Searching for Shadows

As previously posted, I finished making all 12 squares for my quilt guild's Half Square Triangle sampler.  Here, I'll refresh your memory:

The pattern calls for sashing with cornerstones like this:

But, being the rogue quilter that I seem to have become, I wanted to try something different.  I wanted  to make the blocks stand out by creating an illusion of a shadow behind them.  Here is what I had in mind, from my Electric Quilt software:

To create the shadows, you start with two strip sets, each a combination of sashing fabric and shadow fabric:

Then you slice the fabric into individual strips:

For each sampler block I needed to sew one shadow/sashing to the bottom of the block

and then add the second shadow/sashing strip to the adjacent side:

So off I went, adding shadows to all 12 blocks:

I liked the effect, but thought that maybe the shadows were going to be too big for the blocks.  So, they each got a quarter inch trim and I tried again:

In retrospect, I probably should have gone with the first option, because after sewing the blocks together, I ended up with this:

Admittedly, it makes for a nice way to showcase the blocks, but I think the shadow effect got a little lost. Next time I will have faith and stick to the original plan. 😕

Anyhow, I'm still happy with the way it turned out, and I will be adding an additional outer border of a turquoise/lime green batik to bring out the turquoise in the blocks.

A dozen different HST's

Here are the last 3 blocks in my quilt guild's Block of the Month.

These blocks make up the bottom row of the pattern, Jeni Baker's Half Square Triangle Sampler:

Now I need to choose a background.  I wanted to go with a colored fabric, rather than the white as shown in the pattern, and I thought I had found  the perfect green:

I put the first 9 blocks against the green background and lived with it for a while as I made the last 3 blocks.  I began to think that although the green was a perfect match, it was overpowering the blocks. These blocks are only 6 inches, so the background has a bigger impact.  I went back to the drawing board and found a lighter, less saturated green and tried again:

It's a subtle difference, but I think the second choice helps the blocks stand out a little more.   Here are the two fabrics side by side:

And here are the 12 finished blocks, with the darker green background under the top 6 and the lighter green background under the bottom 6:

This has been a lot of fun seeing how much variety can be achieved with just 16 Half Square Triangle blocks.

Snow days are great for catching up

I had fallen a bit behind on my quilt guild's Block of the Month. ( In my defense, we are actually getting two blocks a month. 😄 )  Here are blocks 5 and 6:

All the blocks in this sampler are made up of only Half Square Triangles, and I have chosen to reduce my block size to 6 inches instead of 12.  One fun thing about using such small pieces is that I can get two separate looks from the same fabric.  For example, these charm squares

produced both of these squares:

This month we were given three blocks to make.  I got them finished today as part of the great Snow and Sew event happening in my sewing room:

It's fun to see how many designs you can get using only Half Square Triangles, but the downside is that sometimes it would be easier to make a larger unit such as a Flying Geese unit for some of the parts.  In this case, I got the stripes to line up pretty perfectly:

But as far as lining up these white rectangular boxes well....I didn't even try, other than getting them all in the same direction.

In the overall scheme of things, I know it won't matter.  It's just my observation.

Here is what the first 9 blocks look like.  Only 3 more to go!

Weekend Sewing

Chilly and rainy weather this weekend made it a good weekend to stay in and sew.  I finished the next 2 blocks in my quilt  guild's Half Square triangle block of the month:

The pinwheel block on the left can only be made with 16 half square triangles, but it was tempting to make the one on the right by substituting Flying Geese like this:

However, I guess that would be contrary to the name of this quilt which is "Half Square Triangle Sampler", so I stuck with the program.  Here are the first 4 blocks:

Our guild is making Adult Clothing protectors as our charity project this Christmas. Basically they are adult bibs.   When my father developed Parkinson's disease, his shaky hands could make it hard to keep food from slipping off the fork or spoon and so I know firsthand how handy it was to have something to keep his clothes clean at mealtimes.  This weekend  I bought some fun, yet manly, fabrics and got them cut out and ready to sew into protectors.

Our guild is also having a fun challenge this year, which is to use a magazine photo as inspiration for a quilt.  I found a great page for my inspiration and spent the greater part of my sewing this weekend making the quilt top.   Can't share a photo of it  yet, but here are the fabrics I was working with:

Seems our quilt guild is keeping us busy with sewing this year!

Half the squares, twice the fun

My quilt guild's Block of the Month this year is called "Half Square Triangle Sampler" by Jeni Baker.  All the blocks are made up of only Half Square Triangles.

The pattern directions are for 12" blocks for a nice lap size, but I have decided to make my blocks in a 6" size instead.  I want to use a couple of charm packs that I purchased a while back at an overstock sale:

When I opened up the wrapping, I realized that it contained multiples of only 7 different fabrics.

I checked the stash to see if I had anything to add, and I came up with these additional fabrics:

(Hey Linda N!  Notice the blue/green ginko leaf fabric.  It lives!)

Each of the fabrics will be paired with white to make up the HST's.  I cut the white fabric into 5 inch squares and marked them with an "X" from corner to corner:

Then sewed 1/4 inch on each side of the line:

and cut apart into squares.

Each square generates 2 HST's:

So, instead of drawing a diagonal line on the back of 4 small white squares, I only had to draw 2 lines on the back of one larger square.  Works for me!

Here are my first two blocks of the Sampler:

My quilter friend, Rosemary, is also making the guild's BOM.  You can see her blocks here.