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.