Lucy Boston Milestone

Since August of 2019 I have been working on sewing the sashing around all 56 of my Lucy Boston Patchwork of the Crosses quilt blocks. My Instagram feed has been an interrupted parade of blocks with their new grey perimeters, each one counting up to the finish.

Block 32 of 56, finished Apr 15, 2020

Block 35 of 56, finished Apr 27, 2020

Block 44 of 56, finished Sep 6, 2020

And finally on Sunday, the last one!

Block 56 of 56, finished Feb 7, 2021

At some point I shared the concern that I might get bored of sewing (seemingly) endless grey honeycombs, but really, I didn't. I enjoy the stitching and it was a lot less taxing than when I had to match the fabrics in the blocks! Each block didn't take too, too long so I had regular injections of feeling like I had finished something.

You would think using solid grey would preclude any drama, but I managed. When I bought the grey fabrics, I was planning to use different shades from white to dark grey. After I bought them, I decided the white wasn't going to work and changed my plan. Last April, I pulled out the fabrics to compare what I needed with this new plan to what I had.

You can see the fabric I labeled "3" just has a couple strips left; it was not enough.

Glad that I kept everything organized and labeled, I knew exactly what to order. I made a trip to the store where I got it on the off chance I would get fabric from the same bolt, and they didn't have it any more. Being my last option, I ordered some online and just hoped it would match what I had. Dye lots in yarn is a real thing (as in different batches of the same colourway won't be the same) and I thought that might be true of fabric too. When I got it, I tucked it away because I wasn't in a cutting mood and had plenty of other blocks to sew.

At the end of the year, I got through sewing all the other blocks and finally needed to cut strips from grey 3. But I couldn't find the extra that I had bought earlier in the year. I searched through my maker space and the boxes of my fabric multiple times and could not find it. I finally decided it wasn't worth my time to keep looking and ordered more. Even further removed in time from the original purchase; even more chance of the dye lot not matching.

I received the new fabric and promptly cut it into strips, cut out the honeycomb shapes and glued the 138 honeycombs I needed to finish. I pulled out the block that was waiting to be finished and set the first honeycomb in place:

It didn't match!!

I was so disappointed. And wondering why I didn't check before I cut and glued all those honeycombs when I was already worried the colours wouldn't match!

When I was ready to face it, I tried to find a solution. With some research, a few different things made me suspicious that I mixed up the names. One of them being that fabric I couldn't "find" from April, but funny enough, at the same time I had more of grey 2 than I thought I should!

Now, having an idea of what the grey I needed was called (I suspected I had mixed up the names of grey 2 and 3 but couldn't be sure), I took samples of the fabric to a different quilt store. I don't normally shop there because it's far away, but I was in that city for something else and made the stop.

The shop doesn't have a particularly large section of solids, and they only had five greys. And only one of them was from the manufacturer I needed. And. It. Was. The. Colour. I. Needed!

These colours match!

I was very happy about that, let me tell you. I could have tried an online order, but finding it in person and being sure was so much better!

After that it was simple work to cut and glue another 138 honeycombs for the remainder of my blocks.

Here's a pic of all of the blocks hung together:

You might notice I have also started to sew some of the black connecting pieces between the blocks. And I have started some of the crosses too:

All the centers come from the same fabric, but there are different circle designs.

I'm using three different fabrics for the arms of the crosses, the three bottom ones in this picture:

The top one might be used in the final border.

In a couple places, I have sewn blocks together to get a feel for that:

The lower horizontal seam is sewn

The upper horizontal seam is sewn

I'm still not sure if I'm going to sew it all together in rows first, which is what I see other PotC makers doing online, or try to sew it into sections. Or maybe spiral out from the center.

For now, I'm sewing crosses, which go really fast compared to sashing a block (16" of seams to sew instead of 64"!) and considering how to finish the outside edge. The quilt is visible from where I sit and stitch, so it's easy to stare at it and ponder my options.

All the Quilts; All the Time

It's perfectly normal for me to have many quilts on the go, especially since I tend to work on a quilt on and (mostly) off over at least a few years, bringing it out and packing it away for each new session. But this week I've taken it to a whole new level.

I'm sure this is the first time I've had four different quilts out and going, at the same time! Phew.

It started with an idea I had for the back of my Merrily Christmas quilt. I think I've mentioned that I wanted to make a second top to put on the back instead of a plain back. I'm not going to have many Christmas quilts about so I may as well get double duty out of this one. :)

I came across this book at the thrift store when I was visiting my mom:

and I was intrigued. Soon after I had the idea to sew up the words of the carol Joy to the World. Not so long after that, I was well on my way!

I really enjoy the improvisation of the process. The process uses strips of fabric in various widths and you build the letters up step by step, no measuring or figuring. This is my work station:

Sewing on the left, cutting/trimming in the middle, and ironing on the right, plus all the strips laid out on the parts of the ironing board I don't need to press on. Everything close and convenient. I did start to make myself stand up for pressing just so I would move around more. (I just read a book on ergonomics so it's still running through my mind.)

Making the letters is a prime opportunity to do some leader/ender sewing. The idea with leader/enders is that when you get to the end of a seam on the main project where you can't follow with another piece, you sew a seam of the secondary project. It works better to start sewing a seam when there's fabric under the needle and it saves on thread too, if you're counting that.

Well, as soon as I saw the Plaidish quilt pattern on Instagram, I knew I would be making it. You can click the link to see some samples--it's made from scraps and uses light, medium, and dark values to make a sort of plaid pattern.

The pattern was offered for free, so I downloaded it right away. Following the cutting instructions, I went through all of my scrap stash and started cutting pieces.

There are three different blocks and each requires three or four pieces so I kept them all organized in jars and whatever containers I could find while I was cutting (including an empty Kleenex box!) I got all of the pieces except a few of the dark squares from my smaller scraps! That's a win right there.

I put everything in a cookie sheet and set it by my machine so I could sew a seam whenever there was a gap in the main project.

 I had laid out some of the pieces to see if there was any way to organize the colours

but determined that with this many colours, it was just going to have to be random. But I couldn't do it all random. After sewing pairs together (like a rectangle or square to a narrow strip), I did some planning of what would be sewn to what. I wanted to maximize the contrast and not have the same fabric together in the same block.

I'm pretty far on this project by now. All of the A blocks and B blocks are sewn, and I'm working on the C blocks. Once the blocks are all sewn, I'll lay them all out to determine their placement. I'm sure I won't be able to put them together randomly.

Truth be told, I am really itching to get this one done; I'm excited by it. So sometimes I force myself to make some more letters just so I can piece more of these blocks! The letters take a lot more brain power and get tiring after a while, but having this project gets me fired up to go again the next time.

In the middle of July, I was getting a lot of quilting done on my bright stars on black quilt, including the borders, which obviously weren't quilted the way they were marked!

But then we had company coming and I thought that we might want to use the living room (where I was working) so I rolled it up and put it on a chair:

Which is were it has been sitting. I have the majority of the quilting done, but I was slowing down because I knew I couldn't get any further before I made the brightly coloured flange I was going to put along the binding.

Well. While I was going through the scraps for the Plaidish quilt, I came across a nice pile of leftover brights. So I started cutting them up too.

They are mostly left over from the bright diamonds quilt I made, and the pieces that were already cut into strips were the width I was going to use. Boom. That saved me a lot of cutting. After getting it cut, I measured about 500 inches of strips, so that will be enough to go around my 95 inch square quilt. Next step is to decide what is going where and to piece the lengths together.

And. Then. I could no longer wait to work on my Lucy Boston quilt. I had bought the solids I wanted for the sashing in July with my sister. (She patiently helped me pick out the perfect shades of grey among the many options. And then once we had a group picked, I saw three on the shelf that blended much better. They had more of a brown tone than the others, which is what I was trying to avoid, but the blend was so good, I went with it. So a lot of fussy work to narrow it down and then a 3 second decision to go with this other set. I told you she was patient with me.)

Another reason this project was on hold was that I was debating using another system than cutting shapes with a template and gluing the fabric to paper shapes. Linda Franz has a system she calls Inklingo where you print lines on the fabric for cutting and for sewing. This way you can sew the pieces together without the steps of gluing it to paper and removing the paper later. It was very tempting because it's a very slick system. But the very fact that I hadn't gotten to it was telling me that it was not the method for me. I enjoy the paper method.

So, I cut some strips and then cut some honeycombs:

I'm not going to cut them all out because I need over 1,300. I'll make them as I go. I got enough to start putting them on the first block,

 and just finished it last night.

One down, 55 to go.

I missed having a project to sew while sitting on the couch too brain-tired to sew more letters. And I missed working on these blocks. Besides, football starts tonight so I need some hand work to do! This project should be more than enough to keep me busy through the football season.

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....