Tag Archives: round robin

SAHRR – Border 2

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Last night I finished up the bow tie border for my round robin project. As I mentioned before, I am trying to use up pieces I had cut for a previous quilt that never came to be.

This week, I used a stack of HST’s that had finished at five inches. Using these worked our really well. I was able to cut three 1.5 hst’s from each one (much much easier than sewing new ones!!!) plus all of the 1.5″ squares needed for the rest of the block.

Before attaching the border, I added two narrow borders which brought the center to 12.5″. Then I played around with the orientation of the 3.5″ bow tie blocks. I like the way they look when placed end to end. However, I couldn’t decide how to orient the corner blocks. This led me to using a plain square on the corners. Fortunately, I was able to unpick some uncut HST blocks and use the red portion for these corners.


I finally decided to use red squares at the corners. The solid fabric looks much better than the dots.

For this week, Wendy at Pieceful Thoughts has declared stars to be the choice of blocks for the next round. I am going to somehow fashion tiny stars within a mostly solid border. I need to calm this down a bit. I love the polka dots but if they continue to be heavily used, the quilt will be a bit chaotic for my taste. I also need to decide how big I want this to be. If I want a crib quilt, I need to grow it a bit with some larger spacing rows. Decisions, decisions…. Currently, it measures 18.5 inches square. So, I need to figure out the goal and work backwards from there!

Hope you are all enjoying this fun QAL. It is a surprise to me to see how many quilters are participating! Each quilter’s interpretation of the prompts is unique which makes it so cool to look through the link ups. I missed the link at Roseanne’s but will link this up elsewhere. See my favorites at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

Stay At Home Round Robin

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The third annual Stay At Home Round Robin (SAHRR) is starting this week and I am joining in. I have never done any sort of round robin but I am looking forward to playing along with Gail (Quilting Gail) and the other bloggers that are presenting during this event. Several years ago, Gail decided to do a riff on the traditional round robin (where a quilter makes a center block, it is passed along to the next quilter who adds a border of their choice and passes it to the next quilter who does the same). Instead, Gail has lined up five other quilters who have each designed a border for us to use as we see fit. It is very flexible in that a person might choose to use part of the border, to change it a bit or skip it altogether if it doesn’t work for them.

This is my center block. I had a stack of these HST’s and made this star block with them. They were from a quilt I started a couple of years ago and decided I didn’t like where it was headed. In the project bag, I have loads of cut pieces. Several colors of the batik (red, orange, blue, green and purple) and tons of the polka dot fabric cut into various size rectangles and strips. I am hoping to repurpose many of the pieces in this project. If I need to tame it down a bit I may add some solids to the mix. The star block measures eight inches square.

This feels like a mystery quilt since I don’t know what is coming next week. Because I don’t know the plans for the five rounds we will be offered, I have no plan for the size of this project. Wall hanging? Baby quilt? Lap quilt? Who knows! Not being one who is known for spontaneity, this is a reach for me. But this is a way to use lots of pieces that have been sitting patiently waiting to be put into a quilt!

If you want to join in, below is the list of bloggers who will be posting for one round each. If you click through, you’ll be able to see their starting block. For more information on the event itself, click here.

For those who are participating, there is a link up to share your center block. Click here to find that link. I am excited for the next set of instructions which will be provided in a week by Roseanne and Sue. Join in and sew with this group. It is going to be a lot of fun!