Spinners Again

I debated with myself on how to put this one together. Normally I am not a fan of rows, I prefer the twosie-foursie method. Several years ago while at the Houston market I was talking with Kay England (I believe) and she was telling me about how she assembled quilt tops using the twosie-foursie method. She would put the first two blocks in a row together and then the first two of the second row and then she would put those together like a four patch. She would then move over and do the same for the next two blocks on the first and second rows. She would then connect this four patch to the first one. Continue across and down the quilt like this. It will keep the top more square. Sometimes straight row after row will tend to bow. The first time I tried this method was on a pink and brown HST quilt. When we loaded the top on the quilting machine all those 3 inch HST's ran straight across the front bar. Barbara and Ada were helping me quilt this one and we were all amazed at how straight it was, so needless to say that is the way I usually assemble my quilt tops.

However with this one I decided I would have to put it together in rows. Since I have to work from the design wall one this one to keep everything straight, and I don't have enough room to lay out the whole top, I will have to work on a few rows at a time.

I have decided on 7 rows of 6 blocks each. This will use 42 sets of 4 matching units, however the block is made up of parts of those 30 connecting units. So I pieced the blocks for the first two rows , using 17 sets of matching units. I only have room on the design wall for about 3 and a half rows, so I wanted the second row pieced before I took the first row down to assemble. This made moving the second row up a lot easier. I then only had a few of the connecting pieces to move up to have room then to lay out all of row 3 which will include parts of the next connecting blocks. On the bottom right corner you can see where I have some of my units made ready to be added to the wall. You have to balance your colors as you go since you can't move blocks around, so seeing these extra units like this and also on the sewing table will show me if I have too much of one color or not enough of another. Yes this one is a little bit of a challenge but I am enjoying working on it.








Happy Stitching,



Teresa

Update and Inspitation

I don't think there is anything more tiring than sitting around at a hospital. Yesterday Johnny had a heart cath test done and he didn't realized he would have to stay 6 hours and lay flat 5 of that. The good news is that he only had some small blockages that were too small to stint, so they will treat with medication. One of the blockages they will be watching because of the location it would require bypass if it worsens.  The bad news is this is not the answer to his shortness of breath. They have put him on a different diuretic to help relieve that fluid build up. We had to be there at 11 for the test to start at 1 , so that meant it was nearly 8 pm before we got to leave. We were both so tired we were in bed by 930 which is unheard of for me. But I guess that early rest energized my creative juices because when I woke up this morning (before 5 ) I knew what I wanted to do with the sew off HST I am getting with this Spinners quilt I am working on.

I have been drawing the second line on my 3.5 inch squares so that I would not be wasting so much fabric. Now I don't do this on anything smaller because the resulting HST is just smaller than I want to fool with. This one measures 2.75 inches. In my sleep I decided to try quarter square triangles from them. I thought it would make it small enough that I would trim to 2 inches but I ended up with a good 2.5 inch quarter square triangle.

I then set them together in a Ohio Star pattern.

Even though I am making my Spinner quilt smaller than the pattern I will still have 672 HST's from it. That will make 168 Ohio Star blocks. I am not sure yet how I will set them together, guess I will wait for further inspiration.


Not sure what I will even try to do today because I am still tired. I have already been to Wal-Mart to fill his prescription so I feel like I have put a days work in already and it is not even 11 am.


Happy Stitching,

Teresa

Storage Dilemma

Monday I found out that the Antique Basket, where I had a booth to sell some of my quilts, was closing. We had two weeks to get out stuff out.  So Tuesday I retrieved all my items. I had to get them when I had some help and Judy Dotson was able to help then so now they are all piled on my bed. I really didn't realize how much I had in that small booth. Before bedtime I got enough removed to get in the bed. I have to come up some way to store these. I am hoping that they find another location quickly and I can set my booth back up or I may have to look for another location. I told Johnny it looks like I don't need to be sewing with all of this stockpiled, but you know that is not going to happen.

Oh well, I am going to pull a Scarlott and worry about that tomorrow. Back to sewing on Spinners.

Happy Stitching,

Teresa

Spinners

In my last post I mentioned another quilt made with batiks. It was on the cover of the March/April issue of Quiltmaker magazine and it is called Spinners. Well Thursday I worked all day on a quilt as you go throw for a customer. Yes I get talked into finishing things for other people. If I had remembered how much work went into one of those things I might have said no, but then  probably not because she is such a sweet lady. Then Friday I carried Daddy to his treatment and then we went to lunch. We went to lunch at Clark's Restaurant in Athens Ala. It was a little out of the way since his treatment was in Decatur but they have the best food, plus since I would be in Athens I had an excuse to go by the quilt shop there. It is called Three Hens and a Chick, and they have a nice little shop. I can always find something I want and surprise since it was my birthday I got 20% off my purchase. After I dropped Daddy back off at home I still had some errands to run back in Decatur, so the day was spent pretty much on the road. The weather was so nice that we sat on the front porch for a while when I got home.

As a reward for two busy days, I let myself start that new project called Spinners. Yes I realize that was a poor excuse to start something new when I still have so many unfinished projects. But sometimes you just got to go where the mood takes you.

This one is really going to be a challenge. It makes a 12 inch block but the blocks interconnect so you have to have the parts made for the other sides before you can piece a block. If you have ever pieced a court house steps quilt it is kind of like that. I pieced all these just to get the first block made.

See this one in the top left corner. Before I can complete the block to the right or below I have other parts to piece. These are nice big pieces so I will put a real dent in my Batik stash. I bought 7 yards of a white, the pattern called for 9.25 but I am not going to make mine as big. The pattern is 8 blocks by 8 blocks to make it 96 square. I really don't care for square quilts so I am only going to make mine 6 by 7 and will probably add a border.

Check back later to see my progress.

Teresa

Checker board

I saw this quilt on the internet and fell in love. The post said she didn't have a pattern just made it up, well if you know me that was all the challenge I needed. I took a screen shot of the quilt because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to find it again and I was right. I didn't write down the person's name so I didn't have any way to contact her again. I don't know how she put it together but after I studied it a while I could see it could be made using 3 different blocks.

The double nine patch was the first I spotted. I am not sure what size blocks she used but I decided on 1.5 inch strips. I strip pieced the units for the nine patch and that makes a 3.5 inch block so adding a 3.5 light square it make a 9 inch finished block.

The 81 patch is just 5 dark and 4 light nine patch units. This will also finish 9 inches.

The third block I call the bar unit. It is 2 dark and 1 light nine patch units with 3 different light squares sewn on either side of it. It is turned horizontal between the double nine patch blocks and is placed as a vertical block between the 81 patch units.

I wanted it to start and end with the double nine patch so I had to use odd number of blocks in a row and odd number of rows. I set mine 9 across and 11 down that makes it 81 by 99.

All the dark fabrics are batiks. I was already cutting a pattern called Mosaic by the  Quilted Twins using 2 inch strips of batiks so why not cut 1.5 inch strips and the same time. The Mosiac is still in the box because this one became an obsession. I started out thinking I would just make a few strip set then a few nine patch blocks, them a bar block then the double nine patch block and away it went. I love to multi task by cutting more than one quilt at a time, because you know how time consuming it is to cut a scrap quilt. A two color quilt can be cut much faster. So while you have the fabric out and pressed I like to cut for another project. Wouldn't you know just as I got all I needed cut for this quilt and the Mosiac the Quiltmaker magazine came out with a stash buster in batik on the cover. It is made with 3.5 inch strips. Poo I could have cut that one too, guess I will be pulling the fabric back out. I had not worked with my batik stash in several years and was thinking about getting rid of it and now I have one quilt finished and another two in the planning stages. These will put a pretty good dent in that stash.


I did the math on it and determined I needed 348 dark and 129 light nine patch units. If you have read my blog more than twice then you know I am not one to do all the cutting first , no I have to jump into the sewing immediately and it is probably good that I do it that way or I might not have finihed this one. I was using a lot of fat quarters and on the yardage I would cut it in half so that I was dealing with a 21 or 22 inch strip. Most of the time I could get 14 cuttings from one strip set but to make all these nine patch units it took approximately 60 of the dark sets and 44 of the light sets . That is a lot of cutting. Once I realized how much it was going to take I knew I would have to repeat fabric. I probably had 12 or 15 whites and off whites that I used. I haven't counted the total number of pieces it this thing but I probably will. Okay I stopped and counted and it is not as many as I thought it would be. There are 30 of the double nine patch blocks and 49 pieces per block that is 1470, there is 20 of the 81 patch blocks so that is 1620 and 49 of the bar units with 33 pieces each equals 1617 making it a total of 4707. If I had made this from individual squares it would have drove me crazy but strip piecing it was not bad.  



I am taking it to guild meeting tonight for show and tell so I better get up from here and get going.

Happy Stitching,

Teresa

Boxy Stars

Looking back through my blog post I found that this top was finished on July 13, 2017. I now have it quilted and bound. This one was only on hold in the quilt shack for 7 months so that is pretty good for me. I kind of tricked myself with this one. Back last week I quilted the little heart table runner then quilted a kid size quilt for Donna and since I had gotten such an early start that day I went ahead and loaded this one on the machine. I got everything ready to quilt but left it on hold. The trick came when later in the week when I finished the top I had been working on all month I had to quilt this one before I could load that one one. So that pushed me to get an extra one done.

Linking with----

Oh, Scrap
Slow Stitching Sunday

Happy Stitching,

Teresa