We had a couple of lovely, cool days this past week. It was absolutely delightful. There was even a tiny bit of moisture that cleared the air. Now we're looking at a heat wave similar to what the rest of the nation has endured/is enduring. And there are wildfires burning to the east and south of us. Probably in the north as well, I don't know for sure. It's the particulates in the smoke that do me in at times like this. Well, in addition to the heat.
I have my Botanical Blur top assembled but the final seams still need to be pressed. Hopefully I'll be able to find another cool morning in which to get that done. In the meantime, I've been looking for things I can do without needing the iron so much. Parts Dept. to the rescue!
I have an embarrassment of blocks I could do something with in the Parts Department. I chose to pull out the postage stamp stars I'd made in conjunction with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge the last couple of years. The ones I hadn't used elsewhere anyway. An actual rainbow quilt does not seem to be in my future. This time it was the pink and purple stars that made it to the design wall. There were enough for three columns of six blocks each. With sashing and alternate columns I could easily make a quilt top that would finish at 48" x 60." The next question was what those alternate columns could be.
My first thought was the multitude of Shoo fly or Hole in the Barn Door blocks I've made out of scraps. But I felt I wanted to keep to a pretty controlled color palette this time around. I have used, and enjoy, Karla Alexander's stack, cut, and shuffle method for making crazy patch and string blocks. Crazy blocks don't require a lot of pressing inbetween steps. My only frustration with this process is that the same prints repeat with more frequency than I care for. My solution was to make six different stacks of six assorted prints each and then mix them up as thoroughly as I could manage. Here's a sample of three of the blocks.
That gave me 36 blocks; I needed 40. (They will finish at six inches each.)
This is when my Shoo fly and Barn Door blocks came into play. There were a couple in the collection that I'd feared I would have a hard time using - ever. As it turned out, this was the place for them!
I've sewn the columns together but have yet to press those seams so I can finish assembling the top. Hopefully there will be a time for that soon. 😊
You know, I had to work quite hard to spot the barn door and shoofly blocks, so they blend in really well. I think you have a rainbow quilt in you, and one day it'll appear, but for now, you're making such lovely things by dipping into the Parts Department at random :-) I hope the weather is kind to you, and the heat is not too unbearable. It's still officially the middle of winter here, but already the temperatures are tipping over into warmer days. I wish I could have another month or two of cooler weather!
ReplyDeleteI'm so impressed with the beautiful quilts you just whip up out of thin air! It's magic, I tell ya!
ReplyDeleteSimply marvelous!!!! Such a great mix of happy colors and block designs.
ReplyDeleteI love the mix of the more formal blocks (the ones on the white background) with the craziness of the scrappy ones. The colours cleverly match too! Hope you get those cooler days soon. It seems to have been a horror summer right across the Northern Hemisphere this year.
ReplyDeleteYes, me too playing "find the shoofly"......definitely well blended there. It's a fabulous quilt!
ReplyDeleteFabulous 😊
ReplyDeleteI LOVE this! It is so appealing. When you first showed the block, I thought, nah, don't think so, but when you showed the whole thing with the columns, oh, wow! Great choices.
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