It took me all week to get upstairs to work on my Round Robin project this week. But yesterday I did it! This week was Quilting Gail’s week to supply the prompt. Her only request was that, somehow, the number 4 factored into our decision for what to do with this round. Four patch blocks, use four colors, maybe 1/4 square triangles or pinwheel blocks – these use the number four in one way or another.
I had no problem deciding how to implement the suggestion of four in my round. I looked at the bits of leftovers I am working with and counted out four blue strips with tiny black and white HST’s attached to them.
I connected four of the HST’s with a square of the blue in between each one. Then I added enough of the blue strip to each end to be able to border one side of the Round Robin project.
It looks great. After attaching it to the left side of the quilt top, I measured the width of the rounds on each side of the original center block. Unless the prompt doesn’t work out, I plan to add the final round to the left side of the project and hope to emphasize black in that last round. This should lessen the asymmetry and balance things out a bit.
This has come together quickly and now that it is almost finished, I am looking at each section and planning how to quilt it. I enjoy quilting something small and easily maneuvered. This one will be fun.
We had one really nice day of sunny weather this week which was such a treat. Ray wanted to take out the boat as he had done quite a bit of work on it and needed to test a few things out.
As you can see, there was no one on the water. But the sun was out and the sky was just gorgeous. It was the perfect way to take advantage of a bit of sunshine. Heading to the end of February is leaving me hopeful spring is not far off!
This weekend I plan to attend a monthly meeting of the local chapter of Project Linus. I have donated to them before when in California. However, I haven’t ever gotten involved. Since moving up here, I haven’t been interested in joining a guild but I am interested in meeting other quilters and, as always, love service clubs and projects. Have any of you gotten involved with Project Linus? I am sure I will meet some like minded, nice people in the group!
Lots to catch up on today! I think my priorities are correct in introducing my 100 year old grand daughter. Big sister is in first grade this year. She loves school so much. This week her class celebrated the 100th day of school for this year. The children came to school dressed up as though they were 100 years old. It was so much fun to see the joy on her face when the day finally rolled around.
She was so cute with her gray hair (wig) and cat eye glasses on a chain. H was watching the bus pull up with this huge grin on her face. These special days at school are so much fun for the kids.
Moving on to this year’s Stay At Home Round Robin…. It was Brenda’s week to choose what we were to incorporate into the round. She chose the square in a square block, also called an economy block. For some reason, I had the idea I needed to make a larger block and it was bothering me. I couldn’t come up with a way to use a bigger block. At first, I thought I would skip the whole round. But then I decided to try and make a tiny one. My first attempt was very wonky and I tossed it. Then I tried again and made two blocks I was happy with.
The blue piece set the size for the block. The blue square measured 1 1/2″. I cut large white squares for the surrounding triangles and chopped those in half. The finished square ended up being two inches. I made two of these. They are totally improv which means the center is not square. (I still need to trim the blue corners on the back side). I love them!
I also made this blue border by alternating the solid blue with two tiny black and white HST’s. As I mentioned before, all of these bits are leftover from a quilt I made a while back. As of yet, I have not attached the blue border or the tiny S-I-S blocks. I want to wait to see what comes up on Monday. But for now, I like the idea of this layout.
Stepping Stones Quilt; May, 2016
Since I keep referring to the quilt I first made with these pieces, I thought I would show the original quilt to you again. I made this quite a while ago as part of a quilt along with The Inquiring Quilter. Seems like seven plus years is long enough to hold on to the extra bits. Time to use them up!!
Hand quilting is a great way to keep my hands busy while watching television or listening to an audio book. This peek shows a snippet of a wall quilt I am working on. I stitched much of this while Ray watched the Super Bowl last weekend. By the end of that time, my fingers were sore. Even with a thimble, it is hard to push that needle back and forth for a long period of time.
In the sewing room, I have been working on a quilt for a blog hop in March. (I am way ahead of schedule on this)! The layout of this quilt allows for lots of FMQ practice. I have been quilting it with a straight ruler. After a number of squares like the one above, I think it is time to switch to a curved ruler. When I practice with the curved rulers, I have a lot more hiccups. There are so many pretty motifs to be stitched with rulers so I am motivated to keep practicing.
Another Monday rolled around and this meant a new prompt for the 2024 Stay At Home Round Robin (SAHRR). Hosted by a group of bloggers, headed up by Gail, this annual round robin is a great way to push myself creatively. The blogger for the week suggests a block or an idea and we interpret it as we feel works with our quilt.
This week’s blogging host is Emily of The Darling Dogwood. Her only specification was to incorporate triangles in this round. This clicked with me right away. After last week’s round (use only two colors) I knew I wanted to incorporate some of the black and white charm squares I have set aside for this project.
These leftover charm squares already have a 1 1/2 inch strip of blue already attached to them. I decided to cut triangles from the side where the blue meets the charm square.
I cut a 2 1/2″ triangle from each of these. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get two triangles from each one so I am saving the remaining pieces for another round (hopefully).
I wanted an equal size, white triangle in between each of the blue/black units. However, I didn’t really realize by doing this, I would be chopping off the points when I attached something to the top of this row. I should have made the white triangles larger so the points of the print charms would be encapsulated by the white and thus the points would be preserved. I am leaving it as is and not going to worry about it. Let’s all pretend I meant for it to be this way, ok?
I have some ideas for the next round but of course, I am waiting to see what the prompt is. I hope I can work within the prompt and the idea I am playing with. Currently this measures 15″ x 17″ which is great. Three more rounds should keep this to a nice wall hanging size.
Want to know one of the toughest parts about this event, for me anyway? It is waiting until the following Monday! Now that I sat and worked on it this morning, I don’t want to stop but I have to. Patience is a virtue, so they say. I need to work on that a little. Haha.
While I wait for next Monday’s prompt, I will go back to this project. I have a blog hop coming up in March and yesterday I spent some time piecing a backing for the quilt. It is so cute! Can’t wait to share this one with you all.
We had the pleasure of spending last weekend with our grand daughters. They haven’t had a sleepover at Grammy and PePaw’s house since early fall so this was really a treat. My son dropped them off on Friday and came back Sunday to pick them up. As usual, we managed to do all sorts of things over the weekend.
On Friday, we spent a lot of time outside as Saturday promised to be very rainy. These girls love being outdoors and like all kids, they need that time to run around and burn some energy. They played frisbee and basketball for quite a bit before heading to the woods in front of our house. Both girls decided to dig for treasure without any preconceived notion of what that treasure might be. After digging for a long while, PePaw asked if they wanted to dig for worms.
They were excited about this and ran right to the compost bins. Previously the girls have held the worms in their hands, especially Big Sister. This time, they wanted them on their shovels to look at and then off the worms went, into a bucket. These girls are adventurous and try most any activity they are offered. While they were playing with worms, I snuck into the house and grabbed a handful of ‘treasure’ (marbles and little glass gems).
Acting quickly, I tossed them into the dirt nearby. It took forever for the kids to discover them but once they did, they were very excited. The interesting bit about this was how each girl thought the gems got there. H, being a very worldly six year old, immediately said “Grammy, the kids who lived here before you must have been playing here and forgot about these.” (Note – she has no idea whether any kids lived here before me). A wasn’t close by when her big sister explained this to me. A few minutes later, Little Sister asked me, “Do you think some pirates left these gems here?” Two very different theories. Of course at three years old, A doesn’t feel the need to explain where the pirates came from or why they left this treasure for her. She found five pieces of treasure and was so excited.
Back to the weekend, as expected it rained most of the day on Saturday. But this made for perfect crafting weather. We were looking at images on the computer trying to learn if rainbows could have pink in them even though poor, poor pink sadly is not ever mentioned in the ROYGBIV order of things. We decided yes, pink can be seen in rainbows. While doing this important research, we saw a craft making rainbows with colored stickers. Miraculously, Grammy had stickers in the craft drawer. They added cotton balls for clouds too. It was interesting to me to watch each girl make her rainbow. Big Sister wanted her stickers aligned on the guidelines but not touching. Little Sister insisted on overlapping her stickers so no guideline could be seen.
After lunch on Saturday we were invited to my parents, Great Papa and Great Grammy, for hot cocoa and cookies. The girls loved it and were super about letting us visit while they colored pictures and ate cookies.
Big Sister always asks to sew something while she is here. She knows I won’t refuse her this request. Usually we don’t sew when Little Sister is around because she really isn’t old enough. But it all worked out.
First project was to make this whole cloth project with A. She loves fire trucks and ambulances so I thought she would like this. My vision was to show her the matchbox cars and she could drive them along the roads, keeping busy so I could sew with H. She didn’t get into this at all. Blankets are for babies and stuffies. I don’t think a matchbox car even touched the fabric. It was immediately put to use to wrap up a stuffed animal. Soon Pepaw came to the rescue and took her downstairs to play.
This gave Big Sister and I plenty of time to get started on her first quilt. She was thrilled. Being a very tactile person, she favors the bin with flannels and minky scraps. Her choices centered around dog and cat fabrics and a bright pink scrap to brighten things up. I cut a stack of squares for her to arrange on the design wall.
I loved how seriously she took this part of the process. She wanted symmetry and was able to work it out with the squares she had. I wish I had taken more pictures but it is more fun to stay in the moment with her. This time, she was a very able participant. She sat on my lap and guided the fabric along. I showed her the 1/4″ markings and we talked about the need for a straight line. Fortunately, my machine has speed controls and I could set it to go very slowly. She also learned to pin the pieces together. This made her Grammy a little bit crazy. She looked at the pins like she was judging the quality of fine diamonds, choosing which pins she wanted to use. At times, I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying, ‘c’mon, just pick a pin’. If you think about it, when sewing many things happen at the same time. Pressing the pedal, guiding the fabric, taking the pins out, pressing the seams etc. She was wanted to do each part. I did help quite a bit with keeping the fabric straight but she will get there.
To simplify the project, we didn’t use any batting. The quilt is very soft with a flannel backing. We sewed the layers right sides together and then flipped it right side out. H did a great job turning the corners out. That was as far as we got the first day. Sunday morning we finished it up with a topstitched edging and two lines of quilting, corner to corner. She chose to use ‘special stitches’ for those seams. I love the joy on her face in this picture. She was very proud of this project.
Sunday was better weather wise. We took the girls to the nearby park which also has some great hiking trails around it. After playing on wet slides and swings, we wandered into the woods. The girls spotted this rotten tree stump and started playing. They decided to make a person. Using moss for hair and the smile and leaves for eyes and nose, they soon had a person. Big Sister immediately named her Treetopolis.
Now you have a snapshot of the weekend. Not pictured are the pizzas we made, the paintings the girls did and the amazing shows they performed form us. One involved dance and the other featured their amazing air guitar skills. They are becoming such good friends. So much fun to be with – even if we did go to bed at 8:30 Sunday night after they went home. 🙂
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