Showing posts with label quilt blocks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quilt blocks. Show all posts

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Sylvia's Bridal Sampler Blocks

Just 17 blocks away from finishing all blocks for Sylvia's Bridal Sampler Quilt. Mostly, it's been fun. Some have been a major pain to do, but am glad for getting them done. Wish it had crossed my mind to make notes about those harder ones since my friend wants to borrow the book. One thing I do know is carefully reading the directions helps tremendously, but isn't that true of just about anything worth doing? Rambler, Snail's Trail, and Silver & Gold are names for these three blocks. Generally, I send a picture of completed blocks to my daughter, dil, my eldest granddaughter, and a friend to share my progress...they've all commented on block names. Some make perfect sense, others none at all. Keep being amazed at what creative minds are out there--for coming up with designs I just can't fathom how they did, and then naming them such fun names most of the time!

Never thought I'd do all those blocks--just planned on doing a few for a table runner or such, but started at the first and just couldn't resist doing them all. Try it, you just might get addicted to making small blocks, too.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

WHAT I DID AND DIDN'T GET DONE THIS WEEK!!

Last week, Amy at http://amyscreativeside.com/ issued a challenge to say what we wanted to get done this week. As with so many things, some of what my goal was got accomplished but the whole thing did not. During the week I got an email reminding me there were 35 scarves that needed hemming for the local school's dance festival. So, instead of sewing the 16 blocks for my Starry Night Mystery BOM from Wish Upon A Quilt, that were my plan, scarves got sewn. They got turned in a week early and it felt good to have those done. Below are pictures showing the blocks for months 9 and 10 that did get done. Still have last two months to do--all cut out and think all hst's are done for those. Plus, majority of pieces are cut for 13 pinwheel star alternate blocks for the four quilts.
Blocks for four quilts months 9 and 10. Love the purple and green combo, and that white and green didn't strike me as something I'd like when cutting them out, but really love the graphics of them! Well...love the graphics of all of blocks so far.
Some of the hst's and outer strips of several blocks 9
Block 9 from materials in kit
Block 10 original kit materials. I'm anxious to have all blocks done--100 total. Will be interesting to see how long it takes me, but am determined to get ufo's list down before starting too many other projects.

Thanks Amy for helping me focus even if everything didn't get done. Go check out what others did and get inspired!

Friday, July 30, 2010

Christmas Blocks


Got a Kate Spain Christmas fabric layer cake that's wonderful and having so much fun making up blocks. Most are from a book already mentioned on here: 301 Country Christmas Quilt Blocks by Cheri Saffiote, printed 2002. All sorts of techniques, but mostly doing pieced ones. I'm also using ideas from other places. Last nite the ones done and in progress counted up to 48! And that's not all I want to do, so obviously they're not all going to fit into one quilt, but I'm intrigued by trying so many different blocks. I've added in some other fabrics--in fact, looking at the poinsettia one I noticed there's not any Kate Spain fabrics in there, but most blocks do have hers in them. The blocks are turning out to be all sorts of sizes, but mostly less than 10 inches. A couple have turned out to be 12" so am thinking they will be a pillow top or a mini quilt or two.

So far my very favorite is one called Poinsettia Wreath. The directions in the book are quite minimal and don't make sense to me on some of them. The book has two or three blocks per page; includes a picture; includes some direcctions; and includes a black and white drawing. This one was just not working at all, so decided to draw the pattern out on printer paper, then trace each section on a separate paper and add seam allowances. I then numbered each section on the pattern in the order they'd be sewn. Am so pleased with it and just love the block. Did it so the background color (yellow) was two different yellows--wouldn't do that again, but it'll be ok. I can see a whole quilt done in this design. The design consists of four small blocks with a flower in each. Think this could be done in several colors and layouts. It looks a lot like tulips to me!





The second picture is what I call the eighth block. It's based on 2 1/4 inch squares--size before sewing. Since it's copyrighted, I don't feel like I can put the pattern on here, but will tell you how I did it, so maybe you can figure it out. You need 16 yellow and 8 green squares. I think you could look at the eighth block and draw that out like I did, figure each section and add 1/4 inch seam allowances. I can't think of what that odd red piece is called--a parrallelogram of some sort? For me the way I figured out to sew it was to sew the small red and yellow triangles together--one is sewn with yellow on top, other with red. EVERY time I sewed them I had to look at the diagram to figure it out! Then I sewed one set to the right side of a yellow square, then sewed the other triangle set to the bottom of the square. This produces a small triangle that then was sewn to the long side of the odd red piece. Then sew the green triangle to the shorter side of the odd red piece. (for part of the sewing, there will be points hanging over at one or both ends) This all forms a square. I sewed a yellow and green square together, and two yellows to a middle green square. These rectangles were then sewn to the red/green/yellow square. Cannot tell you how many times I had to pick things out because I wasn't paying attention!! So...pay attention a whole lot better than I did!!
This one is called Christmas Tulips

This one is called North Wind--love how it looks with the fabrics chosen:


Peppermint Candy is one of my favorites, too: There are lots of patterns for blocks out there--lots of free ones!! Try it to add up to a Christmas or any other holiday or no holiday quilt, so give it a go.