Cotton Rose Block

My quilt guild, The Cotton Rose Quilters, decided to have a contest among the members to design a "cotton rose" block.  It could really be anything we wanted it to be, but the idea was to somehow make it representative of the guild.  I chose to combine a carpenters wheel block with a friendship star block, using the colors of an actual cotton rose bloom. 

I've always felt like the outer part of the carpenters wheel block mimics a flower.  I thought changing the inner star from the original to a friendship star would represent the friendships that we develop through the guild, and mimic the yellow center of the cotton rose bloom. 

I'm pleased with how it turned out, but there are soooo many half square triangles that making just one block is time consuming.  If I made it again, I might change my method and make some units as flying geese instead of HSTs.

Here are some pictures of actual cotton rose blooms.  They can be single (top) or double (bottom) blooms, and they change from white to pink as the blooms age.

The pattern for the block is available here for free.  Enjoy!

More Star Blocks

Today I used some more of my red, white, and blue scrap fabric to make a couple more star blocks for the National Quilters Day Out/Quilts of Valor project.  The one on the left is a Simple Spinning Star block and the one on the right is an equilateral (or 60 degree) triangle star.  Both of them went together really quickly and easily. 

They both turned out really true to size.  The units that make the points in the Spinning Star block were made oversized, so that they could be trimmed down to 4-1/2 inches squares, which made the final piecing easier to keep true to size.  The triangles in the equilateral star block were cut with a 60 degree triangle ruler, so they were very precise too.  The height of the block was actually accurate from just sewing the rows together, and the sides were trimmed down to make it a 12-1/2 inch square.

Simplish in Circle Play

Last month at our Moda class, our extra project was a quilt called Simplish.  The pattern is available as a free download from Shabby Fabrics.  The original pattern uses precuts from Wilmington Prints fabrics (a 5 karat mini-crystals, a 10 karat mini-crystals, and 1 essential gems), which are all 24 count packages. I used a Benartex layer cake (42 count) in Circle Play fabric, which I already had on hand, and cut 2-1/2 inch strips from solid black yardage for my quilt. 

I still need to find fabric for the backing.  I didn't buy any yardage from the fabric line when I bought the layer cake, so hopefully I can find something that will go well with it.  I plan to bind it in the solid black.  The finished quilt will be 56-1/2 x 70 inches, so it makes a nice sized sofa throw.

Sunglasses Required!

I just realized that I had forgotten to post a picture of this quilt that I finished right before we left to go visit family in the Seattle area at the end of last month.  It was a nice day and I took the picture outside, but then I forgot to post it!  Oh well, better late than never. 

I've been calling this quilt Sunglasses Required, because it is so bright and colorful.  It is a two fabric bargello quilt, made from an ombre fabric and bold print fabric.  It was really pretty easy to make, yet produces a very striking result.  It was machine pieced and professionally longarm quilted.

Ohio Star block

This year my quilt guild is doing a simple sampler quilt for our monthly project.  In January we were given instructions for making an Ohio Star block - a very traditional block.  I wasn't even planning to make the block, because I wasn't sure that I wanted to make the quilt, which will ultimately consist of nine 12-inch blocks. 

However, a nearby quilt guild is planning a National Quilters Day Out project for making Quilts of Valor, and quilters are asked to come by and make, or make ahead and donate, red, white and blue star blocks.  So I decided to go ahead and make the Ohio Star block, but do it in red, white and blue fabrics so that I could donate it to the Quilt of Valor project.