Fun With a New Charity Quilt!

I finally finished basting the other two charity quilts I was working on and to do so, I had to finally clean up my work table!  

I sorted through all the 5 in squares into colors and types and found a huge plastic bag with a ton of half square triangles that I had cut some time ago and forgotten about.  I remembered a pattern I had seen on Pinterest using black and white half square triangles and decided "what the heck".  This was my first iteration on the design wall.

This was the second iteration and I liked it better.  I added white triangles around the outside but then I decided...

Just before I left for the afternoon, I decided I would like something other than the white in the finishing triangles so found some green.  It was going to be green on the sides and white on top and bottom with white on the corners (like on the right side here) but then...

I finally sewed everything together but those corners.  I decided that I would prefer a two color corner and now I am happier.  Still haven't sewn them on or trimmed around the outside.  I will probably make the binding green.

I have enough prepared fabrics to make four more of these quilts with varying coors in the half square triangles.  I put them together in little "kits".  The remaining 5 inch squares from this packet (and it was just one of the packets I put together) will be donated!  I really get sick of fabric when I have used it in  multiple quilts!  More to follow!

I realized I forgot to put a picture of the quilt I did with all the flying geese that I made!  I found another variation of this block  online which I may attempt at some point also.  There are 100 flying geese here!

 

Trying a New Technique for Making Flying Geese!

I forgot to take a picture of the first step in this process.  I learned this technique from a Youtube video -- I very rarely watch Youtube but this one intrigued me -- enough that I may purchase the formal directions (Kits by Carla.com).  The first step was to cut three strips of a background fabric (I chose white) and then two strips of the goose part.  The three strips of the background are 4 1/2 in, 4 1/2 in and 3 inches.  The goose fabric is 2 strips 3 3/4 inches wide.  She suggests you work with a 22 inch wide strip which I did.

  The order you sew them  in is 4 1/2 in background, 3 1/2 in goose, 4 1/2 in background, 3 1/2 in goose and then a 3 in strip of background.  After they are nicely sewn together (and I ironed the seams to the dark side which was contrary to her directions but worked out fine).  You then cut 3 3/4 in strips from this and then iron again (I did iron the seams open here).  You then sew them back together, twisting every second strip and lining up the goose blocks so that with every other set the corners are touching.  I found this to be the most difficult step as I kept putting them in the wrong order!  After you complete that you add a 3 in wide background strip to the top and the bottom of this reorganized set.

Then  you start slicing diagonally.  The first row is through the points of the square and the second is halfway through the white area.

You can see here the cuts.  You then just cut them apart..

They actually all came out just about perfectly the same size, required no trimming nor ironing and you get 20.

The pros of this is that compared even to the quick "four-at-a-time" way, this requires less drawing lines, pinning and trimming.

The cons of this are that you get bias flying geese which depending on how you sew can be a good or a bad thing.  As you don't have to iron anymore, it seems to be okay.  Another somewhat of a con is that you can only get 10 each of two color geese so if you are a fanatic scrapper like myself, this might be a little boring.  Also, there is quite a bit of excess fabric wastage in the background color.

These directions will only give you one size blocks and the pattern directions which give you multiple sizes are available at Kits by Carla.com for $9.

These blocks ended up being about 2" x 4" finished.


 

Charity Quilt

I decided to interrupt my Farmer's Wife progress with working on a charity quilt using up some of the red strips that I know I won't use for anything else.  One of the other groups I sew for doesn't like red in anything because of the potential of colors running.  We we supposed to bring about 20 colored strips and one solid to the group.  It turns out we were on our own to figure out what to do with them so I decided to go with traditional rail fence.  I made an absolute ton of squares in an hour and a half on my little Featherweight.  Putting them all the design wall like this, I had enough for a single bed quilt. 

However, I just didn't like it.  It felt much too busy to me so then I twisted and turned trying to find something that was more aethetically pleasing to me.  I tried using some black strips and then lining them up in horrizontal rows.

 

I finally came up with this arrangement which I do like!!  All I did was add white strips between each pair.  It kind of looks like a "modern" quilt!  This has inspired me to try mixing and matching some strips in the future.  It  sure doesn't look like rail fence anymore!

I do continue to do the Farmer's Wife 30's blocks and only have a few left to do before I reach my magic number of 90.  There were several in the book I chose not to do and a couple that I couldn't seem to draft at all even though they didn't look at complex.  

This block uses the most different fabrics I have used in any block -- eight!  

This doesn't look that complicated but it was a bear to put together and make sure everything was lined up the way it was supposed to be.

A little tricky!

 

Making Progress!

Progress is being made on the Farmer's Wife 30s quilt but it is far more complex than the 20's one!  I want to make 90 blocks and the book has 99.  I have found, however, for some reason, I don't have patterns drafted for a bunch and I am guessing is that they were too complex for me to do it easily in EQ8 where I drafted all the blocks.  I have had to redo several of the ones I did in EQ as the blocks were too complex as drawn.  This has resulted in duplicate blocks in the file.  As I am using such different colorations from the book, it is difficult to even guess which ones I haven't done anymore.  For some reason, EQ8 did not put them in the order in which I entered them.  If I don't get 90 blocks, I will just add a few I have seen online to make up the difference to 90.  I have 71 done now and a few more I have drafted so am getting down to the wire!

 

These are a couple of my favorites from the last batch.  This one took forever as I kept finding mistakes.  Good thing old age has given me more patience than I had in my youth!