Category: quilting

Posted in quilting

2023 SAHRR Round 3 – Hourglass Block

Posted on by Laura Kate

This week Chris Knits and Sews is choosing the block and providing the linky party for quilting participants to post their work in the annual round robin challenge.

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/32776/posts/4536905279

I approached this round with a plan to give some rest for the eye from the colorful center. Here is my quilt at the end of the last round.

I used two colors of background fabric to make the hourglass blocks. Here is one row attached to my quilt.

For the corner blocks, I cut the centers out of some pineapple blocks.

They are about 3 inches square. Next I sewed strips of light grey fabrics around all four sides to bring the corners up to the correct size.

I think they are pretty.

After attaching the corners to the last two strips of hourglass blocks I stitched them to the quilt.

What I learned from this round:

1 It pays to work slowly in sewing the blocks together to ensure a very accurate seam allowance. If one seams is too narrow or wide, it’s worth it to rip back and re-sew.

2. Sometimes it’s okay to press a seam open, particularly when sharp points are involved. It can help diminish lumps and bumps.

So far I’m having lots of fun making a stay-at-home round robin quilt. If you’d like to sew along, here is the list of the hosts and rounds.

Posted in quilting

SAHRR 2023 Round 2: Stars

Posted on by Laura Kate

Pieceful Wendy has suggested stars, and I’m tickled about her choice. A star block will fit perfectly at the points between my rows of spools.

SAHRR Border 2

I’ve decided to adopt Wendy’s little four-point star for my own. The yellow batik fabric will form the star body and arms. I’ll vary the construction by using three rectangles and one square with stitch-n-flip triangles sewn on. These pieces are then sewn around the center as in log cabin block construction.

Test Block completed

The result is slightly wonky star arms – a look I find sort of charming.

Stars in the heavens like snowflakes: No two alike.

And here is my quilt with the addition of rounds two and three.

While I’m happy with the result, it’s clear that I will need a plain border to give breathing room to the center. I’ll continue with the little sparks of yellow throughout the design, hoping that this device will create unity and lots of rhythm.

Feb 3 – Border sewn together and added to the center block.

Don’t forget to check out the work of other participants at the InLinkz party.

SAHRR Border 2
Posted in quilting

SAHRR 2023 Round One: Spool Block

Posted on by Laura Kate

This week’s prompt for the Stay At Home Round Robin quilt challenge comes from Home Sewn By Us and it is the spool block. This is one I haven’t tried yet, I believe it’s one of the easier blocks to make. And I have a good idea for using fabric from my orphaned quilt blocks for this challenge.

Using my seam ripper, I removed the corners from several of the blocks. (Can anyone tell me what this block is called? It’s a sort of square in a square with at least four iterations, but then stripped corner pieces were sewn on.) Anyway, I took these triangles and sewed two of them with long edges together. This gave me a square about 3 and 1/2 inches which formed the “thread” part of my spools.

To support the center pieces, I cut pieces from four dark colors and two shades of the background fabric. Three of the dark colors were left over from my Creation quilt. The brown fabric was used in my Badlands art quilt.

Here is my first block all sewn together.

I like the way the diagonal lines on the spool look like spiraling thread.

Eventually I made four 5-inch blocks in four different colors. My original design would have the spool blocks in a continuous border. When I started positioning the blocks, it became clear that there would be too much visual clutter. I settled on using three blocks on each side, leaving the corner areas available.

I will reserve the corners for the next round, or fashion corner posts using background fabrics.

To learn more about SAHRR 2023 and see what others are making, here is the link to this week’s round.

https://www.homesewnbyus.com/index.php/sahrr2023-prompt-1-spool-block/

Posted in quilting, weaving

WIP Wednesday: Creation Quilt

Posted on by Laura Kate

Today I have a progress report on my quilt inspired by a medieval manuscript.

Here is the center of the quilt. It is formed by the four corners of each four-by-four block. Upon first seeing that blank white diamond, I knew that it would work beautifully for a God’s Eye. After practicing on scrap fabric, I wove the centerpiece design into place. The four arms of the weaving are gold satin cording which I couched into place. The weft yarns are a combination of cotton embroidery twist and wool fingering weight yarn leftover from many a sock project.

I think it balances the four creation paintings beautifully.

Here are the quadrants of the piece at this point.

Now I can begin quilting. To start, I will stitch into the seamlines of all pieces. (AKA stich-in-the-ditch.) Next will come the free motion quilting. I have something special in mind for the light color patches which will involve more colorwork.

Stay tuned……..

Posted in quilting

SAHRR 2023: Start with a Found Object

Posted on by Laura Kate

Last May I was engaged in the task of clearing out my mother’s sewing room. It was a sad but wondrous one. Almost forty years of accumulated objects, tools, machines and materials were stashed in every closet and corner of a tiny room. These included dozens of unfinished objects which were hidden in other rooms. In one closet I found draped over a hanger, rows of scrappy blocks – about sixty of them. She must have worked on this quilt over a period of years. It seemed very close to completion, so I brought it home with the idea of finishing it.

As I spread out all of the rows and loose blocks, I noticed that many blocks were not squared up. Some blocks were bigger than others. Some rows looked fine, others much shorter. (??.) Stymied by this discovery, I put the quilt away.

Now it is January and time for another Stay at Home Round Robin project. Led by Quilting Gail, this game is played by starting with a block, and then adding rows to it as clues (suggestions) are revealed weekly. I decided to get the scrappy blocks out and do something with them.

I disassembled some rows and organized the blocks by size and value. After a bit of pondering, I concluded that supporting fabrics for this quilt needed to be neutral solids. Purchasing a range of grays, I added a bright yellow batik print from my stash.

My plan is to create a value gradation starting from the center and working outward. The bright yellow will serve as a unifying sparkle for the design. Getting started, I chose four blocks that contained mostly pale colors.

To unify these four, I removed one corner from each, sewed on a triangle of yellow and assembled the blocks into a square.

My finished block will measure 15 inches. It is positioned on point to emphasize the many triangles that seem to catch the eye.

Now let’s hope the SAHHR team doesn’t throw me any CURVES!

To learn more about Stay at Home Round Robin 2023 and to play along, here is your link.

https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/102293878/posts/4496810917