Quilting

After taking a break from our quilt group during the holidays, we were back going in strong in January and got two blocks done on the America the Beautiful quilt. We wanted to tackle a building and not leave them all to the end, so we began with the barn. Our individual tastes are totally on display here in our fabric choices for the barns and adjoining trees. ShaRee and I used the same fabric for the roof and silo, but varied on the barn and door, while Terry went her own way with red and browns. We all used a sky background fabric, but as usual, my choice is a little more bold. We all loved our own tall trees, but then loved each other’s trees when we saw them done. Those same tree fabrics may make appearances elsewhere in all our quilts! This block goes in the lower right corner of the quilt above the fields of amber waves. [Read more…] about America the Beautiful-barn & trees

Once the holiday hiatus was over, 2016 started out with more quilt group activities. In January we got two more blocks done on this quilt. Block #16 is Flower Basket and has an applique handle on a white triangle that is then pieced to the rest of the basket sections. Then the leaves and flowers are appliqued on top to make a 9″ x 9″ block. ShaRee and Terry picked the same fabric, but I had to be different and went with green and orange instead of green and pink. [Read more…] about Ode to the 1930’s-blocks #16 & #17

We made the deciduous tree blocks at our previous session and they went together quite easily. We can sew things up quickly when we already have the blocks all cut out in kits. Because this quilt is showing more of our individualism, our three block units have variations from each other. They are placed in three different spots in the quilt so we decided to have seasons and make a spring, summer, and fall tree unit. Terry found the tulip fabric in her stash and she and I used that for our spring background, but ShaRee wanted to be consistent with her cream backgrounds. Our summer units are different, but we all agreed on that cute fall fabric.

Since everything went so quickly, we decided to begin the Fields Block. We started laying them all out and realized that we had cut greens and a few golds like the pattern suggested, but we all felt the row needed some brown. We decided to bring browns the next week, cut up a few squares, sew up the block and work on our 1930’s quilt as usual. We alternate weeks on the two projects. But those easy squares and triangles ended up taking us two hours to finish! We are nothing if not flexible, so we cut out the next two 1930’s blocks for future sewing and planned our next move on this quilt. Here are our Fields from top to bottom: ShaRee, Sue, and Terry. This block runs along the bottom of the quilt and is the width of the quilt.

Since we had cut up all those lovely little kits, our first sewing day we got right to the sewing and managed to get two blocks finished. The first block is the Flag block and you can already see our styles emerge. Terry found some fabric in her stash with words on it and some of us used that. This block goes in the upper left corner. Then we tackled the Sun block which goes in the upper right corner. Fascinating fact: ShaRee used 3 different fabrics, I used 4, and Terry used 2 fabrics. We sometimes make completely independent choices, as here, but some of our upcoming blocks will be more similar. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out in the end! Our goal is to have these finished for Alpine Days in August 2016.

blocks by ShaRee

blocks by Sue

blocks by Terry