MORE BLOCKS DONE

My relaxation time is making these blocks.

Patch as Patch Can....WEEK 6......
what does that mean? These patches are put in so precisely to make the pattern, there seems to be no 'patch as can' about this block. Can you see I boobed on the dark fabric, I used the wrong side sometimes...Oh well!!

My Lucky Stars...WEEK 7
Oh yeah! With 69 pieces to this 8" - yes I stuck to that size crazy person -I cannot see anything 'lucky' in it, only how it went together - surprisingly easy!!

Morning Star 2 - WEEK 8
I really enjoyed making this little block, well 12" block, I am very happy with the way it turned out.

Fancy Stripes - WEEK 9
hmm more like cheaters Log Cabin really, this was sooo quick to make, it fairly flew through the sewing machine.

Bears Tracks... WEEK 10
A lovely block cos it is to do with Bears. I collect soft teddies or ornament's of bears so was very happy this was in the pack to make. Are they coming or going?

Chimneys & Cornerstones... WEEK 11
Not a lot to say of this cos it was another speedy one to make, love the secondary pattern you get when you link it with Courthouse Steps though. Nice one!

The Queen's X... WEEK 13
hee hee she was probably cross someone put those little triangles in her square!!!

Slowly but surely, I am catching up. Having fun whilst doing so too. :-)
Is this OK to put several in one posting or should they all be separate??

Week 7 Again

Back in week 7 I tried to re-do the block and ended up hating what I made. So today I decided to go back and do the block as it was designed. Holy buckets, there were a lot of small pieces in this thing! But I like it now and am glad I re-did it.

glad this one is done!

This one was definitely a time-sink! I enlarged it to 12" but there were still the same number of pieces...

Edited to add: I think it might be a little easier to make this block 12" instead of 8" and the math really isn't so hard! The small blocks finish at 1.5" so they're still kind of small.

And the crazy fabric came off the give-away table at my local guild last month. Unfortunately I have the selvage edge without the manufacturer's name, so I don't know who made it.

I'm going to be out of town for a bit and will miss the next 2 Fridays, but I'll catch up when I'm back at the beginning of March.

My Lucky Star - Reconstructed

Finally here is my finished block. A bit late, but I got it done. This was done just with HSTs and squares. I increased the size of the block by 50%, but when I did the calculation on the individual squares or HSTs I forgot to exclude the 1/4" seam allowances so in the end my block ended up being 14 1/2" instead of the 12 1/2" that I was aiming for.

The most painful part of doing it this way was trimming all those HSTs, it took a long time. Overall I'm pleased with the outcome but I would never make another one of these.

One thing I would like to say is thank you to everyone here for their encouragement and helpful suggestions on various topics. I can say that my piecing has improved greatly and my cutting of the various pieces has become pretty much spot on. I certainly noticed it this weekend when I was busy making the wonky star blocks for the Bushfire Quilt project just how smoothly my blocks came together. Also tonight when I was piecing this block it came together without much frustration.

Edited to add: By using only HSTs and squares this block is 101 pieces - yes that is nuts, but the whole block was nuts to begin with so I figured I had nothing to lose.

I did it!

I'm thanking "my lucky star" this one is done!! What a devil.

In the end it is quite square, basically the right size, and more than "good enough". Wont be hurrying out to ever do another of this pattern though....

argggggggg

hours and hours later, I have to rip out! I feel like I've made so many of these pieces so many times... I had real problems believing I'd made some "right" the first time, so made some more, only to realize they were the same, and I was trying to put them in the wrong way round.... one thing after another after another.

Now, I got the points nice and pointy, only to realize I'd lined up the wrong side of the two pieces and the centre of the block is on the outside edge! duh.

I'm glad I've got a couple of days of work, 'cause at the rate I'm going its going to take a few more hours to get this one together....

While my points and alignment aren't everything I might want, given that I'm working at the pattern size (8") I'm happy enough... not only are the pieces tiny, the flipping pieces on corners, then aligning that with a HST beside it leaves no room for error on the seam -- even a tread or two shows up so quickly...

I'm for renaming this block a word with a lot of star characters (*) in it in keeping with its current name of "lucky star"....

My Lucky Star - Deconstructed

I first tried my hand at the original sized block and my HST turned into a complete mess. So I checked to see what others were doing and resizing the block seemed like a good idea unless your brain decides to go on vacation over the long weekend (we had a holiday Monday here). My mind didn't want to work with fractions and I just couldn't figure it out. Then I thought what about jut doing the block with the regular sized HSTs that I have been making. Well my block would have come out to 16" and that's just a bit much.

In an e-mail with Quilt Pixie I mentioned my struggle and she got me sorted out with the math so I now had the correct dimensions. But the instructions were still not the clearest and all that flipping stuff wasn't sitting pretty. I read some more entries and sure enough folks were struggling with this block. so I decided to scrap the instructions, look at the block and see if I could do it with just squares and HSTs. Now is this more torture or less, I really don't know because this is as far as I have gotten. I've got all my squares and HSTs made and now to put it all together. How long will this take, I don't know, but I will keep you posted. Probably I'll have something by Wed, since tomorrow evening I have a quilt guild meeting.

When you wish upon a star

I made these wonky stars for the Bushfire Project and got them sent off before the latest snow storm moved in and made driving to town a chore I refuse to tackle. I love doing these. I may add a wonky star quilt to my bucket list.

After viewing everyone else's week #7 blocks, I decided to try doing it without resizing. I don't have the EQ program and my math skills are on par with your average garden snail, that is to say pretty much non- existant. In a momentary burst of inspiration,I decided to use the bright kids fabrics I used for the 9" block. I figured I'd add sashing at some point and make all the 8 and 9 inch blocks fit in a quilt....somehow. Well that was my thought anyway.

So, totally ignoring all the instructions, I cut all the itty bitty squares and proceeded to put the block together using only the finished block diagram. I layed all the parts out on my ironing board. I was merrily sewing away when I noticed a problem.

Having already spent several hours on this block, becoming well aquainted with the seam ripper along the way, I quickly fixed the error.



That was the least of my errors. I used the scantiest of 1/4 inch seams yet at every step of assembly nothing fit. The parts seemed to shrink. I pressed with a dry iron and was very careful not to distort. I'm blaming the spray starch. The finished block is barely 8 & 1/4" and quite wonky on the edges. Thank the Lord I will be adding little borders to bring it up to a 9" size. I can cheat and square it up at that point. Here's my Mickey Mouse Star.



At least my points are nice and pointy! I think the two blocks play together nicely.



I know my little grandaughter Kiera will like it when it eventually grows into a quilt for her.

Giraffe Yuk

OK, this was my week to have a failure. I up-sized it to make it 12 inches, but got some of my math wrong, so the points got lost. I don't like my fabrics choices. And I altered the pattern, because I don't really like the original pattern. But I don't like how I altered it, either. So there you go. My Giraffe Yuk block.

Rebecca's Lucky Star

Oh my stars!  This was a difficult block!  I used EQ6 to print out rotary cut shape sizes and still some of the points were off.  I can't figure out a good way to paper piece this block without adding a lot of seams, or having a lot of little sections.  After all was said and done, I realized I made this block 12 inches instead of 10 like all the others!  I guess I will be making two quilts then, as I won't make this one again in a 10 inch block! :)

I am trying to find a way to recolor the blocks without changing the original block too much if I don't really care for it.  I draw out the block and then look at it with no color and then play to see how many ways I can think of to color it and then pick the one I like best.  When I look at the block with no color I can see many shapes and sometimes nifty designs show up.  I have been quilting about 15 years, and this is a fun challenge for me.  

Edited to add:  I cut all the pieces out the shape they would be.  The red stripes were cut from rectangles and the ends cut at 45 degree angles.  But they could have been done with hst's.

Heather - Week 7

I went off on my own tangent with this one. I sketched out the pattern and then made it my own way without looking at the directions. The first glimpse of an 8 x 8 grid with the saying, "Makes an 8 inch block" nearly stopped my heart so I figured it was best not to read on.

I used bigger squares of fabric whenever possible and added triangles to the corners. Those aren't always the right size to make it turn out perfect but by the time I figured that out I was pretty far along. After last week's quality seam ripper time I was content to let it be. It isn't really as wonky as in the picture. I must have been taking it from a weird angle.

I Thank "My Lucky Stars"

I was nervous. I am big enough to admit it. All these little pieces and I am just now figuring out how to do a proper HST. But, lo and behold, I think this baby quilter is starting to toddle rather nicely!!!

Look, all my wonderful instructors!!! By George, I think she gets it! The corners wobbled a little bit, but ya know what? I am not complaining at all...LOOK AT THE HSTs! LOOK AT THE ALIGNMENT! It doesn't really show up, but I used three colors. I used two pinks and one black...I now think I might have chosen something to show more constrast...but this is definitely a keeper block!

Right beside it, is the wonderfully cheap little tool I must credit with my HST mastery. I got it last night as I ventured to quilt store HEAVEN...see my blog post for today. There is always a master instructor there to help with questions and issues. I had both...I normally do. She suggested the cheapest item (can you believe it?) and said it would help immensely...she showed me hw to use it and I went sailing from there.

Can you tell I am completely tickled. I may even go back an attempt last week's block now...maybe...

Sending you all FBP love,

Marlene

My Lucky Stars!

Here is my block for this week.

But before you go saying anything nice, just be forewarned!

I cheated!

Yup! I cheated! I just couldn't see the 'point' of using 69 pieces of fabric just to end up with an 8 inch block. So I increased everything by 50%. Now I have a 12-inch block that I like. It still took me three hours to complete though. But because this block had a lot of sew and flip pieces in it, it was a good learning tool. I always seem to have trouble getting the points neat and sharp when I use that method. So I used this block to practice that technique on. Instead of just sewing a square diagonally across the corner of a piece, I drew a line on the back of the fabric where the seam was to go. I used an ordinary ruler and a pencil. I used a larger square of fabric and trimmed the piece after sewing. It worked! But it was a lot of work and I still don't like the sew and flip pieces!

Em's block #7

Okay this block was a bugger for me. I don't like to sew a square on a square to make a triangle. I don't get a lot of success with my points matching when I do that. That is why I make my hst the way I do. I love my nifty notions rulers. I guess I could have made more of these little hst and not sewn squares in the corners of bigger squares. But I did not feel like making even more ity bity hst. So I did the sew and flip and I guess I will have to live with things not matching up just right.

And look I have it done on a Friday. Maybe you can learn from my troubles like I have learned from your in the past weeks. One thing I know I will not be making this one again.

week #7

After last week's struggles I had high hopes when I made the drawing that this week's block would be a nice, sane, easy one...

And, while there are a heck of a lot of pieces in a little 8" block (69 in total), the pieces all fit into square subunits so all that nasty bias stretch from last week should be a thing of the past... here's hoping!!

So, you want to see this week's block? Head on over to Quilter's Cache and check out "My Lucky Stars!" :-)