Wonky Stars in vintage sheet fabric

I just looked back through the archives and on the 17th of September 2012 I posted about making the initial sample block for this quilt to show the Monday Modern ladies what I wanted to do for my block, and I think I bound it at the beginning of August this year, so a speedy two years! No-one in their right mind would ever accuse me of being fast at this quilting biz.



It turned out pretty much like I was hoping it would which is nice, but I'm less sure about the batting I chose and the quilting. I should hasten to add that the quilting was done by Carol Fearon and it's superb, but I didn't really know what I wanted when I took it to her, it being the first time I've had one done professionally, and I think the fact I'm a bit unsure about it means that I DID actually have an idea in my head that I didn't communicate to her properly. I took along a picture of Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' and said something along these lines please and she interpreted it really well. I think in hindsight I might have been after more the wavy horizontal lines rather than the circles. But hey, live and learn and it really is quite amazing! I also wish I'd gone for a thinner cotton batting. I used a woollen one and it's too stiff and the quilt isn't particularly snuggly. Is that because the quilting is denser than quilts that I've done myself or is it the wool batting? Or both?

Anyways, I couldn't have done it without the Monday Modern girls (ladies? women? what's the right term here?) so a big thank you to them for doing the initial lot and then a few extra when I was despairing of ever getting done. I got there in the end!

Oh, and I like the back almost as much as the front :)

Oh, and two of the fabrics in the back were from dresses I had back in the 70s - guess which ones :) A hint, they're small because I was small.

Being a perfectionist

Many (many) months ago it was my turn to have bee blocks made by the Monday Modern group.



It really is exciting to have them done for you, and they look great all together! The lovely ladies got me up half a Queen-sized quilt - and the rest are up to me! 

I'm finding the concept of 20-odd blocks a bit daunting! I'm not a fast sewer at the best of times, and envy those who are - I spend a lot of time visualising (which is free and can be done on the couch), then worrying, and planning, and working up to cutting and then cutting (which is the job I really loathe and put off), sewing and then it usually sits awhile while I work up to doing a back, then it sits awhile longer because I don't like quilting much on my little machine. See even my description of the quilting process is long and drawn out! So I've started back into the stars but I can't quite remember what my plan was for the bits I already have cut out so it's going to be slow getting back into it and then I'll have to do a bunch more cutting - I'll need to find the original tutorial I used to make up the instructions I handed out (if I can remember which one it was). The main problem though, is how SLOW this is going to be because I have to press each seam as I make it, and that slows things down big time. I'm better at not being totally perfect at things than I used to be, but I still require a certain standard from myself and I can't be slapdash. I don't think I'm being OCD or anything, I just wouldn't be happy if I knew I hadn't tried my hardest to do the best job I could. I don't care so much if the result isn't perfect, well ok just a little, more that I tried hard. Not pressing the first seam when making the individual points would be slacking off in my books. Why am I so hard on myself when I'm not on others? See I'm just using this blog as cheap therapy ;)

ETA: I came back to change how I worded this post, I don't know if anyone else thought it sounded a bit whiny and self-pitying, which I didn't intend at all, so hopefully now it reads more like I intended! Plus I've been working at not pressing that first seam today (with mixed results on the personal development front).

Bee blocks

Only a week until I head off to Canada for a month! Can't wait. :) Before I go I'm hoping to get my scrappy trip around the world quilt done up for an exhibition the Monday Modern group is having in September. I need to find some time without Ollie around so I can get it all laid out and basted. However, that's time that's hard to come by! The thing about pugs is that they just want to be with you all. the. time. Allthetime. If he's not by my feet he's on them, or trying to be on them, or on my lap. I know they call some small dogs 'lap dogs' but they really aren't good on laps like cats are, Ollie is always slipping off or having trouble knowing where his legs and paws should go. Anyways, despite Ollie and packing I'm hopeful!

I had the last two bee blocks to finish up for the start of the month, I forgot to take photos of Heather's but here is Stacey's. She just wanted us to do a 12 1/2" block for her, our choice, from the four fabrics she supplied. I decided to have a look through Modern Blocks (the 99 blocks one) to see if anything took my fancy and ended up doing 'Stuck in the Middle'. I really liked it, quick and effective.



I've never really seen the appeal of the cross-hatched fabrics, though I know they're popular, but in a block like this I can see their advantage, they really conceal the seams well, as did the yellow dots although they show more in the photo. I thought that made the block even more effective, as the shapes really do look like they're set into each other.

Bee blocks

This poor neglected blog, I feel bad! But I just haven't felt the desire to blog recently, not sure why. I think perhaps I'm just not finishing things the way I used to, and feeling like I don't have anything to blog and then getting anxious about not blogging so I don't blog and so it goes. I might try and see if I can break the vicious circle because I do actually have a few things to show off.

Doing bee blocks for our Monday Modern group really does let me finish things which is always a nice feeling!

The first two I did were for Louise, out of this delightfully gothic fabric by Tula Pink. I don't know that I'd want a whole quilt out of it but it was fun doing two blocks! That's the best thing about bee blocks I think, you can just love something on a superficial level without committing to a whole quilt. The block itself was also great - big and easy and very effective when put together with the others. I gather it's also Tula Pink.





The second lot of blocks were for Cris, and she gave us a pile of solid strips and told us to go for it, keeping a log cabin in mind.



This was a lot of fun to put together. The first one was pretty straight-forward, and I kept it fairly traditional. There was quite a lot of fabric left over so I thought I'd just make another one, but ran out of long enough pieces towards the end. But I liked the pieced strip I made for one side, in a desperate attempt to finish it. It wasn't quite enough though, so I had to add a couple of strips out of my stash to get it to size. My husband wasn't at all sure why I was doing that "just give it to her like that" he said, but I really wanted to finish it for me! Which probably says a lot about why we all do blocks - not necessarily out of the goodness of our hearts but because we like the challenge and playing with other people's fabrics - all fun care and no responsibility!

I'm determined to get out another post in a few days, so check back soon!

Emerging from the fog

In less than two months we've bought a house, put our old one on the market, sold it, packed, moved, and largely unpacked, kept the cat in for 10 days, tried to clean cat pee out of carpets (our old house was all polished floor boards), and after a drought dealt with constant rain and no covered deck or garage to keep things dry until we find a place for them. Yeah. And now I am starting to think about things artsy crafty again - it really does feel like emerging from a fog of packing and boxes and general logistics. When I got to stitching group on Wednesday, after about a month off, I really felt like I was returning to real life!

I've also started back on the Monday Bee blocks which I'm shockingly behind on. I had four to do, and I've just finished Carolyn's 'Cheery Canary' improv block. The brief was only 25% of the block in prints, and a canary must appear once. The others had done such great blocks I really didn't know what to do, although I did know I was jealous of Megan's effort which put small triangles and then squares in mind. Eventually I had this mental image of yellow squares tumbling across the light grey, gradually turning into dark grey triangles. I think I came fairly close, although it's not quite as I'd imagined. I think that's partly due to the number of seams in the block which I find kind of distracting, but hopefully they will be less noticeable after quilting.



It was quite satisfying to put together!

I also found the photos I'd taken of Laurina's and Linda's blocks, both of which were nice to do - I thought the technique for Laurina's hexagons was fascinating, especially the way you end up with two very different-looking blocks from the same two sewn-together strips of fabric.



Now on to Shelly's, Mel's and Karyn's!

Glenys' bee block

Glenys wanted us to do a Converging Corners block for her, and gave us all an assortment of coloured and white scraps.

The concept of converging corners is pretty simple, you just build up the block with strips which are part white and part colour, putting the colours in the corners where they form a V. When they're all put together they produce these multi-coloured starbursts across the quilt. I was quite excited when she told us what we were going to be doing because I've loved the pattern since I first saw it.

The block is 15 1/2" square, which is a fair few strips as I discovered! I don't know if there is any way to judge how much you should extend each strip past each other to get the best effect, I sort of feel like I was too conservative and it doesn't have that really dramatic zigzag effect of the original. I think I could also have gone with bigger strips given the size of the overall block. I think wider strips would automatically allow you to have larger steps between strips. But I'm generally pretty happy with how it turned out and I can't wait to see everyone's together! I had to add in a few of my own scraps because you actually need quite long strips by the end and I'd used up the longest ones too early.  Live and learn, which is why bee blocks are so great - you can practice on some other poor person's quilt ;)

I'm now caught up with bee blocks and can turn my attention to my stuff - and Christmas!

Giveaway reminder and Megan's squares

Just a reminder about the Little Craft Store giveaway that I'll be drawing tomorrow - pop over here to put your name into the draw!

At our last Monday Modern meeting we had two people come with their bee blocks so I'm going to try and get them both done before the next meeting on the 5th. Unfortunately I can't go because Mat's working out of town for most of this month and I have a feeling that leaving your seven year old sleeping in a house by herself is frowned on by society. It's also Guy Fawkes so it probably works out well that I'm home to let off fireworks if we haven't done it on Sunday night instead (I hate having to do these things on the wrong day if they fall on a school night, totally sucks the fun out of them!).

Anyways! I've just finished Megan's blocks and I thought she might like to see them. She's asked us to make blocks for a quilt something like Red Pepper Quilt's 'Slice and Dice' pattern. The fabrics are all shot cottons, although the green looks for all the world like silk, it even has that lovely sheen to it. They're more subtle in real life, the photo has made them look a bit neon. At first I was rather intimidated by the concept of these blocks but once I started thinking about placement and the order of things it was much less scary, and quite simple in the end. Even sewing on the bias without the walking foot didn't seem to present much of a problem as long as I kept that piece against the feed dogs and the on-the-grain strips on top.

They look kind of matchy don't they. I really didn't intend them to come out that way, I thought I was doing two quite different blocks but when I was 3/4 of the way through the second block I looked at them both and had a total d'oh! moment because they're almost identical. I mean, usually when I think I've been innovative with something and discover that someone's already done it, it's a stranger, not me! Just stick them at opposite ends of the quilt Megan, and no-one will ever notice! :P

Vintage sheet wonky stars

I made up this block as a sample to show the bee participants. I love it! I had this vision in my head of what the quilt would look like when I came up with the idea, and I think it might actually look even better in reality (which as you crafty people know isn't always the case!).

I used a star block from the Modern Blocks book to get me started, but will do up some different ones to keep things from looking too samey-samey. I really did feel that I didn't have enough variety in the sheets when I was making this up, when of course I have heaps - maybe I need help?

ETA: You can see more of my blocks over at Jaffa Quilts and Milly Made It - it was such a thrill when Megan and Karyn's posts popped up in my reader over the weekend - I can see why people get addicted to bees! I love the variations they've come up with, and I need to get working on my own.

Wonky star bee blocks

For my Monday Modern group bee blocks I'm asking everyone to make me wonky stars using linen and vintage sheets. Everyone got a small bundle with an assortment of pink, blue, yellow and 'white' sheet scraps. The white are actually prints that have a lot of white background and soft colours, and I've included some solid white fabric just to make it more obvious.

 I'm really very excited about this bee! I had to laugh at myself a bit though, while taking this bright and happy photo because look what it was doing just out of frame...

 ...just bucketing down! In fact, by the time I took the top photo it was raining so hard that it was bouncing up off the deck (which is covered all the way to the steps out there btw) and getting on the fabric - if you look hard at the pink on the left you can see the raindrops.

Bee blocks

My Monday Modern group has decided to do a bee, and Helen was the first person to get herself organised and the fabric distributed. She's doing a quilt that's a combination of string-pieced blocks and hexagons. She asked the group to do the string pieced blocks and provided us with a central strip of spotted linen and five other fabrics for the rest of the strings. Seeing as we meet this coming Monday I figured I should get it done so I can spend some time getting my block fabrics sorted to take along!

I've never done a string block, but as this one uses a paper foundation it promised to be fairly easy. And actually it was, but only by the skin of my teeth because I literally had a small handful of tiny scraps left over at the end! I think that's a combination of Helen's good estimating and my profligacy with the way I put the first block together. At first I was centering the fabric strips without much thought for how much was hanging over the edges to be trimmed. I realised fairly quickly that I should be placing the end of the strip just a bit further than it needed to be, and saving the excess at the other end for the shorter runs. I knew I had some of the pink she is using so I could have cut a strip of that, but in the end it was just enough. I was quite proud of myself!

 The one thing I did stuff up a bit was in drawing the 8 1/2" square of lunch paper I used for the blocks, one side was about 2mm under (whatever that is in inches), consequently a couple of strips are a smidge on the short side and the centre strip isn't exactly centre, but I'm pretty sure that will be absorbed in the seam allowance and all will be fine.

I love how cheerful and bright the blocks are without being too busy - and boy are they fast to sew up! If only I had more scraps...