was 10 blocks long)

Then prior to sewing I ironed each horizontal row one direction.

The first row is pressed to the left.

The second row is pressed to the right. And so forth down the rows. 

That way all the seam allowances are the same making the nesting  a little easier.

Here is shows pressing of the long rows OPEN.  There are just tooooo many layers of fabric in the corners. Think of it. 8 layers.  Ugh.  

Underneath the row is a tool called a Strip Stick. It is a padded area on top of a flat small like ruler stick that helps the seams to open and the underneath ( front side ) falls down a little. You press on top of it down the row.

And then move down the row. You can buy a long or short version. 

Then I repeatedly press on both sides, making sure to hopefully get the fabric as smooth as possible. 

                                                

  What else can you  do with these fabulous blocks?

Hourglass blocks make great setting blocks.  These are 2 color 5 inch blocks.

And since I only have 250 of my hourglass blocks left to play with from my original plan,  here is my next project with them.       4 blocks went together much easier. 

This block is in Pat Sloan's Sweet Dreams quilt along on Wednesdays ( a free block each Wednesday) 

Block 5 Sweet Dreams by Pat Sloan

Mine is so pretty in spring colors and each hourglass is only 3 inches finished.

No corners to match the diagonal lines. 

Other Hourglass bloggers today:

MooseStashQuilting

Becky’s Adventures in Quilting and Travel

The Darling Dogwood

Beaquilter

Quilting Gail

And of course, our hostess:  Just Let Me Quilt  

Packing for retreat.

 Startitis that darn bug.   I have been watching Pat Sloan of late and do so enjoy here perspective on quilting.  I really learn from her "discussions" of why she chooses certain fabrics or colors. And her digressions are fun as well. She has so many ideas and projects and ....

So what has she got me hooked on?   Well, 2 new projects.

1) I am doing her Sweet Dreams block of the week using my leftovers from a graduation quilt I made last year.  I just love the bright springy colors of Corey Yoder. And I even ordered more of the large print for some borders.

And for retreat, I am cutting out all the blocks to assemble on retreat. At least I have started. Hopefully I can finish all 9 by this afternoon.

Here is the link to that page;  Sweet dreams

I love how each block has a baking/dessert name and sometimes recipes as well.

2) I have this large bag of Kansas Trouble fabrics. I need to use them . So she is doing a block a day called String Beans. It is a basic log cabin with 2 1/2 inch strips around a large rectangle in the middle.

Here is her pattern which is well written and has many versions to make using 30 blocks or even bigger.

You can see when she first posted the quilt along in 2015 and many of the finished quilts in different color ways making different patterns.       String Bean pattern

And I am thinking of making her block for Ukraine which is a beautiful yellow and blue like the flag. 

Block for Ukraine   She is also doing a fundraiser through Unicef for the children. Check out her video on Youtube.

And I am packing all these are more for a quilt retreat starting tomorrow. Uninterrupted quilting time with good friends. Hooray. I have so many projects packed. I wonder which ones will be finished or worked on?