Blocks and Birds

I lead off with this block as I had to do it 3 times to get it right!!  I had designed all the blocks in EQ8 and in a couple of cases I got the measurements slightly askew.  That was the reason for the first redo.  The second mistake was actually reading the directions wrong over and over again which resulted in it being an inch smaller than it was supposed to be!

This is the current status of all the blocks I have done.  I dedicate 2 hours each day to sewing but making these blocks has been an excuse not to finish 3 donation quilts as well as the Passacaglia which I finally finished appliqueing onto some background fabric.  All of these projects require basting which is my most hated activity!

I finished these two today.  The top one was all Flying Geese so I found a couple of sources on the internet for measurements for doing the shortcut Flying Geese method!  I used the one that made "oversize blocks" and then trimmed then down to the perfect size.  This method doesn't waste triangles and you make four at a time.  Sure made it easier!

The second block was probably the hardest one i have done.  It required templates and had lots and lots of "Y" seams but it all worked out in the end.  Not my favorite to do however.  The next bunch I has a lot that use a 5 x 5 grid which is difficult measurents when you are working with a 6 inch block.  In many cases I just diagrammed a 5 inch block and put a 1/2 border around it.

I was very surprised when I went down to the Ft Fisher dock and spotted the rocks just filled with birds!  It was high tide and late in the afternoon so the light was not good for pictures -- usually I don't see anything at high tide, especially with the everpresent people but they must have been tired as the birds just stayed.  They were most Short-billed Dowitchers but you can see a couple of Marbled Godwits which finally woke up!

There was a Ruddy Turnstone in this group.

Even though it wasn't obvious, there were probably Dunlins and Long-billed Dowitchers somewhere in this mass of birds.  

I try to get to Carolina Beach Lake as often as I can but the birds have been sparse although people have seen a Roseate Spoonbill there some days.  I did see this nice Snowy Egret fishing one day.  Because of the fierce tropical storm we had a couple of weeks ago, they have practically drained the leg to prevent inevitable flooding.  Fortunately, we had more noise than rain as the wind was ferocious.

 

Neo-natal Quilts and Farmer's Wife Blocks

This and the next two quilts were made for our Guild neo-natal program.  

This was made from the blocks that were not 60 degree angles which I didn't realize until I cut all the fabric up!  So I call it my original design!

I call this my Mother Goose quilt.  I made it a little smaller than I was supposed to in my hurry to get it finished, forgetting to add an additional border.  It's still cute though!

Just a couple of the blocks I have done the last couple of days.  I am getting better at not having to rip out seams because I have the half square triangles going in the wrong direction!!

 

Here is the current status of the blocks.  I am trying to do one a day but if they are super simple, I overachieve.  Some of my fabric choices are better than others but hopefully it will even out at the end.  I was worried about what to do for sashing but decided I will probably use a very dark forest green.  I do them as a reward for having machine quilted a baby quilt!  

My E-Mail Friends are a Bad Influence on Me!!

 

Years ago I got addicted to doing Dear Jane blocks and exchanging them with several email friends.  They were entirely too addictive (although they taught me a lot about quilting because they were such small blocks with so many pieces).  I ended up making about 1000 blocks, enough for several quilts and I still have about 50 I haven't used yet!  About 100 of those blocks were from another series of 30's blocks from a very obscure source!

Well, those email friends strike again as they started making "Farmer's Wife" blocks from two books, one featuring 20's blocks and one 30's blocks.  They are probably the only two books I have purchased in the past couple of years!

I used EQ8 to diagram all the blocks from both books but didn't start them when I was here last year.  I finally got a lot of unpacking done and some organization and decided it was time-- I had selected the fabric palette I was going to use last year.

These are the first five blocks I have done.  For some reason, even though I did them in the alphabetical order in the book, EQ randomly moved them around and I can't figure out the order if there is any!  So I just doing them in the order of EQ.  This one was pretty straightforward.  I am probably going to overlay part of the yellow but will decide for sure further on.

This one was a bear!  It ended up being 5 1/2 inches instead of 6 1/2 inches, thus the border.  The "grid" for it was 5 and when I did my drawing on EQ, I didn't do what I did with other grid 5 blocks which is to add the 1/2 in border all the way around.  So I ended up doing it after the fact.

This one was also a bear to do and it was much too big and then I trimmed down pieces and it became too small!  So another border!

Finally an easy one!

This was an easy one but did have 51 pieces so it took some time and a lot of ripping out as I kept sewing in the wrong directions despite my nice organization of the pieces on a piece of batting!

This is the palette I am using, many are very small scraps so it will truly be a scrap quilt.  I have just about used up one 10 in square already with the light purples.

I have got to get started quilting the many baby quilt tops I have made.  Here is another one which I haven't sewn together yet, having been distracted by the above project!  I was trying to do one block a day but ended up doing 2 each of the last two days!

What To Do With Those Pesky Scraps! A No Picture Day!

 Two years ago,  I took all my less- than-a-yard solids and solid substitutes (predominately one color pieces but have patterning) and cut them into strips.  I kept the full width (45 inches) strips separate from the ones cut from fat quarters which were only 22 inches wide.  My goal was to cut 6 of these 2 1/2 inches wide as I could then use then for borders or binding.  Usually there was some left so next I cut 2 inch strips and then cut miscellaneous sizes if there was any left after that.  I ended up with probably 50 to 100 lbs of strips sorted by color into 2 1/2 gallon bags and set into a deep box so they could stand up and not get wrinkled.  I have actually used up most of the purple strips in the 2 1/2 in length and the greens are getting more sparse!  I gave away a baggie of brown strips as down south I don't tend to use a lot of dark colors anymore.  This has made binding quilts more of a breeze as I don't have to cut the fabric.  At the time, I didn't feel this would be a good thing to do with my lively patterned fabric.  

This week I decided to take a crack at that patterned fabric and so far I have filled two trash cans with strips and pieces that are less than an inch wide or just the selvedge!  I decided to cut the fabric into 10 in squares (like layer cakes) and 5 in squares.  If there is any left, I just cut 2 1/2 strips or smaller.  There are bunches of fabric that I had used partially, some where I cut motifs out of a piece so it had lots and lots of holes.  Many of these were really nice fabrics of which I only had a quarter, half or eighth of a yard.  I cut the really nice ones into 10 in squares but only if I could get at least two 10 in squares (I use these in Delectable Mtns or just by themselves).  If there is fabric left, I cut them into 5 inch squares.  If the piece is wide enough left, I will cut smaller squares (4 1/2 inches, 4 inches, 3 1/2 inches).  If smaller than that, I just cut a 2 1/2 in strip and any left just gets stuffed into a miscellaneous bag if 1 in wide or larger.  

My reasoning for the sizes was (1) seems to be the popular sizes that are being sold online and in quilt shops and (2) I use a lot of the 2 1/2 in size which both 5 and 10 are easily divided by.  I am very very predominately a scrap quilter when doing traditional quilting and have been my whole quilting career.  My exceptions are of course my stack and whack and art quilts.  My very first quilts (applique which was my introduction to quilting) were scrap quilts, even before I had ever heard the term -- my first quilt teacher called me that when she saw my fabric selection for the sampler she was teaching!

I have emptied two plastic boxes of miscellaneous fabric leftovers!  I will have a head start on many charity quilts!  I am very very thankful to have one of those wonderful rulers with the slits in them so I can make very accurate cuts and go through several layers at a time! 

I should also note that I have a ton of black and white fabric -- I used to buy it with the intention of overdyeing it so have substantial yardage.  I make a lot of baby quilts using this fabric now so I cut the small pieces of black and white fabric into 3 1/2 by 6 1/2 inch pieces.  I use this in the quilts I have pictured quite a few times in my blog!  I have so much, I may decide to cut some into the 10 in squares at some later point.  I have been using quite a bit of it for backing lately as they are substantial pieces. 

Using up All the Leftover Stuff - Making Progress

 

Well, I finished the first and second of the three Baltimore Album leftovers quilt tops.  They measure about 40 x 57 and I am pleased with them!

I killed two birds with one stone here, using the leftover blocks and a lot of the leftover strip fabric I made so long ago.  I still have a bunch.  Some of my ice dyed fabric made a nice outside border!

This quilt was inspired by a quilt I saw on Facebook which used a Delectable Mountains block to make flower-like blocks.  I had this pile of 5 inch blocks cut from the leftovers of various quilts.  I have been trying to decide what to do with these blocks as they stare at me each day.  I finally decided to try the Delectable Mountain approach with these blocks, making half square triangles with the blocks and white.  Instead of cutting them in four pieces, I cut them in half. When sewn back together,  this results in blocks that are 5 inch by 4 1/2 inches.  In order to put the four together, you need to use a partial seam approach, adding a center made from a 1 inch square which finishes to 1/2 inch.  This was the tricky part but finally I figured out a way to make this happen.  Even the border is scrap as it was used in the first quilt above!  

Still Attacking the UFOs!

The beginning of another quilt which will be pretty long using these 4 leftover stack and whack blocks from very  very early on in my stack and whack history.  Have no idea where the original quilt is!

Here it is done with the blue strips from my large collection of strips.  They are darker than they appear here.  The quilt is about 40 x 65.  

I finally decided to divide up the Baltimore album leftovers into three quilts plus 3 pillows.  Each of the 3 quilts will be in this format and should be fairly long.  The ones I saved for the pillows are the fancier ones with lots of applique.  I was finding it hard to give them away in charity quits.  You can see I used more of the strips here and it was definitely a pain to cut these!

Here I was auditioning what fabrics I would use to frame these red and green blocks.  I wanted a fabric with both red and green in it and not a Christmas fabric!  I decided to go with the lowest one which is a wild abstract -- a fabric I really like but seem to have bought more than once!  I will use the red and green with the huge flowers as backing.  The tulips go back to the stash to back a smaller quilt.  

I still have to decide the fate of 3 more of these blocks.

 

Attacking the UFOs

We had a request from one of the RAFA members to contribute 6 inch square pieces to her for a charity here in Rochester called Empty Bowls where potters make bowls which are auctioned.  She is making some kind of wall hanging to go with the auction.  I utilized some very small pieces of leftover painted fabrics to make my bowls.  I had held onto these pieces, wondering what I would ever do with them as they were small and there weren't many.  Seemed like a good  use.  Each one is appliqued, batted and zig-zagged around the outside.

I decided to only use the Baltimore Album blocks instead of including the birds as they just were dwarfed.  I settled on this arrangement and then decided again to take the three more complex blocks and make pillows from them and then use the remaining 9 blocks in groups of 3, 4 or 5 to make the medallion type quilts which I have made with some of the other leftover blocks.  They follow!

Here is the first one completed.  It measures 42 x 60 inches and will be donated.  It is made up of 4 leftover stack and whack blocks and the columns are made up of fabric that I pieced, cut and recut and then never  used for any project but thought it was perfect for this.

I really liked how this one turned out!  It is made up of a runner I made to show some ladies how to do disappearing 9-patches.  I utilized a bunch of my marbled fabrics for the squares and the border is made from the huge pile of the strip yardage I made from leftover blue fabrics many years ago.

It measures 38 x 65 and I might just keep this one!  I found some perfect fabric for backing both of these quilt tops.