Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
I surprised myself by getting more donation blocks made than I thought I would.
I am definitely on a blue kick this month. I am definitely making another blue strip donation top even though I just wanted to make 3 blocks for the second Rainbow strip donation top.
I finished the last Spiky 16 patches the other day. They look good. I am not sure what comes next now so I haven’t done anything further.
Sashing strips?
On point?
I don’t know which to chose right at the moment, so I am going to wait and see what I think in a few days
I spent some time yesterday just sewing donation blocks, including these Spiky 16 Patches. I came home to all the pieces on the floor. This is a problem with my new design wall that is making me crazy. I decided to get them off the floor and sewing together.
These will be part of another donation quilt. You saw these blocks unpieced back in April. I hope to have the fourth one finished sometime this week so I can put the top together in time for Sew Day.
I only have a few blocks this month as I was working, mostly on the newest Spiky 16 Patch. However, I got a little boost by attending the retreat and using the materials available for leaders and enders. I tried to choose fabrics that went together so the Community Quilt people could make a kit, but I was only able to finish 5. Maybe someone will start on a Spiky 16 patch.
I started, sort of, the next Rainbow Strip donation top. I finished the first one in September of last year. Mostly what this means is that when I am delving into a scrap bin and come up with strips, I make a Color Strip block from it.
Recently I have been making blue strip blocks and I have a lot of them. I think I will have to make a blue Color Strip donation top.
I don’t know if I will use all of these since 6 is a lot of any one color. We’ll see.
This group adds to the yellow, green, grey and pink blocks I already have.
Hooray! I finished the Pink Strip donation top and back. It is a serious pink explosion. It is very fun, though and I do like it.
It looks like Alison might quilt it then donate to an organization in her area. I am thrilled that she has taken an interest. We’ll see.
I used up some pink on the back as well. It didn’t make a dent in my collection of pink, of course, but every little bit helps.
On to a Spiky 16 patch.
I wanted to try the HuRTy, so I grabbed some scraps and started working on another Spiky 16 Patch.
I I have to admit that I mostly ended up using my Split Rects ruler. The HuRTy isn’t bad; I just haven’t gotten the hang of it yet.
I got inspired, partially, because of the blocks with the solid fabrics and the dots. They look really good and I decided I wanted to make something good with them.
Will this be good? I hope so, but if it isn’t great, I know someone will like it.
My current problem is that I am running out of background. I am not running out of ALL backgrounds – just the particular background I chose for this project. I’ll have to select something else to use to finish the quilt. I have time.
I was really pleased to see a bunch of quilts that Peggy made for donations at the meeting the other day. She called them her “Jaye collection”, which I thought was very kind. I was confused until she talked about how she made them out of bits and pieces I sent to her. I sent her a couple of stacks of HSTs during the pandemic as well as many 16 patch blocks and she turned all of them into great quilts.
I made a bunch of donation blocks this month. Some are 16 patches and some are the pink strip blocks. As a result I am feeling better about my contributions to the guild.
I moved all the blocks to my larger design wall after Who Am I? went into the ‘to be quilted’ bag. While I was little lazy about walking across the room to use the donation blocks for leaders and enders, I finally put the quilt top together and put the borders on.
I got inspiration from the Red Strip donation top I made a few years ago. I really liked the cornerstones and the way the white sashing separated the blocks so viewers could see each one distinctly.
This one is larger than the Red version. I did end up adding a column to the quilt, but I still think it is a weird shape. I didn’t do any of the ratio math I suggest my students do to make their quilts the right shape. I plan to put more borders on, so maybe I will make the vertical borders a little wider than the top and bottom borders.
So far so good and I am on track to bring it to Sew Day or the next meeting.
I am making good progress on the Pink Strip Donation top. It is VERY pink. I am enjoying working on it. It doesn’t feel like a must do project. I do want to get it done, however the pink is so cheerful that it is a joy to work on. This one will definitely not be gender neutral.
I did a big clean out and organization of the scraps in my pink bin, which was required to finish enough blocks to make a reasonable sized quilt. It looks a little skinny, so I am debating adding another row.
I made significant progress over the weekend on this donation top, as I worked on Who Am I?. Leaders and enders saves the day!
I have been sewing these blocks, but it takes time to build up the strips. It seems like I had so few blocks for so long and then all of a sudden a bunch of them came together over the weekend. I finally feel like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
The blocks aren’t all straight strip blocks even though that was my original intention. There are chunks in some of them, because I couldn’t bear to toss strips I had trimmed. There are no rules, but I have been making a straight strip quilt first, then sometimes a block quilt made with chunks and then, finally, an improv quilt. Of course, it all depends on how many scraps I have.
While listening to an International Women’s Day seminar, I went through my scrap bin and pulled out more strips. This type of organization will help me make blocks faster. As a bonus, having busy hands, I was better able to pay attention to the online seminar.
The recent Sew Day was a Community Sew Day. Most quilts were finished, but a few were taken home to finish. We think there were about 8 total.
SueS brought the leftover squares from her I Spy quilt project and most people worked on putting them together to make some community quilts. The quilts really turned out well. The solid sashing and borders really highlighted the variety of fabrics.
Amy chose a variety of pink, or pink tending fabrics and used a dark pink for the border of her quilt top.
She told me she wanted to make something pink and girly. I would say she succeeded.
We all contributed to SueS’s stash of squares. I think the raspberry fabric in the center of Amy’s quilt is one that I donated.
This yellow top was the first one finished. I think Peggy sewed it, but I am not sure.
I think the blue number fabric in row 4, column 2 is a fabric that I provided as well. It is nice to see my fabrics show up in other people’s work.
I did not work on Community quilts today. I have the Pink Color Strip quilt in process and I needed to cut out pieces to make door prizes. If I had been thinking ahead, I could have worked with Mary, but I have been too busy at work to organize my sewing life very well.
I had a little time to make blocks. Without leaders and enders I would not have had any additions to the block pile at guild.
This quilt came back to the guild last week at the meeting. This is the quilt I made from the trimmings off the Orange You Glad blocks. I couldn’t find a post about it, though I am sure I must have taken photos when I finished it, though maybe not.
Anyway, I don’t know who quilted it, but they did a great job. Roz bound the edges and it looks great. I love a striped binding.
I haven’t had much time to sew lately- just a few minutes here and there. Still, I finished the grey Color Strip blocks and made a couple of pink blocks for the latest Color Strip donation quilt.