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!