Making blocks like crazy!

Following on from cleaning and sorting my Sewing Room I am still dealing with scraps and trying to use up "things" I have found.

I found a Square in a square block given to me by a New Zealand quilting friend as an example of this block. I decided not to add it to my Orphan blocks but to 'Use it up"!

So yesterday I created a block which will be made into a 12.5" QAYG block for Soy Amado.  I also used strings and leftover piano keys and added scraps from my recently sorted stash:

 

I made this larger than the size required because I find that QAYG takes up a bit of the size and the blocks finish a bit smaller.  I can always trim it to size after quilting.

 

I have been amassing a huge amount of part-finished Crumb blocks so I finished off 12 more of those:

 

Finally I had a splurge on String blocks using phone book paper as a base - 24 of them:

 

All made from my strips stash (recently added to !).  I think this photo illustrates beautifully the colours I use most: blue, pink and green!

 

 

Practice makes perfect

Over the years I have been quilting I have made loads of 9Patch blocks, usually using separate 2.5" squares as I always have a supply of these on hand, cut from small scraps.

eg in my numerous Wonky Wishes star quilt and blocks:

I have already used the strip method of dark, light, dark matched with light, dark, light but again I think I have usually used 2.5" strips to make those 9Patches.

I was looking at Cathy's Sane, Crazy, Crumby Quilting blog and admired the tiny 3" finished 9Patches she made from 1.5" strips.  She describes in detail how to make these in a tab (HELP WANTED!!! (39P Swap) at the top her blog.
As I have a lot of thinner scrap strips I decided to give it a go. I am not the most accurate of sewers so found this exercise quite challenging.  But I persevered and am amassing a collection of finished tiny 9Patches.

Finished earlier this week:

Completed 9Patches in piles (2, 3, 4 or more of each colourway)

Today I sewed already cut strips together, number of finished blocks I cut make depended on the length of strips I had:

These were sub cut into 1.3" pieces:

And then assembled into 9Patches:

No plan to use them yet, so I'll squirrel them away until a suitable project pops into my head.

I thought I could use them as corner stones in borders, or even to make a quilt border.

Or alternate them with solid coloured patches.  We'll see.

Now off to make some more 5" String blocks which will be a nice change from being so precise!!

However I do think the old adage "Practice makes perfect" is right..............  in my case I think I am getting better, certainly not perfect!

Playing with Scraps

Over the Easter weekend I managed to find some time to sew, making up the Spool blocks I had put together in sets a few days ago. That made another 19 Spools to add to my previous ones.

 

Then I decided to look through my bags of strings and sorted out ones which were narrower than the 1.5" widths I needed for Spool blocks or strings which weren't a uniform width.

These I sorted into colours and made more single colour 5" String blocks.

This time I made some neutral ones too:

 

I really enjoyed making all of these scrap blocks and now I'm off to cut out more strips to make some 9 Patches using 1.5" strips.

Finding sewing is good therapy for the cold I woke up with this morning!

We have had such cold weather this last week after a very warm weekend the one before Easter so I think the huge change in temperature is the reason why I've got a cold.  I had intended to do some gardening today but I'm afraid that's not going to happen.

 

 

 

 

Last quilting in NZ

Yesterday was my last Patchwork meeting in NZ for 2017.
I had a very productive day, using scraps to make 2 more drawstring bags for Jennie's stall:

Front

And back

Front

 

And back

 

I also made 3 more 10.5" QAYG String blocks for Jan at Sew many quilts too little time blog.

That makes a total of 9 blocks which I will mail to her when I go into town on Tuesday.

It's cheaper for me to send blocks to Jan in Australia from here in NZ than from the UK ( postage charge is quite prohibitive now).

Here they are, all 9 of them:

 

 

Hope Jan likes them.  I know she is busy using up QAYG blocks that have been gifted to her so perhaps these will mix in nicely with ones she is sewing up at present.

 

 

Orphans no more!

I have had a busy week on the sewing front, including 2 Patchwork group meetings ( one with each of the groups I belong to here in NZ).

I put into practice my idea to use the 5 "mistake" orphan string blocks, trimmed them down to 4.5" and turned them into QAYG star blocks, finishing at 12.5".

These are for Adrienne's Block Drive ( On the windy side blog), so she can make Children's Quilts which will be sent to Kaikoura for children affected by the November earthquake.

Not a great photo, doesn't really show up the colours and the Perle stitching.

My favourite block is this one:

 

I was also pleased with how the yellow string square showed up in the star block.  It hadn't worked as I had intended - hence being relegated to "Orphan block" status.

But as the centre of a star I think it works well.

Thanks to Jo's contribution of extra 2.5" squares I was able to make another 16 Twinkler blocks:

That takes my total of Twinklers to 61.  These will go home to the UK with me and then I'll probably need to sew more of them so I can eventually make a quilt for the Siblings Together charity.
Haven't worked out the maths yet as the quilt size requested is a minimum of 50" square.

I have also made a Premature baby quilt for our NZ local hospital but that will be in another post when I have finished hand sewing the binding,

So I feel I have had a productive week and enjoyed the company of fellow quilters too.

Using up scrap strings

When I ran out of small calico squares for my Twinkler blocks I made some string blocks.  I didn't have many strings in my stash but I sorted them into colours and just used a 5" paper foundation for them.

This what I made:

and then these mistakes!

 

Not sure how it happened, but when I came to trim the blocks I discovered the papers hadn't been cut at 5", more like 4.75".  Also I was running out of lengths to make the strings so started piecing strips.

I used one of those pieced yellow strips for the centre of the block and it doesn't work, the definition of the centre is lost.  However, we learn from mistakes so I won't do that again. The pieced strings look OK in the other parts of the square.

So, I have put these 5 blocks aside to be used as Orphan Blocks in the future.

And that's the end of my strips that can be used this way. Just a few scraps left which can be incorporated in Crumb blocks.

 

I will take the string blocks home with me to the UK and then I can make loads more to add to them so eventually I will have enough for a quilt.  I'll probably take the Twinkler blocks back too as I don't think I will be able to make enough here to make a quilt.