I took a little break from sewing clothes for wee one to catch up on my block of the month quilt blocks. First up, the final two blocks of my 2008 block of the month.

November: Dolley Madison's Star

December: California Star

Now I've got to get working on the setting squares. In the shop quilt, the twelve star blocks are set among log cabin blocks in an asymmetrical pattern. It's very pretty, but I really can't stand the asymmetry, so I'll be making perfectly symmetrical courthouse steps blocks instead. Hello 1 1/2" strips of everything!

My 30's block of the month quilt started in May, so it's still going strong. I did three blocks for it last week.

September: Kansas Star

October: Green Mountain Star

November: Morning

I adore all of these. This quilt shop has done such a lovely job putting these together. The piecing has been really interesting and fun as well. In the world of block of the months, there's a lot of the same patterns that come up over and over and it gets a little repetitive after a while, but all but one of these has been new to me. And those fabrics... swoon.

Yes, I'm a maverick. I didn't spend the weekend at Rhinebeck, like the rest of my party. Instead, I spent the weekend palling around with a known sewist.

I thought I was going to go to Rhinebeck. For real. Hubby had been making plans for how to entertain the kiddos for the day and a half I would be gone. It was all set. Then Rhinebeck snuck up on me. Suddenly it was "this coming Saturday" and I was in the middle of sewing Halloween costumes and fall outfits for wee one. Out of nowhere this image popped into my head: the possibility of spending my free weekend at home, sewing. My knitting and sewing buddy, Rhinebeck ride, and now fellow maverick, Johanna, had the exact same idea. So we did it. Our husbands took the kids out and away and we sewed and sewed and sewed and ate and sewed and sewed some more. It was awesome! I felt like a kid again, with no place to be and no responsibilities. I felt like Ron Livingston in Office Space when he decides not to care about work anymore. I felt like the maverick John McCain imagines himself to be. I'm not saying that having a family, being a knitter, or going to Rhinebeck are burdens I needed to be liberated from. It's just that it was so ridiculously fun to throw all my plans aside and do something totally different.

So here's what I sewed:

click for the big picture!

I finished the quilt top of my 2007 block of the month quilt. Twelve blocks, sashing and a pretty, pretty Kaffe Fassett border.

click for the big picture!

And I pieced together the big blocks for the sock monkey quilt. Wee one can tell that it'll be all hers once I get the border and backing fabric. For now, she'll have to be content with her new ruffly corduroy pants.

look they're the same color as Elmo!

These are from another Pink Fig pattern, the Bella Pants. They were so fun to make and I totally adore them! Wee one likes to shuffle around in them, watching the ruffles flop around and listening to them swish up against each other.

I also made progress on wee one's black dress and the boys' Halloween costumes. I'll show you more of those this week.

So I may have been a maverick this weekend, but I'm not switching parties just yet. I missed all of you whom I usually see at Rhinebeck! I've shown you what I did this weekend. Now you tell me a little about what you did and what I missed!

Summer's over and here's the proof: six summer quilt squares from my current block of the month quilts. The first three are from my lqs's 2008 block of the month program.

June - "Mohawk Trail Star"

July - "Free Trade"

August - "Combination Star"

This second group is from a block of the month club offered by Sunshine Carousel Quilt Shop in New Hampshire. I couldn't resist the beautiful thirties prints in this one!

May - "Salem"

June - "Wedding Bouquet"

August - "Coronation"

With more of these to look forward to, how could I be sad about the end of summer?

Anachronistic enough for ya? Wait, it's November 2007!

Sister's Choice block

The final block of my 2007 block of the month quilt is done! I had so many issues with this block that I even chose to do the scary, life-in-your-own-hands, set-in seams December block before it. The original November block was simply too hideous to sew as is. There was more gross green fabric, waaaay too much of that dotty purple flower fabric, and those crazy purple/white squares that were competing with everything else. I had to find a way to tone things down and tie them together. I ended up searching through Marti Michell's Encyclopedia of Patchwork Blocks (a great resource for sampler quilts, by the way!) and found this block design. Then I pulled out the Amy Butler and Heather Ross prints, which will make pretty much anything look better.

So, how's it look with the other eleven blocks?

click for a bigger view!

Now we know why my lqs called this version of the block of the month quilt the "bright" version. Wow! I do like the blocks though. I even like 'em together. Phew. After all that work I did substituting fabrics and re-piecing the first six blocks, it's such a relief to see them all together now. And now that I've done all that, I find a fabulous book with all kinds of great info about color for quilters.

Seriously people, this is the beginner's quilting book I was searching for like six months ago! How did I not stumble across it before?! It's got clear, thorough chapters on cutting, piecing (by hand and machine), borders, bindings and quilting. And then there's the whole second half of the book on color. Oh, Quilting and Color Made Easy, where have you been all my quilting life?! If only I could somehow go back in time, back to when I was just getting started with quilting, back to about, oh, let's say, November 2007.

See how that square has to fit into that "v" space? Looks like it'll go right in there, right? What's the big deal? But, actually, this sort of a seam is kind of a pain in the a** to sew. It's sort of like driving on Boston streets. Sure, everything's all nice nice in other towns, where you've only ever got two streets coming together - a little light, you go, I go, order and reason prevail. But then you arrive in Boston, or set-in-seam-town, with three or more streets coming together all the time and that no workie. You can't just be driving straight through intersections round here, people. It's complicated.

Like any good Boston road, my December block of the month block, has a ton of these set in seam traffic circles, where everyone has to slow down, coordinate their entrance into the circle juuuuusst right, and then pray that they exit at the right spot. And several hours later...

There's one more thing that makes this whole deal even trickier. If you can handle another metaphor, let me say that sewing set-in-seams is a little like doing intarsia knitting. Intarsia is tricky because each knit stitch needs to be connected to the one before it and the one after it, but if you keep joining in a new yarn over and over in the same row, the whole thing's not really connected anymore! The same is true in quilting. Usually, you're sewing nice straight seams that cross each other at 90 degree angles, locking the seams and holding everything together. But when three seams come together, you can't just sew from edge to edge and then sew the next seam across the first one and so on. That won't work because - well, I refer you to the traffic circle above - insanity, mayhem and possible death may ensue. (Think Egon in Ghost Busters warning you not to cross the streams: "It would be bad.") So you can only sew up to the exact point where all three streets come together and not beyond. And you better hit that point just right or not only will the quilting police show up and give you a ticket for not matching your points, but nothing will be connected! And holes in quilt blocks are just as unsightly as holes in knitted pieces. Or dents in cars.

Having driven enough in Boston, however, I knew that a little chuzpah, some well-timed aggression, and a willingness to go round the circle more than once would eventually get me through the block.

"Love in a Mist" block

Let's recall, for a moment, the block of the month block that brought my block of the month-ing to a halt last month.

Ahh, the mosaic tile with the sparkly purple corners and the fluorescent leaves and that nothing green yucking up the center. I peeked into the block kits for the last half of the year and noticed that green and those leaves reappearing. Even the sparkles were going to return. I couldn't let that happen. I searched quilt shops and online stores for some suitable substitutes, sewed up a couple new blocks with the new fabrics, resewed a couple of old blocks, and then set about getting this one - the block that broke the camel's back - finally right.

can you find the one fabric I kept?

What do you think? I love the two oranges in the middle. It keeps some movement there without the extra contrast. One thing I didn't like about this block, besides most of the fabrics, was the way that there were so many different colors in it. All of the blocks are very bright and many of them have several colors all working together, but this one just seemed to have too much going on. I felt like it was time to do a calm - but still bright - block. I miss that red, but it didn't work as well with the newer fabrics and, trust me, it looks way better in the picture than it does in person. That new green though looks even better in real life. I loved that marble-y green fabric as soon as I saw it and it seemed well-suited for a mosaic tile block. Now instead of dreading the reappearance of blah greens, I can look forward to sneaking this sophisticated print into another block.

Yay! I declare the block of the month quilt all bettert!

"All bettert" is what the boys used to say when they were little. Now we adults are the only ones who still use it.

I'm halfway through my block of the month rehab. My 2007 block of the month quilt was admitted to rehab last month because of a growing and worrying addiction to yucky greens and ugly prints. Together we've been working on finding substitutes for these illicit substances. And I'm pleased to say that the quilt is making progress.

the "Spools" block before

the "Spools" block after

the "Kansas Star" block before

the "Kansas Star" block after

I've replaced the offending green prints in these two blocks with a fabulous Martha Negley print called "tree rings" that I just love. It's bright and quite different from the greens, but I really think it works for a couple of reasons. The yellow is certainly in the same family as the green and this print has those sweet little touches of green hidden between the tree rings. But those original greens kinda just died there (imho) whereas this yellow really pops, actually highlighting more of the structure of the blocks.

a little yellow goes a long way

Now, yellow can be a dangerous thing because it's a very strong color drawing your eye towards it and away from the rest of the elements in the block. What I think is so perfect about this yellow print is that it's primarily made up of the white tree ring circles which recede back into the background. This cuts down a lot of the yellow, giving you just enough yellow to highlight the piece but not so much as to overwhelm the rest of the block. I think my favorite thing of all though is seeing the circular print within the angular shapes in the blocks. See how it works with the round cherry print in the spools block? Too cool!

Alright, enough block therapy for today. Rehab will continue this weekend...

This last week has been school vacation week around here so I've spent my time trying to find ways of entertaining all three kids all day long. We'd wake up, play games.

playing Hullabaloo in the morning

Then take off for the playground.

baseball!

Rinse and repeat.

doing the slide all on my own

Miraculously we had amazing weather for the week. And just as miraculously, I actually got some knitting and sewing done. In fact, I sewed up two new block of the month blocks (both including some of the newer fabrics I bought to substitute for the original fabrics I didn't like).

the "Corn and Beans" block

the "Contrary Wife" block

Who makes up these block names anyway? Despite the name, I think that last one is my favorite so far. And the redo of the first six blocks is already underway.

february - new and improved!

Now just five more to do. Again.

There hasn't been much talk of my block of the month quilt here lately because, after completing half of the blocks, I was starting to get annoyed with some of the fabrics. The block of the month kits come all packaged from the store with instructions and small bits of fabric just large enough to make the block. I loved a lot of the fabrics and thought that I could live with some of the others, but as things progressed, I noticed that the fabrics I really liked weren't reappearing and those I didn't like kept showing up again and again. I spent some weeks shopping around for some reasonable substitutes for the duds and now am finally tackling the task of picking apart the finished blocks and adding in the new bits.

It was primarily the green fabrics that I was dissatisfied with. In this block, I've chosen to replace the green with some orange that appears in a later block.

Because this is last year's block of the month quilt, practically none of the fabrics is still available in the store, which means that I can't simply get more fabric and sew up a new block. I need to keep the parts of the old block that I do like by taking apart the block seam by seam, carefully removing just the pieces I'm replacing. So this Dutchman's Puzzle block now looks like this.

And the Card Trick block...

...looks like this.

I found an awesome green Kaffe Fassett print to replace this one!

The Spools block also had some yucky green in it.

More blah greens in the Kansas Star block.

I'm switching so many things in this block that I had to completely take it apart.

The Mosaic Tile block was the block that put me over the edge.

There's the wishy washy green, the black with the almost flourescent fall leaves, and then that sparkly lilac in the corners. No, no. I couldn't go on. Not after that. So it too is in pieces, awaiting reconstruction.

Whether this will actually result in a new and improved block of the month quilt or I'm merely rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship still remains to be seen.

the spring blocks (March thru June) of my 2007 block of the month quilt

We're doing our best to summon spring to Boston. I've sewn up the entire season of spring and the boys have hung spring pictures on the front door.

April showers and May flowers

Today's the first day that's felt even remotely spring-like, so maybe it's working!

horrible chicken fabric I nixed from my March block of the month

the boys dyed easter eggs!

a blue egg for the blue blog

the easter bunny "hid" some eggs for wee one

Hope you had a happy Easter!

The quilting marches on.

Look at the little quilt squares all lined up like little soldiers in a row. One more seam on all of them and they transform into...

... butterflies! These were the pieces for a teeny mini-quilt I made for B based on the the quilt square he designed in school. He wanted me to make 9 blocks so he could see the purple triangles come together in the middle to make diamonds.

Math is cool. Heck, quilting is cool. Today when I dropped him off at school, he actually read the class' copy of The Quiltmaker's Journey to me! (Very pretty book and very sweet.)

My own journey of quilting a block a month continues apace. I finished my two blocks for February just in time to pick up the March ones.

the "Card Trick" block

"Air Castle"

And as it is already March, that means that Sew Mama Sew's quilting month is sadly at an end. I do have one new project from the quilting frenzy last month that will keep me busy for a while still, a colorful cartwheel quilt.

I couldn't resist these fun polka dots from P&B Textiles' Pop Parade line when I saw them and was only waiting for an equally fun pattern to use them in. When they featured this fabulous quilt as the quilt of the day, I thought that would be just right for my fun polka dots! I have a good start with 20 blocks already completed, but I've got at least 10 or 20 more to make and some tricky maths to do to figure out how to arrange them.

Hmmm, perhaps I should ask B for help with that!

Thanks to Sew Mama Sew's quilting month, I've been playing around with different quilt blocks all week!

The double irish chain block.

The shoo fly block.

The ohio star block.

The Dutchman's Puzzle block. (You know the one with the flying geese that wouldn't fly!)

And three more pinwheel stars for wee one's scrappy star quilt.

My January block of the month is finished! And just in time too. This weekend I go in to get the next one. I can't wait!

I think it ended up being so pretty. Picturing your final result is so different when working with fabrics than with yarns. I really never would have picked out these fabrics (remember, this is a block of the month kit and the store has picked out the fabrics already), but now that I see them all pieced together, I find them so beautiful. I always think that I want bold, modern prints all the time, but I forget that each fabric will be used in small pieces, surrounded by all the other fabrics in the piece. Fabrics really do take on a different look when they're mixed together in a block or an entire quilt. It's not like a sweater that's just one yarn in one color(way), where you gotta love that yarn in that color 'cause that's all there is! I don't quite yet understand how different fabrics and colors work together, but I sure am enjoying watching it.

Young (this year's block of the month) versus old (last year's block of the month). Right (proper 1/4" seams) versus wrong (erroneous 3/8" seams). It's an epic battle. Of geese.

Are you ready for another little math session? We did knit hexagons yesterday and today it's quilt triangles.

The triangles in question are from my second block of the month quilt block. I'm making two block of the month quilts - the one my lqs is running this year (I'm halfway done with that block) and the one they ran last year (they had some extra kits available and I snatched up a complete set!). Last year's January block of the month was the Dutchman's Puzzle block, which is made up of eight triangle units called flying geese. Flying geese are really cool and very versatile. Sometimes they are lined up in rows like in this awesome quilt from Denyse Schmidt Quilts or sometimes they're used to make a star, like in my other January block of the month block. I actually decided to start with this Dutchman's Puzzle block first because the simpler flying geese arrangement seemed like it would be easier than that star within a star block. Uh uh.

But before we get to the problem, let's first look at how pretty my geese turned out. I was so proud of them. My very first triangles. So crisp and neat looking.

But then I noticed it. See the background fabric to the left of the point of the triangle. There's only supposed to be a 1/4" of the background there. That's because quilt pieces are generally sewn together with a 1/4" seam and are therefore cut larger than they're meant to be to account for that. But mine was too large. Or rather too small. One or the other. I wasn't sure. So I dashed off to the Button Box to see what I had done wrong. It turns out that there was actually an error in that pattern block! (It had been a year, so they'd forgotten that there was this error in the first block.) The instructions had you cut a square of the colored fabric, then cut the square in half diagonally to get each big triangle for the geese. But the square they had you cut was 1/8" too small! After knitting, it's hard to imagine that so small an error would make such a difference, but it does. If I sew two geese together to make one corner of the block, I'll get that bit of cream background between my triangles ruining the look of the piece and the piece would be smaller than it should be. And because the block is made up of four of these two-geese units, that error in the size is going to be multiplied four times over before the block is done. It's sort of like having your gauge be off - every stitch you're off will be multiplied over and over across the whole width or length of the piece you're knitting. It's not good.

Well the wonderful ladies at the store not only helped me find the error and found me more fabric to start my block again, they spent over a half an hour with me explaining all the relevant quilt math so I could make the block correctly and be able to check for this sort of error in the future. They were so awesome!

Here goes... if your quilt piece is a nice, lovely square and you're using a 1/4" seam, well then you only have to cut the piece 1/2" larger than desired so it will turn out to be the right size. Leave 1/4" on each side for the seam and you're perfect. Got it, square = 1/2". Triangles are, naturally, a little trickier. Because of the angles in the triangle, the 1/4" seam ends up leaving extra bits of triangle tips in the seam (see the little bunny ears in the pics above?), meaning you have to add more than 1/2" to the original square you divide.

If you're cutting the square in half diagonally to make what are called half-square triangles, then you've got to add, get this, 7/8" extra. What a crazy number, right? But it's true (see this link for a super mathy version of all this). And if you're making quarter square triangles (that's triangles cut from a square that is cut twice diagonally), you have to add 1 1/4". And check this out, if you want to cut long triangles from a rectangle, you need to make the rectangle 11/16" larger! Nutty!

So that is what they showed me. But in a very reassuring moment, they added, now go home and try it on some scrap fabric to be sure. "It's just math." I love that!

I'm halfway through January's block of the month! It was my very first time working with triangles in a quilt block and this block put me to the test right away. It's a star within a star. You piece the smaller, inner star first, which means that you have to start with the teeny tiny triangles at the very beginning. And when you're working with tiny pieces like these, you gotta get everything just right. I had to restitch a couple of seams to get those triangle points nice and sharp, but man was it worth it!

I think I'm hooked!

Block of the Month, that is....

It's January, the start of a new year-long block of the month program at my lqs. This is such a cool program that quilt shops do, I just have to tell you about it. (To all you long-time quilters out there, please excuse my newbie enthusiasm - we simply don't have this sort of thing at knitting stores!) So here's how it goes: you pay a very small fee (usually only a few bucks) and in the first month, you get a little packet with instructions and pre-cut fabric to make one quilt block. If you show up the next month with your block all finished, you get the next packet for the next block for free. If you miss the designated day or don't finish your previous block, you have to pay your little fee again to get your next packet. But if you manage to get your block done each month, that means that at the end of the year, you'll have twelve coordinating blocks - the makings of a lovely quilt top - for like five bucks!

And here's the really cool part and why this is such a brilliant thing for the quilters and the stores: when you go to pick up your block, the BOM group gets a quickie tutorial on making the block, as well as a show and tell of new stuff in the store, recommendations for new books and patterns, previews of upcoming fabric lines and events, and a first grab at some sale items. It's like being a preferred customer with a special in on everything going on in the store. Wouldn't it be cool to have that kind of relationship with your lys? I'm not sure there's any sort of similarly universal project that the yarn stores could dole out month-by-month like quilt blocks though. But, an excuse to come back to the store each month - when they find it, sign me up!

See ya some time later this month with block number one done!