Hexies with yellow centers

In addition to the pieced blocks that I made each month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, I made appliqued hexagon blocks.   

Prior to the challenge, I had a stack of English Paper Pieced hexies in a rainbow of hues:

I sorted them out by color and picked a batch each month to applique to a white background:

By the end of the challenge year, I had them all appliqued:

I had purposely appliqued them to an oversized white background square so that I could trim them up evenly when I was ready to sew them together.  Once again, I turned to my trusty Tucker Trimmer ruler to get them perfectly sized.  By positioning  the center point of the ruler over the center of the middle hexagon, I was able to size them all to a uniform  4 inch size.

Now they had a more cozy setting:

I chose to border them with a narrow yellow inner border, and a red outer border with yellow cornerstones.  I plan on using a solid red binding to corral those yellow cornerstones in with the rest of the gang.

I'm going to be make this into a Spring table topper for my kitchen.  Those bright "depression era" fabrics are anything but depressing.  

Another finish that would probably still be in a drawer if it hadn't been for the motivation of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.   You can see what this year's Rainbow Scrappers are creating here.

Things you do when you should be doing other things

I have a couple of quilts that need to be finished and bound before our upcoming quilt show, but instead I was making these:

I had attended a regional quilt show this past week and stopped at the Deb Tucker booth displaying all her rulers and patterns and this mini caught my eye.

Nine little LeMoyne Baskets that finish at 3 inches!  I already own the Rapid Fire LeMoyne Star ruler that the pattern calls for, so I purchased the pattern.  I opened it up at home just to see what I was in for, and I saw that it called for  strips  that measure 1 1/4".  Looking over at my cutting table, I also  saw this little container of strips that were leftovers from my Tumbling Blocks.

Well Geez!  How could I not  make a few blocks just to try the pattern?  (And, how about this cute little dish they were sitting in that I bought at TJ Maxx?)

So off I went, making a trial run of a few blocks, and after a while, there they were!

The bottom one is trimmed, the top one is not.  

Now that I have that out of my system, I can go back to doing the quilting tasks that I should be doing and put this project back on the Future Projects list.   But before I put it aside, I picked out all the fabrics for the rest of the LeMoyne star baskets and cut them to size.

Bye for now sweet little fabrics....I'll be back after the quilt show!

I'm linking up with Sandra and  other like minded quilters who run off chasing squirrels and" Drop Everything and Make It" over at mmmquilts .  So glad to know I'm not the only one.  😺

4th of July with no Fireworks

My quilt guild is putting together a calendar with a quilt photo for each month.  Guild members could submit photos to be included in the calendar.  They had to be 16" X 20" in size, and be representative of a particular month.  My month was July.  Without any particular plan, I started out with these fabrics:

I decided to make my quilt with 4-inch blocks arranged in a 3 X 4 setting.  I chose a LeMoyne Star for my block pattern, and used Electric Quilt to come up with a design.  In my head, I was thinking "Patriotic Fireworks".

I used Deb Tucker's Rapid Fire LeMoyne Star ruler to create the blocks, and played around with various combinations of striped and solid fabrics.  Using the red/white/blue striped fabric for all eight points of the star was rather dizzying to look at.  I decided that alternate points of navy blue would be better.

I quilted around each star, and used 3/8" spaced diagonal straight lines for the background.

The  16 X 20" size limit made it difficult to do much with sashing and borders. In the end, I went with no sashing, a 1/2" red border, and a 2" border of the Fireworks fabric.

This is the only picture I have of the finished quilt.  I brought it to our June meeting, thinking I would have the opportunity to bring it back home to get better photos of it.  However, the quilts were retained by the Calendar Committee for photography.

So here it is, July 4th, and I don't have my Fireworks quilt to display.  No problem.   It will be ready for next year, though!

Hope everyone has a Happy July 4th!

Modern Mini Mania

You may have noticed a bit of a trend toward mini quilts among the designers in the quilt world, and I couldn't be happier.  So far, I've made two of Camille Roskelley's mini patterns,   Mini Spools, and Mini Swoon.  Now I am working on Mini Puddle Jumping.

Compared to the Spools and Swoon quilts, which had 6" and 8" blocks,  this mini pattern truly is MINI. The finished blocks measure only 3".   When sewing together two 1" square blocks, there's hardly any room to hold on!  LOL!

 So, it's a bit more of a challenge, but I really enjoy making them.

Square-in-a-square blocks can be hard to make accurately, but the pattern calls for making them just slightly oversized, and then trimming them down.

Once again, I turned to my Tucker Trimmer ruler to do the trimming.  The lines on the ruler created a nice crosshair that I could use to center on the middle square, and get a nice even trim all around.

I only have one row sewn together so far, but with only 9 blocks in the whole mini quilt it won't take too long to get the rest put together.   Someday, I'd like to have a wall of mini's like this one, which belongs to none other than Camille Roskelley herself.

10 Block Pile Up

I'm all caught up with the latest Blogger Girls BOM.  This month the blocks were variations of the "Double T" quilt pattern.  I made the first block to emphasize the "T":

For the second block, there was a addition of a small square in the corner units, which led to all kinds of possibilities.  I ended up using just 3 fabrics and sewing up this one:

To sew the second version, Monica showed a really cool method for making these corner units:

To make two of these units at the same time, you start with a large rectangle plus 2 squares of the background fabric, and 2 small rectangles of the purple fabric:

Sew a background square to each of the purple rectangles, and press towards the background square:

Flip the top one 180 degrees and sew the two units together:

Pressing this unit is the key.  You snip the seam allowance in the middle, and press the long seam in opposite directions:

Draw a 45 degree line from the top left corner towards the bottom, and from the bottom right corner towards the top:

Put this unit right sides together with the large white rectangle and sew directly on the lines:

Cut them apart in the area between the 2 lines, leaving a 1/4 inch seam allowance:

Press open:

The measurements Monica gave us made slightly oversized units, so out came my faithful Tucker Trimmer ruler and it was easy to size them to 2 1/2 inch squares:

I made two sets at the same time so that I had four corner units for my block:

Pretty cool trick!

This month we are supposed to make 3 blocks instead of the usual 2, but I am going to wait to make the 3rd one until I see all 12 blocks in case I want to use certain colors for overall balance.

It's not to late to jump into this BOM.  All the instructions for the blocks are still available for free at this page
on Monica's blog.

Michigan rules

Today I finished the quilt top for my Michigan (aka Labyrinth)  quilt.

The inspiration for choosing this pattern came from a design that was on the elevator floor of the hotel where we stayed in Michigan.

As I worked on making this quilt, I realized just how many different rulers I used to create it.  I know I'm not alone in buying the occasional specialty ruler, but there are a few handy ones that I use over and over again.

First is the 6 X 24" long ruler for cutting strips:

Next is the 6 X 12" ruler for subcutting the strips into smaller units:

The one real specialty ruler I used was the "Rapid Fire Lemoyne Star" ruler that is used to make perfectly pointed Lemoyne Star blocks. (more about that ruler in this post)

Another handy ruler I use often is the "Tucker Trimmer" which comes in handy when you make a purposely oversize block, and then trim it down to size.  I used the large size Tucker Trimmer to trim the center star:

What's handy about the Tucker Trimmer is the diagonal lines, and the center square that help you find the exact center of the block you are trimming so that you trim it evenly all around.

I also used the small version of the Tucker Trimmer to square up all the 3" half square triangles:

You can use the large Tucker Trimmer to trim small blocks, but it gets kind of unwieldy to work so far away from your body.

Lastly, I used the Quick Trim and Circle ruler (more about that ruler in this post) to make the triangles that I needed to add to the Lemoyne star in the center:

A girl collects a lot of rulers when she's been quilting for almost 20 years!  Yikes! That's still a lot of rulers!

Other than the Lemoyne Star ruler, the cuts using the trimmer rulers could all be done using the markings on the average rulers, but being lazy, and since I happen to have them in my sewing room, I prefer the trimmer rulers.

I'm not advertising any particular ruler, just thought I'd share a couple that I find myself using most often and that are versatile enough to be used in a variety of projects.