County Fair Quilt Block: Grandma's Scrap Quilt

It's almost time for my local county fair again. As it approaches, I start to think about what I'm going to exhibit this year.

And the one project I do each year specifically and only for the fair is the quilt block for their raffle quilt. Each year they pick a theme and sell kits of fabric. The block is due the next year.

Last year the theme was "Grandma's Scrap Quilt". The kits have a square of background fabric and four smaller pieces of print fabric. All of the prints were 1930s repro designs.

None of the kits were the same. They had a lot of different prints in the same style and put a selection of four in each kit. While I was working the Home Arts table first night of the fair, I looked at all of them and picked the combo that I liked best.

I didn't want two prints of the same colour family and wanted to have some contrast (light and dark). Most of the prints registered as "medium" but I tried to find the best combo. You can see what I ended up with on the left.

Although I hadn't started any work on the block, I had been thinking about it. The first thing I think of when I hear Grandma's Scrap Quilt is a Grandma's Flower Garden -- flowers made of a ring of hexagons. I thought about doing one single flower or doing a mini version with more flowers on the square. (I've been influenced the 1/4" hexies and 1/2" Lucy Boston pieces I've seen online.)

But I couldn't seem to get fired up about it. I had a hard time picturing how I was going to use four colours in a flower with five petals. When I looked at the project with more purpose recently (being closer to the deadline), I thought of an eight pointed star. Turns out I had one already drafted in Word. I added the squares around the outside and once it was printed and cut, I got this:

The paper pieces should be a clue that I was going to do this with English paper piecing, and not traditional piecing. I decided where the colours should go, glued the fabric to the paper pieces

and got to stitching.

In a couple days, I had the center shape sewn together.

I was going to applique the shape onto the background fabric. But which way to orient it? Like above or below?

I went with option one. To center it on the background, I created creases at the half way mark in both directions.

And then lined up the points with the crease lines:

I pinned it in a couple places to hold it but put in pins from the back to hold it while I stitched. That way my thread wouldn't catch on the safety pins.

I stitchey-stitched all the way around with the ladder stitch.

Now you could call it done here:

with the background fabric behind the whole piece but it does make it thicker. And in this case, I had to pull out those papers still! So I cut out the background about 1/2" from the stitching.

Then I pulled out the papers. To remove them, I run something under the edge of the fabric to loosen the glue and then insert it into the hole to pop them out.

Here we go--all done:

At this point I soaked it in a bowl of sudsy water to wash out the glue. I swished it a bit, but didn't agitate too much. Then I had a job of pressing all the seams in place again. After trimming the background to a 1/4" seam (and cutting all the fraying threads), I had this:

The centre of an eight pointed star is the trouble spot. Two of the worst things that can happen is that the points don't meet there and that it is a big thick pile of seam allowances. To avoid a big bump of fabric, you spin the seams in the centre. My block doesn't look super crisp because the edges frayed from the glue and washing, but it is relatively flat. (As flat as it could be.)

I starched the block from the front and the back and it is looking super crisp.

The last thing I did was cut the background to size, centering the applique and remembering to cut at 12.5" (not 12" like last year). All in all, a relatively smooth process this year.

I think this is a super pretty block that falls exactly in the theme. I used only the fabrics they provided and didn't play tricks by using the backs of fabrics. If this one doesn't win, I will never think about winning again. I will continue to make blocks because it's fun, but will stop wondering if it will place.

Rookie Mistake

I've had a couple people ask, and yes, my county fair is coming up soon. Check in day is July 28, so I have about a week.

A couple months ago, I started thinking about what I was going to do this year for the raffle quilt block. I couldn't find the kit and then I realized I couldn't remember a theme either. Did I somehow neglect to buy a kit last year???

I contacted one of the organizers and was grateful to be able to get a kit at that late date. The theme was "Harvest of the Grapes", which didn't sound at all familiar to me so I really do think I forgot to buy a kit last year.

Here are the fabrics they included:

plus a light background which didn't get into the picture. The rule is that you must use each of the fabrics included and you may add no more than two additional fabrics to go with them. If forced to say, I would have to admit I was not very inspired by the fabrics, but I really wanted to get a block done.

So I resorted to a technique that would get me inspired...you guessed it -- English paper piecing! I poked around on the interwebs and found a design for a bunch of grapes using hexies. I adapted this placemat pattern from the "Wild Olive" blog.

First up was to print the pattern on cardstock and then cut the pieces apart. I then chose fabrics for the grapes. I decided on purple grapes and pieced together this bunch:

(The grapes are on a piece of white paper; it's not sewn onto anything yet.) I added a green fabric to the kit for the leaves and I added a purple to give some variety in the grapes. If you have a good eye, you will have noticed that I have three purple fabrics but only added one.

Well, I used the purple print provided in the kit both right side up and right side down! I don't know if the fair judges will consider this cheating, but the rule says I may not add more than two fabrics and I haven't. Whether they approve or not, I thought the grapes looked better this way so I went for it.

I decided one bunch of purple grapes on a 12" block would be kind of lonely, so after trying out some border or framing ideas, I added a yellow bunch of grapes instead.

This time I used two yellows from the kit and added a yellow. But wait! I've already added a purple and a green - how can I add a yellow? Well, the yellow and green are from the same fabric; I just did some careful fussy cutting to get what I want. (I'm going to include a sample with the block so the judges can see that it really is one fabric.)

Do you see anything else wrong with the two bunches of grapes in the picture above? I meant for them to be the same as far as the light and dark grapes, but I sewed the yellow one together in a different pattern! Grrr.

I gave myself a day, and then I took the yellow bunch apart and sewed them together to match the purple.

Once that was done, I settled on a layout and proceeded to applique the grapes to the background fabric.

Instead of using traditional applique stitches, I decided to sew them down using the same method I used for my English paper piecing. It's called the ladder stitch, I think. You take a small stitch in the background (as above) and then take a small stitch along the edge of the grapes, always entering right above/below where the needle just came out.

It made for stitches you can barely see and the back looks neat as a pin:

Here's a detail view from the front: (the blue marks will wash out later)

And here's a shot of the stem I tucked in as well:

I used a short bias strip, folded in thirds to get the raw edges tucked in. The bias allowed me to curve it to the shape I wanted.

When it was all stitched down, this is what I got:

Then I decided to add a loose grape to each bunch:

I soaked the block, let it dry and pressed and starched it. Then I cut it to size and thought I was done.

/ominous music starts playing

A couple weeks later (this week) when I was physically gathering things together to get ready to take to the fair, I thought I should double check that I had actually cut the square to size. It had been a few weeks; maybe I thought I remembered cutting it but hadn't yet. I would hate to be disqualified for such an easy thing to fix. So I measured it, and then measured it again.

/ominous music builds and gets louder

I was measuring 12". It is supposed to be what you call a 12" block, but that means you cut it at 12.5" so you have room to sew it together. My block was useless.

There wasn't too much wailing and gnashing of teeth because I didn't have time for anything but finding a solution. My options were pretty limited because I had very little of the fabrics left and absolutely none of the background because I had thrown out the pieces I trimmed off the sides! After considering using more of my two additional fabrics, I cut the Gordian knot and contacted the organizer for another kit. I got one.

So now all I have to do is take the appliqued pieces off of the too-small background piece and sew them onto the new background square. (Isn't it a good thing I like hand sewing? sigh) And then I have to make extra sure that I cut it at 12.5".

Maybe I'll go put some masking tape on the 12.5" lines of my ruler right now....

Canada150 Quilt

I told you that my sister and I were working on a project when she visited in early July. I didn't show any pictures though. (I think I was distracted by talking about teaching her kids how to sew.)


Here's a picture of Kim's so you can kind of see where we're going with this:

 And how far she got by the end of the day:

We purchased kits that included the fabric (specially designed for this project) and the pattern. We had to do all of that fancy cutting ourselves!

How it was put together: (If you want to skip this mini tutorial, click here to go to my battle with adhesive or click here to go to final pics.)

The pattern gives you all the shapes to cut out for each fabric. Here, for example, we have the goose body/wing and the long "under wing" pieces:

You trace the shapes onto double sided adhesive. One side is backed with paper and that's the one you draw on. You cut them out roughly, that is outside of the lines. Then you iron them onto the back of the fabric. Finally you cut out the shapes on the line. You end up with a piece of fabric with adhesive on the back ready to stick to your background.

But when you're making more complicated applique, it is helpful to put the unit together before you try to put them onto your background. You use the pattern placement guide to put the parts together, pictured on the bottom right here:

Each goose was different and had its own guide. My pieces fit on more or less, as cutting fabric with scissors is not the most precise process. You can also make changes to suit your own asthetic.

Since you're working with adhesive, you need to take some precautions. I covered the pattern placement guide with parchment paper.

It's there so that the adhesive won't stick to anything. Or rather, it will stick to the parchment paper, but you can peel that off and still use the adhesive. It's also important that you can see through it.

Then I place the bottom two parts where they're supposed to go and cover them with a piece of white cotton.

This is to prevent the adhesive from getting onto my iron and to keep the parts in place.

Once I've hit them with the iron, I have the beginning of a goose:

Repeat for the next layer:

And the final layer in this case is the flash of white behind the beak:

What this gives you is a goose that works as one piece that you can arrange on your background until you find the place where it belongs:

Obviously, this goose needs some help as it is
taking a nose dive!

Once it's placed, you can hit the whole thing with an iron again and it will stick to the background.

Although they were made from more pieces, the geese were simple compared to the maple leaf:

The final goal is a maple leaf nested inside of another maple leaf with the background showing in between. To save room on the pattern and use less fabric, the pattern is nested as well.

I roughly cut out the outside of the shape and stuck it to my fabric. Fortunately for me it was a batik with no "wrong" side because I put it on the fabric thinking that was the front. My heart sank when I realized until I remembered that I could use the reverse side just as well. Phew!

My job now was to cut out the two maple leaves! The inside one is complicated enough (I love you Canadian maple leaf but you are the bane to every child made to draw the flag!) but the outside one has to be cut outside and inside. Ai yai yai!

To make a mistake slightly less likely, I scribbled in the part that I wasn't going to keep. That was the safe zone to make extra cuts to get around all those corners.


My biggest frustration with this quilt was working with the adhesive. Me and any type of glue just don't seem to get along! The adhesive stuck fine at first, but as I handled the piece for quilting and as the quilt changed shape due to the quilting (quilting around the maple leaf literally makes the maple leaf puff up), the adhesive just couldn't keep up.

All the sharp edges and skinny shapes of the maple leaf border were prime for lift up. A lot of the edges were sewn down, but I didn't want to sew on the border--I wanted the puffing up! I also didn't quilt over any of the geese or numbers I ended up adding.

The maple leaf was attended to with a glue stick. Since I doubt I'll ever wash it, I think it will hold fine and it is common for it to be used for quilting projects.

I used the adhesive recommended by the pattern but when I looked at the packaging more closely, it did claim to work for basting. So the company has an out by saying that they expect people to sew the pieces after they stick them down. The pattern did not address this and simply said "quilt as desired". I just have to wait and see how much of a problem this becomes.

Here is the final piece:

I added the numbers since this is the year of "Canada150", i.e. 150th anniversary of Confederation. I printed them on paper from a word processing program and then tackled them in the same way as the rest of the appliques.

To accommodate the numbers on the quilt, I rearranged the geese compared to the pattern.

I can't believe how effectively they convey a goose with only four layers of fabric. For such a small part of it, the white piece adds so much!

The kit did not include backing fabric. I found this in my stash and thought it was ideal:

I really like the maple leaf print and the colour, but have found it very hard to fit it into quilts when I have tried. Sounds like a perfect backing to me! Kim had brought a red stripe fabric for her backing but she used a piece of this as well and traded me for the red stripe. (Win win)

Kim also managed to find a red for the binding among my many red fabrics. I, however, was able to use the same fabric as the red stripes on the front:

The triangle of backing fabric was added to the top two
corners. These pockets will hold a rod to make hanging easy.

Kim left me all of her leftovers and I had enough to piece together a binding. (There are more seams than you would normally have but with this busy fabric, who can tell?)

Here is a shot of the back that shows the quilting:

I echo quilted around the centre leaf, going around the geese as I came to them. On the red stripes, I followed the lines of some of the maple leaves in the fabric. I added some vein lines and outlined the centre leaf. I wasn't planning to at first but the leaf was puffing up way too far and I had to hold it down a little. (And by that time I knew stitching around the edges would be needed to hold it down.)

Then I had a choice to make. I could enter the quilt in this year's fair or I could bring it with me to family camp where my sister and I could share our finished projects. I decided to bring it to camp:

I would have had a harder choice if the fair was in Canada--entering it next year would have seemed so out of date, but the Americans here won't care. They haven't been inundated with all of the Canada150 celebrations (and merchandise) this year!

I worried about bringing it camping for all the obvious reasons, plus keeping it "safe" in a packed car. On top of that, I figured any excessive heat (like a car on a sunny day) would make all of the adhesive fail. But I took a chance and brought it with me. I stored it in the camper in a safe place...and that's where it stayed when we drove off!

I realized late that night that I had forgotten it and sent my sister a message. Best case scenario, her co-worker could bring it with her the next day and I could pick it up on my way out of town. But no, the trailer is stored somewhere else and the coworker wouldn't have access til later. So my sister retrieved it later and will store it until we meet again.

Speaking of forgetting, my sister finished hers as well and then forgot it at the cottage where they were staying right before coming to camp! But she sent me this picture so you could see:

Project Stats
Started: 03 Jul '17
Finished: 11 Jul '17
Pattern/Materials: Homecoming Kit by Shania Sunga Designs, Cotton fabrics, binding, and backing; wool batting.
Size: 17'x33"
Equipment: Quilted on my Husqvarna Viking Sapphire 830