Quilting round robin – Daily Fiber

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

Finished by Friday: SAHRR Border 2

Posted on February 1, 2024 by Laura Kate

The challenge we received from Anja this week was ideal for my project. She had a very simple directive: Choose two colors for this week’s border. Sew them together in any way that you like.

The plan I made for this project included color assignments for each round. When pulling fabrics, I made a bag of scraps for each color. I quickly pulled out my green and my blue fabrics and spread them out. How will I sew them together this week?

To get me thinking about shapes and lines, I browsed for photographs that illustrated subjects in my theme. For the green border, I wanted to depict the re-planting of a forest after a fire has destroyed it. For the blue border, the subject was to be melting polar icecaps.

Here are my two inspiration photographs:

I started with the green image of young trees planted in orderly rows. To be honest, I don’t think large forests are re-planted in exactly the same manner. I chose the photo for the graphical quality. This representation made it easy for me to see a quilt block pattern “hidden in the trees.” Getting out my sketchbook, I drew a grid and placed the trees within it.

Voila – a nine-patch block made of half-square triangles.

It wasn’t so fast for me to put the squares together. I have very little experience in making most basic quilt blocks. But eventually I had them sewn up into rows.

Here is the green border sewn together and attached to the quilt.

While my back was turned, a few butterflies flitted into view and perched on the border. They are not green, but I hope they will stay.

The blue border is next. In my inspiration photo, the shapes of ice and open water are not regular in the least. But I knew what to do. I will make this border with improvisational piecing, using a “slash and sew” technique.

I topped the ice and water piecing with a sky cut from hand-painted fabric.

And here is my quilt with my blue and green borders.

Now that you’ve seen my challenge completed, have a look around at the other quilters who are playing. You can find their quilts at the Linky party.

Click HERE.

quilting

Stay at Home Round Robin Challenge 5

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Laura Kate

Thinking about what I have done so far on the round robin quilt, I have concluded that the work needs some breathing room. A little space and lightness from the intense colors and diverse border designs will give the eye a place to rest. So for this challenge I had already decided to add a wider border of the light blue fabric.

**Here you see the effect next to the checkerboard border.**

I like that the light blue speaks to the blues in the checkerboard border while still providing much needed contrast in value. So I was pretty happy with the next prompt – Wonky Stars – suggested by pieceful quilter Wendy. Stay at Home Round Robin Border 5 – (piecefulthoughts.com)

First of all, I like everything improv. Wendy gave us a link to a wonky star tutorial, and I recognized the same technique I already knew and had used in my tropical fish blocks for Under the Sea.

https://www.berrybarndesigns.com/blog/wonky-star-tutorial

The pile of fabrics you see in my featured photo will form the substance of the stars. I will embed the stars at various places into the light blue border, which I expect to be at least 5 inches wide.

Today I got started.

**Four blue patches with star points added**

**Central patch is one of my painted fabrics. The patches are sewn together in the photo**

The first star is finished. Tomorrow I will start early and work in earnest to complete the round.

quilting

SAHRR 21 Round 4 – Checkerboard

Posted on February 11, 2021 by Laura Kate

My week has been a bit full – which is quite a change of pace for me. Among other things, I received my first COVID-19 vaccine jab yesterday. (sore arm today.)

None the less, I have been working steadily on this week’s challenge – checkerboard. I quickly decided it was important to make a definitive break in the design. It is desirable to separate out the triangular rounds from the checkerboard border, which will be strongly square. To make this, I added a wide coping border in the dark grey fabric.

I like the way the geese triangles now look like stained glass pieces.

To me, the checkerboard border can be a mosaic tile border. To achieve this effect I chose to use all medium toned fabrics, including the flowered batik. Here is a small mock-up for my design, using 1 1/2 inch square pieces.

The first step is to cut and sew together several strips, then cut the strips cross-wise into paired squares. Here you see the three piles.

Next I joined these strips into four square blocks, then joined the blocks into long strips. It took me a while to make the first side. For one thing, I again failed to true up the blocks before attempting to sew on the border. Soon, however, I was fully in the swing of it. The first side…………

……. and finally, all sides completed. There are a total of 48 four-square blocks used.

I like it pretty well. Despite my best efforts, there are some ripples. (Thankfully there are no pleats.) I can try to smooth them out by removing, adjusting, and re-attaching the checkerboards.

I’m ready for the next challenge, although I will probably have to buy more fabric.

quilting

Goose Purgatory

Posted on February 3, 2021 by Laura Kate

It’s Week Four on the Stay at Home Round Robin. The prompt is Flying Geese block.

In the beginning, I was happy and excited. The flying geese block is one that I have never made, so this was going to be my opportunity to try it out. I had what I believed to be a good concept for this round. So what could go wrong?

I decided to make my geese 2 by 4 inches. To make it work, I needed to bring the quilt sides up to 24 inches. I sewed on a narrow border of flowered batik fabric.

This also helps to define the pale blue octagon – a secondary shape.

To get started with the Flying Geese, I viewed this video by Patches and Poodles for making them four-at-a-time.

4-at-a-time Flying Geese Tutorial (with video!)

Her instructions were crystal clear. On Tuesday I made the first group.

These looked just great. I calculated that I would need 12 units per side, for a total of 48. The realization of the quantity and time required gave me pause. I decided to get started the next day.

Today, I started by cutting lots of squares and sewing them into shapes using the technique I had learned on Tuesday. Soon I had quite a collection of geese.

The last step is to trim them to size. That’s when things started to go side-ways.

It seems that all of my lovely geese, over which I had labored for two hours, were 1/4 inch too small!!!!!!!! I had skipped over the instruction about pressing the seams open. Missing this step was enough to throw off the measurement that critical 1/4 inch. Thus began another three or four hours of re-working my flock of geese………………

By dinner time, I had managed to salvage about twenty -four goose blocks. A day has been spent and I am only half way done, with a wad of unworkable blocks left behind.

So I am bowed, but not beaten. I will go back into the fray tomorrow, starting with more fabric and a fresh rotary blade.