Joining Together

I enjoy reading Cynthia's blog, Quilting is more fun than Housework, and a recent post mentioned a block drive for Covered in Love. I went to check it out and discovered Kat at Kat and Cat Quilts had called for string blocks that she calls Mix Tape, click here for her tutorial.

For those of you who just asked yourself some version of, "What is a block drive?" This is a call for quilt blocks that will then be assembled into a quilt. Blocks are easier to get done in a short time and easier to mail. Added all together they can make quilts in a quicker time than one quilter making the quilt from beginning to end. (And it's fun to work on projects together.) Usually a block drive will have a theme specified--maybe by colours used, maybe by the design chosen. 

For whatever reason, this block connected with me at just the right moment and I pulled out some scraps to make some. Coincidentally, the same box that held all my scraps already cut into strips also held some scrap batting pieces. These blocks were made directly onto the batting so that was perfect.

It's easy to sew pieces of batting together to make the size you need. I had a long strip (cut from the edge of a quilt) that was about 10 inches wide but I needed a 13.5" square. So I cut 13.5" pieces and then sewed a strip to the one size to make up the difference. Whiz it through the sewing machine on an extra wide zig zag and you're done.

As long as there are no gaps, you don't have to be too worried about it--whatever quilting is going to be added will hold the batting in place.

Friday night I made five blocks and then cleaned up thinking I might be done.

The next morning I wanted to make more, so I did. I made them two at a time so that I could alternate between them for sewing, which is more efficient. What I did not do was start a whole bunch and commit myself to having to finish them!

I cleared out my yellow and orange strips and most of those batting scraps by the time I was done.

I made 11 blocks all together.

I didn't realize at first, but I was joining this drive on the last weekend. (These were the January-February blocks.) I sent an email to the organizer and she got back to me right away letting me know they weren't due February 28. So I figured whatever I got done on the weekend, I would mail on Monday (March 1) and that would be good.

It makes quite a mess as I'm rifling through the strips looking for ones that are long enough for the next place and that make a balanced-looking block. By the second orange block, I didn't have a wide variety so I wanted to make sure I didn't put the same fabric beside itself.

The examples I saw online seemed to have skinnier strips. Some people save even the thinnest ones. I just worked with ones that I had pre-cut into 1.5", 2", and 2.5" widths, and most of what I had left were the 2.5". It was tempting to think I wasn't doing it "right" but then I remembered that they intend scraps to be used--they must be used to working with whatever they get!

Here's evidence of one of the hazards of working with batting on the back of the block:

Fabric sticks to batting like velcro so anytime I put down the block, I risked fabric sticking to the back and not noticing it. At some point I saw a wide piece of batik fabric was sewn onto the back of this block. I was not about to take out the seam, so I cut the fabric right next to the stitching. If it weren't batik, I could have teased that tiny remnant out of the stitches but batik is too densely woven. It won't do any harm there.

Here is an idea of what a quilt of these blocks might look like:

Kat does a different drive every two months so maybe I'll jump in on a few more this year.

Joining up with Oh Scrap linky party at Quilting is more fun than Housework.

Scrappy Trip Around the World Blocks

Remember this project?

This was how many blocks I had done in August.

For the next set, I matched up more strips sets sorted by colour.

My sister had given me this color tool and I finally thought to use the red and green filters to check values so I didn't have to take a hundred pictures and convert them to black and white.

That saved a lot of time!

By the end of December, I had this many blocks:

At this point I was running out of darker fabrics because the blocks use a lot more of it than the lighter fabric. So I thought, maybe I should make some light blocks, like this:

I put it on the wall to see how it would look:

I also wondered about making every other block a light one.

We'll see.

In mid-January, I worked on the heart. I didn't like the dark lines going through the middle.

I made some replacement blocks:

but I still didn't like how it looked. The diagonal lines didn't match up; the red is too thick on those blocks. So I took apart the blocks and reassembled them:

That's better!

I'm not promising this quilt will even have a heart on it, but if it does it will be one I like! ;)

And now the blocks are packed away in a box as I needed to put my Lucy Boston up on the wall. The ideas can marinate while I work on other projects.

Plaidish Quilt has been Finished; Now Blogged

If you're keeping track, you'll know I titled my May 22 post "Close to a Finish" and then never mentioned the project again!

Well, I did finished the project soon after, and even took pictures. But then, you know, life.

So without any further delay, here is my finished Plaidish quilt:

Final measurements are 62x79".

The simple quilting follows the piecing and gives a good texture without competing with the design.

It's kind of the obvious choice, but it works.

A couple more shots from when it was hanging:

I've mentioned that the binding was a juvenile novelty print but it was so narrow, you can hardly tell.

I'll repeat myself by saying again how much fun this pattern was. Give it a try! (Details and link below.)

The pattern has stuck in my head and I often think about how to do a one or three colour version. It's fun to see different versions pop up on Instagram. (Check out #plaidishquilt.)

Here's a picture of the quilt on my (queen size) bed:

It generously covers the top, but isn't wide enough to hang over the edge.

Project summary

Started: July 30, 2019

Finished: May 24, 2020

Size: 62"x79"

Pattern: Plaidish by Kitchen Table Quilting

Almost 100% scraps with a few pieces from fat quarters.

Cotton batting.

Walking foot quilting on my Viking Sapphire.

All blog posts about this quilt: link

Scrappy Trip Around the World Begins

Remember the Quilty Adoption Event in April? I wrote about the first item I adopted -- a quilt top that I disassembled and sewed the blocks in a new layout -- and in that post, I mention a second item, but haven't written about it since.

If you follow me on Ingstagram, you will recognize these strips that I adopted:

It was a big box of single 2" strips, loosely sorted from light to dark and a bunch of strip sets already sewn together. There's a project the sewn sets were intended for and I'm still deciding if I will go ahead and make it, or use these strips for something else.

Meanwhile, I took the single strips and sorted them in groups from light to dark.

I then sorted those groupings into five gradations I called light, light2, medium, medium2, and dark because I needed five different groups to make a trip-around-the-world (TATW) block.

I have become enamored with the scrappy TATW blocks popularized by Bonnie Hunter. (Link to her tutorial.) These blocks I'm making have a similar effect but with a little more order to them because of how the lights and darks are placed.

For the first set of blocks (above) I created sets by pulling similar colours from each of the five categories. That was enough to show me that I was going to have to do a little more pre-sorting if the sewing was going to be any fun.

So I took the five gradations, and sorted each one into different colour families.

Some of the strips are in more than one colour group, and sometimes it's a stretch when a fabric is multicoloured but I had to put it somewhere. Above, clockwise from top left, is, purple, blue, red, yellow, and green.

This was the first layout I tried on the design wall, just to have a proof of concept.

The project sat for a while then and while it was sitting, I thought I would try to make strip sets ahead of time so the sewing would be even easier. It was just too hard to see if the fabrics contrasted enough when I grabbed strips while I was sewing.

So, recently, I sat down and pulled out one colour group at a time and made some sets. For the first colour group, I did it just by eye, but then realized I should be putting my camera to use.

In this photo, the strips in colour are a bit of a jumbled mess, but when I convert them to black and white, I think the contrast is just what I need. (In this case, M-M2-D-M2-M, as in medium, medium2, dark, medium2, medium.)

In this next set, I think it looks good in colour, but the black and white shows that the first two fabrics are pretty close in value. (I think I used this set anyway because my choices are limited.) This strip set is L-L2-M-M2-D.

In the next photo, I'm going for another L-L2-M-M2-D, and I think the fourth fabric looks darker than the third in colour. But in black and white, I think they are too similar to use.

The next picture is an example of M2-D-M2-M-L.

In the fourth position, there are actually two fabrics (buttons and a floral). I was trying to see which was better. Even though I think they are the same value, I think I went with the buttons because there was a little better contrast. The floral seemed to mush in with the other florals. And I think it's clear that even though the two reds in the first and third position look different in colour, in black and white, they are the same value.

The fabric strips are all different lengths and it didn't take long to realize that I needed to pay attention to how many inches of each combination I was going to get. For each inch of one strip set, I needed 2 inches of the other two strip sets for each block. I didn't worry about getting it exact but I couldn't be way off either. I sorted a lot of fabric and ended up with sets ready to sew.

Another day I tackled sewing some of the strip sets (below). I had tried to match strips of similar length, and just cut them to match the shortest length for easy sewing.

Once they were sewn I figured out how to iron the seams the right way, and cut each set into 2" pieces.

I stacked up the pieces to make blocks (seen at the top of the picture above), and then sewed those strips together.

And here we have my first set of blocks sewn from this process:

I have since sewn sets from two other colour families, and here they are on the design wall:

I don't know if this will be the final layout, but it's a fun way to put them on the wall for now.

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Linking up with Oh Scrap! hosted at Quilting is more fun than Housework.

Rectangles Squared Quilt Started, Stalled, and Resumed

Back in 2012 I saw a quilt on Ravelry in the show and tell thread, and it has stuck in my mind ever since! I love the pattern of the light and dark and then the added layer of the coloured squares that seem to float behind the dark lines.

Here's a link to the maker's post on Flickr. I did not see that she ever identified the pattern.

But as I looked at it more closely, I realized it was a very simple construction. I've diagrammed it:

You put two rectangles together to make a square. You put four of those units together to make the block. You do need to watch how you assemble them because you'll need half spinning clockwise and half spinning counterclockwise. (I choose 2x4" rectangles but of course you could use any dimension as long as the height finishes twice the width.)

When you put them together you get:

There's another way to get almost the same result with fewer seams to match in assembly:

Here they are side by side:

Except for how the pattern ends at the edges, these two methods produce the same result.

Unless you take into account how the colour falls in the pattern.

On the left is the quilt I admired. The squares of colour don't line up with the black lines and add an extra layer of interest. On the right you can see that the colour is confined inside the black lines and produces a flatter result. You could also say the one on the right is calmer and easy to line up the colours to emphasize the woven look. Neither is better; it just depends on what you enjoy and choose to make.

Who knows what made me decide now was the time for this quilt I have been thinking about since 2012, but I got started in early March.

I decided to make half of the blocks pairing dark blue with light yellows and greens and the other half pairing dark green with light blues and whites. I ended up not having enough fabrics in some of the colours so I didn't strictly follow that colour scheme. I organized everything in these stacking trays that used to be used for eyeglasses orders.

You might be scratching your head because these pieces do not look 2.5"x4.5".

No, they're not. When there was a big enough piece of fabric, I cut the pieces at 2.5"x9", and sewed them together before trimming them to 4.5"x4.5". It makes for a little less matching up while you're sewing.

I sewed a lot of the seams as leaders and enders while finishing my Joy to the World quilt.

That was a lot of improvisational sewing with scraps, so there were a lot of starts and stops perfect for fitting in some leaders and enders.

Once that top was done, however, I did some sewing with this quilt as the main project.

I completed the first few blocks and put them on the design wall to make sure I was pressing so the seams would nest.

It's a good thing I checked because I had to make a correction. If you're thinking of making this pattern, for the blocks turning one way, press the first seams toward the dark and the second seams away from the sewn seam. (This will make sense when you're doing it.) Press the blocks that turn the other way toward the light and toward the seam. Everything will nest that way.

By April 19, I had all the blocks sewn that I could make from the fabric I had.

I have quite a bit of blue so that was no problem. The dark green was not so plentiful. Here I have all 40 blue blocks done and 20 green ones. I put the project on pause then because I was waiting for some green to come from someone I had sent fabric to. (I had a certain design she needed and she agreed to swap.) I never did get anything from her. :( On the other hand, my sister came to the rescue and sent me a nice package with a good selection of greens.

It wasn't quite enough to do all 20 blocks in green, but I had already decided to fill in some of those blocks with blue. (And I snuck in some of that black that I have so much of!)

By mid-May, I had all the blocks done and laid them out on the spare bed.

I want to put them somewhere I can see all of them at once on a flat surface to double check the balance of colour and of lights and darks, but I think this is pretty close.

It's laid out in an 8x10 grid. At 8" a block, the quilt will be about 64x80, a twin size or so. I suppose I could border it, but right now I'm not planning to.

Linking up with:
  -"Oh Scrap" at Quilting is more fun than Housework.
  -Quilting Patchwork and Applique