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.

No Longer a Virgin

That's right, I am not longer a Wolltraum virgin. I just finished my first project made from the oh so exquisite and awesome Wolltraum yarn. I have been stalking this yarn for ages via Facebook and Ravelry projects and so many beautiful blog posts, but I could never quite justify the cost of paying $17 - $22 a skein for yarn plus whatever it would cost to ship from the UK. A month or so ago, Wolltraum in their deviousness sent me an email announcing the release of their Halloween themed yarns. I couldn't resist any longer. They broke me finally, and it didn't even take water boarding or the removal of any fingernails. All it took was an irresistibly gorgeous colorway called "This is Halloween."

So, I ordered it and waited. Waited impatiently ... checked my email every day for a shipment update, checked my Facebook for an update, checked my PayPal account to be sure my payment wasn't cancelled ... did I mention waited IMPATIENTLY? I got my shipment notice! Yes! Oh, and then I had to wait some more for it to arrive. Anxiously, impatiently (yeah, it's a theme). And then it arrived. 

It was even prettier than the online picture. The yarn was sooo soft and delicate. The colors were super vibrant. The skeins I ordered had a 4ply, 50% cotton / 50% Acrylic make-up. Wolltraum wraps their yarn in a round cake that unfurls from the inside middle rather than the traditional skein shape. The colorway started out as a soft lemon yellow in the center and gradually transitioned to mango orange and then pink and then purple. The ingenious way the transitions were handled changing first one and then two strands and so on until the color hand changed completely alters how you think the colors will appear from just looking at the cake of yarn. The mix of yellow and orange created areas of gold and the orange and pink looked more like a soft red when it was crocheted out. The purple is so dark it looks black until you get close up.

I decided to use the yarn to make a virus shawl because I knew from the hundreds of projects I had perved on various sites, Wolltraum is a favorite yarn for those. My other reason for choosing the virus shawl pattern was that I didn't want anything that would stitch out in horizontal or vertical stripes. I wanted the transition from color to color to be as subtle as possible, and I have seen quite a few striped patterns end up with very abrupt color changes when using long run variegated yarn.

This particular type of yarn seems to be one that people either love or hate. I've read a lot of blog posts complaining about it being too thready since the individual threads are not wrapped together into a single rope like most yarns. I didn't have any problems working with it, but I could see me having more of an issue if I had decided to knit something with it instead of crochet. I may have to try that next just to see.

I absolutely love the finished product! It is full of firelight and flames. I ended up naming the finished piece Phoenix Rising because it reminded me of a phoenix rising from the ashes. I've posted the finished piece up for sale on my Pandora's Handmade Etsy page, but I think I will hold onto the second cake of yarn to make something for myself.

P.S. Each cake of yarn comes with a little metal charm. One of them had a jack-o-lantern, and the other had a skeleton bone.

Crocheted Wedding Bouquets

Working up crocheted daisies and sunflowers for two friends' wedding was how I spent the last  several months. It was time consuming and labor intensive, but I promise it was a labor of love. Seeing how everything came together at the end to form the bridesmaid and bridal bouquets made it all worthwhile.

My wife, Stephanie, was asked to be a bridesmaid in Cass and Torrey's wedding, and I was asked if I would help Cass crochet flowers for the bouquets. It was really nice to have something I could help do for the wedding. We live just under five hours away from where our friends live and where the wedding would take place, so we weren't able to participate in and help with a lot of the prep work for the wedding.

Cass and I pieced together the patterns for the daisies, buds, button flowers, and sunflowers by taking little bits from this pattern and that pattern that we liked. Cass made the button flowers and buds, I made the sunflowers, and we both worked on making the daisies.

After everything had been crocheted, stemmed, and beaded, we set aside a weekend a few weeks before the wedding to assemble everything. We ended making a trip to the craft store for silk greenery to fill out the bouquets once we started assembling them. Then, we wrapped the stems in burlap ribbon and attached cotton lace as an accent. I think they turned out beautifully! They really looked fantastic with the green bridesmaid dresses, and the bouquets will be a wonderful keepsake for each attendant.

I was particularly proud of how the sunflowers turned out. I ripped those devils apart three or four times working and reworking the petals and centers to get them just right. Then I beaded the centers to add a little shine and glitz.

Sophie's Universe Crochet-a-Long Blanket 2015

This is what I am working toward. It was made by the lovely Dedri Uys from the website Look What I Made

Project Name: Sophie's Universe CAL 2015
Pattern Name: Sophie's Universe CAL by Dedri Uys
Designer's Ravelry Project Page
Designer's Website (Great Tutorials for each Part)
Craft Type: Crochet
Size: Large (King Size Blanket)
Hook Size: 3.25 mm (D)
Yarn used: 4,851 yards

Yarn: Caron Simply Soft Solids
How much? 2 skeins = 630.0 yards (576.1 meters), 340 grams
Colorway: 9712 Soft Blue
Color family: Blue

Yarn: Lion Brand Heartland
How much? 1 skein = 251.0 yards (229.5 meters), 142 grams
Colorway: Joshua tree
Dye lot: 113108
Color family: Green

Yarn: Lion Brand Heartland
How much? 1 skein = 251.0 yards (229.5 meters), 142 grams
Colorway: 105 Glacier bay
Dye lot: 117446
Color family: Blue

Yarn: Lion Brand Heartland
How much? 1 skein = 251.0 yards (229.5 meters), 142 grams
Colorway: Everglades
Dye lot: 111857
Color family: Green

Yarn: Lion Brand Vanna's Choice Solids, Heathers & Twists
How much? 2 skeins = 340.0 yards (310.9 meters), 200 grams
Colorway: 300 Denim mist
Dye lot: 74034A
Color family: Blue

Yarn: Lion Brand Vanna's Choice Solids, Heathers & Twists
How much? 2 skeins = 340.0 yards (310.9 meters), 200 grams
Colorway: 306 Tangerine mist
Dye lot: 51453
Color family: Orange

Yarn: Lion Brand Vanna's Choice Solids, Heathers & Twists
How much? 2 skeins = 340.0 yards (310.9 meters), 200 grams
Colorway: 303 Purple Mist
Dye lot: 73904
Color family: purple

Yarn: Lion Brand Wool-Ease Solids, Heathers & Twists
How much? 2 skeins = 394.0 yards (360.3 meters), 170 grams
Colorway: 140 Rose heather
Dye lot: 74040
Color family: Pink

Yarn: Lion Brand Wool-Ease Solids, Heathers & Twists
How much? 2 skeins = 394.0 yards (360.3 meters), 170 grams
Colorway: 139 Dark Rose heather
Dye lot: 73076
Color family: Pink

Yarn: Purl Essence Sincerely Everyday Solids
How much? 5 skeins = 1660.0 yards (1517.9 meters), 850 grams
Colorway: 103 Sincerely Cream
Dye lot: 7421
Color family: White/Cream


I chose to make the large size blanket, which is suppose to be around 7 ft square when it is done. I did not use the suggested yarn because I could not find it locally. Below are the conversions of the colors from the original pattern to what I used.

Moonstone = Sincerely Cream
Amazonite = Soft Blue
Green Agate = Glacier Bay
Blue Apatite = Denim Mist
Canada Jade = Joshua Tree
Lemon Quartz = Everglades
Deep Amethyst = Purple Mist
Garnet = Dark Rose Heather
Corundum Ruby = Rose Heather
Coral = Tangerine Mist

Part 1: The outer edge of cream that make up the last four rows were a bit tricky. I had to take out the final row a couple times before I got it just right. I do love how it looks though. The flower turned out beautiful, and the high contrast between it and the cream background is really nice. (7 inches in diameter at finish)

Part 2: Round 13 was a tough one to get exactly right. I almost whooped with joy when my stitch count was still right on the last stitch. I had never done a picot stitch before. I am not totally sure I did it correctly, but I liked the way it turned out. The two shades of rose add a nice complimentary color to the cream and blues. (13.5 inches in diameter at finish)

Part 3: I love the pops of light green and blue that were added during part 3. Getting the V shape right was tricky, but it wasn’t too bad once I was able to visualize what to do. The trickiest thing about part 3 for me was the last row of crab stitches. Crocheting backwards takes some serious concentration. (20 inches in diameter at finish)

Part 4: Part 4 is taking much longer than the other parts to finish, but I’m getting there. My beauty is growing exponentially in size, and there are so many color changes in this part. It finally has at least one row of every color that will be used in the blanket. Opinions are still out on if we like the contrast that that coral/orange color brings to the table, but I don’t hate it. More to come as I finish the last couple of rows, block, and take pictures.

Whew! Part 4 is finally done. I stopped around row 32 to make a few hats and a blanket for my dad because he’s going through chemo treatments, but I just picked it back up a couple days ago. The contrast between the jewel tones and the cream is really nice, and I really like the optional flowers. My count is still spot on!!! I was really afraid it wouldn’t be. Now on to part 5. (26 x 26 inches at finish)

Part 5: Round 41 = UGH! This is the first time my count has been off … by 1. Insert sad face here. I did find out the problem and was able to pretty easily fix it. Thank goodness! I finished my first skein of Purl Essence Simple Cream (332 yds.) about a third of the way through the last round. This is the first color that I have finished a full skein of so far. I haven’t blocked anything yet. I think I will do that after part 6. (30x30 inches at finish)

Part 6: The last row of part six (round 53) made me question if I was doing it right. I took the first side apart a couple of times. Because of the way the arches form, it causes the edges to curl in a bit under the tension, but I think it will all lay flat again after the first couple of rounds of Part 7 are stitched. So far that is how it has always worked out with previous rounds I have questioned due to curling. I have faith that it will all lay flat again shortly. Otherwise, this part of the blanket went very smoothly if slowly (slowly not due to the difficulty but because I took some time off to make crocheted wedding bouquets for a friend). I am almost finished with my second skein of Purl Essence Sincerely Cream at the end of this part. I have just a tiny ball left, maybe a yard to a yard and a half of yarn. Lots of cream in this section! (36x36 inches at finish).