Design Wall Monday ~ 5 Inch Cake Stand Blocks

The weekend began with an ambitious goal of tackling 20 blocks. Clearly, that didn’t happen, but hey, no stress, there’s only so much cake one girl can handle!

Sewing these 5-inch Cake Stand blocks is just as tricky as you'd imagine.  There's barely any wiggle room for mistakes or sneaky fixes. Once the quilt is done, those little uh-oh's will probably vanish like crumbs from a cake! 

One of the small annoyances I'm embracing in the quilt is the clash of prints I think don't mix well. Case in point, the bottom right block on the design board. Plaid and stripes together—ugh! But it's staying put, like it or not.  We'll just call it giving the quilt character.

It's the little imperfections that gives a quilt a tale of its own. When this quilt gets passed down, someone will undoubtedly give it a thorough inspection, spotting the flaws and jumping to conclusions. 

For instance, most of the cake stand bases have matching fabrics, but a few don't because I ran out of bonus half square triangles that matched. Instead of stressing over perfect matches, I just went for coordinating colors and declared it good enough.  Anyone inspecting this quilt might assume it’s a mistake on the maker’s part, but you and I both know it’s just sheer laziness on my end.

In other news...

Take a look at my new Zinnia patch, it's like a rainbow exploded! This year was an experiment to see if these beauties could thrive in what can only be described as a weed jungle. Turns out, they're loving it! So, next year’s master plan... double the flowers, double the color!

Nine Patch UFO = A Quilt Kit

Back in 2014 I had grand plans for a simple nine patch quilt.  For some reason the plan changed. 

Six months later I used some of them to make my Patriotic Picnic quilt.

Then a year after that I started another quilt to use up what I thought was the last of the nine patches.

In January of this year while sorting through the UFO's I found more of the nine patches.  This week a plan has been made to finally use the last of them.  It'll be a simple small quilt using the fabric scraps from the nine patches.  The large floral print will used for the backing.

Sadly, I was three pieces short of making the quilt.  No problem, that's why we have fabric stashes!  I pulled several fabrics to audition.  Only one made the cut.

In my opinion a floral print would have been better since all the other fabrics are florals but in the end the color of this print looked better than any of the other prints I pulled.

Before storing this project away as a quilt kit it was added to the design wall.  It took a bit of shuffling fabrics and patchwork until I was happy with the layout.  Then they were carefully removed from the wall in order from left to right. 

This quilt is small, 58 x 58.  So, it will probably be the next quicky quilt to be finished.  By the way the inspiration for this quilt was Cranberry Chain by Laundry Basket Quilts.  

Lori Holt Fabric 2 Bucks A Block

 It's time to play catch up.  I'm six months behind on this Lori Holt fabric block of the month from my local quilt shop, Back Door Quilts.  

This block of the month is extra challenging for me since it requires Thangles.  The challenge is all in my head.  Silly reasons like...#1 the cost of Thangles...$7 is not going to break the bank. 

#2  Ripping off the paper...which takes almost no time.

Since I like working with starched fabric it took me a little longer to prep my precut fabrics.

But the magic happened after pinning the papers onto the fabric.  Within 15 minutes they were sewn, cut, papers removed and ready to be sewn into blocks.   WHOA!  That is quick.  I've never timed it before.  So now all I can really complain about is the cost which isn't much for 450 HST's.

  

Piecing the blocks took about 24 hours...HAHA!  I was in no hurry and had several interruptions.  My main goal for the week is getting the quilt on the frame quilted.  So, these blocks are just an added bonus.

There was some leftover fabric.  

I'm assuming it will be used for the sashing and cornerstones of the quilt top.  Below is the quilt shop sample quilt.  My quilt will be bigger because I'm making two blocks a month instead of one.  The yellow squares show are the blocks I've finished.

And here are my finished blocks.  The plan is to catch up before the last block is released in December.  This should be easier now that I've embraced the Thangles.

A Few Cake Stand Blocks

Well as you can see my plan to lay this project away for a few days didn't last. You all understand, right?  After all the hard work of cutting and organizing how could I not piece together a few of the blocks.  So, Friday night I loaded up a design board of Cake Stand Blocks to be sewn.

Then a board of 16 patches.

And then I just kept making more in my spare time all weekend long.  Sigh...I love them.  

As I sat back looking at the design wall on Sunday evening, I began to think about my quilting journey and what it took to get to this point.

 Years of saving every little bonus half square triangle and triangle shapes to sew into HST's.   Thousands of them!  I would like to tell you it takes patience to get to this point but really it took a lot of half assed planning and procrastination.  It may not seem like much to some but for me it's a big deal.  A lot of things and people have come and gone in my life, but one thing has stayed the same, quilting.

I've been quilting for almost 40 years.  It's hard to believe. This hobby has been with me through all of life's ups and downs.  Some folks are emotional eaters, me too, but I'm also an emotional quilter.

As I sew the blocks together, I'm playing a quilters game of I Spy.  

I Spy a fabric...

...from the first quilt show I went to

...gifted to me from Beverly

...from the quilt I made dad when my brother died

...from a trip with Judy to Ben Franklins in Southern Indiana

...I bought last week

Someday I'll be gone, and the quilt will live on, hopefully with my family.  There's no way to share with them all the memories this quilt holds.  It reminds me of looking through granny's old photo album.  Black and white photos of people I'd never met.  No names, only faces but they all have a story that only granny could tell.

My newly made blocks were carefully placed into the storage totes for safe keeping.  You never know how long it will take for me to be in the mood to make more.  Who am I kidding, I want to make more now but I know there's a quilt on the frame waiting to be finished.  So, the plan is to quilt on the frame this week.  Should I need a break, I have a 2025 BOM project that is way behind. 

13 Years Old ~ Partially Quilted Lone Star UFO

 Over the last month I've been watching the "Quilty Christmas in July" series on the Sew The Distance Youtube Channel.  Kris has been posting a video a day with great tips and ideas for sewing up Christmas gifts or projects for yourself.  One of the tips she shared was to finish up those UFO's and give them as gifts.  Most of the work is already done so it would be quick to finish.  

As you all know I recently went on a quick finish quilting spree for a couple of months and thoroughly enjoyed the feel-good boost I was getting from finishing them.  Kris's video reminded me of a couple Christmas projects in my UFO stash.   The first one is this Lone Star quilt I started back in 2012.  It was pulled off the quilt frame about halfway through the quilting because I was not happy with the quilting I chose for the border.  When I decided to pull it out of storage the other day, I thought I still needed to rip out the border stitches but much to my surprise I had already ripped out all the stitches!  YAH!

All it needed was a lint roller to remove a few stray threads.  I also needed to relax the creases left from the previous quilting.  The cutting table was cleared off for this monster sized quilt (96 x 96).

The best way to remove those lines is to spritz them with water and give it a gentle rub with your hand. 

This is before...

...and this after it dried.  TADA!  Works like a charm!

The next hurdle was the thread.  Remember, I was new to quilting on the frame, so I was still learning and trying new things.  At the time I was using embroidery thread for quilting, the same thread I used with my embroidery machine.  Seemed like a good idea at the time and I liked the way it looked on this quilt.  Unfortunately, I don't think there's enough of this light-colored thread to finish this quilt.  No problem, I'll order more.  Guess what?  In my online search for this thread I found out this company no longer exists.  OH NO!  The online search began.  Searching Ebay, Etsy and any shop that mentioned ARC thread.  Somehow, I stumbled upon a PDF for ARC Poly to Isacord chart.  Yippee! The thread was quickly ordered and should be here sometime next week.  I don't plan on quilting this up anytime soon, but I would like to have it finished by Thanksgiving of this year.  Just in time put on the bed during Christmas.

The quilting around the applique is a bit heavier than I would do these days but I'm not ripping it out.  The applique was my design and was machined stitched in place with clear thread. These days I use Superior Threads Mono-Poly for invisible machine applique but I'm pretty sure for this quilt I used whatever they had at Joann's.

Before loading this back onto the frame, I need to add a quilt label to the very busy back.  My goodness, that backing is awful....LOL!  I'm not a fan of poinsettias but it's what I had on hand.  It's fun to go back and look at our older quilts.  Styles change and so do our taste in fabric and quilt designs.  Just wait until you see the other Christmas themed UFO quilt, it's a hot mess!  But at the time I thought it was just too cute. More on that in a week or two.

Sorting Units For 169 Small Scrappy Quilt Blocks

 Making big scrappy quilts from small blocks can be challenging and it's easy to get discouraged or get tired of the processes.  I think that is perfectly normal and it's a good idea to take breaks and work on other things when feeling overwhelmed.  This quilt project was set aside for almost 4 months, and it may get pushed aside a few more times before completed.  

Everything you will see in today's post took three days to complete, working an hour or two at a time.  Taking breaks to rest he mind and body, plus I do have a life other than quilting.  I must eat, bath and keep up with the rest of the chores in Podunk.

Each block requires (6) different background squares, (1) set of (4) matching half square triangles and (1) set of (2) matching half square triangles.  These matching sets of half square triangles are from my bonus HST stash.  This project has barely put a dent in that stash.

Adding the small half square triangles to the large half square triangles was the easy part.  If I had to guess I would say this task was completed in under an hour.

Adding the (6) scrappy background squares proved to be a bit more challenging.  It would have been easier had I had a wider variety of background prints. 

It took a while.  I'm not a clock watcher so I really have no idea how long. I just work until I need a break and then came back and started again...several times.  By the way, I don't have a clock in my sewing room and I'm not one to look at my phone clock.  More often than not my phone is in the other room on silent, all social media notifications are turned off, all day every day.  When taking a break, I'll take a picture of my progress and check my phone to see if anyone called, texted or emailed. 

During my break on this day I had to come up with a plan for storing these.  Can you believe it?  I had no plan whatsoever!  

After finding a storage solution for the cake stand blocks it was time to start the harder task of sorting fabrics for the 16 patches.  Since there's 16 fabrics in each block, I need a little more space so I can see each fabric in the blocks.

My goodness!  I'm pretty sure I got in my 10,000 steps on this day. 

 It was a reverse matching game.   But I did it!  Each block has 16 different fabrics!  Yipee!  The chances of two of the same fabrics touching when the quilt is assembled is pretty good but I'm crossing my fingers and hoping the quilty odds are in my favor.

Each little 16 patch was neatly stacked and placed on design boards then placed in a storage box.  Four boards total.

The test block and the fabrics for the inset blocks were also added to the box.  

I won't assemble the inset blocks and corner blocks until all the cake stand blocks and 16 patch blocks are completed and put on the design wall. 

The cake stand blocks were stored in the same manner.  The only difference is I had to stack several blocks on top of each other.  The picture below shows one block, the large half square triangle on the bottom and the rest of that blocks fabrics stacked on top.  

About 4 or 5 blocks are stacked together on the boards.

Inside this storage tote is my notes for the quilt and the test block.

This project will be put away for a few days.  I still have the Strawberry Shortcake quilt on the quilt frame.  It hasn't been touched in about two weeks.  Time to get in there and knock it out!