Eat up the leftovers

Leftovers, whether they're in the refrigerator or in the sewing studio, should never go to waste.  Here is what I did with my Panier de Fleurs blocks that did not go in the border of the other quilt:

A little hocus-pocus - add a four patch in the center, cut some grey patches from the leftover border fabric, and voila - a new design that plays with the other one but comes out new.  I have the makings for four more blocks.  Then if I want it to be bigger I have to pick out all the seams of the seven I made the old way for the other quilt's border.

Or I could put them on the back of the quilt.  That might be more rip-rip-rip than I'm up for doing.

Sometime it works, sometime it doesn't. . .

.   .   .and sometimes it's "What was I thinking?"

In my quest to finish all my UFOs, my next project was a quilt made from the Panier de Fleurs line using a Carrie Nelson pattern.  I didn't want to use a plain border so I concocted this variation on the center blocks:

 I thought it was rather clever, until I made the first row of border blocks and laid it out on the floor.  Then it hit me just how wrong it was.  In conception it made sense, on EQ it looked good.  In person - ugh.

So I sat down at the computer this morning and tried to come up with a use for the navy blocks I had made. First I put them alternating with the grey blocks:

 Not bad, but it still didn't hit the mark.  I checked how much of the grey print and red solid I had left, and drew up a very simple border:

This works well.  It's not cutesy and it's not clever but it works.  So I'm powering ahead trying to get this done in the next few days.

I'll figure out something to do with the navy blocks later - don't know what yet.

Yikes, I just made another UFO!

Fifty ways to mess up your quilt block

Well, forty nine, at least.

This is another of my UFOs that have been languishing in my closet.  I made up the main block inspired by a similar one that I saw on the Connecting Threads website about three years ago.  At the time I sewed four of the main blocks and about lost my mind, so I put it away for a while.  The quilt was going to also use the string blocks that were left over from Roll Roll Cotton Boll after I designed a different alternate block for that one, but I didn't like the string blocks in this either.  The strings went back in their baggie and will appear somewhere else.  Well, they will if I can ever learn to love string blocks.  I have to use them somewhere, they took forever to make.

After a number of false starts on the alternate block I came up with this one, so I made a few of them and laid out what I had on the floor.  Pleased with the result, I sewed up a few of them and then resumed work on the main blocks.

That's when I discovered that with 49 separate little squares in a block there were oh so many ways you could get them turned and tumbled and end up with a mess.  Oh so, many ways.  All the little blue arrows are supposed to point toward the center but it is very easy to rotate one when you pick it up and then it's rip, rip, rip.

Has anyone seen this block before or did I actually invent it?  It looks like a super augmented Shoo Fly block.  I think I'm going to call it "Fly Away Home",  The little blue triangles are like homing pigeons all converging on the brown square in the center of the block, their roost.

Bias

Bias bias bias bias bias.

That's what I have been fighting all afternoon.  My quest to finish all my UFOs brought me to the 60 degree sort-of log cabin blocks I started from a pattern on the Moda website.  The one I put away without completing.

The one that I now understand why I didn't complete.

Sheesh - is there another pattern out there with more bias?

Here's a wonky picture of the center with some of the rows still not joined.

See?  You can just imagine.

I hope that the border tames some of the stretchiness or my longarm quilter is gonna LOVE me.