Project Quilting 16.3 - Common Blocks

This week's theme didn't really excite me.  In fact, I considered skipping this week altogether.  Don't get me wrong, I like common, or traditional blocks.  I have made lots and lots of quilts with common blocks.  I've even designed a few.

But for some reason, I kept picturing a block of the month program for beginner quilters.  Something that starts with very easy blocks, (probably 12 inches) laid out 3 X 4 with sashing.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with a quilt like that, but I just didn't want to make one. And for the life of me, I just couldn't picture anything else.

Also, I'm in the middle of working on two different UFOs, and I didn't want to take the time to make anything very big. 

So I kept procrastinating and mulling over options.  I could make a table runner.  Or not.  I could make a wall hanging.  Or not.  How about another potholder? (Always my PQ fall-back option!) Nah. Sometime midweek, I realized that time was running out, so I was REALLY going to have to 's*** or get off the pot' as my mother used to say.  

When I received an email on Thursday asking me to do a demonstration on quilt finishing techniques for our next guild meeting, my decision was made. I volunteered to show how to make faux flange binding and two sided binding.  I needed to make a small sample quilt to use as a sample to demonstrate a faux flange binding, so I could also use it as my entry for PQ 16.3!  And maybe I will use the two side binding on my entry for PQ 16.4.  That would give me samples for both techniques! No pressure, Trish, LOL!

I also did a little 'creative reading' of the challenge.  It said that we have to use at least three common blocks.  But it didn't say we needed to use three DIFFERENT common blocks.....

For my sample, I used four small churn dash blocks, set them two by two and finished the edges with a faux flange binding.   When I was done, I realized that they formed a four patch, which is a  common block.  Then I looked closer - the corners of the churn dash blocks are 'half square' triangles, and when you set four churn dash blocks together, they form a 'small square in a square' block right in the center.  So technically, I did use three common blocks ^.^

10 1/2 square small quilt or hot pad

PQ 16.2 - Ombre

I was thrilled when I saw the subject of this week's challenge!  I was introduced to the concept of ombre (though it wasn't specifically called that) when I took a class taught by Karen Combs.  The class was about Optical Illusion quilts and it employed shades of colors to simulate light and shadow. I made a few blocks, but had never actually finished a quilt with the technique. 

But the class opened my eyes to the power of using shades and gradients of colors in quilting.   A few years after the class, I was a member of the Quiltmaker Magazine's initial "Scrap Addicts".  That group was charged with making scrap quilts based on Bonnie Hunter's column in that publication.  One of the quilts that I made was a queen sized log cabin made from 7 1/2 inch log cabin blocks from 1 1/2 inch strips from my stash.  I used purple blocks as an off-center focal point, then used blue, green, yellow, etc.  blocks shaded  to pinks in the corners.   It actually won a ribbon for Best Use of Color at my guild's quilt show that year.

I made Pat Sloan's Rainbow quilt during the pandemic, which also used the technique of color gradients.

So while I knew that I 'could' make another rainbow quilt for this challenge because a rainbow is after all, a gradient, I ultimately decided to go in a different direction.  Combining black and white with a 1/2 yard of teal ombre fabric that I found in my stash, I decided to make attic window blocks and set them light to dark from top to bottom and right to left. Using white on the bottom of each block and black on the sides gives the illusion of depth.

When I took a picture, I was surprised to see that another optical illusion showed up.  The teal blocks are all 2 1/2 inches finished, but they look shorter toward the bottom than they do at the top. I'm sure that there is a scientific explanation for this, but I'm running out of time to get the picture linked to the PQ 16.2 blog page, so it will have to wait!

Attic Windows
36 inches square

Project Quilting 16.1 - Mythical Creatures

True to form, I am back to blogging only because it is Project Quilting time! That means that I need to remember how to do all the settings to make the formatting on this post consistent with the way it's been since I started about 10 years ago. Ten years? Really? Wow.  I'll think about that later.  In the meantime...

Project Quilting has changed a bit this year. There are still bi-weekly challenges, but no prizes. I'm ambivalent about that. I really don't need anymore 'stuff'. But the fact that you had to finish on time in order to qualify for a prize gave me the extra incentive to actually finish on time! Which I didn't this for this challenge.  In a way, I like it - no sleepless nights with ideas rolling through my brain, so much less stress!

The first challenge of PQ 16.1 is Mythical Creatures. I remembered an applique that was created by Karen Montgomery which is either a gnome or a leprechaun, depending on which hat and beard you use. I had used a variation of that applique when I made my 'gnome' take on Any Which Way, which itself was a take on the Wicked movie poster. (P Q 12.4  - https://myquiltymusings.blogspot.com/2021/02/project-quilting-124-snails-trail.html)

I've decided that I am going to have seasonal wall hangings in my sewing room this year. I don't have one for March, so I decided to make the Leprechaun for this challenge.   It's so rare that I actually finish a seasonal project before the season!  I'm happy that I finished in time for St. Patrick's Day even if I didn't  finish this project in time for the challenge. 

I decided to name him Cornelius, after my Irish great grandfather.  Cornelius the Leprechaun looked a little lonely sitting there with his feet dangling over the bottom border, so I gave him a giant shamrock to keep him company.  I cut some hearts out of the border fabric, and put four of them together to make the shamrock. I had a few left, so they became the leaves. I used a straight stitch on my sewing machine to make a gentle curved stem and just went up and down the original stitching to make it thicker.  

I thought about trying to free motion quilt shamrocks all over the border and background, but chickened out and just did loop-de-loops. 

Cornelius the Leprechaun
13.5 x 17.5 

Now I just have to wait until after Valentine's Day so that I can put up  my new St. Patrick's Day wallhanging!

Project Quilting 15.6 - Irish Chain

How fitting that a challenge issued on March 17 involves something attributed to the Irish!  Although, from a quick search on the web, it appears that the pattern may have originated in the US. Apparently, in Ireland, it is called the American Chain!!

Regardless of where it came from, it is a traditional quilt pattern.  It is listed as a block in many reference books, but you really need two blocks to make the single Irish Chain design - a nine-patch block and a plain background block.  Alternating them makes the typical diagonal chain.  It was historically made as a two color quilt, which really emphasizes the 'chain' pattern.  Given the name, green with a white background is a popular color combination. 

On a normal PQ challenge week, I try to make a baby size quilt.  But this week was shaping up to be a crazy busy week, and my PQ time would be limited.  So when I saw that the challenge was Irish Chain, I have to admit to being less than excited about it.  (Sorry, Trish!)  All I could envision was a scrappy nine patch with a white background.  

Quiltober 23

I have recently completed two  quilts that are scrappy with a white background.  

The first one is called Quiltober 23 from Karen Montgomery's Nine Patch A Day Facebook group. As you can see, it is very similar to an Irish Chain.  It's has the  '23' designation  because she published another Quiltober quilt pattern in 2022.  And probably will have another one this year, so that one will be Quiltober 24! If you are on Facebook, check out the Nine Patch a Day group. 

Karen owned a quilt store for over 20 years before she 'retired' to Florida.  Now, she designs fabric, rulers and patterns and teaches other quilt store owners how to run their business. She occasionally posts patterns that she designs, but more importantly, she posts a video every Sunday evening where she answers quilting questions from group members.  She is a veritable fountain of information!

Circling the Nines variation

Here is the other scrappy-nine-patch-with-white-background-quilt that I recently completed.  It was inspired by a free pattern that I saw on the Quilted Twins website called Circling the Nines.  That one was set on point; I chose a straight set, and made it somewhat smaller.

As you can see, both of these quilts use scraps, a white background and lots of nine-patch blocks.  So it's not that i don't like nine patch blocks with a white background. I'm just a little burnt out on the theme. The thought of working on even a baby size Irish Chain just left me apathetic.  And with all my other commitments this week, I knew that I wouldn't have the energy or time to put into something creative. 

So after a few semi-sleepless nights  of mulling it over, I decided to just do a small, traditional two color single Irish Chain project.  Since I had used up most of my stash of 2 1/2 inch squares and strips on the two previous projects, I dug into my bin of 1 1/2 inch strips.  There, I discovered two strips of a pretty coral with white flowers fabric.  I paired the coral with a scrap of a white-on-white fabric that was printed with small white flowers.

I quilted straight diagonal lines through the coral fabric, and used a decorative floral stitch through the white background squares.  My biggest challenge was the binding.  Because I started with a 1 1/2 inch wide strip, the binding is barely 1/4 inch wide. This was the narrowest binding that I have ever made!  But I like it on a small project like this. 

My Coral Irish Chain project is 9 1/2 inches square. I'm not sure my Irish ancestors would approve of coral instead of green. Coral might be a little too close to orange for their taste!  ^.^

Coral Irish Chain

It's not my most creative venture, but it was quick and easy. It didn't tax my brain on a busy week, it's pretty, and I like the way it turned out.

It has been a great Project Quilting season, and I'm already looking forward to next year!  

  

Project Quilting 15.5 - Wearable

Every once in awhile, I come across a project that really grabs my imagination. It's all I think about; I want to drop everything and make it.  That happened a couple weeks ago when I opened an email newsletter from Melissa Mortenson of Polka Dot Chair.  She showed a tote bag that she made for her latest family trip to Disney World.   She cut some fabric scraps into  Mickey Mouse silhouettes and appliqued them on a purchased tote bag. See the post here: https://www.polkadotchair.com/diy-applique-disney-tote-bag/

It was so stinkin' cute that I immediately started planning to make one (or two....). The problem is that I have way too many tote bags and I really can't justify making any more.  So I started thinking about other ways to use the Mickey silhouettes.  I decided that they would look really cute on a t-shirt.  And I could wear it on MY next trip to Disney!  

But even though I kept thinking about it, I didn't have time to actually start working on it.  I sing with a local concert chorale, and last week was concert week.  We had two dress rehearsals and two concerts in the span of 6 days.  I was so busy that I even forgot that Project Quilting 15.5 was starting on Sunday! 

On Sunday evening, after I got home from the Sunday afternoon concert, I did some unwinding by checking my email and Facebook.  That's when I saw the topic for this week's challenge. 

Wearable?  WOW!  Talk about a coincidence!  And I even had a plain white T shirt that I had purchased awhile ago that I could embellish!

So Monday morning, I went spelunking into my scrap bin to find some fabrics that would be suitable for the Mickey Mouse appliques.  I was originally looking for patriotic fabrics, but on my way there, I found several strips of Ombre Confetti Metallic by V and Co.  Where and when I got them, I have no idea, since I know that I never had that jelly roll.

Sometimes I think that there is a fabric fairly, similar to the Tooth Fairy. But instead of taking a tooth and leaving a coin, she takes some of your fabric and leaves someone else's in its place. That would explain why you just know that you have a certain piece of fabric, but you can't find it.  The Fabric Fairy 'rearranges' it for us!

Anyway, one of the strips was an indigo ombre that I decided was perfect for this project.  I printed out the shape, traced it onto some template plastic, then used that to draw Mickeys onto the paper side of some fusible web.  Since the Mickeys are symmetrical, I didn't have to worry about orientation, like I would for letters.  The only thing that I needed to remember is to iron the fusible shapes onto the WRONG side of the fabric!  Yes, I have absolutely fused to to the right side before!  Once they were cool, I cut them out with a pair of very sharp scissors.

I carefully arranged the Mickeys in a 9x9 grid and fused them down. I used the blanket stitch on my Bernina B590 to stitch around the edges, using a different coordinating thread for each progressively darker row.

The one thing that I learned is that you have to be very careful not to stretch the t shirt when you are stitching around the shapes.  The easiest way to do that is to only hold onto the woven fabric shapes when you are stitching, not the surrounding t shirt.  I am happy with the way that my new Disney T shirt turned out!  

Project Quilting 15.4 - Hourglass

'Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives'  This was the opening line of the soap opera Days of Our Lives.  When I was growing up, my grandmother was a big fan of that show, and always made sure that she was home to watch it.  I never saw the reason why - missing one episode never seemed to make much difference, since the next one invariably showed much of the same content!   

Anyway, I was originally going to write about the fact that soap operas like Days of Our Lives have disappeared from TV, then link that to the Disappearing Hourglass baby quilt that I made for this week's challenge.

But when I googled 'Days of Our Lives' to get more info, I was shocked to see that it is STILL being produced!  So much for that take on the PQ 15.4 theme!  The show is no longer broadcast on NBC,  but it is available on their Peacock paid subscription service.  Wow.  My grandmother would be thrilled.

I guess that I could wax philosophical and talk about how time flies and seems to disappear and .... nah.  I'm not in the mood to be morbid. Instead, I'm just going to ramble a bit about disappearing blocks. Skip to the end if you just want to see my Hourglass project. 

A disappearing block is made when you make a traditional block, cut it up into pieces, rearrange the pieces and sew them back together to make a new block. So the original block has 'disappeared'. 

The first disappearing block quilt that I remember seeing was a disappearing nine patch, which is made by cutting a nine patch block in half both ways.  That gives you four blocks which you can then rearrange in different ways.  But since the four blocks are identical, many of  those arrangements look the same. You can make the variations look different by using different fabrics in different positions, but the basic structure is still the same.  

Since the original disappearing nine patch, some very creative people have started cutting up other traditional blocks.  For instance, instead of turning a nine patch block into a four patch block, why not turn a four patch block into a nine patch?  Many of the simple traditional blocks are essentially four patch blocks. When you cut them into nine pieces, the resulting pieces aren't identical, so you can rearrange them into many, many more variations than what is possible with only four identical pieces. 

Brita Nelson is one of those very creative people who has been playing around with the concept of disappearing blocks. She calls herself 'The Questioning Quilter'. She's turned traditional blocks like Hourglass and Pinwheel into hundreds of different Disappearing blocks.  Plus, she's done all the math!  Check out her blog post here and prepare to be amazed. 

Now back to the challenge! 

single Hourglass block

Disappearing Hourglass variation

Last year, I made a baby quilt for PQ 14.1 using the dark squares from a Fisher-Price themed layer cake and a white background.  This week's challenge was the perfect opportunity to use up most of the rest of the layer cake by using the light squares and some navy blue solid from my stash. I made 12 hourglass blocks, then cut each one into nine pieces and rearranged them into one of the Disappearing Hourglass variations. 

I tried a few different quilt layouts to see which one that I liked the best.

I was tempted to use this layout, because I really like the look of it. But  when I viewed it from a distance it didn't look balanced.  I think that it would work better as a square quilt rather than a rectangular one.

I ultimately chose this layout because look at those cute little hourglasses that form where the blocks meet!

Project Quilting 15.3 - Inside Out

Thanks to my daughter, I knew what the title of my project for PQ 15.3 was going to be on Sunday afternoon.  It just took me awhile to decide what form the project was going to take.

As I was reading the blog post about the theme, my daughter walked into the room.  Now, in order to understand why that is important,  you have to realize that my daughter is a pop culture nerd.  More specifically, she is a Disney nerd.  

I was scratching my head and trying to figure out how I could make something quilted that was inside out.  Batting on the outside?  Seams on the outside?  Neither seemed to be a great idea for a quilt.  So I read the post to my daughter and she said - Oh, that's easy!  Memory Balls!    

Huh? Memory Balls?  What the heck are Memory Balls?  She reminded me about the Disney Pixar film from a few years ago called Inside Out. I remembered the film, but I had never seen it. So of course, I had to look it up. The film is about a little girl who moves to a new city and a new school. Her personified emotions are color coded in the film, and so are her memories, which are stored as colored balls in a place in her brain called Long Term Memory. The color of the balls is reflective of the emotion associated with it.  Yellow is joy, blue is sadness, green is disgust, purple is fear and red is anger.

One of the characters in the film in Long Term Memory
 with the Memory Balls  

So I knew right away that I was going to do something with colored circles in a grid.  I thought about using the Drunkard's Path block to make colored circles for a baby quilt, but I wasn't sure that I would have enough time to get it done. 

I settled on appliqued circles to represent the Memory Balls.  I'm not a big fan of applique, but I thought that it would be easier than doing curved piecing.   I heard about an applique technique that uses fusible interfacing to make the turned under edges, so I thought that I'd try it.  The one thing about these challenges is that they encourage me to try new techniques!  

The fusible interfacing technique involves sewing the fusible side of the interfacing and the right side of the fabric together all along the edge of the shape. Then you cut out the shape with a small seam allowance, slit the interfacing and turn it right side out.  That means that the right side of the fabric and the fusible side of the interfacing are now on the outside.  You iron the applique in place, then stitch around the edges however you want.  

I made a bunch of circles using solid fabrics and fusible interfacing, then arranged them in a grid on a solid navy blue background.  I chose to use the blanket stitch on my machine.  Note to self - you need more practice with machine blanket stitching!

And since I was playing with new techniques, I decide to try using the alphabet stitches that are built in to my Bernina B590.  I programmed in the phrase "Long-Term Memories" and proceeded to stitch that phrase around the outside of the grid of circles.  Another note to self - don't try to go too fast.  The letters get misshapen if you pull the fabric or if you try to stitch too fast.

My Inside Out knitting bag

I ended up making an 8 X 11 inch zippered bag for my knitting. So not only was the project inspired by the movie Inside Out, I also used two inside out techniques - the fusible interfacing applique and the bag both needed to be turned inside out in order to finish them.  WooHoo - a three-fer!