Migrating Geese in Aqua

Pieced mainly as a leader/ender project, here is row 2 for the RSC2017 Migrating Geese quilt, my project #2.

Scraps of the size required, 5 7/8" squares, are not easy to come by when you do not have a lot of aqua scraps, period.  Therefore, three of the triangles were cut as half triangles of that size square.  There's a bit of the Meadow Mystery in this strip, a bit of a fabric my sister Wendy gave me from her first cruise to the Caribbean, a bit of Tula, a bit of the quilt that occupied the first 12 days of February, about which I have only hinted, and a very old marbled piece from a Magic Tiles quilt, etc...

Honestly, she has new quilt on the floor radar!

I am going to have to organize these strips a bit because I was thinking it would be fun to have one row of geese migrating north and the other south because, well, obviously, that is what geese do.  However, I do not want the triangles lining up, so I have to make sure to start adjacent rows with a triangle on the opposing side.  One row will begin with a triangle on the right, the other row with a triangle on the left.  Confused?  I know what I mean and that is all that counts, right?!

Feeling pretty blue...

I listened, twice, to "Canada's Storyteller:  A Tribute to Stuart McLean" on my CBC app while I pieced this row amongst my other projects over the past couple of days.  I am still choked up about Suart's death; how could he go in two months after announcing he was taking a little break to pursue a second, different treatment for his melanoma after the first one wasn't successful?  And only 68.  I used his stories with my grade 7 English Language Arts (ELA--English teachers, like quilters, love their acronyms) and my grade 9 Honours ELA classes.  The listening tests I made up for "Toilet Training the Cat" and "Christmas Presents" are still used at the junior high where I taught.  It was a wonderful connection with students who were familiar with the Dave and Morley stories and whose families listened regularly to "The Vinyl Cafe" on CBC Radio 2 at 9 am on Saturdays, repeated on Sundays at noon on CBC Radio 1.  I enjoyed the musician guests, many up and coming ones that Stuart would highlight; I loved the Arthur Awards, and lamented with my mum that there will be no more, and my eyes brim with tears as I type this.  For those who don't know, the Arthur Awards were given to people who did random acts of kindness, nominated by a recipient or observer of that kindness.  Those shows, usually featuring 3 recipients, made my rose-coloured glasses view of the world glow hot flamingo-pinky-orange.  Such wonderful persons from coast to coast in Canada.  Stuart LOVED his country and illuminated, but in a quiet non-boastful way, through humour and poignancy, what it means to be Canadian.  I am saddened that within a little over three months we have lost two icons of Canadian culture, Leonard Cohen and Stuart McLean.  Yet I am grateful, so grateful, for such a wealth of a legacy that they leave behind, and so very very thankful that I was able to see both of these talented creative souls in concert.

A little aqua crept in to my Honey Pot Bee blocks for the month of February.  Here we have Star Kisses and Quilter's Pantry Block.

And here are all the blocks so far.  Not really a fan yet, to be honest, but time will tell.  I keep wanting to add a print, but the challenge (to myself) is to do this entirely of solids.

We are beginning week 8 of the #30quiltdesignschallenge.  As of the writing of this post, there are 122 designs in the hashtag pool!  This challenge, to create 30 quilt designs, ends on March 15, so we still have nearly another month.  Here are my latest two, which, I realize, incorporate their fair share of aqua!

Trunk Road was sketched on the way to yoga (don't worry; I wasn't driving), just an image I had in my head of the Canadian Rockies.  I'd finished Merle's Door the previous day, and because so much of the book takes place in Wyoming and the US Rockies, and I was still living in the book in my head, specifically in the Rockies.  I wondered vaguely if I could create a landscape scene using only squares and HSTs...not bad!  This comes from travelling the Forestry Trunk Road in Alberta, basically from the Alberta/Montana border to just north of Hinton, Alberta.  We spent many a happy camping trip over many years of trips here.  This scene is from my mental image of a spot in the southern Alberta end of the Trunk Road, wheatfield or perhaps hay stubble in the foreground, foothills rising beyond and the Rockies towering beneath a blue Alberta sky, Ian Tyson's "This Is My Sky" playing in my head.

Two Point Five, a reference to the 2.5" strips I would use to make this block, is playing around with the Quilter's Pantry block I created for my jar.  Note that I put the lime green strips I thought to make version B easier to piece, on the wrong sides of the block!  I've been intrigued with playing with plaid, so I think the woven look to this stems from that.  So far both attempts to create an overall plaid design quilt have been epic fails, ha!
Linking up with
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Two Tips: Twirling Seams and Cutting Backwards

Here are my blocks for January's step for the Meadow Mystery at Meadow Mist Designs.  Cheryl has me mystified, as I played around a bit with all 25 blocks, but can't seem to get a design that says, yup!  She's a great mystery quilt writer!!

This is SUCH a pretty block!

We had to make 4 of those and 8 of the others. I am loving the fabrics and colours I chose.

 

A few of the 25 blocks arranged...so many possibilities!

Twirling Seams

I like to press my seams to one side.  I like to stitch in the ditch to stabilize a quilt before doing FMQ or ruler work on it, whether I am on my Bernina or my Avanté.  With seams pressed open, there is no ditch, and the stabilizing stitches sink between the seams.  I guess one could say you are stitching the batting to the backing then, but the point of ditching is to stabilize all three layers of the quilt.

Problems arise when there are multiple intersecting seams.  A needle can get broken when hitting a lump like this.  You can get a nice a flat intersection, just as you would had you pressed seams open, by doing this cool little trick.  I first saw it on Alex Anderson's "Simply Quilts" show on HGTV, and then later in Carrie Nelson's Another Bite of Schnibbles book.

Here is what it looks like on the back, and on the front, nice and flat.  All you do is gently push the seams in opposite directions right at the intersection. Sometimes I push them in both opposite directions, one way and then the other. This will make a stitch or two loosen and open and you can then lie the opposing seams flat.  You will get a little 4-patch if you have just sewn straight seams, little pinwheels if you have sewn any HSTs together at the intersection.  Too cute!

Here's a great YouTube video by Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts that shows you how to do this.  I didn't spin the 4-patches in this block, but easily could have. Something Edyta says in this video was a lightbulb moment for me: "Whatever direction your first two seams are pressed in, twirl the just-sewn seams that same direction."  Like a pinwheel! Snap!

Cutting Backwards

I've talked about this on the blog before, but it's worth mentioning again, another cool trick I saw years ago on "Simply Quilts".  Actually, this is two tips in one.

First of all you can cut two segments at a time for 4-patches by simply laying two strips sets atop each other with the centre seams opposing.

Here I've cut two 10" segments off my strip, destined to become 2.5" segments for 4-patches.

Lay the two on top of each other with seams snugged up against each other. You can feel the ridges.  I've offset the ends slightly just so you see they are on top of each other, but seams are going in opposite directions.

Place your ruler on the double layer strip set.  We have 10" here and I am cutting 2.5" segments, so the first cut you will slide your ruler backwards, i.e. towards the left, 10 - 2.5 = 7.5, so to the 7.5" mark:

Cut

Move the ruler backwards (to the left) again, this time to the 5" mark.

Cut once more.

Make the final cut on the 2.5" mark.

Voilà!  Four pairs ready to sew into 4-patches.  If you do not separate them as I have here for photo purposes, you can take them directly to your machine and piece since the seams are nicely abutted.

I am finished the January Honey Pot Bee blocks. This is a bee hosted by Molli Sparkles, where certain quilters give instructions for a block, and you as the little maker bee, decide to make the block or not.  Remember my modern tree blocks that yielded an entire quilt top?  That was a wild card he threw at us.

Happy, full, colourful design wall.  Happy me.

This month was a strawberry block from Bec at Skyberries Handmade and a Starflower block by Jennifer at Ellison Lane Handmade.

One of my goals for 2017 is to make a quilt of entirely solids. I made all solids placemats for practising FMQ in a class with Angela Walters a while back, but never an entire quilt top.  So this bee is a great place to challenge myself to do that.  Unfortunately, I did not bring very many solids with me, just a few for working on The City Sampler 6" blocks, not a stitch done there yet,  so my first fabric pull of a mere 5 solids did not lend themselves very well to the January blocks, drat! After yoga one day I had to make a pit stop at a big JoAnn's in Sarasota, where I found two more greens (might've got a third because I wanted to be sure they would work with my pale green), and a pale pink.  I am pretty sure I have Baby Pink at home, but alas, I didn't bring it with me.  So I picked up a half yard of these four and well, four others kind of jumped onto the pile.  So I now have some Kona black, Primrose, Buttercup Yellow and Turquoise joined Baby Pink, Chartreuse, Grass Green and Basil Green.

Did I mention these were 40% off?

And then...
In the remnants, which I always check (thank you Preeti, for this terrific tip!) I found this:

Remember remnants are half price so this was $9.44

I nearly left it when I saw the price and what? 108" wide? I don't need a wideback in this colour.  But then I thought, wait, I do need grey. Outside of Kona Silver, I have no grey Kona.  But it seemed expensive.  However, with the help of the calculator on my iPhone, because my menopausal melon is not so reliable these days for math in a hurry, I determined that the price per yard, when converted to 43" wide fabric, worked out to be $3.71!! Score! Sold!

Three quick reminders:
1.  If you are thinking about taking a Craftsy class, or like me, put them on your Wishlist, now might be a good time to buy it as they are BOGO. Buy one, get one free!  With all that's going on, I still haven't finished watching Natalia Bonner's "Free Motion Motifs for Classic Blocks" but as soon as I do I will write a review.  So far it's very good. (affiliate links)

2.  If you are part of our 30 Quilt Designs Challenge 2017 or #30quiltdesignschallenge2017 on Instagram, be sure to get a design in today for another chance at three prizes. I will be drawing this evening for the first bi-weekly winner in our Challenge! There is a $15 gift certificate to The Red Hen Shop, and two prizes, one each from me and from Lisa.  If you aren't on Instagram, consider joining us! It's a great and quick way (unless you get sucked into the vortex) of seeing what people are up to throughout the day.  Also you do not have to be on Instagram to look at stuff there; that's a clickable link with some very cool designs. 😉

3.  You might want to hop on over to Sew Fresh Quilts to check out her newest free QAL! Lorna is getting a jumpstart on helping everyone have a lovely Christmas quilt for this year's Christmas! 🎄

Linking Up:
Confessions of a Fabric Addict
Sew Fresh Quilts