quilt – agilejack

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.