Quilting a Panel

My Grand daughter welcomed a baby sister into the world this week.  Ari is 2.5 years old so being a Big sister may be a bit of a tough concept.  My mom use to always send "big sib" gifts to older children as a way of softening the shock of no longer being the only focus of their parents world.  I thought I would continue that tradition for my g-daughter.  I have made her several quilts already, but when I saw this Peppa Pig panel (her favorite cartoon character) I thought this might be a good choice for a "big sib" gift.

Quilting the background was no problem, some outlining and squiggly stippling covered that territory but I was at a lose as to how to quilt Peppa's face?!

I started out doing swirls but it did not look right.  So then I just went crazy and doodled all over, that seemed to work better.  I followed the old adage "when you make a mistake just repeat it so it looks intentional!"    

Well I don't think Ari will be scrutinizing the quilting but hopefully she will enjoy the quilt! 

Have a great week!

Cheers, CW

PVQA August 2016 BOM- another Scrap Buster!

  “Scrappy Two-For-one”                                                          10“ unfinished

Fabrics

This is a real scrap buster!  Get out your scrap bag and look for Bright / Kid fabrics in strips ranging in width from 1.5” to 3” and 21” long (1/2 of a width of fabric or use the whole width and you will get 4 blocks per strippy set!).  Bright solids, dots, stripes, checks and other bright graphix will also work.

 Cut

If you don’t have any of these kinds of scraps then cut a number of strips in a variety of widths from 1.5” to 3.5” and 21” long. Enough to add up to a strippy unit 10.5” wide when sewn together.  

 Sew / Cut

1- Sew all your strips together starting and ending with strips that are at least 2.5” wide.  Press all seams in one direction.

 2- Cut two 10.5” squares from your strippy unit made in step -1.

 3- Place the two squares right sides together matching up the strips.  Mark a line with a pencil down the middle of the matched squares.  Pin along the line in a few places. Sew a ¼” seam on each side of the line.

 4- Cut the squares apart on the pencil line and press the center seams open.

Here you can see how the two strips look different because the length of each strip reverses from one corner to the opposite corner!  Thus the name "Two-For-One"!

 Trim to 10".

These are fun and easy blocks.  You can sew up a whole mess of these in no time!  And it makes a fabulous kid's quilt!

Have a great week!

Cheers, CW

The Latest Quirky Old Quilt

While at the Sister's show I happened upon this String Quilt at one of the local Antique shops located on the main drag in Sister's.  A humble quilt top to be sure, but full of interesting details!

Right off you can see that the center rows were probably made at the same time while bottom and top rows were added on at some later date.

Here's the back side.

It was clearly foundation pieced on to newsprint, but unfortunately the paper has been torn out leaving only unidentifiable remnants.

The blocks are mostly machine pieced but here and there were some hand sewn strips.

The lavender flowered fabric is a rayon.  This is the add-on row at the top.  The rayon sashing is probably the main reason the top row is so wonky!  

The fabrics are mostly '30's, 40's maybe reaching into the 50's.  The striped and dotted shirtings make it difficult to say because they were so widely used over a long period of time?!

But this tan floral fab (only one piece in the lower right) is like that kid's game asking "guess which one does not belong?"

Did the maker reach deep into their granny's scrap bag to the 1800's for that scrap or is it some random 30's reproduction?

I don't know but it's fun to speculate!

Have a great week!

Cheers, Claire W.

Pondering more Orphan Blocks

Here's another mess of Orphan blocks from that large stash that I was given in June.  In the search for UNITY in any design there has to be something that pulls everything together.  All the parts need to have some commonality.  It can be achieved in a variety of ways: color, tone, theme etc. I've always maitained that you can mix any BRIGHTS with any other BRIGHTS.  One Bright in a bunch of soft colors shouts; but, throw it in with a whole bunch of it's own kind and you have a loud party.  Well that's the idea behind this grouping. Now I just have to figure out the geometry of it all, how can I get them to fit together?!  

Stay tuned.

While the above grouping presents a big challenge some blocks just say "put me together fool!"

These six blocks came with a little extra fabric to make the corner stones and I had the yellow for the sashing in my stash and Debbie D. gave me the batik for the border and ta da, instant top!

It could be a cake mix?! 

Fun and easy and just the right size for a Vets lap quilt! 

I don't have much patience for making the same block over and over but give me a bunch blocks that go together and I can finish the top in a jiffy!

Just one of many reasons I feel so lucky to have been gifted all those orphan blocks!

Have a great weekend!

Cheers, Claire W.

More BOM inspired quilts

Lynn over at Klein Meisje Quilts finished her Sail Boats quilt which was started after she saw my post on the 2015 June BOM.  It's a fabulous quilt check it out at this link:
http://kleinmeisjequilts.blogspot.com/2016/07/and-all-ships-at-sea-quilt-completed.html?m=1

I have finish the top to my Sail Boats quilt but it's not quilted yet.  It is such a Cheerful quilt!

I call this block a Scrap Eater!  You can take the ugliest fabric and put a bright solid fab boat in front of it and you hardly notice the ugly fabric!  I used a lot of ugy fabric. It's a good block for random scraps too because it does not take a lot of fab to make the background.

 I really like the half drop set of the blocks too. That was the set in the original quilt that inspired me to use this block for the BOM.You can find the link to my original post in the BOM tab at the top of this page.

Have a great week!

cheers, Claire W.

Great use of BOM Blocks!

My Friend Ann Gavin used several of my BOM instructionals to create this original design / layout!

 Ann picked 4 of the 8 block designs that I posted in 2016.  The sail boats from June, the squares framed in green HST from Oct, the 16 patches from August and the 9 patch variations from Feb. Instructions for all these blocks can be found in the "PVQA BOM" tab at the top of the page.  By repeating these 4 blocks she made enough blocks for a bed size quilt!

 Ann very cleverly dealt with the fact that the blocks were not all the same size by organising them into rows and colums.  The 10" blocks went into the 1st , 3rd and 5th colums and the 16 patches went into the 2nd and 4th colums with a sashing strip at the top to make them 10" in height.. 

Then the colums were set apart by 3 rows of the red and white 9 patch variation blocks. Ann made the 9 patch blocks positive and negative (red in the center and then cream in the center) so that they create a secondary pattern.

The sail boat blocks were also light on dark boats and dark on light boats for added contrast and interest!

All in all I'm very impressed with her various adaptions in the block designs to arive at this wonderful layout!  yeah, Ann!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Cheers, CW

PS - Someone asked about the nice quilting it was quilted by Amy Jones from See Bee It Quilting in Morgan Hill, CA.  Sorry I should have included that info in the first place! 

Update on the Orphan Blocks project

I've been working pretty steadily on these orphan Blocks.  The top row seemed pretty solid from the beginning and so I sewed that first hoping that the next row would become clear once that first row was done.  And that went pretty smoothly too.

Below is my first arrangement for comparison.  I decided I needed a little more yellow on the left side for balance so I cut the scrappy puss- in- the- corner block into four pieces and stacked them on the left. 

Another trick I use to make things work is deconstruct blocks.  Four of the blue pinwheel blocks were  actually one block which I took apart so I could spread them around.  This block is probably at least 30 years old, based on the fabric, but also you can see it's hand pieced!

But now I'm kind of stuck in the middle?!  I think I may have to make a block to fill the empty space.  I've run out of blocks with Aqua or blue so I think I'll just make something that goes with...

 Here's the final configuration.  Fortunately I had a whole yard of the aqua sashing in my stash.  That really helped tie things together.  I had to make some filler pieces (lower left corner and to the right of the kite).  And then the house block on the right to fill that space.  But over all I used 25 orphan blocks donated by 16 or 17 individuals and I'm really happy with the results!

I really like these kind of projects.  It appeals to the conservationist in me on many levels and it's fun!  Kind of like a giant puzzle. 

Generally,  I donate orphan block projects to charitable programs but I'm liking this one so much I might give it to my new grand baby due in August.  We don't know the gender but I think it could be for a boy or a girl, don't you think?!

Happy Summering!

Cheers, Claire W.