These placemats have been my leader/ender project for some time now. I used cut blocks from my 2-inch square bin.
Six are scrappy, but I did play with color organization in some. And six are made withone color family.
All the bindings save the green one came from my saved bag of leftover bindings. How fun is that.
I had enough of this fabric for all 12 placemats–and as they will be used here in coastal South Carolina, the “watery” theme will be fun.
Here’s what a pile of 12 placemats looks like. They won’t take up much space in a drawer.
And there is one other note. I have been trying to learn to install a binding on a quilt with my sewing machine. The president of Patchwork Gals makes these bindings beautifully, so I was inspired to learn how to do this task as well as many quilters now do. In her extensive demonstration, she made for us recently, I learned a lot.
But, only one of these placemats has machine sewn binding. It is ok, but not as pretty as what others can do. It takes practice they say–and figuring out what works for you and your machine.
I’ve ordered a special foot for my Janome that might help: a left side bi-level foot. It is meant to work with things like bindings.
We’ll see. Meanwhile, I hand-sewed 11 of these placemats, and I’m happy with them.
Next up: more placemats using the 2.5-inch bin of squares. Maybe I’ll try machine sewing this batch.
This older Kaffee Fasset fabric (which I saw as winter squashes like one sees in New England in this colorway) of “beach balls” started my recent play time with the 8-inch Cat’s Cradle ruler. This piece of fabric had been hanging out in my stash for, literally, years. I chose the fabrics for this new quilt series from those used in this fabric.
The first quilt is “Fall’s Splendor,” and it is done and bound.
BUT, there is a problem that is driving me more than a little crazy. When I sewed the rows, I didn’t put them back on the design wall as I went. So, I didn’t notice that I had sewn two blocks out of order on the third row from the bottom on the left until the top was quilted and bound. The reversal throws off that pattern of the small squares going up the diagonal line.
Ugh!!!
This quilt is otherwise so handsome. But what to do??
I tell myself that no one is going to hang this quilt on a wall or spread it over a bed. It’s a lap quilt. It’s meant to be hugged and loved. I tell myself I didn’t even notice until it was finished.
I also tell myself that I might be able to take off the binding in that spot and to take out the quilting stitches–which would involve more than those two blocks–and to sew the blocks in correctly and redo the stitching using the pantograph.
Can I do that? I don’t honestly know. It would be tricky–and I don’t want to hurt other parts of the quilt pinning it back on the longarm. Could it just be draped over the longarm rollers.
The current quilting is beautiful, so can I replicate that impact?
Honestly, I don’t know what I’ll do yet. I’m just letting this problem simmer.
Yesterday I ran some errands after 6 pm when it was a bit cooler and the weekend traffic out to Isle of Palms had slowed down.
As I came home and turned right onto my street, a young looking female mallard duck was in the middle of the road. I couldn’t see if she had moved away from the car, so I stopped and got out.
Mommy duck had five babies hidden in the grasses on the island. Here I talk to her in what is my “pet” voice–which is way too highly pitched, LOL.
I called my neighbor, and she and I helped the mommy duck to safely walk her babies to the water in our neighborhood’s front ponds. From experience, I know that’s what ducks do. They nest away from water, and when the babies can do it, the mother “walks them to water.”
This task took both me and my neighbor and the mommy duck. The babies were newly hatched and weak, and it was so, so hot. The mommy duck led the parade and kept to places she could hide the babies until we helped her move them along–past front porches and fences and up to the pond.
My neighbor checked this morning, and the duck and her babies are all still in the front pond. So I walked up to take some pictures.
Nope they aren’t in the big pond where she went first yesterday.
Here they are–in the quiet part of this pond away from the fountain–and near the woods. It’s a much better spot for her and her family. At some point she crossed the street with them.
This little family will be very fragile for some time. There are so many predators around then: a passing alligator or river otter, a hawk or owl, and so forth.
We will see. But my neighbor and I did what we could.
PS: And on Friday, when I left Costco, a mother goose was crossing a very busy road with 9 half-grown little ones following her in a straight line. That area is too busy for me to have gotten a video.
The third and my last quilt top in this current series exploring how blocks from the small and large Cat’s Cradle rulers might work together is done and folded up on the design wall while it waits its turn on the longarm. There is now, too, a purchased backing that is…”wild.”
I used the same fabric palette for these three quilts. The middle quilt, “Spring’s Song” is on the longarm now.
The first quilt that started this journey, “Fall’s Splendor,” is getting its binding sewn down.
And I will confess, I had another idea of a way to combine these blocks but if I go forth with it, I will use different fabrics.
Bonnie Hunter has released this year’s leader/ender project–“Four Patch Fun.” She starts a new leader/ender project on July 1st every year. One is meant to just sew one of these block components in the place of breaking thread on a primary project. Or, to sew one of these components instead of using a fabric scrap to keep sewing without breaking one’s thread.
I have fallen in love with this 6 1/2 inch block that uses 2-inch strips. (She included measurements for 2 1/2 inch strips for an 8-inch block as well.). These block components are easy to cut and easy to sew. Here is what I have done so far, and I can tell you that these blocks are addictive to make all on their own. No way will this one stay in the leader/ender category long for me, LOL. Nevermind how they look together on my design wall as I’m sure there will be a lot of moving blocks around.
Bonnie included, as she always does, a lot of “how to” in her directions AND numerous ways to set these blocks. I like the way the blocks form diagonal braids, but one could also group 4 blocks to make a circle pattern, with the light cross in the middle, and to maybe separate those blocks with narrow sashing and cornerstones. I have no idea where my blocks will go, but I’m…addicted to making them. For sure.
One project that has been ongoing as a leader/ender project for me is making a dozen placemats from the bin of 2-inch squares. I had a lot of fun devising various patterns using color, but also just making scrappy blocks. I had enough leftover fabric in one print to back the whole dozen. And enough of that fabric to make some bindings too, though not bias binding which I prefer. The rest of the bindings will be made from leftover bias binding strips I’ve saved along the way.
BUT, another goal with this project is to figure out how to install binding on BOTH sides with my sewing machine. I have been lousy at that task. Yet many quilters here that I know do this work beautifully. I tried with the placemat you see on the top. It was…terrible. I had to take the whole binding off and start again and to sew down the binding by hand.
I’ve watched some videos now and have some new ideas–especially with how to handle the corners. And I’ve ordered a Janome foot called a “left bi-level foot” that let’s the needle lie right on the binding edge while the right side of the foot is higher to accommodate the binding thickness. (There is also a “high bi-level” foot available for other projects that have two levels of thickness involved.)
Wish me luck as I’ll try one idea for sewing down the binding later today.
I went through all my saved solid strips and culled the really narrow ones–and pulled out all the bright colors. I’m making log-cabin blocks (14.5 inches unfinished) with these strips. To what end, I don’t know yet.
There is one lone one on the design wall, with the second to follow later today. The wonky strip below is as yet not exciting me… Maybe I’ll try one more. Maybe not.
I think, next, I’ll pull out one of the projects from The Color Collective where I had a lot of leftovers already cut and a stash of those fabrics saved. That project would make a good donation quilt at the very least and would move that fabric along nicely.
Rachel LaBour of the blog Stitched in Color used her “Parsnips” design as a sewalong some months ago. Rachel has now made two “Parsnips” quilts and you can see those and her pattern on her beautiful blog.
When I cut fabrics I cut leftovers into sizes that I can use later, so I have two separate bins for 2 and 2.5-inch squares that really needed to be used, so I used the 2.5 inch squares for this quilt. Rachel used rectangles and her block is smaller than mine, so she has more blocks. Note that I added the lighter outside border so I could take the stars out to the edge of the quilt. I suppose I could have, also, just made that blue border wider, now that I think about it.
The backing is WILD! It’s a wideback print that I used on its side so I had to buy less fabric to cover the back–and I have the leftover fabric from the edge in my stash now. To compare, that would be 5 or 6 yards of 44-wide fabric (depending on the print drop both long and wide) versus 2 or 25 yards of a wideback. Using a wideback this way if the print allows is…cheaper.
And…now my fingers are itching to try some blocks like these in the wideback with my solid leftover strips. Maybe a stretched canvas piece…
“Fall’s Splendor” is off the longarm, trimmed and bound, and getting its binding sewn down at night. I’m really happy with the quilting texture and the thread color (a mustard yellow/gold).
Up next on the longarm, “Spring’s Song,” which is ready to be loaded.
My design wall is hopping and full of color. I will take pics of it in a few days.
As for the bin of 2-inch squares, there are placemats happening.
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