Shaded Four Patch Rabbit Hole

It's been weeks since my last post, and we're still knee-deep in paint and renovations across four rooms. If you missed the chaos, check out the previous blogpost here. I haven't stitched a thing in what feels like FOREVER! To cope, I've been indulging in the next best thing: endless scrolling through the quilty corners of the internet. Naturally, I wanted to make every single quilt I saw, but the one below completely stole my scrap loving heart. It was quickly sketched in EQ8, and the quilt-planning frenzy commenced! Now, I just need to crack the code for quickly making the red-highlighted unit.  

 EQ gives you three choices for making this unit: paper piecing, individual paper templates, and rotary cutting. The first two? Absolutely not happening. Rotary cutting triangles is fine, but let’s be real, I’d prefer a faster, easier method, something like whipping up flying geese or half-square triangles in bulk. And here’s what EQ suggests for rotary cutting.

I painstakingly did all the math and drafted a quilt plan, only to realize afterward that my old Billie Lauder books probably had a shortcut for this quilt unit. Honestly, I should just keep those books on a pedestal in plain sight, think of the time I’d save!

Well, I'll be darned, it's actually in one of them! Who would have guessed they’d call it a shaded four patch? The instructions are decent enough, but oh boy, I’d love to see this magic in action. So, off I went, back to the wild world of the interwebs for some visual enlightenment!

I stumbled upon a video by Deb Tucker.  Same method just oversized so you need to trim them to size. It was surprisingly helpful, though, with some genuinely useful tips sprinkled in.  Click image below to watch or click here to go to the video on YouTube.

Then I stumbled upon this gem from Just Get It Done Quilts. She has instructions for 3 different methods.  She even went the extra mile and cracked the code for making eight at a time! Her 8 at a time method isn’t in the cards for me right now, but it’s comforting to know it’s out there for future quilting emergencies.  Click image below to watch or click here to watch on YouTube.

Now that I've cracked the Shaded Four Patch code, this quilt should be a walk in the park!

 Before I go, let me share a hidden treasure, a video by Billie Lauder herself. Billie passed in 2018, and sadly, her website and most of her videos have vanished into the abyss. After a rabbit hole expedition, I unearthed four of her videos on YouTube, but they were not worth watching.  Then, like a quilting miracle, I found the one I remembered best, the Ultimate Scrappy Four Patch.  It too will be helpful in making my quilt block.  This technique is in one of my Billie books. Watching her video brought a big smile to my face. She's absolutely giddy about four patches! The video is embedded in a Quilted Hugs blog post, so you'll need to visit the blog to watch it. I snapped a screenshot for the image below.  Head over to the blog post, click the video, and don't forget you can make it full screen by hitting the square in the corner. Happy watching!

See you in a day or two for the sewing room update!

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No Quilting For Me

 A huge shoutout to everyone who noticed my vanishing act! It warms my heart to know you’ve been missing the weekly quilty updates. I had grand plans to check in nearly every day these past weeks, but by the time the day ended, I was too pooped to do anything but kick back and chill. Sewing progress? Virtually nonexistent. The last thing I managed to sew was on September 19th.can you believe it? Wow!

Every day, I promise myself I'll get out there, sew a few blocks, or cut fabric for my Yo-Yo quilt, but by the time the day is over, that motivation has packed its bags and left town.

What’s been keeping me so busy? Painting, unfortunately, not the masterpiece kind, but the kind everyone dreads and procrastinates on. We (a.k.a. me, myself, and I) decided it was time to paint the laundry room, kitchen, living room, and sewing studio.   All rooms will be painted the same colors.  Antique white for the walls and White Cotton for the trim.

And as always, painting is never just painting, it’s a scavenger hunt for things that need fixing or upgrading. What started as a two-week painting adventure has now transformed into an epic saga stretching well into the unforeseeable future.  HAHA!  One of upgrades/fixes is this window into the kitchen that is in corner of my sewing room.  We think my sewing room was a carport at one time.  The floor was concrete before Mr. Podunk added the ceramic tile.  The rest of the house has a crawl space an the typical plywood subfloors.

My sweety is a Mr. Fix-it.  There's almost nothing he can't fix.

However he's not real handy with caulk or drywall mud. What you see below is my work after he "tried" his best.

The walls in the sewing room are textured.  Neither of us like it but making the walls smooth is a DIY nightmare we would like to avoid.

All of the fabric has been moved to the spare bedroom.  Well, all except the scrap bins and three project boxes.  My plan was to sew a little each night. LOL!  Silly girl.

The spare bedroom is a chaotic haven of fabric, bursting at the seams with so much color. I can't help but confess that I visit this room daily.  Those clear bins filled with colorful treasures make my little art heart skip a beat! 

For now, everything else from the sewing room has been stored in my fabric cabinets. When it's time to paint this space, all of it will be moved into the living room.

The sewing room has officially retired from stitching and now moonlights as a door-and-trim painting studio, doubling as a cozy storage unit for my painting supplies.

The sewing machine table has turned into a catch-all. It’s a bit disheartening, isn’t it? Stay strong, Lea Anne! They say absence makes the heart grow fonder!

So that's it, my quilting friends. How about weekly updates on the painting saga?

 

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UFO Finish ~ Snow On The Farm ~ Test Block

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! Oh yes, quilty friends, I’m a total snow fanatic and eagerly anticipate that first frosty flurry. In my dream winter wonderland, the boring brown Podunk landscape gets buried under a fluffy white blanket from early November straight through to March.  Of course, I wouldn’t want blizzard conditions.  Just enough snow to make snow angels, build snowmen, and craft snow forts to hide a stockpile of snowballs for launching at Mr. Podunk when he gets home from work... HAHA! 

Quilt measures 45 x 45

And let’s not forget sledding! Unfortunately, the only hills around here are packed with trees, and at my age, trees and sledding don’t mix well. The next best thing? Taking the truck into town and spinning some glorious donuts in the snow covered Walmart parking lot. That’s classic Podunk entertainment, something we may or may not have indulged in back in the day!  But these days we tend to keep our winter entertainment simple with no chances of crashing or visits from the police.

Since I see snow as one of life's many simple pleasures, I thought it only fitting to keep the quilting on this quilt simple.  The crosshatching lines were drawn on the quilt before loading it to the quilt frame.   Doing ruler work typically takes longer than free motion but not on this quilt due to the large scale of the quilting.  She was quilted and off the frame in a little over an hour.

The quilt back was made (not one solid piece of fabric, more on that in a bit) using the leftover fabric from the quilt top. By the way, it's old Walmart fabric from back in the early 2000's.

I usually like to store my quilt tops with backing and binding so they're ready to go without any hassle when it's time to quilt. But for some reason, this quilt top bundle ended up in the chaotic mess you see here. Clearly, I must have been drunk on the day this was stored and I don't even drink!  Thankfully, trimming off the wonky edge gave me just enough fabric to piece it into a quilt backing.

When I say just enough, I mean teetering on the edge of disaster. I thought about adding a strip of white fabric at the bottom of the backing but decided to live dangerously instead and leave it as is.  She was carefully loaded onto the quilt frame with scraps of 100% polyester batting, and she quilted beautifully, leaving just a tiny sliver of backing fabric at the bottom of the quilt.

As always, a simple label had been added to the backing before quilting.

 In my opinion this quilt needed a simple white binding.  Anything else would have taken away from the beauty of the snowflake.  To keep things quick and easy the binding was 100% attached by machine.

Remember the title of this post said test block?  Well, I designed this block in 2015, original post here.   I never planned to make a larger quilt using the large snowflake block, but a friend suggested it could be a simple and quick Christmas quilt pattern back when I had my pattern writing business.  I reluctantly put together a pattern and quilt, and honestly, it looks pretty dull, doesn't it?  You’re probably thinking, why a black snowflake? Well, no deep reason, black and white Christmas decor was just all the rage back then. I was trying to sell quilt patterns by making them trendy and not my normal happy bright colors.  It worked!  I sold a ton of this quilt pattern.

Full Quilt 71 x 71

And here's the photo that made this pattern fly out of my shop.  Add a little of my favorite color(red) and a few pillows, then put the quilt on point on the bed and TADA!  She looks pretty cozy and inviting, doesn't she?  These days, this quilt and the black pillows are with my son, adding a cozy touch to his couch during the holiday season. 

Yep, I love to play in the snow!

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Yo-Yo Quilt/Coverlet Plan

 All the pink Yo-Yos are finished...169 Yo-Yos completed! Sure, I'm only 27 days into a two year plan and already behind by 100 Yo-Yos, but at least I now have a clear baseline for what I can achieve each day.  Breaking it down day by day seems a bit unrealistic for such a long-term project. It’ll be interesting to see how much progress is made a year from now. Who knows, I might even get it completely finished... HAHA!

The original plan was a super scrappy Yo-Yo quilt.  No real design.  Simple and easy.

And then Carol left a comment on my previous blogpost about this project.  She asked about the layout I had chosen.  I started thinking maybe I should take a look at my options.  Below is a picture found on Pinterest.(with no link or information).  I'm pretty sure mine would look similar.  Maybe I should dress it up a bit.

Thanks to Carol (genuinely, not sarcastically), I've spent the last few days spiraling down a Yo-Yo quilt rabbit hole on Pinterest in search of layout ideas. I found some fantastic designs and even stumbled upon other creations made with Yo-Yo's, which have all been promptly added to my new Yo-Yo folder. This little wreath I found is wonderfully adorable and ridiculously tacky at the same time.

The toilet paper holder made me laugh, and I couldn’t help but blurt out a loud, "Oh heck no!"

It brought to mind my granny's crocheted doll toilet paper holder that always sat on the back of the toilet (picture from Pinterest). Even as a kid, I thought they were strange and a bit creepy.

The rabbit hole led me to some interesting Yo-Yo layouts that caught my eye, so I decided to create a new plan. First, I needed to figure out the finished size of my Yo-Yo's. I started with a 5-inch circle of fabric, which resulted in a finished Yo-Yo measuring about 2.25 inches.

The new plan is still scrappy, but I've incorporated solid green and white to help calm the quilt.  Each square equals one 2.25" circle.

Is this layout set in stone?  Nope.  I'll keep working my way through all the colored scraps in my stash while keeping my eye out for other layout ideas.

For now, there's only 1,056 more scrappy Yo-Yo's to go!  When they are finished it will mark a little over halfway through the Yo-Yo making process. There is a total of 800 green and white Yo-Yo's.  I have three bolts of solid white in my stash but no green bolts of fabric.  Once I begin assembling the 25 patches, I'll start searching for the perfect final border fabric, green might not be the best choice.  Maybe a double row of white?  What do you think?

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