Moda Building Blocks {finished at last}

I finished hand stitching the binding onto my Moda Building Blocks quilt this week. I think that might be my favourite part of quilt making, it is contemplative and satisfying.

I learnt in the process of making this quilt that I don't actually like the look of sampler quilts much, although they are interesting to sew. However, I have grown quite fond of this one.

I have two more quilts to bind. After spending much of the year feeling like I just had endless WIPs, there are finally a few in the finishing queue.

Round robin #1

We swapped the centre blocks for our round robin at last week's Monday Modern meeting. I have to say, I was initially a bit stumped with the block I received, so it sat pinned on the wall for days while I thought about it.

I didn't think it lent itself to anything medallion-ish, so I googled some images for seminole piecing and decided to go with something along those lines. It is probably not exactly the thing to do to start with a bit of de-construction but that is exactly what I did. I just couldn't figure out a way to integrate it with anything else without taking the border off, especially as the fabric is different to anything I have in my stash. 

This was such a great exercise in thinking. I'm pleased with what it became especially as I just made it up as I went along.

After round one, my block which went to Robyn, looks like this:

I think it looks great - I can't wait to see what happens next month!

St Louis Star 2

A winter cold and some less-than-exciting sewing (backings zzzzz) have conspired to rob me of my sewing mojo. In an attempt to get it back, I decided to do some purpose-less sewing yesterday. You know, just for fun.

I went hunting in Quilters Cache and looking for something to take my fancy. The  St Louis Star 2 block caught my eye. I'm not hugely keen on paper piecing but I'm really pleased with how this turned out. It might even be promoted to 'starter block' for our Monday Modern round robin.

Today I got back to work on my Treasure Map blocks after a bit of a revelation. It is soooooo much easier cutting on the bench (I'm sure most of you know this).

See that pen? It's a Frixon pen. This is my latest favourite-handy-thing. It makes nice dark lines for marking and then they just iron away. I found it at Ribbon Rose.

I have two quilts about to be dispatched to Carol Longarm. (That's not actually her name, but its the name she goes by in my head). I'll be so pleased to get these back and bound and finished.

Round robin with Monday Modern

Our Monday Modern group has decided to do a round robin starting next month. It's not going to be a secret round robin, instead we will share progress with each other each month. Not having done a round robin before I wasn't sure what to do for my starter block. A couple of the others have done paper pieced blocks, but my first attempt focused on colour and shape.

After seeing Karyn's block I visited Bubblestitch just in case I want version two to be a paper pieced block . I'm very taken with the wolf block pictured below. I suspect this is because my poem-of-the-moment is called "Little Red Cap" by Carol Ann Duffy. It's in a collection of poems called "The World's Wife", if there is even the tiniest smidgen of the feminist in you, you ought to check it out.

...As soon as he slept, I crept to the back

of the lair, where a whole wall was crimson, gold, aglow with 

books.

Words, words were truly alive on the tongue, in the head,

warm, beating, frantic, winged; music and blood.

from Little Red Cap by Carol Ann Duffy

Moda building blocks update

Thank you for the suggestions you left in response to my last post 'Pondering'.
I have done some picking apart and adding in, and I think the whole thing is looking better now.

I remade a few blocks using a new fabric - the one in the centre block above. It picks up the blue and the green and is just generally quite lively. 

I then added a block of small blocks down the left hand side and put some strips of the low volume fabric in amongst the blocks to break them up. Unfortunately no picture of the whole thing yet, it's blowing a gale here today!

Pondering

I love going along to our Monday Modern meetings. There is always plenty to laugh about as well as food for thought.

Last night we heard from Linda talking about the process of her Lone Star makeover, and Heather who has done crazy bold things with her Moda Building blocks quilt. You can see what it used to look like here.

This caused me to head home from work in the daylight for once and take a better photo of my Moda BB quilt. You can guess where this is heading right?

My theme this year seems to be making quilts I'm not that fussed about and this one is no exception. I don't have any sort of art/design vocabulary to work with, so I'll just say it looks squished up, unbalanced and a bit grey. I didn't follow the original pattern layout because I wanted a smaller version and I suspect this is a major contributing factor.

This is what I'm pondering. Do I pick it apart and try to salvage it somehow, or just quilt it, bind it and give it away to the first interested passerby? The pondering is the result of the one block I really do love. (Top right corner).

If at first you do not succeed...

I have learnt something important over the few short years that I have been quilting. If I start something and I don't really like it, continuing on will not make it grow on me.

I have been wanting to make an Irish chain quilt for a while now, and thought that a dark chain would look really dramatic with my AMH Folk Song fabric. Indeed it does look pretty dramatic.

Although the dark fabric looks black here, it is a peppered cotton and is in fact a dark charcoal (I think it might be called Carbon). Like many a super model I'm guessing, it photographs really well but in real life looks quite different. The result was way too heavy/dark for my taste.

This morning when I woke up and looked at the dark chain version, I knew that I couldn't love it no matter how much I wanted it not to be a waste of several hours of sewing. In version two I used Lecien Yarn Dyed Melange/Chambray in natural which I bought a while ago from Polka Dot Tea Fabrics for another project.

It is quite a different look but I'm much happier with it. I'm hoping that the chain effect will still be able to be seen when I have more of it completed. The melange/chambray is lovely soft material to work with and it looks like a linen without the bulk. This close up up might give you some sense of the textured look of the fabric.

Off I go now to spend some quality time with my seam ripper. Joy.