Wednesday, January 29, 2025

A Second SAHRR and First SAHRR Update

For those who do follow me on Instagram, you may recall that I had a backup block as my potential centre block, the 2.5" strips blue and green heart block that was a test of one I'd seen floating around on the internet several years ago.

It became the inspiration for the second challenge of Project Quilting, which I named Winter Blues. I hated to put it back in my Lonely Blocks Club drawer. (I love that--it just came to me as I typed.) What if I did what I saw Kathleen of Kathleen McMusing is doing this year: make a quilt that is not a round robin, rather make a block or two each week following the prompt.

So on Sunday I decided to make a Sawtooth Star for this second SAHRR. Remember the first prompt was either to make a King's Crown block or a block that starts with the same letter as your name. I love stars; they're my favourite block, so this is fitting for Sandra! Because I'd made the heart block with strips, I decided I'd make the centre of the star with strips. I'm making a valiant effort to decrease the volume of strips in my strips boxes.
Sawtooth Star with strips for the centre

I looked up my tutorial for making no waste two-colour flying geese. Let me just say how happy I am that I wrote that because it worked out perfectly.

This week's prompt is from Anja at AnjaQuilts. Make a block with HSTs. A quick google of quilt blocks with HSTs gave me a few hits, one of which was 30 free quilts using HSTs at SewCanShe. When I saw the star quilt whose blocks look like four flowerbuds coming together to form a star, I thought I’d make it. Now to incorporate a strip set…

Rather than do the math, I knew I had a tutorial for a twirling star, so I pulled it up. I love using my blog as a tool! I gathered some blue and green strips and sewed them together and then pulled out my 4" squares stack to make the HSTs. 
Pieces assembled, and strip set sewn

Checking the quarter inch seam since I am sewing on my 1951 Featherweight. Looks great!

Laid out the parts and it’s kinda cool but… it’s lost the four quarter-star look I was going for. 

Redo the strips for the centre or leave it and move on? I knew it would bug me so…it didn’t take very long to make two 7" long strip sets, one in blues and one in greens. Laid it out with the new parts:
Much better

I love scrappy quilts, seriously love them, always have, right from the first two completed quilts I made. However, a caveat is that I like to have a little cohesion within them. This is why I hit upon making this quilt’s blocks using blues and greens, and within each block, no matter the prompt, I would incorporate strips from my strips boxes. Also note that I’m aiming for a bit of a masculine feel. My first SAHRR project has a soft vintage feel and my RSC project has a distinct girly feel so we need to be fair. Note the gears (from a mini I made my husband several years ago), the planes fabric from my nephew's baby quilt--STOP! Of course girls can fly planes and fix and build vehicles. So this can go to a boy or a girl!☺️ 

Here is the block sewn together.
Love the fussycut turtles!
Here are all three:


Here is how my first SAHRR project evolved with the HSTs prompt.

It was Kathleen's post that gave me the inspiration for this round, specifically one of her diagrams for a possible border.

My centre after round 1 actually measured 20.25" (just short of 20.5" due to a couple of things). I needed 21" finished in order to work with a multiple of three, since I wanted this border to be 3" finished. So a coping strip of 1 1/8" finished would need to be added to the sides. That is an annoying number to cut, so I cut 1 ¼" + ½" seam allowance and after I attached it I trimmed 1/8" off. I wanted the background in this round to be light pink and so I decided upon a pinkish burgundy for the star points. I made them and set them in place. It seemed like a lot of space between them, so I went to EQ8 to take a look at border blocks, and I spied these two


which gave me the idea to extend the star points and make a ribbon effect. More HSTs were needed. It was a bit iffy as to whether I'd have enough of the burgundy, but by cutting the triangles 3½" wide as an AccuQuilt would I had just enough fabric with about a 6" x 4" piece left!


Progress on the design wall - don't mind the red strips shadowing. When I moved the four styrofoam panels upstairs into my newly-renovated sewing room, one broke, so it's 'Tuck-taped" together.

Here is round 2 sewed on (we won't go into how much frogging was done in this round. Who knew how many triangles I could mis-orient while travelling from the design wall to the machine? Lots.)

I am loving this! How the rose snowball blocks flow into this border is really a cool effect. I also love that the burgundy is another pretty ancient little chunk in my red scrapbox but the light pink is just two years old, a piece in a bundle I was gifted as a designer for Benartex Fabrics. They play very well together. The coping strip, for those observant types, is, yep, more of the navy floral used in the centre. I was pretty surprised that I did still have about a fat quarter left. It should appear again in a round in hopes of using it up completely.it now measures 27.5" square. 
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Linking up at Anja's blog and looking forward to the next prompt. Will I keep up with two SAHRR projects? I certainly hope to. I do think one block a week is a manageable expectation. Now I'm off to finish up my gratitude post for tomorrow, and also play with some pink strips as I play with the Winter Blues hearts pattern.
 

8 comments:

  1. woohoo - Two SAHRR quilts - go you! Looking good. And the Lonely Block Club Drawer - love it!!! (I've got the centre done for my ONE and when I get back home this weekend, hopefully I can catch up.)

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  2. Pretty batiks and blocks. I admire that you are making two quilts.

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  3. Both SAHRR's are coming together beautifully. It's a "free" project if you are using scraps isn't it?

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  4. Oh, I love the blue and green blocks (no surprise there) and I think with the change up in the way you are approaching the second SAHRR, you should be able to keep up just fine. I love how the second round on your first SAHRR is like a bit bow saying, "TA DA" around the center.

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  5. I loved this block when I saw it on IG last night - and knowing the "behind the scenes" story of it adds to how special it is!

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  6. I love your blocks. It's so nice to see everyone doing "their own thing" and making their quilt their own.

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  7. Fun to see you making two versions and they are really just fabulous. I love the border you did and love the version with the strips. They are both going to be fabulous.

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