... from blocks to a quilt top

...and back again.  Or a quilters prerogative to change her mind. 




I put this together awhile ago and thought the top was done. But I couldn't get around to finishing the back and sandwiching. And in the last few days I worked out why. 


I don't like the way the sashing make it look. The blocks, each different and wonderful in their own way and made by the lovely ladies in Bee Seam Piecing Downunder, don't pop in this layout. The sashing takes away from the massively. 


So I have ripped all the seams out and and back to blocks (with a little sashing on the edge ones) and have some more decisions to make. 

The plan when I decided to make changes was to sew all the blocks together without sashing and to use the sashing (plus a few extra squares for a 3 square deep border.

And then as I was pressing all the blocks again last night I wondered about a Kona Coal border /sashing around each of the blocks to frame them and then attach the border. 


Decisions ....decisions


What do you think?

...3x6 Bee blocks

Thanks to everyone about their supportive feedback from yesterday. I have really appreciated all the comments and I am so glad the quilt is well received. 


The second bee blocks of June ... for the 3x6 Bee - although this is a little cheating because I finished them in May but couldn't get them photographed, packaged and mailed until a few weeks ago and blogged until now.

I chose to make these from a pattern in the 100 Quilt Block magazine. There are from the Third volume and were designed by Gerri Robinson from plantedseedsdesigns.com. 


All in all I made 8, the six for my bee members, one for me and one extra because I misread the spreadsheet.


And all of that added up to 64 HST, 64 flying geese units and a few extra small squares and rectangles. I think they look pretty good and I hope my bee members appreacite theirs when they get to see them in person soon which should not be too long as they have stared arrive. This bee is going through a few  changes at the moment meaning the next round is a few weeks away but I am looking forward to the next round!

...cooking up a storm.

I am posting over at the Moda Bakeshop today....and I am lots nervous. Please take a peek if you have a moment.

...for Nan

My  Mum and Nan came to visit a few weeks ago for the night and we sat on the couch in the evening, Mum knitting some socks for me (still waiting on them Mum),  Nan knitting a blanket for a great-grandchild, me quilting my Bakeshop project and Nik looking like he wished he was anywhere else (or wondering how he ended up in the 19th century).

On their return home I realised Nan had left her knee rug behind and sent it back to her with the idea I would also get to sewing her a lap quilt not too far in the future.

This quilt ís the result. It was made, in the majority, in one weekend including the hand quilting. Small quilts are good like that. In fact the thing that took the most time was getting it photographed before posting, including washing it after I dropped it in dirt and almost falling in the lake when I finally got thd pictures I was after.

All the fabric is the Spotlight Picnics and Fairgrounds and the solid is Homespun in 'Sand', also from Spotlight.

...supplies for a quiet Sunday morning.

1. A foot massager
2. An audio book
3. A ball of perle cotton
4. A needle, thimble
5. A basted quilt
6. A seat near a slightly open window.

...sampler quilts.

So I collected my copy from the post office this morning of the Farmer's Wife Sampler Quilt. And I can't wait to get started on making the blocks in this Quilt Along. But since I went straight on to work after collecting it and am only now getting home I haven't had a chance yet.

Haven't heard about this Quilt Along? Where have you been? Go and check out the information at our hosts Amanda and Angela's blogs or the flickr group. The block patterns might be 'traditional' but these quilts certainly won't have that 'look' to them.  

And perhaps it has something to do with my long car trips to work and back but I have had sampler quilts on the brain a little lately and I'm wondering about a 'modern' sampler.

Let me take a step back, but not too far back because that might get too confusing and bring up all sorts of unlooked for debate. I know this might end up as a 'modern' vs 'traditional' debate and about what is better and proper but I don't want it to because I tend to believe noting in life is that simple and besides that in't where my stream of consciousness was going when I was thinking about this. In what follows I use the terms 'modern' and 'traditional' only because I can't think of anything better to describe the two 'styles' I'm referring to. I just hope your constructions is vageuley similar to mine or the rest of this just won't make the sense I want it to.  

So for my step back, when I bought the book for the Farmer's Wife Quilt Along I also bought the Sylvia Bride Sampler from Elm Creek Quilts and the Dear Jane Quilt book. From my googling of late these seem pretty much to be the sampler quilts, although I might well be wrong, there are a couple of civil war ones that seems quite popular too. There are certainly many on-line groups about them and the people that belong to then have proudced quilts as varied prom this same pattern as if they had been working from completely different designs. In my musing I can see a lot of similarities in these three quilts, although one was designed and sewn over 100 years with the others being much more recent but inspired by times past. And naturally the blocks are quite, for want of a better word, 'traditional' although not all of the incarnations of these quilts would be called that - this traditionallity is one of the similaries I noted. The other is that the blocks are quite small between 4" and 6", smaller than most blocks you might see most quilters that labels themselves 'modern' making. And they are all sashed and set square or on point, with at least two borders.

I guess what I noted was what wasn't represented in these sampler quilts, wonky blocks, spiderwebs, bento blocks, houses, many pieced curves are ones that sping almost immeadietly to my mind. You might think of others. And they layouts were all based on a straight grid or on-pioint layout, there was not random block placement.

Which got me to thinking about what I might look at and consider a 'modern' sampler to look like, and what blocks it might include. I guess a simple staring point might be to think about what comes out of the 3x6 Bee. The blocks would be bigger, 12" finished seems to be standard. I guess the colours would be different too but any quilt can look different in different fabrics and with different quilting.  

So what is your take, what would be the 'modern' sampler be like?

As an aside, it is more than a little embarassing when you have so many packages delivered to your PO Box in such a short space of time that the postmaster knows, and greets you, by name...

...the first beeblocks for June

...and the first for Sew Australia, a new bee. 

Made for Amelia with Henna Garden and Kona Coal and Snow.

This is the second time I've made blocks using this tutorial for a bee and they have been very different. But I have liked them both. 

Maybe one day I will make a whole quilt of them myself.