First Finish of the Year

Finally! 

I haven't blogged about the FootSquareFreestyle block swap (rounds one or two) very often. Mostly out of reluctance to spoil the surprise for the participant each month but also due to LBS (lame brain syndrome). Now that we're approaching the end of F2F2 I have a finished F2F quilt to show you.

To recap, there were twelve participants in the first F2F. We each made three blocks for one person a month, our choice of block but in colors the recipient had chosen. Of course we have free rein when it comes to assembling our blocks. Kate and Lynn and I think someone else quilted their blocks separately and then assembled them into quilts (in the quilt-as-you-go technique). I'm blessed to have a long arm quilter in the house so once I set the blocks I handed the parts over to him. It took us some time to decide on a quilting pattern. It was no easy matter to select thread color either, let me tell you! Finally we decided on a light lavender thread and a contemporary straight line design. It's not easy to see in the photographs but you get the idea from this detail shot:

We have a quiet, sunny day here today so I went out to the back deck and got some shots of my completed F2F quilt. I had to do it in two halves. I made my quilt big enough to use on our double bed so it measures about 85" square. Here's one half:

And here it is from the other end:

I see that even in this shot I didn't get the whole width in the picture! I'd like to get a single picture of the whole quilt but haven't yet figured out how to manage that. You'll notice that the blocks are grouped according to their predominant color. I made one extra block to fill out the middle polychrome section. I used my collection of black and white prints to make the sashing strips. I thought I would be using a rainbow print for binding but a black with a white line design looked better when it came down to it. Oh, and for the back I made sure to use some prints that had been given to me by other cyber friends, including one that features a lot of women friends. :- )

I confess that I have not put a label on this yet, but it's coming. For now I'm anxious to get it on the bed to see how it looks and feels!

Building a Back

My F2F swap blocks are now a flimsy!

This should finish as an 84" square quilt. Setting the blocks was a pretty straightforward process once I had the sashing strips built and distributed as evenly as I could manage. The bigger challenge has been building a back for this beast. It needed to be a minimum of 90" square. The easy way out would have been to purchase extra wide fabric specifically made to be quilt backs. I have too much yardage in The Nest at the moment to get away with that however. ;- ) 

In spite of the fact that I have a lot of yardage, not much of that is extensive yardage of any given print. So no matter what I had to piece things together to get that 90" square. Since these blocks were made by new friends from around the world I decided begin with prints that have been given to me by other friends over the last few years.

Do you recognize this Julie?

There wasn't enough of any one thing to get all the way across the quilt back so two sections feature two prints each.

Then I needed a narrower strip to get the necessary length. That strip ended up being composed of three different prints but I only have two in a photo to show you.

Technically all those women on the left are gardeners but they've been waiting patiently in my stash to be included in a project for many, many years. I figure they are a pretty good representation of the variety of ladies who made blocks in the F2F swap. The purple text print is one my sister just sent to me in that heavy box for my upcoming birthday.

It makes me happy to have the back of my quilt be as meaningful as the front. What makes me happier is that it turned out bigger than it really needed to be and is done. I declare, it's been a bigger challenge to build this back than it was to create the top! I will be avoiding projects of this size in the immediate future.

On a more technical note, I've downloaded and tried a couple of the photo editing programs y'all recommended. At the moment I'm using Pixlr. I like it pretty well. I think it's time to come up with a better system for managing the photo files while I'm at it. They've gotten a bit out of hand from my never having learned exactly how best to handle files and folders in a computer.

Status Report

I feel all confused about where I am with ongoing projects and what I may or may not have posted. Seems to be a recurring theme lately! 

For the record, the quilt I made as part of the Hands2Help quilt drive is finished. Woohoo! It's been bound but not laundered yet. I'm holding onto it long enough to enter it in a local quilt show. 

Not the best photo, just a quickie taken outside. It's upside down to boot!

I'm keeping up with the strips and rows for my version of Quilty 365. Here are the current strips just laid out on the design wall:

That bottom row has since been completed and a new row begun. I'm about halfway through my year of strips.

Kate should be receiving the F2F blocks I made for her soon. Hers was the last set of blocks to be made and sent out in this first F2F swap. A second swap has been set up and will begin with blocks for Lynn in June. 

I've only made a few postage stamp stars per the Rainbow Scrap Challenge color scheme for this month. We're only a week into the month though. In all likelihood I will be focusing on the green aspect of the palette, probably leaving brown out of the mix altogether. 

There have been more little ships.

Very soon I ought to be able to begin setting these into the Scrappy Sea I intend for them to sail.

Is that everything? Doubtful, but this is what comes immediately to mind. 

Oh, there has been a windfall of new fabric come into The Magpie's Nest. I received an early birthday (and Christmas and next year's birthday and Christmas too!) present from my sister this past week. I shouldn't tease you like that, I don't have any pictures yet. But there was an irresistible sale at my LQS the week before that. This is what 27 yards of fabric looks like all in one place:

Some of it will be quilt backs, and about half of it is for a wedding quilt I hope to get made before the end of July (oh dear! that's not that far off anymore!). There are other new projects on the horizon as well. Things are sort of nebulous at this point. Rest assured you will be kept abreast of the most exciting developments. ;- )

Filling in the Gaps

I hit upon a scheme for the fourth spot in the set of poly-chromatic or rainbow F2F blocks. A tried and true approach:

 Put the 6" star in the hole in a barn door! So now the central four-block unit in my F2F quilt top will look like this:

Remember, I'm setting these four-block units in a nine patch setting. To make this quilt big enough for my double bed I'm using 6" sashes between the four-block units. I considered a single print for the sashes. In the end I decided to make sashing from my collection of white with black prints. I'm using the stack, cut, and shuffle technique to make 6.5" blocks that I'll sew together for the 24.5" lengths I need.

And four of my scrap shoo-fly blocks will function as cornerstones!

I'm using four prints in each stack of 7" x 8" rectangles so I get four 6.5" blocks out of each stack. (I can do a brief tutorial post if you'd like.) What I have on the wall at the moment are the blocks as I made them. Once I have the rest of the blocks made I'll mix them up for greater variety in the sashing strips.

I should be able to assemble this top in sections without too much difficulty. (Famous last words.) I have no plans for a border, I believe I'll just bind the whole thing with a black fabric. Now that I'm over the hump I'm really excited to see this done!

F2F Update

So after that burst of energy things stalled a bit last week. I've sewn my Foot Square Freestyle (F2F) blocks into four-block units -- except for the rainbow blocks. I showed you the yellow, blue, orange and green blocks in this post. At that point I hadn't sorted out the blocks featuring pink. This is how they've been arranged:

 

Last up were the rainbow blocks.

I'm not keen on having both color wheel blocks in that set. I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do instead however. I have a 6" star, rainbow hues on black, that might replace the second color wheel. 

Most of the last week was spent coping with migraines. As a result there are new postage stamp stars and ships.

There's something about the focus required to make the postage stamp units that makes the headaches fade into the background. Most of the time.

The ships are just fun. :- )

Eureka!

I've had my complete set of FootSquareFreestyle blocks for months now. At first I was busy on other quilt projects so didn't have time or energy to play with them. Then poor health took over for a while. I've felt more like myself again recently (whew! thank goodness!). I was laying in bed the other night, waiting for sleep to come, when suddenly an idea for setting those blocks popped into my head.

I completely dropped the ball in terms of keeping my own blog updated with the pictures of the various blocks everyone was making for this international block swap. Fortunately the originator of this swap, Kate from the wonderful land of Chiconia, has been far more diligent than I. She has a whole gallery page over on her blog where you can see not only the blocks I received but all the other blocks that have been made and sent so far too. (Poor Kate is the last one to receive her blocks. She has to wait until next month for hers!)

Suffice to say that my request was one bright, intense hue with black and white. It was an innocent enough request, or so I thought. I found I just couldn't bring myself to set the blocks together side by side or even with sashing. So they sat, waiting patiently for that eureka moment. But would that idea work?

There are 36 blocks in the set. I want a quilt big enough for my double bed. I've learned over the years that a square quilt works really well on that bed. It doesn't provide equal drop on all three sides but since I have a foot board that doesn't matter. I also like being able to turn the quilt one quarter turn periodically to even out the wear or fading that might occur.

I hadn't really assessed the color distribution among the 33 blocks I was sent. That night I couldn't even remember what the blocks I'd made for myself looked like! I wondered whether I would be able to group the blocks by their featured color. And if so, would I be able to make groups of four blocks? If so, I could create what would amount to a giant nine patch format. Nine sets of four blocks equals 36 blocks, the total number this swap was to produce. (I'd received an extra block from one participant, and I could easily make any blocks I might lack for the desired result.)

So the next morning I got out the blocks and started sorting...

Four yellow blocks:

Eight green blocks, which I divided into two groups:

Four blue blocks:

And four predominantly orange blocks:

So far, so good!

There are 12 blocks in various shades of pink, and some that feature a rainbow of color. To keep this post from getting ridiculously long I'll show you in another post what I end up doing with those.

Stay tuned!

We Did It

In our Foot Square Freestyle block swap Miss May/January had almost a week with her completed quilt before she passed away. Kate informs me that it was exactly one month from the time we decided to move Pat up in line to accommodate her shortened life span to the date the quilt was shipped to her. What a relief and a blessing to be able to get that assembled and quilted and then shipped overnight. You can see the image of the virtual quilt and the work in progress in my previous post. Here's what the end product looked like, photographed in my local quilt shop:

James Brown did the quilting for us and Kate created the label.

There were some struggles when it came to choosing thread color and quilting design. James wanted to do his best work and display his talents but the feathers he was planning to use proved to be too much for the quilt. In the end we chose leaves. They speak to me of hope and new life.

With a Hobbs 80/20 batting the quilt turned out soft and fluffy. I was surprised by how pretty the color palette was too. 

Kate has written up a memorial page about Pat and her quilt. I encourage you to take a few minutes to go over and read it.

After that concentrated effort I had to take a break. That's one reason this blog has been so quiet. I have been stitching however, working on a needlepoint case. I love Stitch and Zip kits for mindless stitching. C~ asked me to make up this e-reader case for her:

It's nearly finished. I've already purchased another kit that I'm looking forward to working on. There's a new quilt project on the design wall too. I'll save that for the next post though, and hopefully you won't have to wait weeks to see what it is!

Status Report

There's so much to catch up on here in The Magpie's Nest that I hardly know where to begin. My head is not fully in the game at the moment either. Let's see... how about a list?

1. I finished the binding on the second twin's quilt. Need to get that photographed.
2. I'm more than halfway around the binding on a Parts Department quilt, then that will also need to be photographed.
3. I'm making more of the 12" Ohio Stars I made for last year's Rainbow Scrap Challenge to fill out a second Parts Department quilt. 
4. As the blocks are coming in for Miss May's Foot Square Freestyle (F2F) quilt I'm sewing them together. 
5. My sweet, charming father-in-law passed away. It's a good thing really, we just have to adjust to the new normal and sort out funeral arrangements.

The one item I can elaborate on a little bit right now is the F2F quilt. When we began our swap Miss May knew she might not see her blocks or be able to assemble them into a quilt. We didn't know it at the time but she is in the late stages of ovarian cancer. A drug trial did not have the desired benefits for her. The rest of the swappers have now taken it upon themselves to make their blocks for her immediately instead of waiting until her scheduled turn in May. They are being sent to me and I am sewing them together according to the plan Kate and Avis devised digitally. They also created a virtual quilt for Miss May so she can see what her quilt will look like.

I have about half the blocks here in The Nest. I put them on my design wall this morning to show you the progress so far.

Once again the quilt will be larger than my design wall so what you see above is not entirely true to the design plan. Almost a whole column has been left out. Nevertheless, you can see that it's coming along nicely. I'm expecting blocks from Germany, France, the UK, and Australia any day now.

When this top has been assembled my son will do the quilting. Our hope is that we'll be able to get this done and shipped to Miss May before it's too late. Whether she has time to enjoy it or not, it will eventually be donated to the M.D. Anderson Ovarian Quilt Project to be auctioned off to raise monies for research into the screening for and treatment of ovarian cancer.

Speaking of the Foot Square Freestyle swap, I haven't been very good about posting the blocks I've been making for each month's participants. You can see all the blocks that have been made over the last seven months by all the participants by clicking on the highlighted phrase above and scrolling down.

S is for Swap

I haven't shared much about the Foot Square Freestyle block swap since Kate and I organized it. Life has been getting in my way very effectively the last couple of months. Fortunately, Kate is more organized than I am digitally and has set up a wonderful gallery of all the blocks that have been made and swapped so far. You can see them here (scroll down a bit). Now it's September, and it's MY turn to receive blocks!

I've already made the blocks for my set. I've actually shared them already but I didn't reveal they were for this blocks swap (I'm so sneaky!). I've requested the other players use black and white and bright colors. Like this:

Or this:

Or this!

I hope the other F2F swappers will have fun with this palette. I sure did! 

June F2F Swap Reveal

Today marks the end of the first month of our Foot Square Freestyle block swap. Esther has received some of her blocks and the rest are on the way. I had hoped to put up pictures of all the blocks made during this swap on my dedicated F2F page but I haven't quite managed that yet. I've been incapacitated too often to have spent much time on the computer. I can, however, send you over to Kate's blog where you can see all the blocks that she has pictures of so far. And I can show you what I made. :- )

Esther requested blocks made with white, mustard, jade-ite or minty green, and coral. I just happened to have the perfect green in my stash! According to my book of block patterns this one is known as Ladies Wreath.

I made a Colorado block too, even though I have no association with the state of Colorado. It puts me in mind of a flower.

Lastly I made an Ohio Star since that seems to be my signature block this year.

There are all sorts of uplifting words and phrases in that gray print in the center of the star. I fussy cut the center patch to get the word 'Create' in coral tones for this star for Esther.

There was a good deal of paper piecing going on in other parts of the world for this swap. I heartily encourage you to pop over to Kate's blog to see what else was made during the month of June. Next up is Annett, who doesn't live all that far from Esther as it turns out. She has asked for blocks that feature white, green, turquoise, and orange. I've already got my blocks for her done but I wont' show them until Annett has them in her hot little hands. ;- )

Let the Swap Begin!

Finally, it's time to officially kick off our Foot Square Freestyle block swap!

For those who may have missed to initial rumblings of this event, Kate (talltalesfromchiconia) and I are hosting an international block swap with ten other participants. We will each make three 12" blocks (each block is a square foot = Foot Square) per month and all those blocks will go to the designated recipient for that month. The giftee gets to state her color preferences but we get to choose the blocks we'll be making for that month (that's the Freestyle part). The ones I make will very likely be simple and traditional but there are a couple of expert needlewomen on the list who may blow our socks off with their offerings. We will all be doing out best work of course, and holding good intentions while we sew. Kate and I will be posting pictures of all the blocks so everyone can see what has been produced. We hope to eventually post pictures of the finished quilts too!

Esther, who lives in The Netherlands, is the lucky one to receive June's blocks. She has asked that hers feature white, light gray, or cream backgrounds and jadeite, coral, and/or mustard hues. The question now is, which blocks to make for her?

There are so many to choose from! Not just these, but blocks I haven't tried yet or haven't made lately. The possibilities are virtually endless. :- )

F2F: Let the Games Begin!

 What is F2F? It's the Foot Square Freestyle block swap, organized by Kate Chiconi and myself (Magpie Sue). You can read our original proposal in this blog post.

I'm delighted to announce that we have our 12 players for this first F2F. Yippee! My good husband was kind enough to lend us the use of his hat...

and his skills in drawing slips of paper out of it to randomly assign each of us the month in which we will be the recipient of the blocks.

the first slip out was labelled for June, the second for July, etc.

...and these are the names for each of those months!

To recap:

June: Esther at ipatchandquilt.wordpress.com 
July: Annett at knettycraft.wordpress.com
August: Susan at desertskyquilts.wordpress.com
September, ME!
October: Lynn at thetialys.wordpress.com
November: Avis at ohsewtempting.wordpress.com
December: my good friend Christina who does not have a blog
January: Emmely at infectiousstitches.wordpress.com
February: Kim, also blog-less
March: Nanette at stitchandsow-homeandgarden.blogspot.com
April: Kate at talltalesfromchiconia.wordpress.com
May: Pat at quiltsandchemo.wordpress.com

And now we're choosing the colors we want for our blocks. So far...

Esther has chosen white/light gray/cream for background areas and mustard, coral and/or jadeite or a minty blue-ish green for her focal colors.

Annett has chosen white for her backgrounds, and orange, turquoise and green focal colors.

Susan is asking for white with red and/or blue in her blocks.

I want black and white backgrounds with the bright, intense color of the maker's choice for my blocks (think hot pink, lime green, orange, strong yellow, electric blue, etc.)

Lynn has chosen dark gray for her backgrounds and pale gray, white, and turquoise/teal blue (little bits of coral acceptable) for the focal areas of her blocks.

Avis would like bright blues and purples.

Christina has chosen gray and turquoise, the scrappier the better.

Emmely has simply chosen green.

Kim would like off-white or cream backgrounds with turquoise.

Nanette would like soft shades of mauve, lavender, and purple (but not dark or bright purples) with gray.

Kate is looking for blocks with off-white or pale gray backgrounds and black, iron-gray, and/or lime green focal colors.

We haven't heard from Pat yet but as she's at the end of the list we won't pressure her for her choices!

Our three blocks for Esther will be in the mail to her by 30 June. Then by the end of July we'll have sent three blocks to Annett, and so on until finally Pat will have her 36 blocks in June of next year. It will be a long wait for her unfortunately, but hopefully she'll think it was worth it!

A Freestyle Block Swap

Foot²Freestyle is a new scrap-busting block swap party for 12 people. It has been developed by Kate Chiconi of Tall Tales From Chiconia and Sue Brown (me!) of From the Magpie's Nest. We hope you'll want to join the party – everyone who does will end up with 36 foot-square blocks, the makings of a decent sized quilt.

Here's how it's going to work. First come, first served, but we will retain the next few names as well in case anyone has to drop out and a replacement would like to step in. To make it work, we need enough people to make enough blocks for a decent-size quilt, and 12 is the practical minimum. If we get a lot of response, we can run two parallel block swap parties, which would be very exciting. If the participants enjoy it enough, we may do the whole thing again but have more people and make the blocks smaller – Four²Freestyle, for example – or simply make fewer blocks each.

Each month, one of the 12 names is picked out of a hat at random. That person is notified by both by email and on the F²F page we will set up on our blogs, and chooses a color theme for their blocks. This color choice will be advised to all participants on the F²F page. Each of the F²F swappers makes three, foot-square (12 inches square) blocks each month, and we all send our 3 blocks to the same selected person, who gets to choose color, but that's all. You get to choose the design, layout, fabric, etc. That’s why it’s called Freestyle…

Your foot-square block must feature the selected color, but can be any design, any style, any layout, so long as it’s a foot (12 inches) square plus a quarter inch seam allowance all round. Please make sure you measure and trim your blocks before you send them out.

At the end of the year, we all end up with 36 blocks, which is enough make a 72” square quilt top. At that point, we celebrate and have an online exhibition! We are each responsible for assembling, quilting and binding our own quilts. You can, if you prefer, make something else out of your blocks – for example, if you’d like to make baby quilts, a twin size, or multiple pillows, etc. Your blocks, your choice. Freestyle, remember?

Foot²Freestyle will be administered by Kate Chiconi of Tall Tales from Chiconia and Sue Brown of From the Magpie's Nest. Once we know how many (or if any!) people are interested and if it will go ahead, we will make the image above available as a button for you to grab for your blogs. Insufficient interest will result in failure to launch... Contact us in the Comments section of this post if you’d like to participate. Please also send emails to us at the addresses shown on our blogs, so we have your email for future notifications (it doesn't matter which of us you send to). Entry is strictly on a first come, first served basis. The selected participant each month is chosen by random draw from the remaining names and cannot be changed, to keep things simple and administration to a minimum.

The swap party begins in June, which should give you time to work out if you have time to join us.  We'll send an update closer to the time. Hope to see you there!

Kate & Sue