Design Wall Monday--2/19

While I've been away from the blog the last couple of weeks, I have been stitching.  The churn dash block swap has been my main project, along with more Thomas Fire donation quilts. Our guild has had sew-ins every weekend for many weeks.  I sewed from home, not wanting to lug all my stuff around (lazy!)

Our Guild president laid out this set of blocks and I sewed it together.  I did have to replace one block that was an inch too small.  The colors turned out pretty, I think, and I love the offset setting.  Unfortunately I missed last week's guild meeting where a family came and picked up four quilts.  We will continue to make quilts for Thomas Fire victims. Our guild will have a booth at QuiltCon to collect donations of blocks, batting, etc.  Lots more quilts to be made!  My sister and I will be attending QuiltCon on Friday.  Kathy has a class but I will probably just go to a lecture or hang out with fellow guild members during that time. 

The second set of churn dash blocks for Barb's swap (Fun with Barb blog) have this cute cross and plus background fabric.  The blocks are small so the print looks a little sparse, but I love the charm.

Final set is this jade green with a text print that has words about fabric and design, it is a print by Robert Kaufman.  I almost drove myself crazy trying to find a missing set of HSTs waiting to be sewn--but they were already trimmed down and sitting on the cutting board.  Sheesh. 

I had fun staging the purple blocks in stairsteps.

 These will need to get popped in the mail before Friday in order to make the long cross-country  trip.  I'll look forward to receiving everyone's version of this Modern churn dash. 

Blogger is being very weird today and jumping around when I move my mouse over the typing.  Formatting is also not working.  

See more Design Walls on Small  Quilts and Doll Quilts. 

Slow Sunday Stitching February

*Updated p.m. to fix picture and add link.

Well, after an unplanned blog break, I’ll join in on Slow Sunday Stitching today with Kathy’s Quilts.   While in New Orleans in November, I loved all the old houses, including the tiny shotgun houses ( so called as they are built with a long hallway front to back door with rooms off to one side). While wandering the neighborhood after one quilt shop on our tour, I pulled my sister into an embroidery shop, Needlework Vault, those being rare birds!  The shop owner’s name was also Annie and she had a nice selection of her own hand-painted cross-stitch canvases. I couldn’t resist this sweet shotgun house kit.

I stitched a bit yesterday while we babysat our grandson Hunter, while big brother was at his first T-Ball practice. They sure start them young--Cove turns 4 this month.  Anyway, I started with the gable section and got a few rows done.  While pricey, it did include the canvas with the edges alreday taped, a needle, and all the skeins needed to complete the stitchery. 

See more Slow Sunday Stitching on Kathy's blog. 

Design Wall Monday February 5

On my design surface are some cute little Churn Dash blocks for a swap.  Barb from Fun With Barb and Mary has had an annual block swap for several years and this year added a modern category.  I was lucky enough to secure a spot. The solids and prints were specified as jewel tones and low volume, and 6" finished in size.  A trip to Superbuzzy was called for to choose a couple of additional colors besides the Flamingo Pink Kona and a length of a low volume print I had at home. 

The colors are more vibrant than my nighttime lighting reveals.  The swap requires 36 blocks of one colorway, and a second set of 18 blocks in another colorway. After washing and ironing all the fabrics,  I started with the 18 block set, using the Flamingo Pink, by first making the HSTs oversized using 3" squares to trim down.   The Bloc-Loc ruler is a great trimming tool, but generally I have to relearn using it each time I pull it out.

The HST is set up with the "pressed to" side toward the bottom, and the ruler with the lettering face up to lock the seam in the diagonal inset.  After trimming the right and top edges, with your fingers you gently swirl the HST around  90 degrees without lifting the tool.

You can then slide the ruler, which is still locked on that pressed edge, down to the block measurement desired on the ruler, and trim the right side and top again. Perfect 2 1/2" HST with no dog ears.

Barb's tutorial cleverly required 11" lengths of both colors to subcut into the side pieces of the individual Churn Dash blocks.  I used another trick to shorten the subcutting process. 

By nesting the pressed strips, I could cut the subsections two strips at once.  Nice and neat.

Aren't these the cutest.  Barb's tutorial was easy and I was able to complete half the set in an afternoon.

A lot of cutting and piecing will be going on this short month--these are due by March 1st so I'd better keep on it daily!

See more Design Walls at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts. 

Thomas Fire Quilts Being Finished

Our little Ventura Modern Quilt Guild has been busy collecting blocks and making tops, quilting and binding them, labeling and assigning to different recipients.  We were lucky to secure an empty office in a building with rent charged of only $1, where we can store all the quilts and fabric and give members their cars and homes  back, including mine!  Our Communications chair is a longarm quilter and my sister Kathy jumped at the chance to play during  a sew in  at her house recently.  We are just beginning to get quilts made from the Perikomen Valley blocks and this is one of them.  

Isn't it pretty?  Kathy turned out to be "a natural", and I received a message that she is "hooked". I wish that either one of us had the money and space for a longarm machine!  I worked at home on two quilts that just needed binding sewn down.  These were donated tops, I believe, that other guild members quilted and attached binding to. 

So very pretty and modern.  It is about 50-60", a nice lap size.  The other one was a behemoth queen size and not nearly so modern, but very nicely pieced.

Someone did some beautiful quilting on this very brown quilt.  Lots of feathers and crosshatching.  It took me awhile to do the binding by machine as I had to trim about 1/8th of an inch off the sandwich to pull the binding far enough over to cover the seam line.  A few places where I missed were hand stitched closed.  I dropped these off Saturday and picked up another kit of blocks to sew into a top.  I have another set of blocks and two quilts I made backings for that need to be quilted.  Hoping to get one basted tomorrow after work.  We are having sew-ins every weekend this month, except for the dates of QuiltCon in a couple of weeks, where the generous folks have let us have a booth.  So many people are helping that makes the job go faster and easier.  Looking forward to our next guild meeting and the handing out of Thomas Fire Quilts.