WIP - National Quilter's Circle Block Challenge Part 2

As I mentioned earlier, I started the year with the National Quilter's Circle Block Challenge. In the earlier post, I shared that blocks three and five were done, but not photographed. Here they are:

Block six was still in-progress as of the last post, primarily because I changed it a bit to allow for the continuous stripes of the fabric in the bounding square set on-point. I am positive it would have been easier to just follow the directions. Here it is:

Block six and some other commitments in my life led me to set this project aside for a bit. Hopefully it will be a late 2018 or 2019 finish.

WIP - National Quilter's Circle Block Challenge

I've had a productive few weeks, though I haven't shared much of it, yet. One of these projects is the National Quilter's Circle Block Challenge. This free quilt along is a series of nine blocks constructed primarily with half square triangles and flying geese. They are deceptively complicated. I think one block has 81 pieces! I've made a few modifications, but, other than being a couple of blocks behind at this point, am excited by the challenge. Gina Perkes of the Copper Needle has designed nine excellent 16" blocks.

One of my quilt goals this year is to make a couple of quilts to live on our couch. This will be one of those quilts. Because I knew it was staying home, I cut into a layer cake I've had for awhile now of the first Cotton + Steel line by Melody Miller. It was a little scary, I'm not going to lie. I've opted for Kona Steel for my background.

I've managed to take pictures of blocks 1, 2 and 4. I also have blocks 3 and 5 complete, and block 6 is in-progress. This is one that I am modifying slightly. It has a great square set on point that separates the inner and outer parts of the block. The original pattern makes this box with a lot of smallish half square triangles. I'm not intimidated by the HST's, but I do have a striped fabric I'd like to fussy cut and use to frame the inner part. I'm pretty sure this has been more work than just following the directions would have been. Blocks 7 and 8 have been officially released and block 9 was leaked. Hopefully, I can have them all complete by the end of next weekend.

I've also played some with designing a setting for the blocks. The nine blocks on their own are a little smaller than I'd like the finished product to be. I'm up to six variations in Illustrator and about a dozen pictures from similar quilts done by others and shared on Facebook or Instagram.

This post will be linked to Elm Street Quilts' One Monthly Goal. I'd like to finish the top by March 31.

Quilting Influencer: Grandma Patent

I've been fortunate to have access to many talented quilters in my life. Some briefly for a class or workshop and others for more long-term, deeper relationships. One of the first quilters in my life was my paternal grandmother, Lorene Patent, or as my children called her, Grandma 'Tent.

For most of my memory, she was an avid hand-quilter. She spent hours and hours quilting nearly every day at home on family or customer quilts, at the local senior citizen's center for fundraiser quilts and at church on charity quilts. Her standards were exceptionally high. She was known to take out what she considered sub-par quilting done by others and restitching it to not let customers down. She was a retired elementary school teacher and meticulous in her record-keeping. She could estimate how many stitches were in a quilt based on the number of turns around the spool of thread the she used on the quilt.

Grandma was a Type I Brittle Diabetic. Her blood sugar was quite volatile. Her mortality was always at the forefront of her mind. When I was in later elementary school, she thought it was important for my sister and I to know how to do all of her various crafts so we could finish whatever she was working on when she died, particularly since many of her projects were commissions or work other people were paying for. I learned to hand quilt at this time, but have not done a lot of it since. We also learned how to cross stitch and embroider.

I made her this mini for her 96th birthday on February 2. It is made with half-square triangles and is based on a similar quilt made by a guild friend. It was a great project for the Prairie Point Quilters' Retreat. The solids are all Kona Cottons by Robert Kauffman.

I talked about Grandma in the past-tense in this post because she passed away shortly after celebrating her 96th birthday. Because I am the most avid quilter among her descendants, I received her collection of quilt design templates including many from her mother, a precut quilt kit from the 1930's or 1940's, her hand quilting hoop, and the last quilt she had started hand quilting. Fortunately, it was not a client quilt, and I will be able to keep it once it is complete.

#playimprovqal - All Caught Up!

As planned for in yesterday's post, I am all caught up with Elm Street Quilt's #playimprovqal. These two blocks were put off because of other priorities, but I will admit, neither is my favorite type of block ...

Week 5 - Wonky Stars

Wonky stars require too much planning to fall under improv in my book, but I am pretty happy with the outcome.

Week 6 - Crumbs

This is also a challenge for me primarily because I don't keep scraps less than a few square inches. In general, I'm not really a scrappy quilter. I am far more likely to pass my scraps on to someone else than organize them for future use. Fortunately, I was a bit behind when I saw this prompt so I was able to generate a few small scraps as I completed previous blocks.

I'm looking forward to the last two prompts, and I figured out my setting plan today for completing the project.

I'm linking this post to Sew Can She's Show it Off Saturday.

Elm Street Quilts' Play Improv Quilt Along - Progress Post 1

I am focusing on finishing UFO's or quilts already planned this year, but the quilt along hosted by Elm Street Quilts was just too tempting. She set-up a quick eight-week quilt along based on weekly prompts to make improv blocks or mini quilts. I am using my stash of mostly solid scraps and have four of the six announced prompts completed. (I did get a little behind as I was trying to finish up a project I'll share sometime down the road.) I hope to finish up the two delinquent blocks this weekend so I'm ready for Monday's second to last prompt.

Week 1 - Log Cabin

Week 2 - Triangles

Week 3 - Stack, Cut, Sew

Week 4 - Wonky Geese

I am linking this post to Elm Street Quilts' Progress Check-in Linkup.

WIP Wednesday: A Heavy Heart and a New Experience

While I was sitting at one of my family Christmas celebrations, scrolling through Instagram, I saw a post that made me cry in the middle of joyous children, a competitive card game and all of the other activities of a large boisterous family enjoying time together. One of my sorority girls from back when I was an advisor to the sorority to which I had belonged as an undergraduate student who is now a grown-up with a husband and a grown-up job had posted about the unexpected loss of their five-month-old son to an undetected birth defect. Ever since, my heart has been heavy and I've felt powerless not knowing what to say or how to reach out. A couple of weeks ago, another Sigma invited me to a benefit dinner and silent auction. I'm not able to attend the benefit, but contributing to the auction gave me something to do. I sent a note to the organizer that I would try to get a quilt to her in time for the event.

In a previous post, I outlined some of the UFO's floating around my space, but none of these seemed like the best option for this particular need. I opted to dig through my stash for one of those sets of fabric I bought but didn't have plan for and test a pattern I've been playing with for a few months. As of yet, it is unnamed, but I like the bold pattern, asymmetric layout and negative space.

I was able to finish piecing the top in a later than I should have work session after the kids' bedtime and the back in an early morning burst. Both unusual sleep-depriving bursts of productivity were not only to keep me on track to get a quilt to the auction, but also to keep my appointment with the APQS Millennium Long Arm at Innovation Studio today. I'll write a full post (or series) about Innovation Studio at some point, but in short, it is a community center with oodles of fun tools available to members. The textile lab includes regular sewing machines, industrial straight stitch and serger machines, looms and the Millennium. I completed my orientation course to the long arm a couple of weeks ago. Today was my first solo run on a quilt I had made.

My time was limited, and I was starting to get nervous when it took me a chunk of time to get everything loaded, threaded, and otherwise set-up. Once it was on, I continued to have problems with breaking threads so I opted for simple straight-line, channel-lock strip-quilting. I was able to get it done and my mess cleaned up in time to make daycare pick-up, though, so all worked out.

I can hardly wait to finish some more tops and schedule another block of time to practice my long arm quilting skills.

Now I'm down to trimming, binding and getting the quilt to the auction. I know money won't help this family replace their lost son, but I do hope it will relieve some of the financial pressure of intensive care and a funeral.

The Yoshiko Jinzenji's Modern Sampler QAL with the Salty Oat

Quite awhile ago I saw a post on Instagram advertising a Quilt-A-Long hosted by The Salty Oat for Yoshiko Jinzenji's Modern Sampler. The little picture on my phone looked so adorable I took a screenshot. A little bit later I found her post and got a little bit excited, excited enough that I bought the pattern. When it came, I selected and bought the solid background fabric. Then, I put it on the shelf to work on some swaps with nearing deadlines and some Christmas projects.

Over winter break (the University I work for banks some holidays from throughout the year so we can shutdown between Christmas and New Years), I opened it up and wanted to catch up on the QAL. Yikes! Twelve blocks with templates for itty bitty wonky pieces. Ugh! After I got over the urge to throw it in the trash and toss the six yards of Kona Smoke into my stash, I dutifully traced all the blocks on white butcher paper. I pulled leftovers from the OMQG's charity quilt to use for the scraps ... Kona Red, Kona Sunny, and Kona Capri. Fortunately, by being behind, I could read others' posts about their first blocks. My adventures with Blocks A through E follow. I should note that many blocks have the same borders. For consistency, I'm opting to do all the borders at the same time.

• Block A is pretty straightforward half-square triangles so it went together pretty quickly. I actually haven't done a lot of HST's. Over the last few years when there have been many posts and projects using HSTs, I was fascinated by improv piecing and hiding my rulers in their shelf. A little Googling and reading and I was ready to cut and piece.
  
  
• Block B gets a little more complicated. The original version of this block had 51 or 52 individual pieces in five neat rows. I opted to foundation paper-piece this block. In my first attempt, I tried to include all of those pieces. It was a bit wonkier than I wanted so in the second attempt, I combined some of the pieces that were going to be the same color. When it was finished, I realized it is backwards and that I should have traced it upside down. Fortunately, there aren't any words because we're going with backwards on this one. :)
  
  
• Block C tosses in curved piecing. In completing my Shades of Grey Challenge Quilt last year, curved piecing and I came to terms. The tiny piece inside the handle seemed a bit small so I began construction by hand-piecing the handle and its center. Then I machine=-pieced the gray background around the handle followed by attaching the handle to the cup and, finally, the remaining background. The saucer and additional background strips were easy peasy.
  
  
• Block D was back to itty bitty pieces sewn into strips. Back to foundation paper piecing. Have I mentioned that I don't particularly enjoy foundation paper piecing? Anyway. From the start, I combined like-colored pieces and am happy with the first and only shot at this block. I actually kind of like this block and could see making a bigger piece with it if I can figure out how to strip piece rather than paper piece the blocks.
  
  
• Block E is a simple nine patch on a wonky point. I made the nine patch, aligned the squares with the template and trimmed. The first time I did this, I forgot to add a seam allowance around the outside edge so I made it twice for ease when adding the borders later on.
  
  

Now that I'm caught up with the Quilt Along (and actually a month ahead), I put it away again to focus on some other projects. I'll revisit it sometime in March. There is another great curved pieced block coming up and too many more that will likely be paper-pieced.

I am linking this post to The Salty Oat Quilt-a-Long for January and, because I actually sewed a little ahead, Salty Oat: modern sampler quilt along: block E link-up.

Under the Needle - Quilt Goals for Q1 2016

Last year the Omaha Modern Quilt Guild and the store at which we meet both had PHD challenges ... Projects Half Done. I did quite well at working through my list last year and have compiled a list for 2016. Right now, the list has twenty-eight items. Twenty-eight! Many of these are swaps I am already committed to, and I left four slots for swaps later in the year. There are also at least four big quilts. I've never made four big quilts in one year. We shall see how this goes. I've thought for a long time however, that setting high expectations are the best way to accomplish things.

As I've become a bit addicted to the quilt community on Instagram, I found @quiltalong's quarterly finish challenges for 2016. This post shares a few projects I have started and hope to finish by March 31, 2016.

1. January's 2016 Birthday Fun Swap
   My hive mate with a January birthday loves gemstones. After all, diamonds are a girl's best friend. She also loves the palette of April Rhodes ... neutrals, coral and aqua. I was inspired to paper piece an aqua diamond on a linen background. It is pieced, sandwiched and edged but needs quilted and either bound or faced.
   
   
2. Zipper Pouch Swap
   I have identified a pattern and pulled fabric, but we shall see how it evolves.
   
   
3. Tula Jaybird Mini Swap
   Again, I've pulled fabric and selected a pattern, but have not started cutting or constructing. The fabric pull did garner positive support from other swappers in the FB group so I am optimistic.
   
   

There are a few more projects on the spreadsheet that need to be finished by the end of March, but they don't meet the Quilt-A-Long's definition of "started", yet. :)

I am linking this post to SLO Studio's Quilt-A-Long's Quarter 1 Call for Projects.