Author: agilejack

I’ve had several people ask me how I’m arranging my colors in my strip sets for my scrappy trip quilt. A couple others have asked for clarification on how I use the metal ruler in pressing my strip sets.

I made a quick video to show you how I use the ruler. But first, here’s a few tips on how I make my strip sets. After I sew two strips together, I finger press the seam allowance. Then I’ll press each set of two strips with the iron. I sew the three sets of two strips into one big set of six strips then finger press the seam allowances on the two new seams. I press the whole six strip set on the ironing board. I press the seam allowances in the direction recommended in Bonnie Hunter’s tutorial. I find that finger pressing has helped me keep my strip sets straighter and makes it easier to press the sets.

Here’s a link to my metal ruler video on Youtube.

Now, about how I’m arranging my colors for the blocks in my scrappy trip. I want red to be the predominant color in the quilt, so I’ve cut more red strips than other colors. Here’s the photo that I shared earlier of my fabric strips for this quilt.

The rows of colors in this photo are basically red, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, purple. They’re all in the same order as the colors of the rainbow: Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. I remember it by remembering Roy G. Biv.

Each strip set starts with one of the darker reds, followed by a lighter red or orange. Then a yellow. The remaining three strips are a combo of green, turquoise, blue and purple. Not all of these last four colors will appear in each block.

Here are some strip sets that I sewed together and pressed tonight.

The colors in each strip set follow the order of the colors in the rainbow.

When I’m putting the blocks together I keep the darkest red as the center strips on the diagonal of the block, as in these two blocks.

This is what gives me the strong red diagonal lines across the quilt and forms the shape of the diamonds. I saw one tutorial for this quilt that said the center diagonal should be the strongest fabric in your set of six… either the darkest, lightest, or most vivid pattern.

Of course, you can arrange your colors any way you want. And I have a lot of ideas for different color arrangements I’d like to try.

And speaking of color… LOOK AT THIS!!!

I’ve been collecting gray batiks for some time thinking I’d like to make a monochromatic quilt out of them some day. And now I’m thinking it might be a trip quilt.

I’ve been looking at lighter and more neutral approaches to the trip quilts and I really like the soft comfy look of them.

But I’m thinking I might add in some light pastel colored batiks to give it a little bit of interest.

I’m going to give this some thought before diving in.

After work last night I put together four strip sets for this quilt. I had to work this morning doing fundraising on the radio, then took the dogs for a nice long 5 mile walk after that. When we got home I dug in and whipped up the 8 blocks from the sets.

I took my scrappy batik 16-patch blocks off the design wall so I could move these blocks over to get the full width up. The finished quilt top will be 6 blocks wide and 7 blocks high. This is the full width. I have three more rows of blocks to make, or 18 blocks.

I’m really loving how this is turning out. I just stand in my sewing room and stare at it. This isn’t the final design. I’ll wait until I get all the blocks done to start tweaking.

Holy cow. These fabrics! So amazingly gorgeous!

So yummy.

when I was going to through my stash of Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics for this scrappy trip quilt I realized that I had a pretty poor selection of purples and greens. So I went online a couple of days ago and ordered a bunch. I don’t have any specific plans for these fabrics. But aren’t they gorgeous?

The KFC fabrics are so amazing to me in the way the colors just all work together. Look at all those different tones of green… and they look fantastic together! I’ve been wanting to make a quilt with KFC greens. I’ll have to keep my eyes out for a pattern.

I saw this Brandon Mably design called Primulas when I was shopping online. I don’t remember when it came out. In the photos online the print looks much smaller. But you can see from the photo that’s not the case. I really like it!

I have a sheep herding lesson with Rico tomorrow afternoon. I plan to get more strip sets and blocks done tomorrow.

Not much to say tonight except that I’ve finished nine blocks for my scrappy trip quilt and I’m loving how this is coming together!

I love how the blue pools in one spot while the yellows pool in others. I love the boldness of the red diagonals. I love the randomness of the fabrics.

I can’t wait to see this as I get more blocks added.

It poured here all evening so that gave me more time to get a start on my new quilting project. The dogs are not happy that we didn’t get our regular walk tonight. Luckily, we did get a two mile walk in this afternoon. But that’s not enough for any of us. We have a week or so of cloudy but dry weather coming up.

After dinner I gave the dogs chewies to keep them occupied and hunkered down in my sewing room. I finished the first three blocks for this quilt.

I wanted to finish four blocks, but I was tired and made mistakes that I had to pick out on the third block. So I decided it was time to wind down with a little TV instead.

I have to say… I’m really happy with where this is going. I always have some difficulty in picturing what a quilt is going to look like once I’ve selected my fabrics. I was thinking these blocks were going to read darker. And I’m really happy with the red as the diagonal center in each block. I think I’ll see some interesting color blocks appear once I get more blocks done and up on the design wall.

I made four full strip sets tonight. That’s the most time consuming part of making these blocks. I really like to be careful and make sure my seams are accurate and that I press them nice and straight. That means that my blocks will go together nice and easy.

Here’s the first strip set on my ironing board. Holy cow! Look at all that gorgeousness!

See that big old metal ruler on my ironing board? I use that to make sure my strip sets are straight as I press them. Using a ruler has really helped make my strip sets more accurate and much nicer to work with.

I actually sewed the first block together wrong… and that was after taking a photo of it laid out and admiring it for a while. Why didn’t I see it at this point?

The good thing about making a mistake early on is that it was a great learning experience and now I have a really good system for deciding which seam to pick out in each section.

And speaking of unpicking… I read something recently that said that seam rippers do wear out. They get dull after use and you need to replace them. The seam ripper I’ve been using is a green plastic one that I got after I graduated from college in 1983. I started using it tonight and it was pulling the thread rather than cutting it. So I grabbed a new one that my brother gave me several years ago. It’s a beautiful one a friend of his made out of Myrtle wood. It has a seam ripper on one end and a stiletto on the other end. Instead of a cap, you just pull out the sharp end, turn it around and push it into the handle part.

The sharp ripper really made a big difference! So I can confidently recommend that you occasionally purchase a new seam ripper!

I’ve already selected all the strips for the sets that I need to make. So now I just need to grab a set of six strips and start sewing.

I’ve cut and selected enough strips to make about 46 blocks. That way I’ll have a few extra in case I end up with some that I don’t like.

These blocks will finish at 12 inches square. I’m planning on making this quilt 6 blocks by 7 blocks, which means I’ll need 42 blocks. It will end up about 72 x 84 inches. That’s a nice throw size quilt.

I think this quilt will be a lot of fun to make because each block will be unique. That will keep it interesting.

I will have about 12 inches or so left over in each strip set — not enough to make another block. So I’ll have to come up with a project to use that all up.

I’m itching to get moving on my next quilt. I almost felt panicked Friday when I thought I hadn’t decided what to make next.

I’ve been busy cutting 2.5 inch strips from all Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics. Here are 133 2.5 inch strips. 133 unique fabrics.

I’ve wanted to make a quilt with a bunch of different fabrics for awhile. I’m excited to see how this will turn out.

It took a long time to cut all these strips. And now I’m wishing I had cut multiple strips of each while I was at it. Oh well. Live and learn. Look at this huge pile of slivers that I cut to even up the edges before cutting my strips.

All of these 2.5 inch strips will be made into a scrappy trip around the world quilt following Bonnie Hunter’s tutorial. I can’t wait to see how this turns out. I’ll start sewing strip sets tomorrow night.

I decided that my scrappy batik 16-patch needed one more row. I like a throw quilt to be nice and generous in length… I don’t want to have to choose between having my shoulders OR my feet covered. I want enough quilt to cover them both. So I dug through my scraps again and made a few extra blocks for the additional row and moved some other blocks around a little.

I’m pretty happy with how this looks now, but will take a few days before I start sewing the rows together so I can tweak a little.

Here’s the black and white version.

I can see some things in this photo that are bothering me. But overall, I really like this quilt.

Rico had his sheep herding trial debut today up near Olympia, Washington. He was such a good boy. It was a great experience for the first time out. Here’s a video of one of his runs.

Sorry for all the yelling. It’s very exciting and stressful when you’re out there and are sheer dog and sheep flying all over the place!

Here we are waiting our turn. I feel like we look relaxed, but my heart was pounding out of my chest! I’m pretty sure I don’t deserve this dog.

I like to make a blog post with each finished quilt to make a record of the fabrics I used.

Here’s the fabric list for my Blue KFC 16-Patch quilt top finished 1/28/2021.

Top Row

• Kaffe’s Guinea Flower in black

• Kaffe’s Shirt Stripes in cobalt

• Kaffe’s Millefiore in blue

• Philip Jacobs’ Begonia Leaves in cobalt

• Brandon Mably Moss in blue

• Kaffe’s Enchanted in cobalt

Row 2

• Kaffe’s Persian Garden in blue

• Philip Jacobs’ Spiral Shells in blue

• Kaffe’s Enchanted in blue

• Brandon’s St. Clements in blue

• Kaffe’s Elephant Flower in blue

• Kaffe’s Dahlia Blooms in cool

Row 3

• Kaffe’s Pencils in blue

• Kaffe’s Paper Fans in cool

• Philip Jacob’s Glory in cool

• Philip Jacobs’ Curly Baskets in Delft

• Philip Jacobs’ Poppy Garden in blue

• Brandon Mably’s Jumble in cobalt

Row 4

• Brandon Mably’s Labels in white
• Kaffe’s Vine in blue
• Brandon Mably’s Mad Plain in blue
• Kaffe’s Spots in sky
• Kaffe’s Buttons in blue
• Kaffe’s Mughal in white

Backing will be Kaffe’s Millefiore in blue, and I’m contemplating doing a border in the cobalt shirt stripes just to make the quilt a little bigger.

I took advantage of all my screen time today and pinned the final two rows of my blue KFC 16-patch blocks together. I sewed it all together this evening.

I’m happy to be able to put this one in the finished pile. My plan is to use the dark blue millefiore wide backing that’s coming out next month. This quilt will probably be a holiday gift for a friend who absolutely loves blue.

It was really fun to work with a color way that I don’t typically use. And the wonderful thing about Kaffe fabrics is that even though these are all blue, there’s a lot of other color in there. I just love looking more closely at each block to see how the fabrics and colors play together.

Since I had this quilt off the design wall I went ahead and threw the batik 16-patch blocks up so I could get an idea of how they all look together.

I’m really happy with this collection of blocks, but there are some that I really don’t like. So I’m thinking I will dive into my batiks and find some fabrics to make at least four different blocks. I will look at this for a couple days before I decide to do that. But it’s pretty likely to happen.

Here’s a shot of these blocks in black and white. There are definitely a few things I want to change. I’ll give it a couple of days to ferment.

I’d better decide what I’m going to make next!

I have been in video meetings from 9 am to 5 pm for two days and have one more day to go. Yesterday I got very stir crazy. So I decided that today I wanted to have some hand work next to my desk to keep my hands occupied while my brain was working. So I looked around my sewing room last night and pulled out the green batik blocks that I made a few weeks ago. They had been stacked and labeled in rows.

I pinned all of these rows together during the meeting this morning and felt more at peace during a stressful and draining day.

And I got them all sewn together tonight, so this quilt top is done! This is the second quilt top I’ve finished in January

The blocks are tall so there are only five rows here. It went together quickly.

It’s funny, but I like this quilt better on this bed than I did on the design wall. There are some really pretty spots in this quilt top.

As I was pressing a section of this as I was putting the rows together I noticed how nice the back looks. I do like it when the back of a quilt looks almost as nice as the front. Even though it will never be seen, it gives me satisfaction to know that something looks nice.

I’m going to pin together the final two rows of blue 16-patch blocks tomorrow morning and hope to finish that top up tomorrow night. Then I can move the 72 scrappy batik 16-patch blocks to the bigger design wall.

The blue 16-patch and scrappy batik 16-patch quilt tops will be #14 and #15 that I’ve finished since we started isolation back in March.

It rained all day today. A constant soaking rain. So I was in the house all day.

I didn’t feel well last night and decided I needed some extra hours of sleep. I’ve developed some really bad habits during the pandemic and working from home. I’ve always been a night owl, but it’s gotten worse over the last few months. I’ve been staying up until 2:00 am every night. My body said “enough!” last night. So I took some Advil PM at around 8:00, fell asleep on the couch before 10 pm, and woke up around 1:00. I put myself to bed and set my alarm for 8 am. I didn’t hear the alarm at all and woke up at 10 am.

And I feel much better today. I needed those extra hours of sleep.

After breakfast I put on a big pot of chili. I’ve only got one container of chili left in my freezer and have been wanting to make a big batch.

It was wonderful to smell it simmering away on the stove for a few hours.

Knowing it was going to be rainy I planned to get a lot of sewing done today. I finished the remaining 34 scrappy batik 16-patch blocks. This photo shows half of the 72 blocks for this top. The duplicates of these are sitting on my cutting table.

Then I finished a small project I’ve been intending to do for a few weeks. A couple of years ago I made a bunch of “corn bags” for holiday gifts. These are flannel bags filled with feed corn that you heat in the microwave and use as a heating pad. The one that I use the most got a small tear in it a few weeks ago and has been leaking corn. So I have been wanting to make a new bag and reuse the corn from the torn one.

This is basically the width of a piece of flannel and is about 7.5 inches wide. I’ve sewn five sections and each is filled with corn. This is great to heat and drape over a shoulder or around an ankle. They’re also really nice to warm your hands or feet when you’re cold.

I filled each of the five sections with corn and then put in pins to hold the corn away from the top opening. Then I stitched the opening closed.

A lot of these bags are made with rice, but I prefer whole feed corn. It holds the heat longer than rice does. I buy 50 lb bags of it at the farm store.

After dinner the rain finally let up so I took the boys out for a three mile walk. The first two miles were really nice, but we got a little wet on the last mile. It was really nice to get out and move around a little after being house bound all day.

When we got back I dug in and sewed three rows of blocks on the KFC blue 16-patch quilt together, and sewed them into a section. So I have two sections complete — one with four rows and one with three rows. I have two more rows of blocks to sew together and then will have three horizontal seams to sew and this top will be done.

I got a lot done today!

I had a very productive sewing session this evening!

I sewed two more rows of blocks on my KFC blue 16-patch quilt and sewed together the bottom four rows. So this quilt is 40% done. I should be able to get this completely assembled tomorrow.

Gah! I can’t get enough of these blue fabrics!

Here’s one full row on the ironing board.

I also finished up 38 of the scrappy batik 16-patch blocks and put them up on the design wall. I just wanted to see how they look together. This needs more blocks and some thought to how it’s laid out.

The duplicate of all these blocks are also sewn and ready to go up on the design wall once the rest of the 34 remaining blocks have been sewn.

This is going to be a fun quilt!

My sewing room has been overtaken by 16-patch quilts!