welcome to wensleydale

i made a test block. yes, i already have sooo many projects in various stages of making. but this quilt has been haunting me and i just wanted to try it out. one block, that's all.

it's all the fault of this book which has been sitting at the bottom of my stairs for several weeks. i walk past it many times a day and see the wensleydale quilt on the cover every time i go by. i'm a little obsessed. 

i resisted buying "quilt recipes" by jen kingwell for a few years now. i already have so many quilt books, i knew many of the patterns in this one were template quilts, her patterns are amazing but usually sparsely written, i wasn't likely to use the baking recipes that make up half the book, and it has been priced at over 50 USD since it was published.

but . . .

i've had my eye on the wensleydale and daylesford quilts, both in this book. so when i found the price dropped on amazon, i ordered the book finally. just perusing jen's  quilts is always inspirational. i'm not sorry i got it. the "winki stars" and "diamond exchange" quilts also appeal to me greatly, but my goodness, they are complicated quilts! one of the things that makes jen's quilts unique is that she does templates and handsewing for many of her quilts. this produces shapes and looks you don't get with machine piecing. but template cutting and all the handsewing of them is outside my comfort zone and developed skill set.

i saw foundation paper piecing templates available for wensleydale and figured that would make things a snap to sew together. they've been sitting in my sewing room for a while.

this morning i passed that darn book cover again and just couldn't take it any more. shouldn't be too hard to put together one block, right? so i went in the sewing room and hunted out the papers. i looked at the pattern in the book, which is only instructions for using templates. i thought i had done paper piecing before but i quikly realized i had absolutely no idea what i was doing. 

i googled "how to do wenselydale foundation paper piecing" and had a few videos come up. i thought certianly someone somewhere had done a video of themselves using these papers to make this quilt block. 

• i found a helpful video for how to cut fabrics for the project from "the quilted chicken" on youtube. it did help with that, but didn't show how to put the block together.
• i was able to access two videos from "klquilts" on tiktok (an app i don't use or have), but i could only find part 1 & part 4 of the videos, which left a gaping hole in my knowledge of the process.
• those were the only wensleydale-specific videos i found, but i did watch this fpp video from "a quilting life"" that rounded out my ideas for how to proceed.

this, of course, took a lot longer than i intended just to get ready to start. then i pulled so many fabrics. i love the look of the couple of blocks showing on the book cover. here are the elements i noticed that appeal to me:

• high contrast between between each layer of the block making them distinctive from each other
• lots of dark and moody fabrics mixed with the bold and punchy ones
• each block has at least one low-volume print
• variety in scale of prints between elements
• lots of stripes (particularly pinstripes), DS-type blenders, ginghams and plaids, dots, vintage-y florals

i really love the mix of the moody neutral colors with the reds, deep blues, and golden yellows i see in these few blocks on the cover. but when i looked around my sewing room, my eyes fell on a dark, moody fall-colored bundle i bought a few years ago. that seemed the way to go and i started pulling more fabrics from there. i started with the DS stash for some of the blenders (which is when i made the happy discovery of all that yellow "katie jumprope" print i needed for my "sunny yellow crossroads" backing). then i pulled out my fall colored liberty drawer for florals in the right tones and feel. i grabbed a few jen kingwell neutral blender prints and some low-volumes. it's a start. 

i kinda need a whole shelf to store this pull on. but there's no room for that here. i already have one in-progress jen kingwell quilt taking up two shelves and half the design wall. (really should get that finished.) but we won't talk about that right now. there's a wensleydale to start!

once i got started, the block went together pretty easily. i used the cutting dimensions from the quilted chicken video, which were pretty good. i did feel some might be a little too big, but they worked and were definitely helpful.

i made a mistake or two along the way. once i forgot to flip the sewn triangle out of the way when i trimmed the seam allowance and cut it off completely - oops! fortunately, there was enough fabric left to redo the piece without additional cutting. another time i sewed one on backwards. unpicking fpp is a lot harder because i'm using a tiny stitch length - about 1.5 on the juki - which is how you do so the paper is easy to tear and remove.

fpp does make a lot of trim waste and none of it salvageable for anything useful. you can see the pile of trimmings from one block above. i didn't know this about the method before.

one perk of fpp is it's supposed to have extremely accurate results. so far that's true for this block although my very last seam on the outer triangles appears to be wide. i didn't lose the point off it but there are a few threads of fabric above the point showing and i sewed right on the line. i guess we'll see if this happens again.

so that's how my afternoon was spent - making a wensleydale test block. conceivably i could make one a day for two months and have a quilt top. i don't know if i want to do that yet or not.

too late?

just found this mass of yardage of the absolute perfect print (from denyse schmidt's "katie jumprope" collection) for the backing to my “sunny yellow crossroads” quilt hiding in my stash! 

i have a step ladder folded up leaning against my fabric shelves. the seat of the ladder blocked my view of this gem hiding in my DS stash when i was searching for a backing the other day. i need to look more carefully in future. what a find. the orangey-red daisy centers perfectly mirror the center squares i chose for the blocks. 

i’ll be saving the bees i ordered for something else. maybe my “grellow garden geese?” that quilt is also subtly garden themed. looks like I can get to work on the backing now! 

what now?

i'm stalled on my building projects once again, so today, for the first time in forever i cracked open those blue sewing room doors to see what i could do with fabric. and i find myself a little stumped what to pick up.

i immediately rejected the two projects on the floor: "pinky stinky edna" and the yellow stars quilt. d5 hasn't finished the 16 patch blocks for "edna" and the yellow hst project was just a trial block i'm not ready to dive into yet.

i thought about making some binding for the liberty courthouse steps quilt when i realized i already had some ready and waiting. that felt promising until i thought about dragging out the cutting mats to trim the quilt. best to leave that until i have the other projects ready to trim also.

so then i looked at the two completed tops waiting for backs to see if i could easily get those done. 

i have been debating the options for my "groovy liberty" quilt for weeks. i desperately wanted to use that bright and bold colorway of the "fairy forest" print (not even positive on the name, but it's the one near the top with the red mushroom in it and at bottom left with the yellow flower), but after several hours of online research (really, ugh) i was unable to locate it anywhere at all and gave up on my hearts desire. i have a couple yards of "june's meadow" with a blue background that i got on clearance a few years ago. i've decided this is the easiest backing option. i didn't use it on the front of the quilt, but i did use another color of the print there and it has the right colors. it doesn't have the really bold, groovy look i wanted for the quilt, but it will do and it uses up stash.

the only reason i didn't jump right into basting this quilt together is that i want to batch baste this and the next one at the same time.

so i set my sights on the "sunny yellow crossroads" quilt to see what i could come up with for a backing. i have a few large cuts of golden yellow prints, including an especially large cut of this golden yellow gingham. i tried to make myself use it, but i just couldn't. i like this top a lot and i did not want to settle for a mediocre back that i wasn't chuffed about. so i went to etsy and found some more of one of the yellow bee prints which is now on it's way to me. which is great, but it again left me not making anything and sets me back from basting the liberty quilt.

this is beginning to feel like my building projects.

if i do find something to work on, i'll share it.

log cabin at the cabin

and just like that, my blogging streak is over. i've not been quilting, either. early mornings have become workout time and all the other things have taken over what's left in the day thereafter. i was spending a whole lot of time with my grandchildren until my daughter up and took them to my cabin several hours away for the whole month of august. how dare she.

but this last weekend we decided to visit our own cabin ourselves and got to see the grandkiddos. i brought along handwork and actually pulled it out a few times. my christmas liberty log cabin was the easiest pick. i'm not as opposed to its christmas colors and cheer now as i was in the spring by the beach. late summer and at the cabin, i can stomach a bit of christmas. besides, if i want to have it a finish for this coming christmas, now would be the time to start.

i'm shadowing the outer edges of each square in the blocks and will add a stich in the middle of each strip as well. it's actually rather hard to see the handquilting on the print fabrics. that's fine. i haven't decide yet if i'll do any stitching in the green sashing areas. i'm could do it either in white or green, so it doesn't have to stand out. undecided. i'll do the blocks first and make that call later. as d3 says, "we'll burn that bridge when we get there."

while i was working on this, d1 was looking at the fabrics in the quilt and asked if there were christmas fabrics in it or not. basically, no - these are not christmas fabrics. there are one or two that are christmas versions of classic tana lawn prints, like the red "wiltshire" print above, and a "betsy" that has stars added to it, but the rest are just red and green prints i put together. add the dark green sashing and the bright red hearth centers to the blocks, and voila - it looks like christmas, which will be here before we know it.

fingers crossed i find more time to stitch on these blocks.

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!

girls night in

 

this photo doesn't do justice to the volume of these pieces d5 sewed together for our "pinky stinky edna" quilt. but isn't it a lovely stack? it brings to mind the layers of a croissant. 

last saturday afternoon she came to me and said, "mom, let's quilt!" i had house design projects (custom drawer inserts) and planning for an upcoming family event that i needed to be doing for deadlines, but i was burnt out and could not resist her siren call to the quilt room. so we had a girls night in together, both piecing away.

so many cute bits of fabric spread out on the sewing table! lots of fun projects going at once, just how i like it.

we both get a kick out of chain piecing "bunting." this was the first string she pulled off. later it stretched across the room and then some.

she worked away quite diligently on piecing the rows of four while i jumped around doing some yellow projects.

this is what i got done:

• hsts and a test block
• two "sunny yellow crossroads" pairs
• one leaders-and-enders "lemonade at sixes" block

ducks in rows

 just popping in to say i have all the blocks for “groovy liberty” complete, sashing and all. and one to spare. the rows are in pairs. as soon as i join the pairs together i’ll have a top!

lining up

 

my last bits of liberty arrived, and while nice, were not what i was fully hoping. but i switched out one print for the pink and brown print i wanted to remove; then got on with finishing the blocks and assembling a quilt top.

i added the grungy crossweave as sashing and am happy with the look. i was thinking as i put the short pieces on the sides of blocks for the vertical sashing that it's so nice how sashing makes it so you don't have to worry about seam matching as you do when the blocks join each other directly.

then, as i began joining up rows with the horizontal sashing in between, i thought how cornerstones are a really good idea for getting the sashing to line up. i was thinking this because i wasn't using any and immediately had issues with the vertical pieces matching up across the horizontal pieces even though i pinned right from the start this time. ugh. i thought they were lining up and everything was going well. but when i pulled the first pair off and opened it up, things did not look good. the photo actually looks pretty good, but it got worse from there the further down the line i went.

i was a bit stumped. i thought i was getting them lined up as i pinned them. i was feeling the seams further away from the sashing where the block and sashing joined together, which felt lined up. but they weren't.

i don't think louise (my quilt mother) every taught me how to line up pieces that have sashing in between. and i haven't seen anyone else talk about it, either. so i had to come up with an idea myself.

this time i marked the horizontal sashing piece with where the vertical piece already attached to it was. i made small pencil marks where the seams were at the outer edge of the sashing that would be sewn to the other blocks. i lined the edge of the ruler up with the seam between block and vertical sashing, then marked down the line from it on the horizontal outer edge. it was the right side of the fabric, so i kept it under a 1/4" where it would be included in the seam allowance and not show.

the pencil marks blended in with the crossweave fabric, but i could see them well enough in person.

then i laid the next row on top, right sides together, lined up the vertical sashing ends with the pencil marks, and pinned at each seam. it worked! whew. i was happy to have that figured out. 

backing up a bit - i did a good job laying out all the blocks in a pattern and sticking with it as i sewed them into rows. i've seen other quilters have a system for stacking the blocks and ways to mark them, but that never works for me. the only (nearly) failproof system for me is to take a photo of the blocks in the order i want; then set the photo up in front of me when i'm sewing and consult it constantly as i sew the blocks together. constantly, as in, for each and every seam i'm sewing i check and double check i have the correct blocks going together and turned the correct direction.

and somehow i still manage to turn one or two overall. but its so much better than when i don't do this!

when putting this top together, i laid out the blocks in rows. first i sewed the short, vertical sashing pieces to the blocks, then sewed the blocks with sashing into a row. next, rows were joined into pairs with the long, horizontal piece of sashing between them.

the above photo is the blocks for one row with the short sashing attached, ready to be sewn into a row. i keep them on my lap and consult that photo propped up in front of me constantly. i put the sashing on two blocks in the first row on the wrong side, so had to unpick those, and put one or two other blocks together the wrong way, and had to unpick that. but for me, this was doing really good!

the lining-up of the short sashing across the long pieces between rows was giving me a bit of a headache, so i had to break out the chocolate for a pick-me-up. it reminded me of a small instagram trend a few friends and i had going once apon a time where we used the hashtag #chocolateonquilts. i'm not sure why it was "on quilts" instead of "and quilts," which makes more sense, but i'm not the one who started it. i just remember we would occasionally share a chocolatey treat photographed with a quilt and mark it with that hashtag. in the good old days before ig ruined hashtags.

summer sunnies

one of the summery wips i'm itching to complete is this "sunny yellow crossroads" project. i've been working on a few others, but this has been hovering in the back of my mind, waiting its turn. i cut some low-volume leftovers into pieces for a block, so i got the project box out to put them away. that's all it took. i was curious how far i'd gotten and if i'd gathered enough other fabrics to complete the top.

the box contained 12 complete of the 28 needed blocks sets  and two sets of low-volume pieces cut.

then i pulled down the basket where i've been chucking all the cuts of yellow and low-volume fabrics i might want to use for this quilt. it was literally overflowing with fabric. so much yellow! sadly, way too much yellow. i could easily do another yellow geese quilt or some such thing with all this yellow.

i selected my 16 favorite prints to use and then paired them with low-volumes to make the rest of the block sets. i had one or two already cut from scraps, but needed to complete the set with more scraps. so i went digging through my scrap drawers and baskets searching for a few more scraps of the needed fabrics. instead, i found four other sets of yellow fabrics already cut. oh no! more culling of all the yellows i'd already selected. 

i tried to keep a balance of monochromatic prints and those with some touches of other colors already in the blocks i made first. i also selected which stayed based on keeping a range and balance of the yellow shades. it was a little tough!

eventually, i got my choices narrowed down and settled in to cutting and piecing. i made sets 13, 14, and 15 while d5 and i were having a sewing-and-listening session (we're on to "the emperor's ostrich" by julie berry). she's back to working on the 16-patch blocks for "pinky stinky edna," which i should be able to piece the top for pretty soon.

the next set of 16, 17, and 18 got made the next day. there are some really old pieces from my earliest quilting days in these blocks and one or two brand new ones. because i'm such a fabric nerd, i'm going to talk about them.

the butterfly print is from sandi henderson's "meadowsweet" collection, one of my all-time favorite collections. it's more than a decade old and has been used in a couple of my quilts over the years. it doesn't always work up nicely in large cuts of the fabric because it tends to not be printed perfectly straight. but it works well in this block, which makes me happy.

 the bees are from a newer heather bailey collection called "local honey." i'm working a number of bee prints into this quilt and really like this one. i had this rather odd netting print, low-volume fabric already cut for a block set, but had no idea what to pair it with. it's really rather strange. i think it works nicely with the bees, thank goodness.

this mismatched set breaks some rules and gave me quite a headache figuring out. the sprigged yellow fabric in the "road" pieces is a momo print from the "it's a hoot" collection, a last leftover from nearly the first quilt i ever made. i searched high and low for another morsel of that fabric and couldn't find a bit. i really wanted to use it in this quilt, so i kept looking. i noticed i still have two jelly rolls of the fabric line (??? i already used one, why did i buy that many?), but didn't want to take out the best fabric from the roll (that i have no plans for). but as i couldn't find any scraps anywhere else, i finally pulled the strip of this print out of one jelly roll.

but that strip isn't wide enough to make the background pieces for the block, so i paired the low-volume i used for the sprigged momo print with some pieces of heather ross's "far, far, away 3" moon print to make a set. i already had those moon pieces cut and pairing it as the other half of the momo set meant i didn't have to cut any more of it from what i have left. good enough!

most of my yellow prints for this project are very yellow, with yellow backgrounds, i have a handful like these two prints that are low-volumes with large spots of yellow. it mixes things up a bit, breaks up the hard-and-fast rules i made for the quilt.

another thought to note about cutting for crossroads blocks - if cutting a directional print from yardage, cut the strip the to the wider measurement so the print runs the correct direction. thinking to save a 1" smidge of fabric by going with the shorter cut first, i ended up with a few pieces that are not facing the way i'd like, such as the moon print. that one isn't too bad, but some others would be much more noticeable (to people like me who notice these things). it's something i noted and implemented with later cuttings.

last pair to share for now - one that's gold and bold and a softer, buttery yellow. i especially like the combination of the the sun print juxtaposed to the raindrops low-volume print in the set on the left. that's 19 & 20 of 28 complete. only 8 more to go!