Tag: 16 patch

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Aboriginal Fabric 16-Patch Half-Way Complete

(I’m back from tech issues! This post is from Friday night)

It was cold again today in Portland. Crisp and cold. Our snow is still fluffy and many of the roads are icy. They have cleared the freeways, for the most part and traffic is flowing again.

My visiting friend lives in a place that got around 14 inches of snow over the last few days. People there are already back to normal. So she’s having a hard time adjusting to what happens in Portland with about a third of that amount. She had a store and restaurant that she was ready to go to today. I suggested that we should call first to see if they were open. And, as I predicted, they were both closed! She thought this was astounding. Yup. Snow storms are very different here.

The good thing about the cold weather after a snow storm is that the snow on the ground stays nice and fluffy, which is good news for dogs. I didn’t get them out for a walk today because we were out and about and because the roads were too slick for me to be walking on. So we played in the back yard instead.

I think they enjoyed themselves.

That Rico takes his play very seriously. Bender, on the other hand…

We stayed home a good portion of the day today, but we did venture out. We want to the grocery store and then dropped by the mall again to buy some curtains for my bedroom. There weren’t very many people out and about and some of the roads were really icy and slick.

Once we got home we hunkered down and decided that we were going to get the first five rows of the 16 patch quilt all sewn together and in one piece. And we did it!

I just love seeing all these blocks sewn together. It takes it from a bunch of blocks to something really fantastic! We made a big old piece of amazing fabric!

My friend went through the blocks and made sure all the seams were going the same direction in each row… alternating direction in each subsequent row. This insures that the seams will nest nicely and the corners will be perfect!

Case in point…

Look at all those beautiful corners! Thanks to Wanda at Exuberant Color for her fool proof tutorial! Here’s a direct link to Wanda’s tutorial for making a 16 patch.

A little more eye candy…

We pulled the remaining 5 rows off the design wall after clearly marking each row.

I pinned all these rows and my friend pressed them all. We took turns sewing. I actually love pinning all these seams. I pin every place where two seams meet. I absolutely love the feeling when those nested seams make that little soft click when they nest. It’s almost mediative to me. And I love all the precision that nesting makes possible.

While we were at the grocery store today we bought everything we needed to make rock fish tacos for dinner. They were pretty tasty!

I don’t have a recipe. I basically pan fry the rock fish with some Penny’s Northwood Spice rub. Then I add pickled onions (lots of recipes for these online), some simple coleslaw with a vinaigrette, and a little cheese in a corn tortilla. We topped these off with some home made hot sauce my sister in law gave me. So tasty!!! And enough fish left over that we can have another dinner of rock fish tacos!

Tomorrow we are planning on heading out again on a more adventurous post storm trip… Battle Ground for Rico’s weekly sheep herding lesson, and we’ll be getting ready for his competition on Sunday!

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OMG! These Blue Fabrics Are So Good!

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!

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Scrappy 16-patch is done and Other Sunday Stuff

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!

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16-Patch 60% Done, and Sunburst Scrappy Planning

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.

Here’s some eye candy…