eleven sets of sixes

these little mini crossroads blocks for "lemonade at sixes" are stacking up. i've continued to piece them, mostly as leaders-and-enders, while i work on other projects.

i've completed 11 sets of the 28 something i need, am working on the next set of 3, and apparently made an extra set of the pink flower on navy print in the roads sections. i have no idea how that happened, other than i am me. now i need to decide if i should make more of the same print with the background or not to balance things out.

flimsy finishes

i got so close to completing this top the weekend before, but i did not cross the finish line. all week the pairs of rows were draped on the chair next to the blue sewing room doors and i just let them be, working on other sunnier projects instead.

when this weekend rolled around, and i finally had time to quilt rather than design kitchen drawers, i had completed the last of my "sunny yellow crossroads" blocks and was excited to put them together. but i looked at these rows, so close to being a flimsy, and decided to do the quick work first.

voila! some pinning and two long seams later i had my first quilt top - flimsy - of the day finished.

once laid out, i could see i'd turned some blocks. in fact, half of one center row is turned the wrong way. oopsy. but it's not obvious and it's not the kind of thing that needs to be fixed. this top has a topsy-turvy, jumbled look anyway, so the pattern guidelines i used weren't brazenly apparent. i only noticed because i was looking to see if i got all the blocks in the correct positions and noticed some were turned. but no unpicking today. this flimsy is finished.

i got right on to putting these blocks into flimsy form. i timed myself: 10:15am start to 2:05pm finish. i had a few minor interruptions and took periodic water breaks, but i worked pretty steadily the whole time. i don't know if 4 hours was fast, average, or slow?  however that measures out, this is my 2nd flimsy finish of the day.

what a good saturday!

final sunny blocks

plugging away a pair or two at a time on these sunny crossroads block pairs. this is pair 21 (i think)? i really like the pairing of the heather ross far, far away 3 "sleeping beauty" with the tiny yellow gingham from her trixie collection.  i did some sort-of fussy cutting for these pieces. i didn't exactly choose where i was cutting, but i was picky about which pieces i used for this block. there are two slightly different princesses in the print; mostly the top of the bed is different. i used one of each of these offset by some of the lily-of-the-valley parts in the other two pieces. for the block where the "sleeping beauty" print was the roads, i opted for the sprays of lily-of-the-valley as a contrast to the high-volume yellow gingham. i'm quite pleased with both!

once i had my pieces cut for the crossroads block, and some squares for the hst star quilt i'm making from scraps, i only had 7" of my "sleeping beauty" fabric left. i've used this print a few times already, including as a backing. and i might still have some yardage in stash (maybe). so this piece needed to be processed for scraps, which i was really reluctant to do with such a large scrap piece. i mean, there are so many ways it can be cut! and this is a print i'm partial to. i was afraid to get it wrong, to commit to a size when i didn't know what it would be used for. 2.5" strips are the most versatile cut, but this was shy .5" to do that 3 times. finally i got brave and decided it wasn't too precious of a fabric to just cut without knowing what it was going to be. i looked at the layout of the princesses and made cuts for 2 - 2.5" strips on the outer edges, where most of the princess parts were, and 1 - 2" strip down the center that is mostly white with the lily-of-the-valley sprays. 

it's done'! i cut it and now it's in the scrap drawers.

i counted how many blocks i had left to make and realized i was one short. (or was i?), so i pulled this lovely upsized "d'anjo sky" liberty print i could see in the clear bins on the shelf in front of my cutting table. it's such a pretty print and i like it paired with this anagram print, which contrasts so nicely.

then i made a couple of blocks in not very exciting fabrics, the kind that are more blender prints. it's okay that they're not very exciting or eye catching. quilts need those quieter spots to support the feature fabrics and make the pretties shine and stand out more. they have a job to do and i think they're great supporting actors. there's oscars for those, too, you know.

the next time i was making blocks, i counted again. and i only needed two more pairs but i had six fabric pairs pulled, read for cutting. what happened? where did i count wrong? or did i set some fabrics out i didn't mean to, didn't put them away? a few weeks ago when i pulled this project out, i originally culled all the yellows down to the 16 pairs i needed, but then found about four pairs of pieces already cut. i think maybe i never decided which four to put away, thinking i would decide as i went. oopsy.

this blog could be called "oopsy quilts," couldn't it? how often do i say that? ah well, it all comes right in the end.

 i now have all 28 pairs complete and have begun laying them out! this has been one of the easiest tops to lay out yet. there are 8 blocks across, 7 rows down. i started by laying the top row alternating the yellow background blocks with the low-volume background blocks. i kept moving left to right, and down a new row, until i had used one each of the 28 pairings. this got me to the middle of the middle row. then i started using the matching blocks, which made up the 2nd half.

i kept up the pattern of alternating yellow and l-v, but i added one rule: the block could not be on the same right or left half of the quilt as its partner. it was simple to keep track of where the quilt splits in half vertically, four left of center and four right. that worked easily and beautifully. i felt like that rule kept the fabrics spread out enough from each other. i looked the top over and moved a few blocks around, mostly to spread the different tones of yellow more evenly. that was it! easy-peasy.

next time you see this, it will be a completed top! yay for a flimsy.

learning curve

i really like how crisp and flat my pieces are when i've left them under the floppy books after pressing. it's a sight this quilter likes to see. they don't stay that way once they've been handled again for further piecing, and of course once in the quilt they get crinkly and soft, just how we like a quilt to be. 

but for a moment, they are perfectly flat and stiff, as good as if i'd starched them.

for reference, quite often after i've pressed pieces, i set a couple of "floppy" soft-cover books on top of them for a bit to help flatten the seams i've just pressed. originally i used some old phone books (and still do). now i also use some sewing books i was going to purge and donate but found work really well for this purpose, too. i stack 3-4 of the floppy books on top of the pressed pieces until either i need to move them to do more pressing or until i'm ready to use the pieces. often the last pieces i press in a sewing session get left on the pressing table under the books until next time i sew. those tend to look especially nice.

d5 and i had another sewing session after school a few days ago. she has finished all the row sets for the "pinky stinky" edna 16 patch blocks and told me she wanted to press them herself. i was not going to argue with that! at this point, pressing is my least favorite part of the whole quilt process. (well, maybe basting? but there's a lot more pressing to do all the time, so i guess it wins.) usually i press for her, but she was ready to take on a new skill.

it was harder than she thought, of course. and she's a little perfectionist! she didn't fully follow my advice for how to lay out her pieces to make it easier to remember which direction to press the different rows (so they nest). naturally, this meant she got mixed up periodically and pressed in a different direction than she intended. she's still wrapping her head around how all that works. i know the more she does it, the better she'll get with the process and the more it will sink in for her.

after pressing a whole lot of sets, she decided to join a block. this was another learning experience for her, one with it's own frustrations. seam nesting and matching such small pieces was harder than she expected. but she's learning! and she sticks with it. i showed her how to nest the seams and pin in the seam directly. it worked pretty well. there was one pair of rows that didn't match up well enough for her and she was happy to unpick and redo.

after a while she had her first 16 patch complete! i'm so proud of her. she did another one before feeling done for the day. only about 30 something more to go. a few more of these put together and i'll start assembling the quilt top.

side note: linda asked me recently which of us gets to decide on background music when we're sewing together. actually, we mostly opt to listen to audible books together. this session we finished up the very end of our previous listen (julie berry's "the emperor's ostrich; fun, creative, well-read, recommended) and had to pick a new one. we did have a bit of a skirmish deciding on a new one from the extensive library we have. i started one she immediately vetoed; she picked one but after two chapters said, "okay, let's listen to "jane," the book i was trying to get her to choose. so l. m. montgomery's "jane of lantern hill" it is for now. although i've got to say i can barely stand how entirely horrid and toxic so many of the characters are! i read the book years ago and really liked it. listening now i'm appalled at the grandmother and aunts. but i know it will get better, so we're suffering through the set up of how bad jane's early home life is. the reader isn't great either, but she's tolerable to listen to.

inspired #4, yellow hsts

all those yellows i pulled for "sunny crossroads" that i didn't get to use have been nagging at me. i've subconsciously been searching for a use for them. my first yellow quilt was hsts set in a flying geese formation. hsts did cross my mind for a new project, but i had no plan at all for a configuration.

from moglibalu51 via instagram

the browns add a nice touch

at the same time, i've been enjoying watching my IG friend, ms. balu, put together this lovely yellow hst project. it makes me smile whenever this pops up in my feed. she's making a golden version of the "cool blue stars" hst quilt from jolene's "scrap quilt diary." the quilt has a subtle star pattern to it, but what i mostly see because of the arrangement are qsts when i look at it. there are ways to make the star pattern more visible, like the browns ms. balu added, but i also like it just barely there.

the other day the two ideas collided in my head - why not do a yellow version of the jolene quilt myself? i already have all the yellows pulled and could cut for both projects at the same time. so when i cut the next set for "sunny yellow crossroads," i cut some squares for hsts as well.

i've been piecing "sunny yellow crossroads" with a light grey thread on the same machine as "groovy liberty" and "lemonade at sixes." but when i decided to try out the idea for the yellow hst project, i chose to put yellow thread on the third machine. the grey would have been fine, but that machine has a  1/4" guide foot on it, which doesn't' work for making hsts. so really, it was the foot that determined the need for involving the 3rd machine. and why not? it wasn't being used. one of the reasons i own two machines myself is so i can do different types of work on each one instead of constantly changing feet.

so yellow for hsts it is.

jolene wasn't specific about fabric placement, but the photos reveal a sort of pattern to how she laid out the hst pairs in a block. you get two hst units per pair of squares, so i'll be using each combination more than once in a block. you could totally mix it up randomly, but i'm going with a little bit of a placement pattern. the outer squares use 3 different combinations 4 times each. in the center diamond, i used 2 different pairs, twice each.

this is my test block for the stars. it's subtle, no? if i mix in some brown stars like balu does, which are so fabulous, then they would show up more in the top. i don't know what i'm doing just yet. there are so many yellows in my pull! 

i haven't done the maths yet, either, but i think there are a lot of hsts in this quilt! that it could eat up a lot of yellow fabric. 

and there are a lot of yellows on the cutting table. i can cut my crossroads pieces and squares for hsts all from the same strip. that's efficiency!

i do admit as i was making these yellow hsts and thinking about aaaaall the trimming that will be involved, i looked up on the design wall to "gypsy child hst" and thought, "do i really want to do another quilt with so many hsts?" i guess the answer is "yes?" i do eventually want to make another yellow quilt and why not this one?

 i dove into the scrap drawers for all the leftover strips from the crossroads blocks i already cut for to make more squares. and i am getting so many squares from the strips i'm cutting now that a few are going into the drawers to fill those up as well.

i don't know how soon or quickly i will be working on this project, but i'm happy to have another use for all the yellows i pulled. and i love that i'm making something from jolene's scrap diary, too. there are so many good projects in there and i never imagined this is the first one i'd do, but here we are. when inspiration strikes, you run with it!