Catching Up!!!

These past couple of weeks have been very busy so it will take a bit to catch up on my blogs for sure!!  I had to put this picture up of a gorgeous sunset first even though it was not taken where the rest of the pictures were!  It is a sunset last Monday at Ft. Fisher and I was hurrying off to a quilt meeting but sensed it would be a beautiful sunset from what I could see.  The sun had actually gone down probably 20 minutes before I took this picture.

I spent the previous five days in Florida at my sister Gail's house.  She invited me down early so I could share some of my learning with her weekly quilting group,  My sister definitely overachieves in this department as each week she develops a pattern and then teaches these ladies how to make whatever project she is doing -- probably why she doesn't blog much anymore!!  So as two of the ladies are really beginners, I chose a "disappearing nine-patch" as that is an easy block that makes for a nice presentation.  We decided that we would do three blocks for a table runner.

This was my demonstration piece.  The nine-patch consisted of the purple marbled blocks in the corners, the yellow on the inside and the blue in the middle of the column and row.  My instructions were to three different values (my first mistake).  I chose a light value for the center, medium values for the middle sides and dark for the corners but you could do any combination.  However, all the ladies (including my sister) brought charm packs with 5 inch squares which was the right size and saved the cutting step.  Unfortunately, it was a bit difficult to sort out the light, medium and dark values.  I learned I shouldn't say values as that was not a term all the ladies were familiar with.  

We got our nine patches sewn but three of the ladies hadn't done chain piecing before and my sister was resisting....Being the older sister, I INSISTED she do it my way this once!!  So they learned chain piecing, nesting (seams turned opposite ways at intersections) and ironing.  It didn't take long for them to get their blocks finished.  Then we measured the center block (knowing that beginners don't always do a scant 1/4 inch seam) and took that measurement, divided in half and cut the blocks.  This all went relatively smoothly.

This was my sister's almost finished table runner.  She did well with her lights and darks and mediums and put them together in a nice scrappy composition.  It is hard to successfully pull off scrappy with only three  blocks.

This was March's and worked out really well I thought.  With these scrappy ones, we didn't sew the now four-patches together until we set them on the design wall to get good placement.

March overachieved and did four blocks and this was an alternate arrangement and an idea. of what it would look like as a scrap quilt.  If you put these  blocks on point and use a strong color for the center blocks, you get a really interesting arrangement (just turn your head sideways!!!).

These were Arliss's blocks and have yet to be arranged.  She chose some nice bright colors.

Donna's charm pack was the most difficult to arrange but she did very pleasing blocks with good contrast!

In the meantime and during times I wasn't looking out the window taking pictures of birds, I managed to complete the green quilt minus one block!!  Right now it measures 77 x 77 but I will add some borders to make it probably about 90 x 90 so it can fit on a king-sized bed.  I gave the book away as I never am going to make another of these!!  I will be quilting it in three parts so won't add the borders on until I am finished the quilting and have sewn it together -- much easier on the shoulders and arms.  

My sister has an awesome studio with lots of space, all windows facing out onto fields and woods with bird feeders in the backyard -- a lanai which she has pretty much taken over!!  It was a great space for teaching a small group.  It would give my friend Marcia's beautiful studio a run for its money (Gail doesn't have the storage though that Marcia has though!!).  Gail was giving me grief about how much fabric I had versus what she had. I pointed out that she has only been quilting for about four years and I have for 40 years -- she didn't much to say to that (she has collected quite a bit in four years!!)  She has a free pattern on the Hoffman website (Skyline Circle Quilt).  Her quilt was displayed at Market last fall and she received a nice collection of beautiful Hoffman fabrics for her efforts!!  

Comfort Quilts

This is one of the small quilt tops made with the "disappearing 9-patch" pattern. Below I show the sequence of piecing, cutting and rearranging to come up with this. I don't know the origin of this pattern and basically put it together after hearing what it was. I understand there are You Tube visuals and many patterns out on the internet. My friend Peg said it was best to keep one constant color in the center so I added that criteria.

Whenever I am on vacation, I take along some mindless projects to do. They usually are my stack and whacks or using up some of my scrap fabric making comfort quilts. Since I cut up hundreds of squares and strips before I left, it was time to start putting them together. Up until yesterday, I had a pile of 200 of one kind of block and 75 of another made up. It was becoming increasingly boring to make those blocks and not know what they would look like put together.

A trek to Lowes and a purchase of a 4 x 8 foot insulation board (which they nicely cut in half for me) and then Joanns for some fleeces and now I have two design walls!! So the blocks have now been made into 8 quilt tops so far and I am inspired to make some more of the blocks. These tops will be made into quilts when I get home where there is a large stash of backing material and batting and donated to our Comfort Quilt project at GVQC. My goal is to have 30 tops done by the time I leave the beach.

You have to use a little imagination here and picture this as the nine patch. There are four different (or the same) novelty prints in the four corners. I used relatively matching solids or solid substitutes in the four alternating squares and some sort of red in the center. So just pretend that the reds are all the same and that those alternating rectangles are the same. It is your basic 9-patch cut vertically and horizontally in this case evenly. I used all 6 inch blocks so for each 9 squares, you will end up with four blocks (uneven four patches). Each blocks is about 8 1/4 inches finished.

If you want a nice even placement like the top quilt on this page, you just switch around the piles like this. All I did was switch the upper right with the lower left. I then treated the four blocks like a block and pieced the top.

This is a totally unplanned arrangement of random blocks. It got a little tricky as almost all the blocks of novelty fabric I had were directional (had a top and a bottom). This works too!

I have finished 7 of this style (the vanishing 9-patch) so far and have two more to go (all arranged but not sewn). I will add a small inner border and a border to all these to make them about 40 x 50 inches when finished.

This was the other style, the pattern for which I saw at a sewing day at Marcia's. Jeanne used it for one of her workshops. I call it a disappearing 4 patch as you just take a completed 4-patch and make cuts from the center seam and then turn around the rectangles and re-sew them as 9-patches. I found that it was really important to use pretty high contrast fabrics for the two fabrics in each of the four patches. Again, I started with 6 inch squares. When put together they would make 10 inch blocks. After repiecing, they become 9 inch blocks.