When I looked through my batik scraps the other night for strips to add to my green impulse quilt I realized I had almost enough strips to make another sixteen patch quilt.
So tonight, although I promised myself I’d finish up my blue KFC 16 patch blocks first, I paired up a bunch of batik strips and started sewing the strips together. Another impulse… but that’s where the fun is!
This will be another bright quilt. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that. There are some really cool combos of fabrics. It will be fun to see it once some of the blocks start coming together.
I sewed sixteen strip sets together tonight. I haven’t pressed them yet. I’ll probably get a lot done on these strip sets tomorrow afternoon. And Monday is a holiday so I’ll have more time this weekend to be productive.
These poor dogs seemed to know today was Friday.
They were done with me working at around 3:00 and were letting me know they thought it was time to call it a day.
I didn’t have much to do tonight to finish up the 12 remaining green batik blocks. So I sat down after dinner and sewed some, then took the boys for a three mile walk. When we got home I sat down and sewed the final seams on my blocks, pressed them, and then got them all on the design wall.
I did a few tweaks to this and I think it’s close to being done. I’ll leave it up on the design wall for a few days before I start sewing it together.
I’m pretty okay with how this looks now, but I’ll finalize it later.
There is a little more color in there than what shows above.
I’ve been thinking again about what quilt I’ll make next. Well, first I want to finish up the remaining blue 16-patch blocks, but after that I think I’m going to make another 16 patch. I’ve been thinking of something in reds, but I saw one today that may have changed my mind.
The one I saw is from Kaffe’s Quilts en Provence. I don’t have the book, so I ordered one today and I’ll have it this weekend. There are two versions in the book, but I think I’m going to go for the feeling of this one called Snips and Snails.
There are a ton of fabrics called for in the book and a lot of them are out of print. I’m not going to try to replicate this exactly. It’s more the feel I will try to go for. I should be able to do this from my stash.
I like these colors because they are bright yet earthy… and sort of spicy.
It’s so interesting to me that the Kaffe book calls for you to assemble these blocks square by square, rather than by making strip sets. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t make one of these if I couldn’t do it with strip sets. If you look at the striped fabrics in the photo above you can see that the striped fabrics are going every which way. It’s a cool effect but not cool enough for me to assemble these square by square.
the weather has been fantastic the last two days. I noticed the stars as i was walking with the boys tonight.
Today was Dress Up Your Dog Day so Bender got a little adventure.
He’s such a good sport. Poor Rico would have taken it very badly if I had dressed him up.
It’s been pouring here for days and I’m getting a little tired of it. I didn’t get a walk yesterday afternoon so took a long walk last night, which meant there was no sewing. There was a bit of a break in the rain this afternoon so I took the boys out for a three mile walk, knowing that we would most likely not get a walk tonight. So I had more time this evening to spend on my green batik impulse quilt.
This was feeling a little flat to me and I decided it needed some pops of color. So I dug into my batik 2.5 inch strips and pulled a few to add. Then I pulled a few pieces of fabric from my stash to liven this up.
That’s some of the more colorful strips added to what I had already cut for this quilt. THIS makes me much happier! So I sat down and sewed these six strip sets into blocks tonight and tossed them up on the wall with the existing blocks and it is making me feel better.
It’s not a ton of color, but it’s enough to give this more dimension and make it feel less flat.
I decided to get a good start on the remaining 13 strip sets. So I sewed them all together, pressed and cut them in half, and then sewed them into 4 strips in each set. That’s the most time consuming part of making these.
That photo is a much better representation of the color that I’m adding.
One exciting thing about digging into my batik scraps is that I discovered I have a fun array of fabrics and enough of them to make a scrappy batik 16 patch. I have some ideas for mixing that design up and some batik scraps are a great way to test my idea.
I sold a completed quilt to a friend today. She just got a new border collie puppy with the help of a friend and wanted to thank her. What a great way to let someone know you appreciate what they did for you.
I finished this quilt a little over a year ago. I’m happy to have sold it even though I sort of let it go for a song. I did make a little bit of money on it but I’d hate to have to make a living this way. It’s been sitting in a closet since I got it back from my long arm quilter and I’d rather have someone enjoying it.
You can see a couple of posts on this quilt here and here.
I’m looking forward to ten days of weather coming up that looks like a nice break from all the rain we’ve been having. Plus, Monday is Martin Luther King day so I have another long weekend.
I’ve been working away at finishing the blocks for my blue 16 patch quilt and felt like I needed a break so last night I dug into my green batiks and pulled out 16 pieces of fabric and got them all pressed. Today I cut them all into 2.5 inch strips, broke them out into sets, and started sewing.
I’ve been wanting to make a green batik quilt for a while now, and I’ve been wanting to try this quilt pattern too. It starts out with strip sets and goes together really quickly. I want to make one of these out of KFC fabrics, possibly in greens yellows and oranges. I’ve been thinking about that color combo for some time.
Starting something spontaneous like this is a pretty common thing for me to do. I like just deciding to do something and then just doing it!
Here’s a single block. It measures 9.5 inches by about 16 inches. I’ve made 15 out of 36 that I need for the quilt.
Here’s the 16 fabrics I’m using.
Funny, I thought I had a lot of green batiks. I have two plastic bins full. These were the best 16 for this quilt top. When the pandemic is over I’m going to be going about buying fabrics differently. I’ve always just purchased fabrics that I like, with no attention to the value of the pieces I was buying. It’s amazing to see how few light value fabrics I have. In the future I’ll be more deliberate in purchasing fabrics.
I got a lot done on the blue 16 patch quilt this weekend. I sewed up 20 duplicate blocks on Friday night and sewed up an additional 16 blocks yesterday. I have about 15 blocks left to finish up. Then I’ll get the blue blocks up on the design wall and start playing around.
I asked my brother to measure his bed and let me know how big he wants the scrappy sunburst half log cabin quilt to be. They would like it to be 84 by 1-2 inches. So I need to take some time and figure out where it is now and how many more blocks I need to make and what borders I need to add to get it up to size I made 11 blocks Friday night. I’m guessing I’ll need at least 20 more.
I met my brother and his wife in Cottage Grove, OR, this morning to take a nice long walk on the Row River Trail. It’s about a four hour drive from my house to my brother’s, so we chose a place that is almost exactly half way between our homes.
We walked for 8 miles on the trail, which is a rails to trails park — it’s a rail road track that has been converted to a walking/running/biking trail. It runs through the forest and along the edge of a lake.
We walked for 8 miles and then sat in the sun overlooking the lake and had lunch. I heated up some chili that I had made a few months ago and put it in thermoses early this morning. My sister in law brought some good bread and home made biscotti. It was really nice to have a warm lunch after a nice long hike.
My brother brought me a table that he made for me. He was a cabinet maker for years and has been making mandolins and other small stringed instruments in his retirement.
He told me that this table was his version of patch work — the gorgeous top is redwood, and other woods used to build it include koa, walnut and iron wood.
This finish is all the natural wood that has been hand rubbed with oil. It’s like silk!
The piece on the top is redwood. It’s made from a piece of wood that my brother got from a friend of his. He’s had it for years and couldn’t decide what to make with it. I feel pretty lucky that I have it in this gorgeous table!
Once I got home and got the car unloaded, got the dogs fed and cleaned up my kitchen, I had a quick dinner and then sat down to chunk away at finishing up the 20 duplicate blue 16-patch blocks that I had left unfinished. I’m happy to say that I got all 20 of them sewn and pressed.
A friend of mine let me know last week that a local quilt store on the coast had gotten a bolt of border collie fabric in. It was fabric that I’ve used for years and am running low on. It can be a little hard to find, so I got on the phone yesterday and ordered three yards for myself and two yards for a friend who wanted some.
In conversation with the clerk I learned that they had the Philip Jacobs Silk Road Collection so I had her send me a yard of each of these gorgeous pieces. I have no idea what I’m going to do with them, but I might have to design a quilt around one of them and use it for a quilt back. A good reason to buy more fabric!
I have tomorrow off from work and am planning on heading for a hike on the Banks Vernonia trail. I should be home in early afternoon and plan on spending a good bit of time working on blue 16-patch blocks. I have 40 of 72 blocks complete. On the down hill now.
I promised myself that I would finish the 10 duplicate 16-patch dark blocks that are sitting on my cutting table… but I couldn’t do it. I was so excited to see how the lighter blocks would look with the dark ones that I dove in and made five lighter strip sets, sliced and sewed half of them into blocks and got them up on the design wall.
I was a little afraid that I wasn’t going to love this as much when I got the lighter blocks up there, but I absolutely LOVE it!
In fact, I’m so excited to see even more lighter blocks up there that I sewed an additional five strip sets tonight.
And 15 duplicate blocks sit unfinished on my cutting table. And I’m totally OK with that!
Tomorrow I’m going to start chunking away at those 15 duplicate blocks. Yup.. even before I slice the five additional light strip sets I sewed tonight.
This is sort of unusual for me, but I have no idea what quilt I’m going to make next! I’m usually itching to start the next one by this point in a new project! Maybe something red…
I sat down right after work tonight, even before I had dinner, and sewed up five of the blue strip sets that I cut over the weekend. And holy cow… I’m loving what I’m seeing!
These are all just the darkest set of fabrics and I’m really liking what I’m seeing in contrast and value. The look of the quilt will change once the lighter fabrics are added in. Oh, and those little pops of color here and there are pretty spectacular.
I sewed up another five sets before I took this photo. Tomorrow I’ll sew up the duplicate blocks before I sew more strip sets together. I don’t want to get behind on these twin blocks and have a huge stack at the end that I have to trudge through.
Here’s some eye candy to enjoy… and I have to say that I’m pretty proud of all those seams matching!
This first one is my favorite of all the blocks I made tonight. I just love this black guinea flower fabric and that poppy fabric does some pretty amazing things when it’s cut into small pieces.
This next lighter fabric almost glows and I love the streaks of purple and pops of orange in the darker fabric in this next one.
And guinea flower again. I love the pop of colors of those little flowers on the dark background. And those fans are doing some pretty fun stuff in those little squares.
I was so happy to find this blue pencils fabric. I had never even seen it in that color way. And the dark blue mille fiore is one of my favorites. Again… those pops of color! GAH!!!
And now for some real color! Here’s where I am with my scrappy sunburst half log cabin blocks made from KFC fabrics. This will be a gift for my brother and his wife. I’ve asked him to measure their bed and the drop they want so I’ll know how big to make this.
This is 67 blocks. I’m guessing I’ll have to make at least 20 or 30 more to get this up the size I need. It will have some big borders to provide the drop. Good thing I have a lot of scraps left!
Knowing that we would have a very rainy afternoon today, I had a nice sleep in, a good breakfast with coffee and then took the boys out for a six mile walk. It was sunny and glorious and it was wonderful to get out. There were so many people out walking. We have a really rainy spell coming up and people around here tend to take advantage of a day when it’s not raining.
When I got home I dug in on finishing up my 16-patch quilt top. It was my goal to get it done this weekend and I’m glad I can check off that box! I’m counting this as my first finish of 2021.
I’m always glad to finish a quilt top because that final assembly is not my favorite part of making a quilt. But I knew that if I didn’t get it done, it would sit around for awhile.
Then I dug in and cut all the strips I need for my blue sixteen patch quilt and paired up fabrics for all the blocks. I just love this initial part of making a quilt. Once you get the fabrics cut you can see how it looks in smaller pieces and how the pieces play together.
That’s 36 sets of strips. Each set of two fabrics will make two blocks. My plan is to make this quilt 8 blocks by 9 blocks, which sill be a nice size throw. The one I just finished is 9 blocks by 10 blocks. For a throw, it doesn’t need to be that big.
I’m really excited about the fabrics I selected.
I’ve decided I want to do a little work each week on the scrappy sunburst half log cabin quilt now that I want it to be a queen size quilt. So I made six blocks tonight after I cut the blue fabrics. I have no idea how many blocks it will take. I need to do some cyphering to get organized.
And if that wasn’t enough productivity today, I folded up a growing pile of KFC fabrics that I’ve purchased recently and which has been sitting on my sewing table, sort of getting in the way. I’m going to have to reorganized my fabric drawers because there just isn’t enough room for all of this in the existing set up.
I’ve decided to enter Rico in a sheep herding trial at the end of January. He’s been doing really well in lessons and it’s time to see how he will handle a trial setting. I’m sure he will be a champ. I’m guessing I’ll be a nervous wreck! I just hope I don’t embarrass him.
He’s such a good and sweet boy. Look at him… he loves his mama!
I took Rico for a very rainy and blustery sheep herding lesson this morning and then decided to take the boys for a nice walk around the campus of Washington State University since we were already all geared up, wet and muddy.
We did 5.25 miles because I knew it was unlikely we’d get a walk later in the evening. We got rained on but it wasn’t too bad.
There is a field that we found a couple of months ago that is isolated and out of the view of the campus buildings, so I let the dogs run loose there while I walk laps. I walked five laps while they ran today, which made up 1.25 miles of our walk.
When I got home I was ready to dig in and start assembling 16-patch blocks when a friend of mine called me. We got to talking about my scrappy KFC sunburst quilt and how I was going to finish it. So I put together a bunch of combos of fabric options for the setting triangles and finally decided that I will go with my original plan.
After I posted a photo of these blocks a month or so ago my brother went on and on about how much he loves this quilt. So I decided I was going to ask him if he and his wife wanted it for their bed. After convincing him that it wasn’t a problem, he finally said yes. So I need to make this for a queen size bed. I haven’t had a chance to calculate how many more blocks I need to make. But I will finish it with the same scrappy blocks and the border as shown.
Here are some of the failed combos:
Before I laid out all these options, I was pretty sure this next one with the sunburst fabric used for setting triangles was what I was going to do, but it doesn’t work for me — it just feels way too busy.
With this lengthy phone conversation and texts back and forth with photos, I didn’t get as much assembly on my 16-patch quilt completed as I had hoped. But I did finish six of the ten rows and that’s pretty good progress. So 3/5 of the quilt top is complete.
Tomorrow I’ll finish the last four rows and then combine the two large parts and call it done. And I can’t tell you how happy I am with how easy and nicely this is going together. All these seams are nesting so nicely and everything is consistent and square. I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying matching all those seams.
I had a pretty low key New Years celebration last night. My boss delivered some amazing tamales from a famous local food cart and a six pack of some Modelo Negra beer. It was so amazingly good and it was so nice to have a warm meal that someone else prepared!
I had one of the left overs for dinner tonight. I have three in my freezer and one more in the fridge. I will enjoy every one of them.
I woke up this morning and got the dogs out for a nice 5.5 mile walk before the rain started in this afternoon. We lucked out and stayed dry and had a really nice walk.
There were a lot more people out walking today than we usually see. it’s been a pretty rainy week and we’ve got a forecast for rain as far out as the forecasts go, so people really like to take advantage of a few dry hours.
Once I got home I decided to dive into a little project that I’ve wanted to sew up for a few weeks. I’ve been needing a little basket to hang on the closet door next to my desk for used tissues and old Post It notes. So I dug into Pinterest to find a pattern or tutorial that I liked that wasn’t too complicated.
Here’s the tutorial I followed. I used some of the leftover indigo batik from the quilt top I just finished and a very small quantity of my KFC scraps. I had to improvise the loop that would hang this on the closet door, but that was easy enough to do. And I actually hand sewed the inside of the binding on the top of this little bucket.
After dinner we had another little break in the rain so I took the boys and myself out for a quick two-mile walk. It was really nice out… warm and moist but we didn’t get rained on.
When we got home I hunkered down in the sewing room and assembled the first three rows of my scrappy 16 patch.
We’re going to have a very rainy sheep herding lesson tomorrow morning and then I’ll probably spend a good part of the rest of the day on the assembly of this quilt top.
I think I’ve decided on the final set of fabrics I’m going to use for my KFC blue 16-patch. So I’ll probably start cutting and pairing up some of these fabrics this weekend.
Here’s a black and white version of that photo to show the values better.
And… knowing myself… I’ll probably make a few of the blue blocks this weekend too because I’m getting anxious to see how these fabrics will play together. I’m getting a little excited to see how those little bits of color in the blue fabrics will pop!
I’m hoping for a much better year in 2021 than we just had… for all of us!
agilejack 