It's time again to join the group over at Carol's Quilt Schmilt, the hot spot for "To Do Tuesday" reporting!
The goal for my quilting this past week was to get back to working on blocks for a UFO challenge project, a mystery quilt and a raffle quilt. I only managed to get some work done on two of those.
UFO Challenge: Scrappy Figs
I had started making the "Christmas Figs" sampler quilt using a scrappy mix of Fig Tree fabrics back in 2020 as a personal BOM project. Pandemic projects disrupted that along with the projects that followed in the subsequent years. I am hoping to finally bring this one to a finish this year and had eight more blocks to piece before I could make it into a top. This week I got to a little under half of them done with three more blocks finished.
Each of these involved fairly intensive piecing so I was thankful that I was able to put my Accuquilt Go! cutter into service to help cut parts for the blocks. The "Bow Ties" block on the right isn't true to the pattern. The patterned block consisted of 4" finished Bow Tie blocks in a 4x4 set for a 16" finished block.
Joanna Figueroa designed her version of the blocks to be made with the "sew and flip" technique to form the center triangles of the Bow Tie. I am not a fan of "sew and flip" and avoid it whenever possible. Usually, I would rather cut an angled edge off of a square using either an "Easy Angle Ruler" or a "Folded Corner Ruler" and then stitch an appropriately sized HST triangle to it using a regular 1/4" seam. This is exactly what I did to make the points of the "Star" block and for the tree trunk center. For the Bow Ties, I didn't even need to do that!
I have Bow Tie die sets for 6", 4-1/2" and 3" finished blocks purchased on clearance some years ago. The closest I could get to a 16" block was to use a mix of 3" and 6" blocks which left me with three less blocks to make than patterned and a 15" finished center. To bring it up to size, I then added a 1/2" finished coping border in the background fabric around it. There are other blocks in the original quilt design that also make use of those kinds of borders (such as the "Tree" block also made this week) so it won't look odd among the sampler set.
Since this block in particular is effectively 13 blocks in one, being able to die cut all the parts and then just sew seams -- as opposed to marking sewing lines and trimming off bonus triangles after -- was a time saver!
Leader/Ender Mystery and Other Project Blocks
With all the sewing I had to do for the BOM blocks, I was able to use the "Log Cabin" blocks I need to make for Quilty Girl Alycia's new Quilts of Valor Mystery called "Stars Like Spaghetti" as leader/ender piecing.
The Log Cabins are for the first clue of the mystery and I still have four more to make. Clue #2 has already dropped and Clue #3 drops tomorrow.
With so many seams to sew, it still took throwing in a few more blocks to get everything through the machine. So I was also able to make another "Striped Squares" block for a really old UFO project I have wanted to make since the very early days of my quilting. The scrap blocks with the diagonal strip in the middle are made from a free McCall's Quilting pattern called "Scrappity-Do-Dah". So four projects for the work on one!
Related: Charity News! When I went over to Alycia's blog, she mentioned in a recent post that details for the 2024 Block Drive for the Quilts of Valor Foundation have been posted. They are looking to receive "Ohio Star" blocks and you can pick up the pattern for them here. Additionally this coming Saturday, February 3 is a "National QOV Sew Day". If you have a local group or shop that hosts these events, you may be able to go there to submit or even make blocks for the cause.
No Love For the Raffle Quilt
The plan for this had been to stitch down the applique flower motifs that I had added to three of the basket blocks when I last worked on this a year ago:
However with all the work on the other blocks, I didn't even get to that. What I did do however, was to take a good look at the top and consider whether to add more. The more I looked at the layout I found that I wanted to keep it as symmetrical as possible and adding more just complicated that. So the good news -- given that I haven't made any progress on this so far -- is that I am okay with settling for what I have. Ironically, I also have another applique project that will be a "New Start" but didn't get to that either. So I guess February will have to be the month for applique!
And Let's Not Forget Cross Stitch!
Oh and last but not least, I did make progress with almost daily stitching on my latest cross stitch project:
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| As of Today! |
As always I will be heading back over to Quilt Schmilt to check out what everyone else is working on. Hope it's been a good week for everyone!
1 comment:
Look at you go!! that was brilliant to use your SLS Clue as a Leader Ender!!!
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