Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Moda Row for July

This month our assigned row was the Weathervane row.  It is due for the class meeting in July.  I won't actually get to attend the July meeting, because I will be out of town visiting relatives in New Jersey, but my row is ready none the less.

Friday, June 17, 2016

Rainbow Binding Tool Star

This is a wall-hanging sized quilt that I made to test out the binding tool star pattern before I tried it large scale for my son's quilt.  I also wanted to try making a different size star.  In the original pattern, you are told to cut out the shape of the binding tool, which is technically 1/8 of an inch shorter than the size of the square that you are sewing it to, so I wanted to see if it really needed to be an 1/8 inch shorter or not. 

So I tried cutting 6-1/2 inch stripes, trimming it them with the angle at the end of the binding tool, and sewing it to a 6-1/2 inch square.  Then I used 3 pairs of colored strips instead of 4 pairs.  It worked out perfectly.  I added a one inch (finished) inner border and then a four inch (finished) pieced border made from the remaining 2-1/2 inch strips.  It used 12 jelly roll strips in total.

I have no idea yet how to quilt it.  If I went with an all-over quilting design, I don't know what color of thread to use, as black seems a bit harsh for the colored areas.  Also, any one of the colors might look odd in the "other colored" patches.  Oh, well, it can stay in the UFO pile for a while until I figure it out.

Moda Row for June

This month our row for Moda class was made of 6 Wheels blocks.  Each block was 10 inches.  I decided to go with 3 blocks using a complimentary color way and 3 using an analogous color way.  And, of course, once again Mickey Mouse makes an appearance. 

I finished it just in time, too.  I finished it on Tuesday with the class meeting on Wednesday.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Binding Tool Star Quilt

In the fall, my youngest son will be living in an off-campus apartment instead of in the dorm.  This new arrangement allows for him to have a full-sized bed instead of a twin bed.  That, of course, means that he needs a new quilt for the larger bed.

I let him sit down and look through my issues of Block magazine, and he chose this beauty for his new quilt.  The original pattern was a little small for what he needed so we increased the number of blocks from 16 (4x4 layout) to 36 (6x6 layout) and left off the border.  The original pattern called for a jelly roll of fabric, but that wouldn't have been enough for the extra blocks, so I figured up the yardage to cut our own 2.5 inch strips.  He went with me down to the quilt shop and picked out all of the fabric.  I think he did a really good job. 

The finished quilt top measures 96 inches square.  In fact, it would actually fit a queen size bed pretty well, as you can see above with it laid out on my queen size bed.