I signed up for a block swap with a new friend I met at the American Quilt Study Guild annual Seminar in Manchester, NH, last October. Some of you may know Barb Vedder and her blog, Fun With Barb. In January she announced a Churn Dash block swap. You were to choose reproduction or modern as a theme for your blocks. By the time I emailed the only opening was for modern. I signed on, and meant to have the blocks done right away. But as always, time flies by and I'm working on them now. The guidelines for the modern swap was to use jewel tone solids with low volume background prints. Weeks go by in my recliner, and I finally pull fabric. Unfortunately, I remembered modern, but not necessarily jewel tones. I used my new Accuquilt Go Big electric cutter to cut squares, half squares and strips (I'm so in love with this machine!). I then sewed a set of blocks that I shared to Facebook. Not jewel tone! While this brown is a nice fit in a "modern" quilt, it doesn't meet the guidelines for the swap. It's ok, I'll save these 9 blocks and perhaps use them in the top I end up making.
Continuing on, I checked my other color choices with Barb, and have now made 36 blocks, and have 18 to go. I'll get to cutting more this afternoon, and have these done and in the mail in time for the March 1st deadline.
As a side issue, the cutting of blocks with the Accuquilt dies requires some calculations. I need 54 blocks total and need to make at minimum two color combinations. So, with the four colors I'm using that means 13 or 14 blocks of each color. The dies include squares (middle block) and half squares (corner blocks) so that was ok. The half square die cuts two with one pass, and up to six layers with one pass, so I had them cut in no time. The middle side piece, with a background and a colored rectangle, wasn't quite as straight forward. I used a 1-1/2" strip die to make strips of the fabric, then sewed pairs and cross cut with my rotary cutter. I could have sewn the strips and tried doing the crosscut with the 2-1/2" strip but didn't want crooked cuts.
I've got my next little project lined up already. It came in the February Quilty Box I received recently. The box always includes fabric, a pattern, usually a spool of Aurifil thread, and another item or two. This month features Julie Herman of Jaybird Quilts. I love the geometric designs she makes with her Sidekick and Hex'nMore Rulers. I've made her Gravity quilt and it is out to be quilted. I didn't discover Julie's patterns till 2016, but back in 2014 she asked for people to make blocks for her wedding quilt. You can read about the final quilt - I just love it!
One final item for this post is I've joined the Quilt Qwazy Queens Blog Hop that will take place March 15 - 21. We will be sharing our UFOs (unfinished quilty objects) on this hop. And a few are going to swap UFOs with someone else! My trouble will be deciding which UFOs to share. I have the individual units made for the Quiltville Mystery that started at Thanksgiving. They just need to be assembled into blocks. Maybe a deadline to show it would motivate me to get it assembled! My day on the hop is Wednesday, March 21st.
Thanks for visiting,
Mary
