using leftover fabric – Daily Fiber

WIP Wednesday: SAHRR Round Three

Posted on February 5, 2025 by Laura Kate

It’s all Japanese quilt blocks all the time around my house these days. First of all, let me show you the fabrics that came yesterday from kimonomomo on Etsy;

They are all types. There’s smooth cotton and homespun, shiny metallics and quiet two-color prints. What I forgot to buy was fabric in light colors. So my completed squares are about to get darker.

But not this week. Quilting Gail asked us to make star blocks for round 3. I found only one Japanese star block in Susan Briscoe’s book. The Japanese word for star is hoshi.

This is a basic eight point star assembled from diamond shapes. But it is not an easy one. The directions are rated difficult and the technique includes sewing lots of Y-seams. No thank you.

A google search helped me get out of this assignment. I discovered many Japanese quilts that incorporated hoshi blocks in different techniques and styles. So I decided to use this criss-cross star block as described by Anorina on sameliasmum.com

To give the block a little Japanese style, I made the center square with an appliqued crane, which symbolizes longevity for the Japanese. This applique is included in Susan’s pattern book and described as a crest.

I sewed three criss-cross blocks in all. And here is my quilt at the end of round 3.

I will be continuing to stagger the placement of blocks. That means I need to wait for Round 4 to finish this row. Two blocks from Round 4 will replace the outside stars in this row. They will be moved to row 4.

I hope you are enjoying my little adventure in international quilting. Be sure to visit the Linky party. It can be found on Quilting Gail’s site.

Here is the line up of all 2025 SAHRR designers.

January 13: The links for the Centre blocks are on THIS POST.
January 20: 1^st Round: Kathleen @ Kathleen McMusing
January 27: 2^nd Round: Anja @ Anja Quilts
February 3: 3^rd Round: ME!!! @ Quilting Gail You are HERE!
February 10: 4^th Round: Wendy @ Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life
February 17: 5^th Round: Brenda @ Songbird Designs
February 24: 6^th Round: Emily @ The Darling Dogwood
March 24: Parade: showing all of your finished SAHRRs!

See you next week.

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.

knitting

Finished Object: It’s been a minute

Posted on March 15, 2024March 15, 2024 by Laura Kate

It just now occurred to me that I cast on this stash-busting brioche stitch hat more than a month ago. Time to show the final product.

In my first post about the project, I noted that working brioche stitch was quite new to me. I elected to knit this little beanie because it was advertised as an easy pattern for beginners.

Yes it was. But I still made mistakes. Notably, every time that I knit back to the beginning of a round, I became confounded when picking up the second color and starting the next round. Consequently, I have some weird-looking contrast color bars across main color stitches in some rounds.

Thankfully, they are visible only on the inside of the beanie. (not shown in the photo……..why advertise one’s mistakes?) So I don’t recommend that the hat be worn flipped to the reverse side. Trust me on this.

On the plus side…..

It is very soft and squishy
It is comfortable
It will probably be very warm on a cold day.

On the down side……..

It is pretty loose on the head.
It shouldn’ be worn on a windy day
It probably doesn’t match your school colors.

Winter is quickly drawing to a close. Despite the fact that Spring is my favorite season, I’m a little sad to see Winter go. I’ll be taking a pause on knitting warm accessories for the hot months ahead.

What’s next in store for my yarn stash? I’ll take stock of what sort of fiber is left and see what I can craft out of the much-shrunken remaining inventory.

quilting

F.O. Friday: Round Robin Quilt

Posted on June 4, 2021June 3, 2021 by Laura Kate

I’m so happy to get this fiber object moved to the finish line.

This is my Stay at Home Round Robin quilt, a group quilt project that took place in January and February. You may recall some of my earlier posts on this topic.

SAHRR 2021 Last Round Celebration

After all the piecing was complete, I was unsure of how to quilt it. In the quilt’s center I had used the walking foot to sew parallel lines that pinwheeled outward. But the checkerboard border seemed to act as a visual line, stopping the progress of the parallel stitch lines.

After months of procrastination, I made some decisions. The checkerboard border was quilted free motion in a sort of figure eight pattern (the symbol for Infinity.) Each square ended up with a circle inside it. I then continued my parallel lines beyond the checkerboard all the way out to the edge. EXCEPT: I sewed spirals (the shape of galaxies) around the stars and log cabin corners. The straight lines filled in everywhere else.

I call this quilt Expanding Universe. Each challenge caused the quilt to expand over and over. And the choice of a pinwheel block in the center, with corresponding smaller pinwheels in the last border reinforced the idea of spinning outward. The finished quilt measures 60 inches square.