Mosaic

This is the one that got it all started working with batiks. It is a free pattern from Quilted Twins. They have a lot of really nice scrappy quilt patterns that are free to download. I am not sure what really drew me to this pattern of all they offered but it just did. I knew I had some batiks that I had not used in years, just didn't realize how many I really had. It is simple enough cutting, the bricks are 2 by 3.5 inches, using a 2 inch square to start and end every other row. There are 7 different row constructions, one and seven are not repeated but 2-6 are repeated backwards to make rows 8-12. I say backwards but I guess I mean inverted, example row 2 instructions are the same for row 12 and row 3 is the same for row 11. I pieced the first 12 rows and assembled them one row at a time

This was very time consuming and frustrating because it felt like it would take forever. This is probably why I ended up setting this one aside and doing the checkerboard one.

  It was easy to convince myself since I already had the batiks out and was still cutting the bricks for Mosaic that I could just as easily cut some one and a half inch strips to piece this one. And because I was able to put this one together in blocks which is something I am more comfortable with, it went together very quickly.

Batiks are still out on the cutting table when the Quiltmaker magazine came out featuring this one in batiks so you know how that story went. I even came up with a block to make from the cutoff of these spinning pinwheels.

Not to let this Mosaic pattern beat me I had to come up with some way of moving it along quicker. I realized that each row is not that hard it was just changing it every time, so repetition was the answer. The pattern is 5 and a half repeats of the first 12 rows, so since I had one section done I new I needed  4 and a half more repeats. So since row 1 was not repeated I would only need 5 more of them and making 5 in a row of the same thing went a lot faster since I didn't have to think so much about it. Now row 2 and 12 were the same so I would need 9 repeats of that instruction. This really sped things up. I would put each group of the same row in their own container.

I now have all the individual rows finished, waiting to be assembled. However I am again going to have to set these aside to make a baby quilt for a customer, but when I am able to get back to it, it should go together quickly.

Happy Stitching,
Teresa

March Update

March is coming to an end and I am just now getting back to the sewing room. The last week of February my Daddy was in the hospital and then moved to rehab. He says he just slid out of bed but then couldn't get back up. One hip just didn't want to work and he ended up spending the night in the floor. Thankfully nothing was broken but we did have a battle with pneumonia.  With the time in the hospital and rehab he was away from home 25 days, and that was pretty much the same for me. Things have settled back down and I have been trying to catch up on some things. First I had to take care of a few things for customers and then I got back onto some of my projects.

I finished the Spinners to the flimsy stage. This is the cover quilt from the March/April issue of Quiltmaker magazine. I reduced the size of mine to 6 blocks by 7 blocks, the original pattern was 8 blocks by 8 blocks making it 96 inches square. Mine will be 72 by 84 inches. This was not on either of my to do lists for the year but it was one that just spoke to me and since I was already working in bakiks, what the heck, just go for it. I am still looking for a back and am not sure about the binding. Thinking about binding it in the same white background rather than choosing one color since it is so colorful, but I know the white would get so dirty. What do you think?

I was also able to get my Ringo Lake finished. The night before Daddy's little episode I had put the top and bottom borders on and had planned to add the side borders the next day, well that didn't happen. It was a month later when I got back to it.

As you can see I didn't finish mine per the instructions. I tried the sashing on the design wall and just couldn't make it work for me, so skipped that part and set it together block to block and used the sashing parts for the border. I am happy with it

12 for 12 WIP list

1.Rick Rack Nines
2. Jacob's Ladder
3. Jamestown Landing
4. Ringo Lake-----------------------March finish
5.  Mosaic
6. Split Rail
7. Rainbow Challenge 2017
8.  Master Checkerboard-----------February Finish
9. Garden Party
10. Floral Log Cabin
11. Alabama
12. Red and Cream
 12 for 12 Quilted list

To be Quilted list
1 Scrapy Trip
2. Boxy Stars
3. Civil war stars
4. Sisters Choice---------------------------------January Finish
5.Brown and gold runner
6. Blue and Yellow backroads
7. Christmas Ribbons
8. Blue All Around
9. yellow/orange brick road
10. Double nine patch
11. Bowties
12. 30's dancing nine patch



I am hard at work on Mosaic, it is more of a challenge than I thought. Of course Spinners was a challenge as well with the way the blocks had to connect with the alternate spinner. I'll try to get back here sooner with the latest from the sewing room and the quilt shack.


Happy Stitching,

Teresa