Three Cheers For the Red, White & Blue! --- Part 2

In my last post I had been playing in my R/W/B stash to finally make up the last of three QOV tops that I hope to get quilted for distribution this year.  When you finish a project there are a couple of options open to you.  You can:

1. Just put all the leftovers back in your "stash storage system" of choice.
2. If  you use a Scrap Users System, you can start cutting up the scraps into the precut sizes you prefer depending on the amount of each fabric you have left.
3. Or you can ask yourself:  is there enough of anything here that I can apply to another project?

As my sidebar will attest, I am guilty of acquiring many "Squirrel Projects" as I read through all the quilty blogs and websites that are around.  Pat Sloan's site is one of my favorites and she also does posts for other companies (although I was sorry to hear she'll no longer be doing the podcast for American Patchwork & Quilting).  One of the companies she does posts for is Aurifil Threads, hosting their "Designer of the Month Series".

For June, the featured designer was Annette Plog, one of the "19th Century Patchwork Divas".  I love reproduction quilts so know the work and books of this group of women well!  For Aurifil's DOM series, Pat interviews the designer about her interests and quilty journey and the featured designer will offer a block designed around the year's theme.  For 2019, the theme is "Traditions" and the block Annette offered was this one:

What's cool is that if you make the block and link it up (this month's deadline is July 15), you have a chance to win an  Aurifil thread prize.  This was one of those times when I saw the block and could visualize how I wanted to work it up (and you can see another time I did that here).  So I downloaded the instructions with plans to make up a block once I had finished my QOV top.

This was the block I made:

I did make one change and made the center square a "Square In A Square" unit instead.  Seems good right?  Except that when I went to link up and looked at some of the other blocks, something seemed amiss.  It didn't take long to realize what it was:  I had made my block following the picture in the instructions:

However, if you compare that to Annette's block earlier in the post you can see the difference, LOL!  I don't feel bad because if you look at the blocks submitted, you can tell who worked from the blog post and who worked from the pattern instructions!  It was funny, after I had my block made, I thought it had looked a little different than what I had visualized!  I was going to just upload it as it was but then I wanted to see what the block would look like in the original design so I made another one up.  Here's that one:

Just goes to show what happens when you play with color position in a design!  I think I'll upload both of them.  More entries, more chances to win, right?!?  I'm not done with this stash yet, there is still more R/W/B fun a comin'!  Stay tuned!

One More Go 'Round with the Western Quilt

As the year finishes up, I'm also finishing up with Block of the Months I've been following on the web.  One of those is Aurifil's "Designer of the Month" Series hosted by Pat Sloan.  The theme for the Series this year is the Color Wheel and each designer made their block according to the color assigned them.  As a viewer, you can participate by making the block offered for a chance to win some Aurifil thread. 

Up to now I had been content to just "ooh and ahh" over the blocks presented but this month's block immediately struck a chord with me.  Designed by Amanda Murphy, I could see plugging fabrics into the block from the Western quilt I recently gifted!  So even though I should be catching up on mystery quilt piecing, I figured why not?  I had a leftover photo transfer square that made a great fussy cut for the center of the block and it'll be that much less scraps to process now that the gift quilt is finished.

This is the what I came up with for the December block design:

 

Interesting thing about this:  It just so happens that the thread I used to quilt the majority of quilt that the fabric came from was Aurifil #2370.  When I had to switch machines in order to keep sewing, I continued to use that thread for my mystery piecing and subsequently for this block too.  Also, Amanda lives in North Carolina  and that's where the gift quilt was sent too!

Let's hope all of this is an omen for a win!