Progress on the Star Sampler Swap...

Duck Paddle

Kaleidoscope

Peaceful Hours

Both Lisa and Luisa's blocks arrived in the mail recently. The three above are from Lisa (love the names!) from Marsha McClosky's Block Party. Luisa posted hers on her blog. As you can see, her ochre and rust added much needed warmth to the overall color scheme. These swap blocks are so inspiring, both in workmanship and design. I think the cross-fertilization of ideas and visions is going to make for a much more interesting quilt than I could ever have made on my own. I want to make a double quilt, and perhaps a lap quilt out of extra blocks that i've been making along the way. Haven't decided yet on a setting, but thinking of using a very simple alternate block mainly in indigo, to sort of frame the stars.

A bit premature, I know, but I felt like posting something Christmasy.

You know those funny names that blocks have? I've always been intrigued by the one called "Hobson's Kiss". It raises so many questions. One can't help wondering who this Hobson was and, if he was such a great kisser, why the quilter wasn't on a first name basis with him? Or was this a legendary kiss someone of her acquaintance had experienced? And if so, what did the block design have to do with the kiss? I made five of these today, just because of the mysterious name.

Still working on the indigo and white sampler blocks, but hesitate to post pics, as I want them to be a surprise for the swap recipients. We finally decided to make them all 9" for this swap, which means i've got about 25 10" orphan blocks(!). If anyone happens to be interested in doing a 10" indigo/ white swap, I'm ready! (You can see some examples of the blocks i've already made below.)

We've also decided to include more warm colors, like cinnabar and ochre to warm up the overall color scheme slightly. I've been laying mine out on an indigo background, thinking i'll alternate these blocks with plain indigo, to make things less busy. I like this layout better than just sashing, as the blocks are so different.

Hi, there,

Sorry not to post in a while. I've been rather caught up in other tasks and hesitate to start sewing as i know how obsessive i can be about it and there isn't time at the moment...

The first deadline for the Indigo/ White stars swap is looming, though, plus my friend Nancy and I are working on a quilt for her son, and I'd like to get going on some blocks for that. So far, my contributions have been limited to raiding my stash. It's another Hidden Spools, but this one won't be so "higgeldy piggeldy" (as Nancy puts it). We're trying to make it more orderly, which is a bit of a challenge for me, as it will be harder to make large amounts of color go with other large amounts. I find scrappy quilts easier when everything's mixed together in small bits. Her son just started studying Physics at university and we're thinking he would appreciate orderliness and discernible patterns.

Below is a higgeldy piggeldy version of Hidden Spools. We're going to make Benny's so that all of the squares match within themselves, rather than simply alternating light and dark, as I did here.

More Tumbling blocks, laid out on Nancy's dining room table yesterday after lunch. One was the wrong way round, i notice now.

How to Make Tumbling Blocks

I used 2.5" strips, but you can obviously use any size you want. You'll need Light, dark and medium. I sometimes contrasted cool and warm, when the dark and medium were only slightly different in value. I especially like using Kaffe Fassett stripes for the mediums, as they add more dimension, without being too loud. For a kid's quilt, you might try using a feature fabric for the medium.

Use a 60° angle template (or the marks on your cutting board, if you have them), for the first cut.

I used a template with inches marked on it, to cut the parallelograms at 2.5" intervals in the strips.
You can make a template out of cardboard, marking 1/4" seam allowances on it and then making holes where the lines cross.

This you can use to mark where your seams should start and stop when you're sewing the blocks together. Once you've done stacks of them, you probably won't need the marks anymore, but it helps to get started.
Sew just one side of a light and dark together.

Take care that the pieces are arranged according to how you want them to be placed in the block. In this case: dark will be lower left, light on top, etc.


Sew the medium onto the light, with a pin to mark where the seam between light and dark is.
Pivot at this point and then sew medium to dark, being careful that the dark remains in the proper allignment when you pivot, so that the seam turns exactly where light and dark meet and the medium and dark pieces match up exactly.
Also, be careful not to stretch the bias cut edges while sewing!


This strip piecing tutorial for Tumbling Blocks looks promising and i started to try it, but then realized it's better suited to a project that isn't so scrappy, i.e. with just three fabrics, like for a baby quilt. Also, i preferred the aesthetics of this method. After all, sometimes the viewer is not galloping by on a horse!

Take care that the pieces are arranged according to how you want them to be placed in the block. In this case: dark will be lower left, light on top, etc.


Sew the medium onto the light, with a pin to mark where the seam between light and dark is.
Pivot at this point and then sew medium to dark, being careful that the dark remains in the proper allignment when you pivot, so that the seam turns exactly where light and dark meet and the medium and dark pieces match up exactly.
Also, be careful not to stretch the bias cut edges while sewing!


This strip piecing tutorial for Tumbling Blocks looks promising and i started to try it, but then realized it's better suited to a project that isn't so scrappy, i.e. with just three fabrics, like for a baby quilt. Also, i preferred the aesthetics of this method. After all, sometimes the viewer is not galloping by on a horse!

Finally had time for a bit more sewing. I'd been longing to try these tumbling blocks and had been collecting fabrics for them for a while. Many of these came from Brigitte's shop.

From the campus at Bremen where the semester started last week. My classrooms are all way out in the boonies this time, but the walk there is scenic and good exercise..

A reversible keyboard cover. Been meaning to make one of these for a while. I used some of my favorite fabrics, things i was tempted to save for more important projects for other people. I decided, hey, i'm important too! Besides, how do i know they would even like these fabrics?

Well, my little holiday from the internet was productive. I managed to get lots done. This week i couldn't resist sewing a little again and started on a new quilt, but it's Top Secret, so i can't post pictures of it. Sadly, I've had to put it aside again until i finish a bunch of work-related stuff. There are a zillion other projects i'm longing to get to as well, including a radio flyer quilt.

This Bear Needs a Break

Thanks for visiting my blog. Just thought i'd say, I'm taking a mini-break from the internet at home, so may not post here for a couple of weeks. I have some catching up to do and need to prepare for the upcoming semester (the "Winter Semester" at universities starts in mid-October here). Last night i finished piecing the rose and white irish chain for my Aunt Livia. It turns out her cancer appears to be back, so this was good timing. I've been clearing the decks, sending quilts off to be quilted. I'm afraid if i start another new project, I'll be swept into it and not be able to tear myself away to do anything else. I wonder if other people have this problem.

Last weekend, I visited Brigitte near Bielefeld. She let me fool around on her Bernina and I managed to quilt two of my doll quilts. The last evening, I couldn't hold out any longer, and ended up having a shopping spree at her little fabric shop (see below). Talk about Kaffe Fassett heaven! She also gave me the above charm pack from Fig Tree by Moda. I want to make something really special with it. Just have to figure out what. I'm thinking of saving them for a Tea Leaf quilt I want to make someday.

The fabrics I scored at Brigitte's

Autumnal hues aren't the sort of colors I usually choose, but they're definitely growing on me. I'm thinking of making a Tumbling Blocks quilt with them.

My Stars!

Another bout of obsessive piecing for the Sampler Swap (see below). I made seven of these Golden Samovar blocks over the last couple of days. They're from Once More Around the Block by Judy Hopkins.



Some more stars and "stars" I have in mind to make:
Amish Star
Martha Washington Star
Sarah's Choice
Foxy Grandpa
Grandmother's Choice
Continental
Autumn Hues (tho of course not in autumnal hues :-)
Ohio Star
Ribbon Star

So far none of them are foundation pieced, but i'd like to do some down the line. One reason i decided to do this project was just to test out and practice different blocks and techniques.

Indigo and White Star Sampler Swap

Guidelines

• 10" blocks (or 9" augmented to 10")

• Star or vaguely starlike, i.e. with a pattern that radiates out from the center (see examples above and below)
  

• Each block should contain Indigo or navy and white or cream, but can also contain other colors, esp colors with blue in them, e.g. , greens, turquoise, teal, lavender and violet.

• Deadline: December 2008, with mini-deadlines along the way.

• Every three months, we will send 3 blocks to other swap recipients individually, which means making a few copies of one block per month. You can choose how many blocks you want to send and receive.
  

Some more stars i made today (Chickadee Quadrille). These are actually 9" but i plan to augment them so they'll fit with the 10" blocks. I'm still not sure about including turquoisey blues. I'm sort of inclined to limit it to indigo/French blues, that sort of range. Opinions on this appreciated.

Star Swap, Anyone?


I'm not sure how to organize a swap as i've never done it before, but I started this one with Norma and Lisa, two quilters in the States who, alas, are not yet in blogland, and i wondered if anyone else would like to join, as i find I'm making way more of each block than i need.

They're 10" indigo and white stars (the background can be light or dark--i.e. the reverse of what you see in these pictures). We've found lots of good patterns in Judy Hopkins' Around the Block and Once More Around the Block, as well as quilterscache.com under 10" blocks. Also, they don't absolutely have to be star or star-like designs. Things like Chickadee Quadrille or Footstool or even Yankee puzzle would be fine, as far as i'm concerned. Overly simple designs like Friendship Star might not work as well, though, since the blocks are rather large.




The Castle Garden below isn't so precise because i made it before reinstalling a 1/4 inch seam guide on my machine. So don't worry, my piecing is usually more accurate than that.



I like this project because you can get carried away with it for an afternoon, making a bunch of one or two block patterns, and then leave it for a while until you feel inspired by another block design. Please contact me if you're interested.

Doll Quilts

The day after finishing a very long project, i was dying to finish something quickly, and these three doll quilts were the result. Sometime soon, I'd like do some doll quilts with traditional blocks, like Lucy has done.


This "cheating bargello" was an experiment: i cut strips out of striped fabric and then just rearranged them as you would with a normal bargello, like the one above.

Finally, here are some pictures of the log cabin project Brigitte and I are working on. It was Brigitte's idea and she made this first block (I snaffled it from her when she came to Hamburg).
The two below are ones I made, after finally figuring out a way to foundation piece them on fabric (without paper--paper didn't work for me at all) so the strips wouldn't be stretched out of shape. You wouldn't think log cabins could be so complicated, but these are 12" blocks and the strips were mainly cut across the grain, which made them extreeemely stre-e-etchy.

This bottom one I did without foundation piecing, and you can see the problem a little, although some were much worse.

The latest batch of strips I cut, I made sure to cut lengthwise,
with the grain, even if it meant much shorter strips, just to avoid the stretching nightmare i had in the beginning.

The other big challenge for me is deciding on such a long row of fabric strips to put together for each block, making sure that
a) they all fit our color scheme,
b) there's enough contrast and variation between lights and darks / cools and warms
c) i'm not repeating my favorite fabrics too often
d) i don't run out of certain colors, since many of these hues (e.g. that warm, light red, these soft blues, the apricot) I don't tend to have in my stash.

However, I think this joint project is broadening my horizons in some ways. I admire Brigitte's sense of color, so it's interesting to try to imagine whether she would approve of various combinations.

Inspired by Judy's challenge to fess up to UFOs, i haven't got time to find and photograph all of them, but here's my list:

• some house blocks i pieced by hand (not sure if anything will ever come of them)
• Imelda's Amish Dahlia (need to finish appliqué and put it all together)
• Franny's yellow and blue stars
  
• log cabins with Brigitte (I've made five and need about 15 more)
• blue and white star sampler (a long, ongoing project)
  
• pink and white single irish chain that i just started and am close to finishing.
• Sister's Choice for moi me me!
• Basil Garden for my guest room

This is not counting the long list of project i have in my head and haven't started yet :-)

Finally, a few pics from this summer's holiday.The mountains in South Tirol where we went hiking every day. We slept in a beautiful old Farmhouse.
This is at a seminary in Innsbruck, where some friends studied years ago. A current seminarian let us in to look around.

Marlene borrowed my hat as soon as we arrived at the Alm. She and Hans were wonderful hosts.

This is a lap quilt I made for my sister Lisa. She's made so many beautiful quilts for other people, I figured she deserves a quilt more than anyone I know, which made her a perfect victim for my experiment with the Disappearing Ninepatch.
I've always hesitated to make a quilt for Lisa, thinking it would have to be perfect. That's why I decided to call this "Ode to Imperfection". Many of the seams don't match, partly because I decided this quilt actually looks better the less the seams match.
I like how it turned out. I think it looks especially good in the half dark, when the reds and lighter colors seem iridescent. Lisa will choose the borders, since we both agree she's probably got something that would work (most of the fabrics in this are things she's shared with me). Plus, we already have this collaborative habit of Lisa choosing borders and backings for my quilts, fabric being so expensive here. I figure since it's her quilt, all the more reason for her to choose the border fabric, although i have some ideas.