piecing – Daily Fiber

SAHRR 2026: The first round

Posted on January 26, 2026 by Laura Kate

It’s been a week of trial and error, as I struggle to make the first round of blocks suggested by Brenda of Songbird Designs: Hourglass, aka Quarter square triangles. I had come up with a plan for my Costa Rican inspired design and pulled suitable fabrics from my stash.

For this round, I chose green, yellow and pink fabrics. My objective was to have groups of blocks on either side of the center panel. The first attempt did not please me.

The border just didn’t look like a Costa Rican rain forest. My second attempt used more of the green with the blocks arranged to resemble the ginger flowers of the center block.

This looks a little better, but the scale was way off. The shape dwarfed my poor bird, which is the focus of this row. At that point, I dropped my rotary cutter and gave up for the day.

After a good night’s sleep, I had a new plan: Make the blocks smaller, placing the flowery colored fabrics in a more random way. That might suggest the lushness of the rain forest in an abstract manner. And if I cut the blocks to finish out at 2 and 1/2 inches, four of them stacked would fit the 10 inch length of my center block. Eureka!

Next came ripping apart, cutting down and sewing a total of 24 hourglasses. I added some pale blue fabric to represent the sky and separated the flower colors into discrete patches.

And here they are in the final layout.

To see what the other SAHRR participants are doing, visit our hosts and take a look at their interpretations of this round.

January 14	Everyone shares their center blocks	Gail @ Quilting Gail
January 21	Round 1	Brenda @ Songbird Designs
January 28	Round 2	Kathleen @ Kathleen McMusing
February 4	Round 3	Emily @ The Darling Dogwood
February 11	Round 4	Wendy @ Pieceful Thoughts
February 18	Round 5	Gail @ Quilting Gail
February 25	Round 6	Anja @ Anja Quilts

You can find the link to see the rest of the participants’ quilts on Brenda’s post.

quilting

SAHRR 2025 Round 6: Kites

Posted on February 28, 2025 by Laura Kate

A brand-new-to-me quilt block, kites was select by Emily at the Darling Dogwood for the final round of the Stay at Home quilt challenge this year. First, I practiced making the shape with scrap fabric. I used instructions given by Diane at Little Penguin Quilts and came up with a decent sample. She recommended this site: Scrapdash, including a post called Catch That Kite Quilt Block.

Flipping through my Japanese block directory, I discovered no kites at all. There was a block that started out as a kite, but ended up as a tiny kimono.

So I went a different direction. I decided to “fake” a japanese style block by selecting a general design, inserting small kite blocks into the design, and then finishing the block with sashing. It went like this:

Kurume kasuri musubi is designed to be used with traditional kasuri fabrics (plain weaves in solid colors, also ikat fabrics) The design itself is based on a knot.

The four squares in the knot will be replaced with four kite squares. They finish at 3″ each, leaving room for the sashing and border in a dark color. I had to estimate my fabric cuts, but managed to figure it out.

My fabric choices are solid gold, dark gray, and a metallic print black which features little flowers.

Now the fun design decision: how will I orient my four kites?

And the winner is……..

As you might expect, the assembly of my made-up block did not go smoothly. I had to rip apart my first try, re-cut some of the strips and sew it back together. The second block went much faster.

These two will be added to the front of the kimono, just below the sleeve section.

Here is how my quilt looks today.

I still have two rows to make up, and the whole center front, which will be built from half blocks on either side of the opening. No doubt you may have trouble visualizing it. Me too – honestly, I haven’t decided what patterns to use for the remaining rows. They could be some simple repeats of earlier rounds, such as half square triangles or quarter log cabins. Or more Japanese traditional blocks.

Fortunately, I seem to have enough fabric left.

I hope you have been enjoying all the products of on-line quilters who are making SAHRR quilts this year. Check out their work at our design creators’ sites.

January 13th: Center: Gail @ Quilting Gail
January 20th: 1^st Round: King’s Crown block or inspired by your first initial Kathleen @ Kathleen McMusing
January 27th: 2^nd Round: Half Square Triangles Anja @ Anja Quilts
February 3rd: 3rd Round: Stars Gail @ Quilting Gail
February 10th: 4^th Round: Slice & Insert Wendy @ Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life
February 17th:5^th Round: Partial Log Cabins Brenda @ Songbird Designs
February 24th: 6th Round: Kites or inspired by your first initial or the letter “k”
Emily @ The Darling Dogwood 🠜 You Are Here
March 24th: Finish Parade: Gail @ Quilting Gail

Be sure and check back with me after March 24th. Maybe I will be finished by then.

quilting

SAHRR 2025 – yes, I’m participating

Posted on January 14, 2025January 16, 2025 by Laura Kate

After telling myself that I had too many projects going at the same time I had decided that adding SAHRR to the mix would not be a good idea. Then I changed my mind. What’s this all about, you may ask?

After my mother had a stroke, I assisted my sisters in cleaning out my mother’s crafting room and disposing of the contents. One project bag contained some intriguing fabric panels depicting Japanese geishas. I took these home.

There are four in all. She also had various bits of Japanese quilting fabric, including cotton fat quarters and some lengths of yellow silk.

I became enamored with the idea of making a Japanese-style quilt, to the point that I bought a few books to learn how.

So, getting back to SAHRR. I decided that my center block could be one panel.

I worked on it a little to get its dimension down to 11 and 1/2 inches. My plan is to make a row-style quilt that will be suitable for turning into a kimono-style robe. I’ll match up each week’s clue to one or more block patterns from this book.

All the blocks are designed to finish out at 9 inches. This plan could be a good work-out for my problem solving skills.

And when I am finished, I will have something made with my mother’s fabric selections, to remind me of how much she loved to sew.

To see the SAHRR 2025 participants’ center blocks, click here.

quilting

SAHRR Round 6 and a revisit to Round 4

Posted on March 1, 2024March 1, 2024 by Laura Kate

It is the final week of the 2024 Stay at Home Round Robin challenge. In my last post, I had part-way finished the round 5 challenge (the number 4) but was flummoxed by the Round 4 challenge (square in a square). Working many hours on my quilt this week, I managed to sort out and assemble round four, as well as the second side of round 5. If you are following this, I recommend that you get comfortable, because this is a long post.

Let me start by sharing two inspiration photos.

A kaleidoscope of butterflies.

A boatful of refugees.

It’s possible that the connection between these two images isn’t obvious. When I tell you that the theme of my quilt is migration, my choices will make more sense to you.

For at least a year I have wanted to paper piece some butterflies and use them in a quilt about migration. I even went so far as to design three different patterns in multiple sizes. After fooling around with them, I ended up putting them away for a later date. It’s now 2024 and, it’s clear to me that now is the time for the butterflies.

Most of my paper pieced butterflies were in plain blocks. But because Round 4 is square in a square challenge, I used two small butterflies as centers

This border took me almost three days to design and construct, but I don’t regret any of the time, or the mess left behind. The result exceeds my expectations.

Moving on to the top border, which also is included in my Round 4. Here is the shirt I cut up to get the fish fabric.

I wanted to sew the blocks in a manner that gave the illusion of fish swimming upstream. Here is my first attempt, which was a total fail.

To move forward, I did what everyone else does. I looked at other quilters’ work. I noticed one quilter put together a square in square that totally changed the appearance of the block, simply by mixing up the corner triangles’ colors. The lesson: you can use more than one color. Ahhhhh! Out came the seam ripper to completely disassemble my entire border. I threw away all the corners and made new ones. Now I have six square in square blocks that work together the way I envisioned.

Deep, breath – on to my refugees. Using my inspiration photo, I made a sketch that caught the essential elements. Then I turned the sketch into a pattern. Because the shapes of the people are not straight lines, this part of the design was not made by paper piecing. It was appliqued to a background of sky and water.

The finished block is 12 x 6 inches.

And if you look closely, you can see how I met this week’s challenge by adding the lettering that appeared in the inspiration photo.

I wrote the words with a purple fabric pen.

This morning, I threw together several four-patch blocks to fill in the right side of the quilt. And while it’s not completely sewn up, and two corners need transition blocks, this quilt top is close enough to a finish that I can post it on the linky party site.

If you are still with me, thanks for reading all of this. It felt important to me to share my process. Maybe it’s a way to clear my mind for what may come next.

This week’s Linky party is hosted by Kathleen McMusing. Visit her to see the quilts of other participants.

quilting

SAHRR Round #5: Moving forward with 4

Posted on February 24, 2024 by Laura Kate

Our quilting guru for this round is Quilting Gail. She has suggested that we make this border inspired by the number 4. That can cover a lot of turf. One could use blocks made of 4 patches, or 4 different colors in the block, or build the border to be 4 inches wide, or all of the above. Here are the fabrics I have selected for the bottom row of my SAHRR quilt.

The warm and earthy palette of this round is informed by the colors of the American Southwest desert. My goal is to depict a (deadly) drought.

Here are the aspects of my border that accomodate the number four. I started with a piece of fabric about 5 inches square. I then transected it vertically, inserted a strip of black, cut across the block and inserted another strip. Four sections are divided by the sign of a cross. I proceeded to make four blocks containing crosses.

I also made a few four patch blocks, a few blocks sewn from 2 1/2 inch strips and a few one-piece blocks.

Here is my collection of blocks for the four-inch bottom border.

After this week, my quilt looks like this:

There is much left to do before I can proceed with round 6. I need to make the left and right borders of this round. I also need to finalize the top border, which now contains the fishy square in squares. While I will be seeking additional inspiration, I can reveal one thing: There will be more butterflies landing on these borders.

If you are curious to see how other Stay at Home Round Robin challenge participants have interpreted this week’s prompt, you can find the link to their posts here.