a string of birds, not for swapping
I have been going crazy making birds but mostly for myself. I decided they were just the thing to populate random places in my own bird trap block inspired quilt top (for about four months now I have been obsessing on the African-American quilts in the Belger Arts Center collection. These three birds are quite a bit smaller than this months Block Lotto bird, the smallest began with 2″ squares to make the 1/2-square triangle body. My plan is to embroider legs as even the <1/2″ legs of the bird on the right would be to thick. I was also challenging myself to not repeat a single piece (except in the legs) across all three birds, although I am not sure I was successful.
& in other news, this afternoon I mailed March blocks to Erin, Ginny & Jeanne. Congrats on your wins!
Weekend Update – April 5-8
A plumbing catastrophe at my house was a major distraction this week and, as a result, very little quilting happened. Now that the plumber has come and gone, I plan to spend some time this weekend playing catch-up. How about you.
Share a link from your blog below. It doesn’t have to be quilting related …maybe you had a major distraction this week, too? Has Spring (or Autumn) arrived at your home? It’s gone cold again here (with a possibility of SNOW in the area), so I’m happy to stay inside a bit longer … and just THINK about gardening and planting flowers and herbs. How about you?
Weekend Update – Easter Weekend Edition
When you’re not working … every day is the same in which you work at being able to work again. In any event, I almost forgot it’s Friday and time for the weekend update.
Please share a link from your blog below. Are you quilting, crafting, cooking, gardening–my neighbor has daffodils in bloom and I admit that I’m jealous–or something else?
Happy Easter, Happy Passover, Happy Spring Break, Happy Weekend.
How did I forget? The Weekend Update
I have been seriously stressed out and spaced out … and completely forgot to publish the Weekend Update post.
I’ve seen some interesting stuff on some of your blogs … I hope you will add a link here and share with everyone. It’s an anything goes weekend, so feel free to link any post here. It’s the first weekend of Spring 2013? It doesn’t feel much like spring here, so I’m inside quilting … how about you?
Stop me if you’ve seen this …
I surfed past this quilt on allpeoplequilt.com and immediately saw a design idea for this month’s blocks. If you follow the link to the directions for the Lemon Bars quilt, you’ll see the dimensions for the rectangle is different than ours, but the idea could be easily adapted. To make a 16-inch block using the February lotto block, you’d need two steps blocks + one 6 inch square (finished size) + one 9 inch square + 1 inch sashing. I would change the squares to include one more round of “logs” in each.
If you made 16 of these large blocks and arranged them as in the pattern and added a 6 inch border, your quilt would be 78 inches square … slightly larger than the quilt in the pattern, which is made from 15 inch (finished size) blocks.
Lemon Bars quilt from All People Quilt
Weekend Update – Worldwide Quilting Day Edition
The weekend is here–time to share a link from your blog.
World-wide Quilting Day is tomorrow … which makes me think every quilter has something to blog about and share.
How will you spend the day? Have you blogged about your plans or will you blog about your day?
Please share your quilting day or another slice-of-life from your blog with us.
My Block Lotto-Inspired Project
Last weekend, I had an idea to make some scrappy-with-a-lot-of-purple pillow shams for my big square European-style pillows to go with this scrappy-with-a-lot-of-purple quilt.
I thought to make something from half-square triangles (since there are a lot of those also in the Buckeye Beauty blocks of the quilt) and remembered this quilt that Karin made from our lotto blocks from the Scrappy Triangle blocks she won a year ago.
I loved her arrangement of the blocks.
So I did some math and figured out that if I made three inch half-square triangles, I would need 64 for a 24-inch square pillow front, or four 16-patches made from triangle square units.
I decided to make them half purple and half from whatever I found in my scrap bins, with no regard for color or style.
I was remembering the photo that Julie recently posted of the scrappy blocks she won in December, and her comment about the variety of color and style.
And so my scrappy triangles are made from the last squares of favorite fabrics, fabrics so ugly that they’ve been stuck in my scraps bin for years and … everything in between. The proportion of colors was dictated by what I had in my scraps and the order I opened the little color-based bins. (I opened the red and green ones last, so there’s not much red nor green.)
Much like the rules for the Block Lotto, I devised fabric guidelines for myself–I used only a handful of purple fabrics and repeated them in multiple HST units, but used a unique fabric for the other half of each pair.
I split the half square triangles in half, each with one half of the pairs I made from my squares.
I decided that the fabric placement in the pillows didn’t need to match, though in both arrangements I put the darkest purples around the outside, to echo the dark purple border of the quilt.
Thank you, Karin and Julie for your influence. I know that I’m going to like these.
This project was the thing I did because I was stuck thinking about where to go next on my current project. It was a lot of mindless meditative cutting and sewing and trimming of the triangle squares and then some playing/arranging them.
Once arranged, they were quickly sewn up into these 24 inch squares, ready to be quilted and sewn to the pillow backs.
Tonight I was thinking that lotto blocks make great pillows, too 🙂
I need an Intervention!
I have a confession to make. I made a new quilt top. I’m not supposed to as long I’m behind on my 2013 UFO goal, but what the heck? It’s my rule. What happened is this…..Sophie issued the directions for our new Block Lotto for March. The block was simple, it had to incorporate gray and white, and another color of our choice. I was going through my scraps. This particular tub, has pinks, purples and blues. My intent wasn’t to limit my color choices to these colors, but that is what happened. Happenstance? Serendipity? I started making the blocks and liked them so well that I decided, rather than waiting to see if I won the lottery this month, I would make some blocks for me and also to donate to Block Lotto. So here is what I did with the thirty blocks I made myself. Isn’t that limited palette pretty? You can’t tell but the border is a batik with a gray/taupe dots and subtle shades of the pink, purple and blue in the quilt. I will quilt it, simply, before month end, then it won’t be a UFO, right?
Tips, Tricks and Lessons Learned – Weekend Update Edition
It’s time for the Weekend Update Linky Party.
Share a favorite quilt tip or lesson learned that you’ve blogged about. It can be the latest and greatest that you’ve just learned or an oldie-but-goodie that has become an essential part of some aspect of quilting. It could be a tutorial on your blog or a link to a go-to tutorial from someone else. It could be the story of a project or a workshop and what you learned.
Seeing March Blocks everywhere, 2
Don’t mean to be a blog hog, but couldn’t figure out how to include 2 pictures in one post. In the same trip, I picked up a copy of Quilt-it . . . Today , which had a modern-style quilt called “modern dash,” by Deanne Quill composed of a few solid rectangles against a background that reads solid. But I think the layout could work for the Steps block as well if one wanted to show off machine quilting skills (which sadly, I don’t). Whatever happens this month, I think I see a Steps quilt in my future.
