Catching Up

A very satisfying day.  I finished two of the weekly blocks for the Traditional Tuesday Sampler.

The only trouble I had was trying to follow Jenifer's suggestion about ironing the seams flat to reduce bulk.  After burning the ends of my fingers repeatedly, I gave up and ironed the seams to the side the way I usually do.  Then I pressed the heck out of the blocks (with steam) to flatten the bulky areas as flat as I could.  I can only assume that Jenifer has lovely slender fingers, not the pudgy square ended ones I have.

Proceeded to block # 2 for the Bloggers' Block of the Month .  Pulled out the 2.5" strip bin and got to work selecting fabrics.  I'm using my blue and neutral scraps for the 8.5" blocks.  I see from surfing blogs that many participants are making two of each block.  And I thought, Well duh! Why didn't I do that?!  I don't know why that didn't occur to me, since that's exactly what I'm doing for the blocks of the week samplers Modern Monday and Traditional Tuesday.  I may pull out the bin sometime between now and next month's block and make an extra for each of the first two published blocks.

I used my Easy Angle ruler to cut the components for the Half-square triangles.  It lets me cut the components from the 2.5" scraps and still end up with a 2.5" HST.  I just love this ruler.

My Bloggers' Block of the Month # 2.

I pulled out enough bright scrappy strips to make another dozen 9-patches for my Sister's Choice project, cutting two 10.5" lengths of contrasting colours and one 2.5" square of one of the fabrics for each block, and then cutting up the remainder of each half strip into 2.5" x 4.5" bricks or 2.5" squares.  I've built up quite a nice little stack of bricks and squares this way.  I don't know yet what I'm going to do with them...  When I first started quilting it was a major puzzle to me how the more experienced quilters were so prolific.  Now I know.  You do this long enough and you end up with far more components than you can use and it becomes necessary to find projects to use them up.  A dozen scrappy patches is about my limit time wise.

The resulting 9 patches are really bright and cheery.  The 9 patch count is now up to 31.  I will want 48 to make a big lap size, 56 to make a double-bed size quilt, or 80 to make a queen size.  Still haven't decided which size I want to make and I need to check what size bed the intended recipient has.  This is another one that is going to require strips with sew-n-flip corners.

It feels good to be up to date on the blocks of the week/month.  I hate falling behind on those.

Running out of roosts for my chickens

It was bound to happen... all my chickens coming home to roost at the same time and that day being one in which I have about 1.5 hours of sewing time.  (I'm actually supposed to be eating, changing my clothes and getting out the door again, but I can do a lot with a cheese sandwich in one hand, and they've all seen me without make-up on before anyway.)

I'm making twice the number of 6.5" sampler blocks for both of Jenifer Dick's samplers, Modern Monday and Traditional Tuesday .  I've gotten into the habit of sewing two blocks for both these sampler blocks on Tuesdays.  I rather enjoy comparing the two techniques to make the same block.  All I had time for today was the Modern Monday blocks.

Tuesday is also the day Jo posts her latest Crumb-Along instructions, which I started out sewing on Tuesdays and eventually moved to later in the week because I like to include sewing string blocks for my String Quilt project and found I couldn't do it all on the same day as the weekly sampler blocks.

Today is the 25th of the month, so the Bloggers' BOM block has been posted.  And I was planning on getting it done right away and making more bright scrappy nine patches for a Sister's Choice project I'm making with strips from the same bin.  Yeah...well...so much for planning.

And today is also the start of 12 Days of Christmas Sampler Quilt-Along .  The first block has been posted.  It's really cute, but it's paper pieced and fussy-cut... which has me doing the ol' take one step back and melt into the crowd shimy.  I've decided, with regret, that I really do have too much on my plate so will probably not be doing this one afterall.

Got to run now.

A bit of Sunday Sewing

Today is the first day of the Canton Village Bloggers' Block of the Month  - I'm going to make mine in scrappy blues and neutrals.  There seems to be quite a good supply of those fabrics in all of my strip bins, as well as yardage in my stash.  All the block # 1 components could be made from 2.5" strips and squares.  I'm keeping all the pertinent links for this project on a Blog Page here.

After finding a handful of colourful 9 patches in my 2.5" strip bin, I decided to keep making them so I could use them as the centres of Sister's Choice blocks - it will be a very colourful and scrappy project.  I'll be making these along with my Bloggers' BOM blocks every month.  The Sister's Choice blocks will finish at 10" square so I will probably want to make the quilt 6 by 8 (48 blocks).  I already have 19 nine-patches so only need another 29 before I move on to the next phase of these blocks.

I like the fast piecing method I read about on Quiltville - where to make a scrappy 9 patch you pull two strips plus a square from your strip bin.  As these are being made from 2.5" strips, I needed to cut two 10" strips in contrasting colours plus a 2.5" square of one of the colours.

After sewing the two strips together, and ironing, the strips are then subcut into 2.5" segments.

Then laid out for chain piecing.

 I made another two blocks for my Traditional Tuesday Sampler (blog page on that project is here).  I did determine that my seam allowance was a couple of threads off, but increased the components by 1/8" anyway.  There wasn't much to trim off to make the blocks 6.5" square.

Here's the pile of scrappy 4 patches that were run through as leaders n' enders during today's sewing.  I've found a couple of patterns I like that will use up some 4patches.  One requires 3.5" HSTs and the other 3.5" strips with sew n' flip corners.  Both ideas require some cutting to proceed, which I hope to have done before I run out of leader n' ender two-patches.

I'm making seriously good progress on the 2.5" HSTs I've been trimming.  Here's a pic of the trimmed box.  Amazing how fast it goes, even if only trimming 20 or 30 a day.

And this is all that is left in the "untrimmed" box.  I am on track to be done with this trimming business before the end of October.  I've found a couple of patterns that use a lot of HSTs.  They too require cutting components.

I can see I will have quite a bit of fabric cutting to do to use up some of these components.  Tonight?  I'm planning on handstitching binding and watching television.