Quilt Top Finish - 169 Cake Stand Blocks

After a year of sporadically working on the Cake Stand quilt, it’s finally a quilt top! 

I’m pretty sure I deserve to do a little happy dance for this one. 

For all of my math loving readers here's the numbers.

The quilt top finishes at 91 x 91

Total piece count is a whopping 

6188

Yep, you read that right.  No wonder it took me a year to get this one together!

This week the plan is to piece the quilt backing from the yellow and teal floral yardage, make a label and attach it to the backing, and then make the binding.  Speaking of a label, I've not come up with a name for this quilt.  Any suggestions other than Cake Stand?

The rest of the week I'll be focusing on quilting the blue quilt on the frame.  I didn't make one stitch in her for the last 2 or 3 weeks. I can't wait to quilt up the cake stand quilt, so that's just the push I need to get ole blue quilted and off the frame.  I guess she’s been waiting patiently long enough.

It was a busy week in the sewing room by the end of each day I wasn't in the mood to work on the yo - yo's.  Only 17 to add the stash, that's better than none.

See you in a day or two for more about last week's sewing room adventures.

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Mini Quilt Blocks Playtime And WIP's

Every now and then I get a hankering for a little fabric playtime.  After a couple of weeks of arguing with myself I finally caved, dug through the scrap bins and made a couple mini blocks.  The first was this adorable scrappy mini Churn Dash block.  The inspiration was found on Pinterest and much to my surprise it had a link to a blog post tutorial.  I found an error/typo in the tutorial but could not report it because the blog has been abandoned.  So if you want to make this block the center square is cut at 2.5".  I used (4) 1" squares for the each side of the churn dash and the green polka dot is 1" x 2.5", the HST's in the corners are 1.5".

While digging through the scraps to make Churn Dash I decided to pull out enough scraps to make a 4" mini dresden using Suzn Quilts Mini Dresden template.  Dresden's are popular again, so I'm seeing them all over social media. It's my favorite block to make, they are so happy and cute no matter what size or color pallet a quilter chooses.

There’s no plan for either one of these blocks. I just needed a little scrappy playtime. Sometimes you just have to dig into the scraps and make something fun, with no plan and no pressure. 

Now it’s back to the design wall to get the Cake Stand quilt top together. All of the set-in triangle units are finished, so I should be able to get this girl into a quilt top in the next couple of weeks.

The first three rows in the upper-left corner have already been sewn together, and seeing those rows come together is so exciting! I’m finally getting close to having a finished quilt top. I can almost see the finish line!

I made a little progress on the yellow yo -yo's for the Yo - Yo coverlet.  34 completed and all the circles have the seem allowances pressed.  Someone asked recently if I'm using a Yo - Yo maker.  I am not.  I'm cutting the circles using a 5" longarm quilting ruler then using Karen Kay Buckley's Perfect Circle templates to iron the seams under.  The running stitch around the circle is free hand stitching.

My plan to get this quilt off the frame was a total bust. I didn’t even touch the quilter all week. 

Maybe this week… maybe. 

 

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Quilting and Shopping

 This past week flew by, and here it is Monday with very little quilty progress to share. But I assure you, I was busy .... just not nearly as busy in the sewing room as I had planned. Apparently, the rest of life didn’t get the memo that I had quilting to do.

My week started with a plan to quilt the Moody Blues quilt, just a little each day, and have it off the frame by today. Well… that plan didn’t exactly go as expected. I did manage to quilt the top border and half of the first row of blocks. So, technically, progress was made. It just wasn’t the kind of progress that makes for a very impressive Monday morning report.

 I’m trying my best to keep the quilting as simple as possible, doing as much free motion quilting as I can with just a little ruler work thrown in.

The original plan was to use only white thread, but I didn’t care for how it looked on the dark navy fabrics. So, as you might have guessed, Jack the Ripper and I had a little playtime.

The quilting plan is to use the same quilting designs in each block ... feathers, curved jumps from corner to corner and straight lines. 

My thought is keeping the quilting somewhat the same in each block will help bring the quilt together.  

Almost every evening this past week, while watching the original Little House on the Prairie series, I made a few yo-yos. Thirty seven to be exact.  At this rate, it’s going to take me a few weeks to get through all the yellows. I guess it's a good thing there's 9 seasons to watch!

As for the Cake Stand quilt, very little progress was made this week. Only 10 inset triangles and corner units were finished. I’d really love to have this quilt top ready to quilt within the next couple of weeks. It’s about time to start getting the yard ready for winter, and after that comes the busy holiday season. Somehow, the year just keeps moving faster and faster.

I was planning a scrappy quilt backing for this quilt ... just pulling yardage from my stash and making it work. Since this quilt is super scrappy, I thought, why not keep the scrappy theme going on the back too?

That plan changed after a trip to one of our local quilt shops, Love It Sew. They were having an anniversary sale with 20% off everything in the store, including the clearance fabric! How could I possibly pass that up? 

My plan for the sale was to stay home and avoid temptation. But when a quilty friend asks you to go shopping after you’ve had a stressful week ... fabric therapy is just what a girl needs to get things feeling good again!

The shopping plan was to simply enjoy browsing, petting all the pretty fabrics, and maybe pick up a few low volume fat quarters. I came home with two FQs.

So I’d say I showed remarkable restraint.

Well, sort of… I also came home with 12.75 yards of this Moda fabric. How could I not? It was only $7.20 a yard!  No digging through the stash trying to piece together a backing for the Cake Stand quilt. There’s more than enough of this one print to make the whole backing.  I could have bought less, but I thought, “What the heck ... just get it all!”

It's called Happy Home by Tara Reed.  I've never heard of her or this line of fabric but it's a large floral and that makes me happy.

We were also given a free goody bag for shopping during their anniversary celebration. I came home refreshed and ready to put the week behind me.  It’s a new week, a fresh start, and a new plan to get things done. 

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Four Projects Moving Forward

 My quilty mojo is running at full speed and there seems to be no signs of stopping.  Maybe it has something to do with the lunar eclipse we had this week....HAHA!  This is going to be quicky blog post.  Let's start with what took up most of my time this week .... processing scraps into the scrap saver system.

Remember the yellow scrap bin from last week? After sorting through it, I cut nearly 150 circles for the Yo - Yo coverlet and somehow managed to turn the edges under on quite a few of them.

My #1 goal for last week was to get the Cake Stand quilt blocks on the design wall.  TADA!  All the blocks I had finished last week are on the wall.  The goal was to sew together a few of the inset triangle units but I ran out of time. So that's going to the top of the list for this week.

I could have sewn a few on Sunday but I decided to finally put this quilt on the frame.  It's been waiting far to long.  The plan is to keep the custom quilting super simple and have her off the frame by next Monday.

Sorry for a short and sweet post but ..... the mojo is ready for more sewing time!

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Tricky Pieced Inset Blocks

 I put the pedal to the metal this week and finished all of the remaining alternate blocks for my Cake Stand quilt.

To make it go even faster, I broke one of my self-imposed rules: all seams must be pinned. That’s right ... I only used one pin at the end! All of the fabrics in these blocks are low volume prints, so if the seams don’t line up, it won’t be that noticeable. 

There are one or two seams in each block that are slightly off, and I think they’re hard to see… well, at least with my old eyes.

After finishing all the square blocks, it was time to start working on the corner blocks and inset blocks.

Below is a clip of the corner of the quilt image pulled from EQ8.  As you can see I don't plan to add borders so the inset pieced blocks will have triangles on the edge of the quilt.

When drafting the cutting instruction page from the information given to me by EQ8, I totally overlooked that EQ had made a huge mistake. It instructed me to cut a 2 1/8" square in half diagonally. Well, that’s WRONG, because that would make the edge of the quilt bias-cut, which would make it stretchy and hard to control. Even with the fabric being starched, it’s not a good idea.

I went back into the program to see if I had done something wrong. I hadn’t. I knew I needed a larger square that would be cut diagonally twice, but I didn’t know how to do the math.  So I used a Quilters Paradise calculator that does the math for inset triangles.  Within seconds I had the new measurement .... 3 1/8" squares.

Here's one of the leftover squares I cut in half to show you the stretch when fabric is cut on the bias.

Below I'm trying as hard as possible to stretch the fabric and it doesn't move when trying to stretch the outside of the square.  The diagonal cut(above) was easy to stretch out of shape.

With the new measurement it was time to dig through the low volume scrap bins.

Before cutting all the squares needed I made a couple test blocks to make sure the measurement was correct.  All was well!  Yippee!

This week I plan to start working on these blocks.  The blocks are a little finicky due to them being so small and the pressing has to match up with the Cake Stand blocks.  Some of the seams are pressed open and some are to the dark.  Hopefully once I do a few of them I'll get the pressing directions down pat and it will go faster.

Of course cutting the inset pieces produced some scraps that will need to be processed into the new scrap saver system.  This will be put on my list of things to do this week.

I've also pulled the yellow scrap bin and will begin cutting circles for my Yo - Yo coverlet.

Before I can do anything, the cutting table needs to be cleared.  What a mess!  First thing to do is put the Cake Stand quilt blocks on the design wall.  The inset triangles can be added to the wall as they are made.

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Nothing New~ More Yo - Yo's And 16 Patches

 Well I finished all the blue Yo - Yo's.  It wasn't planned, it just happened.

107 of them in one week is pretty good progress.  I'm not sure how the yellow and green ones snuck into the mix.  I don't remember cutting them, but obviously I did.

This week the plan is to start making more yellow Yo - Yo's.   I also need to start digging around for a new storage container.  I'm pretty sure I have a larger clear tote hiding the spare bedroom closet.

Late Sunday evening I finally found the time to press the 16 patch blocks.  24 blocks total, 12 from last week and 12 from this week.

I'm thinking it might be time to start putting these blocks on the design wall.  Maybe that will be the push I need to get them finished.

This quilt was started in March of last year.  It's taking much longer than planned.

Only 48 more blocks to go and then I can start on the set-in blocks.

This last picture is what I saw Sunday morning on my way out to the garden.  Funny thing is didn't rain at our house until 12 hours later when I was mowing the grass...and it poured!

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