KFC Fabrics – agilejack

January 3, 2021January 5, 2021

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!

January 2, 2021January 5, 2021

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…

August 20, 2020

Six Down, Fourteen to Go

I made two more blocks for my Ruffled Feathers quilt tonight. I’m not sure how long I’m going to be able to keep up the pace of two blocks each night. Even though they are big, they are time consuming.

I decided that I don’t care for one of the fabrics I’m using in these blocks. Well, I’m ok with it in the smaller blocks, but don’t like it in the larger outer rectangles. It’s the blue Jumble at the top left of the photo above. For some reason, it really stands out to me and I just don’t like it. so I will not use the rectangles of this fabric I’ve already cut. I will make an extra block if I have enough fabric when I’m done. If I don’t have enough fabric, I’ll fix this block.

Without that fabric for the outer rectangles, i needed to ad another fabric. So I decided to use the contrast zig zag. It surprises me that i reads a little calmer and grayer than some of the other fabrics. So I think it’s a good addition. You can see it in this block I made tonight.

When I sit down to make blocks, I lay out the fabrics ahead of time and take a picture of what the block looks like prior to sewing. This helps me keep track of the block lay out and avoid having fabrics next to each other that I don’t want next to each other.

Here’s photos of block layouts prior to sewing on the outer round of fabrics.