Hi all -
I hope everyone is doing well! Hard to believe Memorial Day is here. How did summer fly by so quickly? I'm looking forward to the cooler weather (although I hope the really cold weather will wait...) and the beautiful changing colors! Although it's been a very dry year so the colors probably won't last long so I'll have to make sure that I appreciate them while they're here.
I put my nose to the grindstone this week and finished piecing my Stars & Stripes Forever quilt top from Judy Martin's Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts book. I started by sewing together the center.
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| Stars & Stripes Forever - Center Assembled |
Most of the blocks had been made, but I still needed the checkerboard blocks.
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| Stars & Stripes Forever - Checkerboard Blocks |
Now I could start putting together the pieced border. There were a lot of pieces in this border! I tried to position all of the blocks and triangles so that the shades of red and blue were scattered around the quilt to keep the eye moving. It was hard because I was running out of space on my jerry rigged design wall!
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| Stars & Stripes Forever - Positioning the Pieced Border |
I left the blue triangles for last because I didn't have room for them on the right side of the design wall. I did place the triangles for all of the borders except the right on the design wall before sewing together the pieced borders. For the right border, I saved a selection of the blue triangles and trusted that they would be scattered appropriately. I pieced the top, left and bottom borders then took the quilt center off of the design wall to position the pieces for the right border. That way I could keep things from falling off of the wall and getting mixed up. I had to be very careful to make sure that blocks didn't get rotated. The striped blocks were positioned so that the red stripes abutted the star blocks. The checkerboard blocks were positioned so that one of the blue squares pointed to the center of the quilt. (In the center, I had made sure that all of the checkerboards were positioned so that the long line of blue squares were vertical). I didn't want to have to fix one of the blocks afterwards!
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| Stars & Stripes Forever - Pieced Border Finished |
Now I just had the final plain border to finish. I wanted to use a single fabric for the plain border, but didn't have enough of any one fabric so I had to buy fabric for the border. I knew that my closest quilt shop (a 45 minute drive) didn't have patriotic fabrics, so I looked on the internet. I checked out some of my usual, larger online shops, but only found one possibility and it was out of stock. So I searched on that fabric and found it at 3 Aunts Quilt Shop, along with a bunch of other patriotic fabrics. I ordered that fabric and another possibility and was very pleased with how quickly it came. I made the order, received the fabric, prewashed it and got the plain outer border attached all this week.
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| Stars & Stripes Forever - Finished Top |
I love how it turned out! Looking at the finished top, I do think it would look better with star blocks in the outer corners rather than checkerboard blocks, but not enough to make it worth the effort of sewing the blocks (I'm really tired of flying gees blocks after making all of those stars) and then replacing them in the border. Especially since I know I'll like the checkerboard blocks better once I've added the binding which will frame them and make them a more cohesive part of the quilt. Now I need to work on the backing and binding. This is a large quilt (98"x98") and I like to make my backs out of the leftovers, so it will take a bit of work to put the back together. I'm going to a quilt retreat at the end of next week, so I'll probably work on it there. When I make a quilt like this, I pull possible fabrics from my stash (and any new fabrics I pick up along the way) in a bin and pull from that while I work. I started this quilt top many years ago, so it'll be nice to get the backing and binding prepared so I can get the rest of the fabrics back into my stash for other projects! I have some ideas for the quilting, but it'll be a while before I get to that point.....
I've also been working on my Rill Scarf designed by Miriam L. Felton.
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| Rill Scarf |
This is a slow project because it is lace weight yarn and small needles. It's an interesting design with a lace strip along one side and ruffles on the other side created by knitting a bunch of short rows in each repeat. It's going to take quite a while to finish, but the final scarf will be luxurious!
Nancy
