I'm making progress on a bunch of small things! Block of the month, September and October :) A small lap quilt using some cute fabrics! And making some plans to tile the shower!
I needed a quick easy item to avoid foundation piecing for a few nights. Conveniently I had signed up for Fat Quarter Shops Sew Sampler Box, and it arrived a few nights ago.
It had a cute set of fabric (apparently Fat Quarter Shop has started a new pre-cut size - Jolly Bar sized at 5x10") and a book of patterns - The Jolly Bar Book. Most of the patterns in the book are either extremely basic or bizarrely wasteful - perplexing. You'd think if you were cutting down the Jolly Bar size and making a bunch of half square triangles, the other part of the half square triangle would show up somewhere; either as a collect them and make an additional quilt out of the scraps at the end or at least identify which sizes you should have and whether there is anything neat you can do to make a patch for the backing or matching pillow or something; otherwise, what was the point of buying the pre-cut?? While I'm not super convinced the world needed a new size of pre-cuts, it did make for a fairly quick cut/piece together quilt. Baby quilt size (about 45 by 54"). I made the Regiment pattern but made a modification. I extended the inside borders around the outside - you need an additional: 10 - 1.5x10" strips of background 16 - 1.5x5" strips of background 26 - 1.5" squares I got weirdly lucky and my jolly bar had most of a 43rd cut it in - I thought I was going to have to adjust the other way (that my 42nd piece was defective), but I magically had enough of the same fabric line to make my extra 1.5" squares! In one of those adventures in a quilt store, I decided I should try a more challenging project, and there was a pattern for Empire Place foundation piecing. I'm doing the complex parts in grey/yellow from a half yard set I had already purchased, and I'm debating having the background be shades of teal solids. First effort on Block 1 below!
I figured I'd increase the challenge by only buying the foundation pieces, and not bother with the instruction booklet... we'll see how much of a silly idea that was later. I further increased the challenge by deciding I want to make it a 90x90" quilt, so I need another 7 of the foundation blocks to size up the grid. Look forward to future amusing posts where I confuse myself or run out of fabric! In a future post I'll go over my aha! moment for the paper piecing on how to make it easier to add the next piece/line up edges (it has to do with convincing yourself that it is okay to bend the paper...). I have been managing to keep up with my BOM through the summer, and I like the colours more as I make the blocks! It is always dangerous going to pick up the BOM package as I spend time in the quilt store buying all sorts of other stuff!!
Below are June/July/August blocks Sorry for the gap in posts - summer has been crazy!
I've been busy supporting the community garden - setting up sessions for pruning and grafting, making sure to keep up with my own weeds, trying out different jams, and preserving fruit to make jam later (another community garden session). I've gotten a few hours of sewing in, but not as much as I'd like; gardening, dragon boating, helping the inlaws, and camping, and being sick for dragon boat festival took over, so here goes a catch-up post with lots of fun pictures and not much explanation - SUMMER!!! |
AuthorWorking full time leads to a need to have pet projects for stress relief. This site is to track learnings and progress to share with others! Archives
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