Allô and welcome 😊. It's a lovely snowy day which started with a guided tour of the Woven Histories exhibition at the National Art Gallery of Canada and some quality time with sweet Poppy! I saw the exhibition when it first opened - it's really amazing, but it's even better when someone is telling you a story about some of the artists and pieces.
First round of blocks for SAHRR
Monday was the first day of instructions for making the blocks for our quilt. We got to choose a block that started with the first letter of our name. I chose the Art Square Block that I found online. There were instructions but just the very old fashion way of making blocks, i.e. attach one triangle to another. You do know that I'm accuracy challenged, so this was very challenging. After making four Art Square Blocks, I took the time to find alternate ways of making it, such as the stitch and flip, or making 4 flying geese at a time.
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| Four Art Square Blocks for the Christmas panel |
You may notice that I changed the order of my blue and gray fabrics in the flying geese block part. I originally wanted the gray to be in the centre but I didn't cut my fabric properly for the first block, so blue in the centre it was. Since I only cut my fabric one block at a time, I decided to try both ways. I like them both, but I do prefer the gray surrounding the block's centre.
I've had to take almost everything off my design board - I don't make many large projects. Since the panel is quite long, I'll probably only do one border but with different blocks. We'll see. I do love these blocks in the corners.
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| Christmas panel with the four Art Square blocks |
I've looked at other blocks starting with "A" for my cowboy panel, although now that I know how I could make these blocks more easily, I may stay with this block. I've washed, trimmed and ironed the panel, so I'm ready to go. I'm slowly picking fabric to go with the panel. I love the muted colours and am looking for some denim colours, browns and the cactus green. I may even have some plaids that would go well 😊.
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| Next, making blocks for the Cowboy panel |
"Snow Happens" wall hanging
I finished the border around "Snow Happens". It's not as bad as it could have been. 😁 My points are still mostly there but the diamonds got cut off on the side borders. That was because I didn't follow the instructions - I just don't cut things at ⅛". Since I'm not very accurate anyway, that ⅛" will not make much difference (OK it would but this is my excuse!) Anyway, some of those diamonds got cut but it still looks pretty darn cute!
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| "Snow Happens" wall hanging |
I had some lovely blue Christmas fabric but wasn't sure about using them since they have a little bit of other colours, like the little snowman with a red scarf! I don't think that these little pops of colour distract from the blue.
What I learned
- I know that my piecing skills are not great. Before I started the Art Square blocks, I should have researched how to make it using more modern tricks. I didn't realise that I was making a flying geese within the block and that I could easily make 4 at once!
- Using these faster methods don't guarantee more accuracy but at least it's a bit easier!
- I go so long without making quilting blocks that I forget how frustrating they can be.
- For the other blocks in the SAHRR, I'll try to find easy alternatives if I have to.
- I did go through my many magazines and books of blocks and found a few alternatives, as well as a few tricks, so I hope that I'll be OK for the next ones.
- As I mentioned already, rounding up the measurements to not use ⅛" wasn't brilliant, but I suspect that my blocks would not have fit anyway. I think that the best way to make sure that such a border works is to make the pieced border first and then work from there to add inner borders that will be large enough to fit them. It's a little late, but if there is a next time, I've written it here!
- I'm actually looking forward to making the blocks for my cowboy panel. So we'll see how that goes!
- Update: I just figured out that my lovely Art Square blocks are the same as version 2 of Kathleen's King Crown block...and I thought they looked too complicated to make!😂
Related Links
Linking parties
I'll be linking up to many fun linking parties, including the
first round of the SAHRR with Kathleen McMusing. You may want to check out other participants' first round.
Monday Musings,
Design Wall Monday,
Sew & Tell,
Put your foot down,
Needle & Thread Thursday,
Off The Wall Friday,
Finished (Or Not) Friday,
TGIFF,
Beauties Pageant,
Patchwork & Quilts,
Free Motion Mavericks
Welcome to week 516 of Free Motion Mavericks! Thanks for linking up. Here are the projects from last week that included FMQ, ruler work or walking foot quilting.
Kat of Scrapbox Quilts has made a beautiful quilt (22" x 29") for this cute bear. This is for the
Bear Hugs mission. Kat used the blanket to practice her FMQ swirl designs from Angela Walters' swirl challenge.
Quilting Gail's first finish (that she can show us) for 2025 is this lovely Christmas Tree made by watching "Helen Godden’s Christmas Countdown" with her sister on Zoom. What a great way to spend time together while quilting! It was also a great way of playing with FMQ.
