Posted on by agilejack

Ninety Sixteen-Patches Done!

I finished the last ten sixteen-patch blocks this evening. This is half of them. The duplicates of all these blocks are in a stack on my cutting table.

My plan now is to finish the sashing on my improv batik quilt top and get that assembled so I can free up that design wall for this sixteen patch quilt.

I just love some of these fabric combos. It’s giving me ideas for future quilts.

I ended up with a really sore and painful shoulder yesterday. A friend of mine who is a therapist told me that it sounded like I had some inflammation in there that was pressing on a nerve. She said I needed to keep ice on it and take Advil for the inflammation and Tylenol for the pain. So I had ice on it almost all day today. Since it was pouring rain all day it was a good day to cuddle up on the sofa.

So I took some time to plan my Christmas Eve dinner and make my shopping list while Bender snoozed next to me.

Christmas Eve dinner was always the big holiday event when I was a kid. Every year I have a group of people over for dinner and I usually cook traditional family food. My mother’s parents were immigrants from northern Italy, so that’s where the food I cook is from. It’s usually a pretty labor intensive meal and I really go all out.

This year, I’m going to make a more simple dinner for a couple of friends who always attend and deliver it to their house. But I’m going to get everything assembled complete with cooking instructions and they can pop it in the oven and eat it piping hot when they’re ready. So it’s taken some time to plan a menu that will work.

I’m going to make poached salmon with roasted potatoes, a Waldorf coleslaw (my friend LOVES my coleslaw) and roasted asparagus. For dessert I’m making an apple cranberry crisp with some vanilla ice cream.

Two packages of the blue KFC fabric I ordered arrived late last week. I’m going to have to rearrange my fabric drawers if I’m going to get this all put away.

This group came from Glorious Color.

This group came from Sew Colorful, one of my favorite places to buy KFC fabric online.

The group of fabrics from Glorious Color seem to have more vibrant spots of color, which I love!

I don’t have a specific plan for these fabrics, but I have a few ideas rattling around in my head.

I have a short work week coming up. I’ll take Christmas Eve off and, of course, Christmas Day. I’ll be cooking and prepping food on the 24th. Then on Christmas Day I’m planning on meeting a couple of friends for a nice long hike, and then my friends will deliver a prime rib dinner later in the afternoon.

Happy holidays to everyone! It’s a tough year for holidays. I hope you can find moments of joy.

10 Replies to “Ninety Sixteen-Patches Done!”

  1. Love your new 16 patch quilt. I will have to try more combinations with my Kaffe fabric. It sounds like you are going to be busy on your time off. Have a Merry Christmas.

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  2. Have a calm and soothing Christmas Day and take good care of that shoulder. I had rotator cuff surgery five years ago and it was the most painful surgery I ever had and also kept me from sewing for longer than I wanted. The older you get the more you have to take care of your various parts and pieces! Your 16 patch blocks are vibrant and happy and the new Kaffe “blues” are wonderful.

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    1. I used to buy third yards to build my stash, but recently I’ve started buying half yards. If the fabric is something I really love or something I know is out of print or hard to find, I’ll buy more — maybe two or three yards, depending on what it is. With the quilts I make, a half yard of each fabric is typically plenty to get it done. For me, the third yard pieces just weren’t quite enough.

      Happy holidays!

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  4. It’s really fun to pair the fabrics from your chosen group and then add in more fabrics if you don’t have enough contrast or have too much contrast. You learn a lot on these large prints when they are sewn, sometimes revealing surprises.

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    1. It’s really making me look at fabrics differently. I can see blocks in this quilt that don’t really work very well regardless of where I put them, and I decided it’s because they are muddy — the two fabrics in the block are too much of the same value, even though very different colors. But, as they say, value does all the work and color gets all the credit! It will be interesting to see how it all comes together when I get all 90 blocks up on the design wall.

      And you’re right Wanda… these big prints do some pretty amazing thing when they’re cut into little pieces!

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