Adventures in Quilting - 2018-2019 Block of the Month Club - October 2018 - Block 4

Quilter's Haven 2018-2019 Block of the Month Club - October 2018

Sew Simple Northern Lights Sampler

One Spinning Wheel Block

Three Small Pinwheel Blocks

The first two months included just one large block, the third month included one large and two small, and this month includes one large block and three small ones. You can see kind of how the smaller blocks will work together in each corner of the finished quilt by looking at the completed example to the right of this month's blocks.

Let's get this out in the open first ... I am very apprehensive about this yellow. It is SO bright. It kind
of hurts my eyes a bit to look at it. You may just think it is formatting on the photo, but no. It really is that bright. I am hoping that paired with my lighter, cream background it will be less glaring.

We receive our fabrics and instructions on the third Thursday of each month, so it's only been just under a week since I received the October 2018 set. But, I know that with Halloween quickly followed by a four day trip out of town, my after work time is going to be little and precious. I've really been working hard to finish these early, and I haven't done too badly at it.

My lovely wife who can cut so much straighter than I can helped me cut out my background pieces, so I was able to get started on the little blocks. I have the green one completed using the pop seam technique shown in the video by Adrienne Reid on my last post. It turned out beautifully. I have all of the pieces cut, pressed, and arranged for the fuchsia and red blocks so that I can finish those tonight.

Then, I will just have the larger 15.5" yellow block to complete on Thursday or Friday. We have Halloween in a few days, and we will be hosting an all day game at our house the following weekend, so prep and cleaning have to be top priority. That means that sadly my sewing stuff will have to packed away and moved out of the living room Don't judge! The living room is warmer and has better lighting than my current sewing room setup. I'm working on improving that. The sewing room is a Winter project.

I will post up new images of the finished smaller blocks and the hopefully less of an eye-sore yellow block when I finish those.

I've added a photo to the right of all three of the finished smaller blocks, and I added a picture farther above of the finished larger yellow block. The yellow is still a bit of an eye-sore to me, but I do not dislike it against the cream background as much as against the black background on the class sample.

Adventures in Quilting - 2018-2019 Block of the Month Club - September 2018 - Block 3

Quilter's Haven 2018-2019 Block of the Month Club - September 2018

Sew Simple Northern Lights Sampler

One Spinning Wheel Block

Two Small Pinwheel Blocks

Month three of my Block of the Month adventure mixes it up a bit compared with the previous two months. Instead of just one 15 inch block, we will be responsible for one 15 inch block (the green block pictured above) and two smaller 6.5 inch blocks (the purple and light blue blocks above). 

This month, the instructor also introduced a different way to do the seams for designs like the pinwheel where multiple seams converge together. She suggested that instead of pressing the seams open, we should press them flat in alternating directions so that they fan out together in a flatter, stronger intersection. I had never sewn and pressed a seam like this, but the theory made sense. It's always good to add new skills to the repertoire.

The results? It is not as easy as it looks. I watched a lot of videos on popping / twisting seams to achieve flatter and less bulky quilt blocks. The standard blocks, it appears pretty straight forward, and I will probably end up using that technique for future blocks. There is a really good video on YouTube by Adrienne Reid that goes through the process step by step.

When it comes to twisting or popping seams for pinwheel blocks, it's a slightly different technique that actually involves breaking some of the seams after you sew the block together to achieve the affect shown in the image to the right. None of the videos I watched really show the process up close. I want to actually "see" what happens when the stitches are broken. I ended up just pressing my seams open on my 6.5" pinwheels because I could not get the seam work the way that it should. I will have to keep trying on scrap material until I figure it out. I am sure that it is going to be something simple that creates that Aha! moment for me, and then everything will work.

I do not think they turned out too poorly when all was said and done. I love the contrast of the bright purple and turquoise with the cream background. Along with the two 6.5" blocks, this month also included a 15.5" block similar to the one completed during the last two monthly installments. It has the same edging as those two blocks, but the center incorporates a pinwheel as well as a thin separating flashing. It has a blue green and spring green mingled batik as the contrasting fabric. I am not quite done with it yet, but I will post a picture of the center portion of it below. I just need to finish the border. It should be the easiest part considering I've done the same border on two other blocks, right? Not when you realize three-fourths of the way through that you've cut the center sections of each side a half inch too small. Many Grrrs were voiced. I was very frustrated with myself. Read, read, read! And then read again before actually cutting. And then measure and read again before actually sewing anything. So ... it was rip, rip, rip and re-cut new pieces. Luckily I will be able to use the mis-cut pieces on October's BOM blocks that call for 2.5" squares.

So here (to the left) is my mostly finished 15.5" block and last piece of the September 2018 Northern Lights BOM. You can see the point where the pinwheel slices meet is a bit lumpy. This is the square that I tested out the seam twisting technique on. The other two smaller pinwheels that I pressed the seams open are flat, but this one doesn't look as nice. I may tweak it a bit still before I complete the border around the edge. Better to do it now than after when I would have to take apart even more of the finished block. I will add the final picture when I finish this one up.






And below is the finished block. I'm not 100% happy with the little border. I may end up taking it apart to reset that eventually. We will see how much it bugs me as I look at it on my wall over the next several months.

Adventures in Quilting - 2018-2019 Block of the Month Club - August 2018 - Block 2

Quilter's Haven 2018-2019 Block of the Month Club - August 2018

Sew Simple Northern Lights Sampler

Tick-Tack-Toe Block

As you can see, I still need to do a bit of ironing, but I have otherwise completed my second Block of the Month quilt square.

The cutting was a bit tricky on this one because we were given just enough to cut out the pieces exactly (less than 1/2 inch to spare once all the pieces were cut out). So, no room for error at all. We were warned because the instructor mistakenly used Thangles to cut her pieces out and ran out of fabric. For this one we had to do each piece individually. I will admit, I mis-cut one piece and had to go buy a small strip of fabric to finish my square. What have I learned? Measure 10 times before cutting anything.

The actual sewing on this square was pretty easy. It had some of the elements from the first square like the outside border design, but the inside design was new. I was a little worried that the red of the contrast fabric would clash too much with the pink in my background fabric, but I do not think it does. The pink dots are small enough that it isn't a glaring combo.

Two months down, ten more to do before I have a finished quilt.

Adventures in Quilting - 2018-2019 Block of the Month Club - July 2018 - Block 1

I have wanted to learn more about quilting for quite a while. It's an art form that I think it is important that we not lose in the day of cheap blankets from the nearest big box store. My great grandmother on my mother's side and my grandmother on my father's side were avid quilters. They both made beautiful quilts completely by hand, and my favorite quilts to snuggle under have always been the ones that my Grandmother Bell made.

I have had a little bit of experience with hand piecing and more with hand quilting. I had zero experience up until now with machine piecing and quilting. Summer is nearing its end, and I thought I might give it a go as a Winter project. We have several quilt related sewing and fabric stores in our area, so I started to explore their websites for classes and workshops. There is a beginner's quilting class that will start in October. I believe I will sign up for that soon.

During my search, I happened upon a separate posting about a Block of the Month (BOM) Club at the quilt shop that is very near my house. They were just finishing up their 2017-2018 BOM quilt, and according to the posting the new 2018-2019 BOM was going to start in just a week. The quilt is called Northern Lights. Just above is an example of the finished quilt. I thought, why not? One class a month, one quilt block a month. It seemed like an easy pace, and hopefully it would help me learn basic techniques in bite-size chunks. Two days later, I dropped in at the shop and signed up for the club. Four days after that came my first club meeting.

Wow, am I out of my league in this class. I am a good seamstress. I sew costumes and clothing, decor items, etc., and I do a lot of other sewing and craft related activities, but these women are master quilters. There is a crazy amount of experience cumulatively. A lot of them have been doing this particular club for 17 years! Their show and tell pieces were amazing, and their stories about the quilts they've been working on lately were gold. I feel a bit intimidated, but most of them seem pretty friendly (and hopefully willing to answer questions from this newbie when they come up).

The colored blocks in the Northern Lights quilt are suppose to give the illusion of floating on top of the background color. It's a high contract project to make this effect work. You can see in the example photo, it can be done with either a very dark background or a very light one. We all receive the same color fabric for our block contrast design each month, but we were able to pick our own background. The ones that were selected as examples for the class were either solid blacks/dark grays/creams/whites or those same colors with just the tiniest mingling of a lighter shade or with just the hint of a tone on tone pattern. I think everyone else in the class chose either black or dark gray as their background.

I really liked the softer cream shown in the inset on the example photo, so I went with a lighter shade. The class instructor at one point mentioned that she wasn't fond of the pink contrast fabric that was suggested for a couple of the blocks and that she thought she'd replace it with another color. I loved the pink, so that was a disappointment. So, I worked it into the background I chose, which is a solid eggshell cream with tiny micro dots in hot pink. A couple of the ladies looked at me weird, but some of them also got it right away. I was

honestly a little nervous about it as the cashier rung up 10 yards, but now that my first block is done I am feeling more secure in my choice.

And now on to the actual first quilt block of the sampler. I will preface each month's post with identifiers labeling that it is part of the block of the month, the month/year it was assigned, and the type or types of blocks given for that month. I think that will make it easier to identify in case anyone wants to look up the pattern details for a specific block.








Quilter's Haven 2018-2019 Block of the Month Club - July 2018
Sew Simple Northern Lights Sampler
Flying Four Patch

Let me just say first, triangles are f-ing intimidating to me. Getting the angles perfect and the tips crisp has always been the bane to any project I have ever done involving triangles. Godets in dress patterns irk me, and I end up taking them out and putting them back in multiple times to get it just right. And then the class instructor said a magical word ... Thangles. Do you know what Thangles are? I had not clue, and the instructor didn't even pause in her instructions. No one else looked puzzled, so when she stopped for questions, I asked what it was. It's a marvelous little paper pattern piece that is a guide for cutting out and sewing half square triangles. Instead of cutting out each individual triangle and sewing them together, you cut out two rectangles and then use the sewing guidelines on the paper piece to sew/cut your individual triangles. AMAZING! It made it tremendously easier. We used a 3" Thangle for this first quilt block.

Most of the piecing of block one went fairly smoothly. I had to really take my time and visualize each section as I followed the directions, but it wasn't too bad. I was more than a little concerned about my color choice for the background as I cut out all of the pieces and placed them into the configuration of the block. The blue didn't "float" as it was suppose to, and I will admit it was stressing me out a bit. I mean, what wtf am I going to do with almost 10 yds of cream and pink confetti cotton if this didn't work out? I told myself I wouldn't make a snap decision that would involve buying another bolt of fabric in a dark color I didn't like, and I would withhold any judgement until the block was completely finished.

Piece of cake, easy peasy piecing ... mmmhmm. And then I got to the last part involving cutting out the edge pieces to finish the block. I read it maybe five or six times and still wasn't getting what it was asking me to do. I had my pieces cut out, but I couldn't put it together in my mind to make it look like the finished piece. I even had my wife read the instructions and look at the pieces it asked for to see if she could figure it out. Her spacial orientation is way better than mine, but she was puzzled too. The problem came in because in the diagram that was included for the final step, they had drawn sewing lines that looked like cutting lines and cutting lines that looked like sewing lines. I was finally able to piece together what they wanted me to do. 2 a.m., Sunday morning I am sewing together my block because I can't possibly wait until after sleep to see what it is going to look like. I knew if I tried to go to bed, I would just lay there and think about it. Better to just do it.

It worked! After adding the edge pieces, the contrast fabric is much closer to floating than it was before. It's still not as good as the dark material because the black camouflages the seams better, but I am happy with how it turned out. Want to know what's even better? The instructions say we should end with a 15 1/2" square. Know what size my finished block is?! ... 15 1/2"!!!!! I was ready to do a victory dance when I measured it.

This piece has mistakes. A couple of the seams are a little hinky, and the cutting on the edge pieces wasn't perfect. For my very first machine pieced block with no help other than a one page print-out ... I am very pleased with it. This BOM will hopefully be a learning experience, which will help me improve in the areas that I may not be completely happy with for block one.