Thoughtful Sunday #16

Beauty is being the best possible version of yourself on the inside and out.

This box was gifted to me by my daughter a couple of years ago. It sits in my bathroom where I can see this quote every day.

Believe Circle Bee Blocks

Robin is our Believe Circle quilter this month. Robin blogs over at Ormond Beach Quilts. This month she was inspired by a tutorial for Urban Chickens blocks shared by Wombat Quilts.

Robin asked for black squares and bright colored triangles on a white background. It took me a few triangles to get into the improv style of making them. I like the wonkiness of them all in a row.

This month also highlighted the dwindling quantity of black with white fabrics in my stash. That area of my stash is quite messy so it might be time for some cleaning and organization to make sure there isn't fabric hiding in the deep recesses of my fabric cubbies.

These blocks were fun and easy to make. Can't wait to see how they look all together.

Linking up to Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

A Time To Sew And A Time To Clean

I know some of you will look at this and think that it is hardly a mess at all. We creatives have all sorts of work styles and I totally get it if you work best that way. Me. I can't handle it. It's to the point where I can't do a thing without having to move something out of the way.

It starts suffocating me when it is like this. It just means it is time to take a breath and do a little tidying up.

I knew it was time when I went to find some black with white prints for this months bee blocks. It took forever and lots of frustration to dig out something that would work.

The brown and cream cubby is even worse. Bleh.

To the rescue, drawers that fit perfectly in each cubby. I started using these a year or two ago. I would buy one or two a month and do a little along. It has been a while since I added any. Now I can find my black with white fabric with ease.

The first set of cubbies looks sooo much better. Every now and then I get lazy and shove fabric on top of the drawer units rather than putting it back where it came from. All of that has been cleaned up, too. Only bigger yardage is allowed to sit on top of the drawer sets.

There's still this set of cubbies to deal with. Today, we'll take the small victory. The room is clean enough for me to breathe now, which means it is time to get back to sewing.

We'll just keep our eyes on this part of the room for now, okay?

Quilts Inspired By Art (And Craft): Hello Baby

Welcome to week two of the first project in our series, Quilts Inspired By Art. This week we are cutting and piecing our quilt top. If you missed last week's post, go check it out.

This greeting card, made by Linda Aarhus of Polka Dots and Paper, is our inspiration. I think the quilt top looks very close to the inspiration piece. The scale of the print is a lot smaller but in general, this project is on the right track

Last week, we talked about choosing fabric and the yardage requirements needed to make this quilt. This week we are going to finalize our pattern, cut our fabric, and piece the quilt top.

While it looks like the basket weave effect might be complicated, it is really simple if the design is broken down into rows. Here it is translated to a pattern. There are three fabrics and seven rows in the body of the quilt. The light gray is the background; the dark gray is the vertical stripe; the white is the print horizontal stripes.

CUTTING INSTRUCTIONS

Light Gray Background

Cut one 15 1/2 inch strip from the width of fabric
From the strip, cross cut
one 22 1/2 inch piece
one 5 1/2 inch piece
Cut one 6 1/2 inch strip from the width of fabric
   From the strip, cross cut
one 22 1/2 inch piece
one 5 1/2 inch piece
Cut three 2 inch strips from the width of fabric
From one strip, cross cut
two 15 ½ inch pieces
four 2 inch pieces
From one strip, cross cut
one 22 ½ inch piece
one 6 ½ inch piece
one 5 ½ inch piece
From one strip, cross cut
one 22 ½ inch piece
one 6 ½ inch piece
one 5 ½ inch piece

Dark Gray Vertical Stripe

Cut three 5 inch strips from the width of fabric
From one strip, cross cut
two 15 1/2 inch pieces
    From one strip, cross cut
one 15 1/2 inch piece
three 6 1/2 inch pieces
   From one strip, cross cut
five 5 inch pieces
six 2 inch pieces

White Horizontal Stripe

Cut three 5 inch strips from the width of fabric
From one strip, cross cut
one 5 ½ inch piece
one 8 inch piece
one 22 ½ inch piece
From one strip, cross cut
one 5 ½ inch piece
one 8 inch piece
one 22 ½ inch piece
From one strip, cross cut
one 11 ½ inch piece
one 28 ½ inch piece

Inner Border

Cut five 2 1/4 inch strips from the width of fabric 

Outer Border

Cut five 3 1/2 inch strips from the width of fabric 

PIECING INSTRUCTIONS

The piecing is very simple. The most difficult part is making sure each piece is in the correct place and turned the right way since some of the pieces are very close in size. Check carefully before sewing. All seams are ¼ inch wide.

All of my cut pieces are laid out and ready to be assigned to a row.

As each row was arranged, I kept this ruler close by to verify measurements for pieces that were similar in size.

Row One

     5 ½, 5, 2, 5, 2, 5, 22 ½

All pieces are cut 6 ½ inches wide for this row. The cut length of each piece is listed under the picture of the row. Arrange the pieces and sew together as shown. For row one, press seams toward the dark gray.

Row Two

      5 ½, 5, 8, 5, 22 ½

All pieces are cut 5 inches wide for this row. The cut length is listed under the picture.
Arrange the pieces and sew together as shown. For row two, press seams toward the white (or print).

Row Three

       5 ½, 5, 2, 5, 2, 5, 22 ½

All pieces are cut 2 inches wide for this row. The cut length of each piece is listed under the picture.
Arrange the pieces and sew together as shown. For row three, press seams toward the dark gray.

Row Four

       11 ½, 5, 28 ½

All pieces are cut 5 inches wide for this row. The cut length is listed under the picture.
Arrange the pieces and sew together as shown. For row four, press seams toward the white (or print).

Row Five

Repeat Row Three.

Row Six

Repeat Row Two.

Row Seven

 
       5 ½, 5, 2, 5, 2, 5, 22 ½

All pieces are cut 15 ½ inches wide for this row. The cut length is listed under the picture.
Arrange the pieces and sew together as shown. For row seven, press seams toward the white (or print).

Here are my rows all ready to sew. There was only room for the first six on my cutting table so I stitched those together first, then laid out and stitched the last row.

Oops. There is a mistake on row two. I was a bit of a smarty pants and was not checking the pattern closely enough as I was stitching. It is easy enough to correct. Those first two print pieces need to be swapped.

That is much better. Once your rows are completed, sew them together and press the seams. I pressed toward the row with the least amount of seams.

Now, to add the borders. I decided to stick with the color plan of the inspiration card and used the dark (red) for the first border. Measure the sides of your quilt and cut your borders to length. You will need to piece the borders for the top and bottom to have enough length. I added the side borders first, then the top and bottom.

I have not added the second border to my quilt yet. I really like the pop of color the outer border adds to the inspiration card, and I did not have enough of anything on hand. There will be a shopping trip happening in the next day or two to take care of that. I did have some scraps on hand to experiment with.

This light blue goes nicely with the lightest blue dot in the print fabric.

This citron green goes with the print fabric as well. I am leaning toward this color. It definitely pops.

What's up for next week? We will talk about adding lettering to our quilt top (I haven't decided if I want to add any letters to mine yet), and quilting options. I'm hoping to have a finished quilt to share with you, and maybe even a very girly color variation.

Thanks for following along.

Linking up with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times and Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt. Also linking up with Fabric Tuesday at Quilt Story. More link ups with Work In Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced.

Thoughtful Sunday #15

Knowledge comes but wisdom lingers.

Between Christmas and New Years, we took our teenage boys on a surprise trip to Washington, DC. It was a great trip and my favorite part by far was the Library of Congress. The building was beautiful. Panels like this were all around the room, each with unique art and quotes about learning and knowledge.

Free Motion Machine Quilting Practice

To keep those free motion quilting skills fresh, I took three of the pieced blocks from the Craftsy Block of the Month class from several years ago and quilted them up. My go to place for motifs these days is Lori Kennedy's web site, The Inbox Jaunt.

The design on this block is the Squiggly Sun. This is the only block where I knew before I started what I wanted to do. The semi-circles of gray were perfect for this design. There isn't any quilting on the printed fabric at all but I'm thinking that some should be added later. My preference is for the quilting to be balanced over the entire block or quilt.

Here is a close up of the center motif. It was a fun design to quilt.

It took some time to figure out what to quilt on this block. I had drawn some ideas but none of them were quite right. While browsing the motifs over at The Inbox Jaunt, this sewing scissor motif fit the space perfectly. It is a design I had been wanting to try anyway, so that made it an easy decision.

There was some space left in the center of the block after the scissors were quilted. I attempted to quilt a needle and thread to go with each pair of scissors to fill the space. The printed fabric is stitched in the ditch along some of the seam lines.

This block ended up being my favorite, probably because I was able to use so many different motifs in one block. The Welsh Leaf is across the top, Clam Shells on the left side, Lines with Spirals across the bottom, and alternating vertical and horizontal lines on the right side. The inner square is quilted with The Twist.

Here is a closer look at the Welsh Leaf. This was the most difficult of the designs.

Here's the straight line with a spiral. I need to practice this one more. It was hard to figure out where to start the spiral so that it was centered on the line. I think it would look better if the spirals happened more frequently, too.

The alternating vertical and horizontal lines were fun. The rhythm and flow of this design made it easy to do.

This design is called Clam Shell but they look more like rainbows here. You can see the twist design in the inner square here, too. It was another design with easy flow.

I'm not sure what is going to happen with all these quilted squares. There are quite a few to go. For now, they are a good size for quilting practice and that makes them one step closer to becoming a finished project.

Everything gets better with practice.

Linking up to Whoop Whoop at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Finish It Up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

Sampler Block Shuffle With Cardinals

Finally, I cut into my Charley Harper cardinal fabric. 

Why oh why did I only buy one yard? I love these little birds and want to keep them around for a long, long time. I'm glad I found a project that highlights these pretty birds while not eating up all of my yard in just a few cuts. 

The Moda Sampler Block Shuffle is a series of free blocks offered by shops that carry Moda products. The series has been going on for a couple of months now and runs through the end of January. Participating shops offer two or three new blocks each week. Each block is designed or sponsored by a different designer. There are two copies of the pattern on each printed page. The idea is to keep one for yourself and share the other with a friend. The blocks are only available for a limited time. I am getting mine from the Intown Quilters.

This is Block 2 by Me & My Sister Designs. Because the cardinals are fussy cut, I went through and sorted the blocks that have been published so far so that the easier ones to cut are first.

This is Block 4 by V and Co. I have collected 24 blocks so far and stitched up 5. It took a while for me to commit to using my cardinals for this project. 

This is Block 5 by Kathy Schmitz Studios.

Block 6 by American Jane. I altered this block slightly. The center is supposed to be a four-patch but I liked using a bigger piece of the cardinals for the center.

Block 8 by little miss shabby. Again, I turned the center from a four-patch to a single larger square.

I like they way they look together so far. This is a good project to fit in between others or when I want something that won't take a long time to do. I'm not sure what the final count of blocks will be for the Moda Sampler Block Shuffle series but I intend to make them all. There may be a few alterations along the way so they fit with my cardinal themed sampler. Hoping to share more progress with you in a few weeks. I'd love to see your blocks if you decide to play along.

Linking up with Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts and Work in Progress Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. Also linking up with Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation and Scraptastic Tuesday over at She Can Quilt.