Monday, June 18, 2018

A Decision and a Squirrel Project

I hope all the dads had a great Father's Day.  We went to a BBQ at my Mom and Dad's and all my siblings were there, lots of nieces and nephews, for about 30 guests.  Boy does it take a lot of set up and clean up, but we sure had fun.  The grandsons had a great time being spoiled with attention as they were the youngest in the crowd.

Now that Narragansett Browns is a finished top, I need a new leader-ender project.  A few years ago, American Patchwork and Quilting magazine had a sew along they called Go Four It, based on four patches.  I fell in love with Edyta Sitar's design, a bar quilt with braids of four patches.  However, her design called for 1.25" pieces for the four patches and I don't save pieces that small, so resized ito utilize my 1.5" and 2.5" precut strips and squares.  These I have used as leader-enders for quite some time and I have made hundreds of four patches.  Last year I showed a possible alternate layout , and have made lots more of the 3.5" square-in-squares. I revised my plan to make a larger quilt and did the MATH again.  I now only need 70 each of light and dark square-in-squares. 

I'll lay out all the little blocks individually in diagonal rows and then use 3.5" setting squares of a print or solid.  My design eliminates one bazillion setting triangles, which I am happy about!  It feels good to see this leader-ender closer to becoming a quilt top.  

A squirrel jumped out of a box while I was looking for something else in the Hoosier cabinet that houses my precuts, project boxes, and pattern books.  Oh, they are sneaky, those squirrels! 


Some Broken Dishes blocks made from a Turnover of Frolic fabric I won on Sandy Gervais' blog years ago.  I trimmed all the HSTs to 5.5" inches.  Some Grunge fabric would look great as a border, I think.  There are still MORE pieces left of the Turnover to do something with.  I need to sew faster!

8 comments:

Julierose said...

I love that 4-patch piece you will be working on; strangely enough i am working on getting rid of all my ga-zillion 2" squares (from a swap 3 years ago!!) and making 4-patches, too. There are 2" (+/-) patches as they come from all over the place and everyone's 2" are just slightly different!! So it will be a challenge--I am trying to decide what to make with them--I will be watching your progress on this beauty hugs, Julierose

Mary said...

LOL. You've got to watch out for those squirrels. They are sneaky little critters.

AnnieO said...

Thanks, Julierose! I know what you mean with swapped pieces—yet I still join swaps as I do enjoy being part of the community of quilters!

AnnieO said...

They are pretty sneaky, Mary! Several more from that box of unfinished smalls also attempted escape. I did spend time making some more decisions with that squirrel container!

Janet O. said...

That will be an amazing quilt! I love that you tweaked the design to make it more doable for you (and eliminate all those bazillion HSTs!).
That is a very fresh, pretty looking "squirrel". :)

AnnieO said...

thanks, Janet! I find setting triangles to be pretty tedious in smaller blocks :)

Kate said...

That's a very cute little squirrel! Hope you can find some more pretty pieces to match it.

Karen said...

I didn't know what you meant by "squirrel project" but now understand. Cute way of referring to the hidden gem.

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