Wild Women Units Finished

 Hi all -

I hope everyone is doing well! We finally had a big "winter" storm last week. It was great! We got about 2 feet of heavy snow! Now we're back to warmer than normal temperatures and most of the snow is gone, but we still got the moisture and I appreciate that.

This week I was able to finish the paper pieced units in my Wild Women Don't Get the Blues quilt designed by Karen K. Stone.

Wild Women Don't Get the Blues

This completes my 100 units required for the 25 blocks in the quilt. Now I need to pick my fabric for the centers. I know that I want a solid and it will probably be a brown (although I could get wild and use another neutral like a red., shoutout to Freddy Moran😉....). One of my quilt guilds is starting a cross-stitch group that will be meeting at one of the local quilt shops that also carries a lot of solids. I'm planning on joining the group so will look at solids when I'm there.

I've also been working on my Pluma Morada shawl designed by Joji Locatelli. 

Pluma Morada

You can really see the pattern now. Maybe it's just the good lighting this morning.....

Pluma Morada - Close-Up

I'm in the last section that I'm going to do so I should have this shawl finished soon. I've been looking at several projects to start next.....

Finally, we had out monthly UFO (UnFinished Object) group meeting yesterday. We meet at the home of one of the ladies in the quilt guild who has a little quilt shop and teaching area in her home.It's a really nice space where we can even bring our sewing machines. I've been going through my stuff and organizing my UFOs. I found one that I could easily take to the UFO meeting, so I resurrected that project. It's a simple block that just has a black or gray frame around a pink and gray fabric. The quilt will just be these blocks, alternating between the black and gray frames. My project box had a bunch of completed blocks and a pile of center fabrics. There wasn't any of the black or the gray framing fabric in the box, so I think I used all of that up. Given that I can't make any more blocks, I now know the size of the finished quilt.  So I brought the completed blocks with me to the group and started putting them together.

Pink and Gray Quilt

The final quilt will be 8 blocks across by 9 blocks down. When the blocks themselves are sewn, you end up with two seams on two sides of the blocks. When sewing them together, I first thought that I would always position the black blocks with the seams on the sides and the gray blocks with the seams on the top and bottom, but then I realized that it would really bother me if the directional fabrics weren't all oriented correctly in the final quilt so I had to sew a bunch of the blocks together with those seams hitting, but they don't seem to be creating much bulk when pressed so I'm okay with this. When I started sewing the blocks into 4-patches, I also realized that I forgot that while the black block is on the left and the gray block is on the right in the top row, the positions are reversed in the bottom row. So, the fabric that was right-side-up when in the top row, became up-side-down in the bottom row. So I had to divide the paired blocks into piles with and without directional fabric, and then use the pairs without directional fabrics as the bottom pair in each 4-patch. Luckily, I had enough of those so I didn't have to do any unstitching! Now that I have the 4-patches, the geometry is such that I don't have to worry about having a block that can't fit into the quilt without a fabric being upside down. That makes things a lot easier! Now I'll put these blocks up on my makeshift design wall (I temporarily hang a picnic table cloth on a photographers quilt stand and stick the blocks to the felt side of the tablecloth), decide on the layout and sew them together. I also need to think about the binding. Since I don't have any of the black or gray fabrics, those obvious choices are out. I could use a different black or gray fabric. Or I could see if I have enough of one of the striped fabrics. Who knows. I have plenty of time to think about that!

Nancy