Category: Quilting in South Carolina

Online friend Wendy Currie (Wendysquilting) blogged about the Bloc-Loc rulers some time ago–before I moved to South Carolina. These come in different sizes and I bought a 3-size package–so I have a range of choices of which size to use. Wendy, by the way, is an outstanding longarm quilter who lives in Thunder Bay, Canada.

I LOVE these rulers! For this project, I’m using the middle-sized ruler. My resulting blocks are so perfect I don’t really have to measure my bigger units when I sew them together.

But, first, here are the 3rd set of blocks for the Summer Camp Mystery from the Modern Quilt Studio. There will be 6 installments, and the next set comes next Friday. After the 4th set, I may pin all the blocks so far to the design wall to just…admire them? Yes, admire and pet, but also to see how my palette is working together and if I need to make any changes.

The unit for the solid scrappy quilt on the design wall–is a 3 1/2 inch half-square triangle made from TWO 4-inch light-dark squares cut from my solid scraps, layered together. Tara Faughnan uses this method. I also love Bonnie Hunter’s ruler for cutting triangles from strips of fabric layered together, but here I am cutting from scraps too small to use strips, for the most part. And I want more variety than the strip method affords, unless one uses shorter strips.

I layer the two squares and use a quarter-inch ruler strip (I love these rulers too) to mark the sewing lines on the light square. This method is more labor intensive, but also makes a clean unit that never needs resewing as the trick is in the sliver trimming with the Bloc-Loc ruler, not in the perfect sewing of two triangle units.

I put the dark fabric on the bottom and the Bloc-Loc ruler’s ridged edge fits along the seam to hold the unit perfectly in place. You want the ruler lines to be just ON THE FABRIC–not off of the fabric. Sliver trim. I trim ALL of the units I’ve sewn on the dark side first, and rotate each trimmed unit so the other side is facing up. It is satisfying to see the pile growing as I trim each unit.

Turn the pile of units so that the remaining notch is on the right, pointing up, and the light, untrimmed side is down.

The ruler now fits so the name is upside down. Remember to put the ruler’s lines ON YOUR UNIT or your unit will trim too small.

And, voila, you are DONE and have a whole pile of new units to use.

I’ve cut a TON of 4-inch squares to get color variety, so will use them up in making half-square triangle units via chain piecing. You can see I’ll need to keep cutting for the light units. If I don’t use all of these squares, I’ll save them for another project down the road. Meanwhile, my scrap pile is disappearing. And there is a long way to go on the scrap quilt, so, yes, many of these squares will get used.

I think piecing is my most favorite part of the quilting process.

Girlie car is coming home tomorrow as of right now. So I’m off to put gas in the rental, have lunch on the porch, and…SEW. There needs to be a walk in the day at some point. Maybe late afternoon, with music, when the day cools off a bit. Temps are now in the high 80s and low 90s. Summer has arrived.

And today a painter is coming to paint the ceiling bases of these hanging lights over the kitchen bar. The bases are covering too-large holes in the ceiling. Painting them the color of the ceiling will help them recede and not stand out.

And after this fairly quick painting job is done, I’ll go pick up the raw milk and cream that I get every two weeks at Local Jo’s–and will deliver some to Mike’s family. I take a cooler with ice and frozen blocks in it to keep everything fresh and cold.

Then I’ll make my noonish dinner and will sew. It’s raining, so likely I’ll not be able to grill the two lamb chops I defrosted. Tomorrow: chicken salad with homemade mayo.

Alex is here mowing–between rain storms. The grass is now thick and happy–an apple green carpet that is soft and cushy underfoot. And it is growing like crazy. All the plants are also thriving.

Yesterday I got all the blocks I had set up on the half-square triangle quilt sewn together yesterday, and I’m loving what I’m seeing. I have not connected the 20-inch blocks themselves yet.

Now I’ll have to make a lot more of the units, and I have the sub-units (4-inch squares) set up to do that work via chain piecing. Plus I found a kind of pumpkin yellow orange for the sashing for the bottom left block. When all are done, I’ll have a top that is 60 by 60–and I’ll figure out what to do to take it out to the 70s range, width wise, and maybe 80s length wise.

I’m going to use Kona Thistle for the sashing between the big red blocks.

It is soft and does not compete with the outrageous Kaffe Fasset prints, but will separate, gently, them. I may use it as the binding too.

Of course I won’t position two green centers next to each other when the time comes to finalize the layout.

The next group of Summer Camp mystery blocks drops tomorrow–so there’s that work for the weekend.

Girlie will be done next Friday. How nice is that?

Very, I’d say. I miss her so much.

On Saturday morning I was getting ready to make a Costco run, which involved an ice chest in Girlie car’s back hatch, and while backing out of the garage, I smashed the rear window as I had left the hatch door open, and it didn’t clear the low garage opening. In my Maine garage I would have gone right through with the hatch door open.

It is interesting that my RAV4, which warns me of all sorts of possible events while backing up, didn’t make a peep about the hatch door being open.

It was one of those totally stupid life moments. And it left me with tiny pieces of shattered glass all over the back of the garage, obvious damage to the back door, and a case of the shakes. And a loss of confidence. For sure.

So, let’s skip to today–Wednesday morning. Son Mike came right away with plastic and tape and soothing directions of what to do and what to expect. (Son Bryan was away with the family.)

USAA, on a Saturday, set the required insurance in place, organized the repair, and got me a rental car. Better Collision had an inspection spot ready for me on Monday, and I dropped off Girlie there and felt she was in good hands. There was additional drama as we got a really bad thunderstorm, which I tried to beat in getting Girlie to Better Collision, as we weren’t sure the plastic would be totally efficient, and I got caught in it just 5 minutes or less from finding the repair place. But Mike’s plastic seemed to hold until Better Collision could get her under cover.

Enterprise car rental picked me up at Better Collision, and I came home with a bright white Toyota Corolla, which I can drive until Girlie is fixed and which will stand out in parking lots. And the best news is that Better Collision called yesterday and, assuming parts are available, Girlie will be ready to go again some time Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. And I can drop the rental car at Better Collision and Enterprise will pick it up there.

What has amazed me is that all these systems are so efficient and helpful. In all my years of driving, I’ve really never had an accident (knock on wood) that required this level of help. And I’d also like to say that there have been so many, many very nice people along the way who have helped me fix Girlie and to manage without her.

My nerves are another matter though! And my friends have been busy telling me of their car mishaps that they also classify as stupid moments that should not have happened. At least two friends have smashed hatch doors and the window backing out of a low garage. And, yes, that has made me feel much better. Accidents happen. And I think my own new rule will be NOT to open the back hatch door if I am leaving home unless it is OUTSIDE the garage.

To soothe my nerves and temporary loss of confidence in my sweet situation here, I’ve been sewing a lot since that Saturday morning. As always, quiet time in my studio restores me.

I’ve completed the second set of the Summer Camp mystery quilt (Modern Quilt Society) and am looking forward to the third round this Friday. These blocks are just so much fun. The blocks on the 3rd and 4th rows were made by cutting a set of blocks from the first set into two pieces and adding borders–a process I thought quite clever.

My backing/field fabric came yesterday, and I washed it last night. It’s a deep olive green and will be perfect. And the backing for the quilt from hell and its lighter batting came as well. The first of the 4 needed borders is almost done.

I’ve been sidetracked a bit with the half-square triangles made with solid scraps these past two days. OK, I’ve been side-tracked a lot. I am intrigued and engaged. Here’s where that project is as of this morning. I’m not going to use the dark green sashing I don’t think. I’ll put the aqua sashing in that spot. And there will be a third row. Then what? The blocks are 20 inches finished, and I’m loving how the secondary patterns are emerging. I’ll get the gold and light red sashing blocks sewn together today. But I also want this quilt to be more modern, so I may take the half-square units out on the top and sides in some way to be yet determined.

I took this picture of the design wall some time yesterday, so you can see the three projects I’m working on now. Then I stored the mystery quilt blocks. The red quilt blocks are stacked up together to make room on the design wall for the growing half-square triangle project–which is, by the way, eating up scraps like crazy.

I’m still wondering about the sashing color for the red quilt. I was thinking green, but I’m not sure. I don’t want it to remind of Christmas. I’ll try some other color choices later today. I don’t want pink. Maybe a soft lavender, like Kona thistle?

For now, before we get more rain, I need to take the rental car to the grocery store. I’m still not ready to make the Costco run though. But…soon.

Here’s the first set of blocks for the Modern Quilt Studio’s “Summer Camp Mystery Quilt”:

Each block has been measured and fiddled with if needed. The blocks in the 4th row, with the horizontal stripes, are used to make other blocks in the second set of block patterns, which I downloaded Friday. I did that work last night, and you’ll see them when I’ve finished the second set.

Each week we get a choice of eight blocks, divided into sets of two where each participant chooses one of the four pairs–so four blocks to make each week. But there are always multiple numbers of blocks to make for each choice–as you can see above.

So, now on to making the four blocks for this week.

I put her on the longarm yesterday, after prepping and ironing her backing and trimming the batting. It took all afternoon, so no work happened on my two new projects that are filling up the design wall.

I can set my machine to a VERY big stitch. When I am longarm quilting a quilt, I follow this same process, but just baste down the edges as I go–so the longarm needle plate does not get caught in the fabric at the edge of the quilt. Believe me, that creates a terrible mess. And, sometimes, at least once for me, a hole in the quilt. For a regular quilt I just sew straight lines across the quilt, and I measure the distance of the sides to the quilt frame to make sure the quilt stays even on its backing and batting.

But with a quilt I want to hand quilt, I make big curvy swirls as they will really hold down the fabric. The top might look a little puffy, but trust me, it is tight to the backing and batting as that is the gift of the longarm basting.

Here she is–and remember the camera distorts…

I have a whole little bin of Sulky 12-weight threads in so many lovely colors. And I want to use a lot of thread color in this quilt–probably to match the colors in the quilt. These are “little” spools that are very inexpensive at Red Rock Threads–under $3 each the last time I looked.

Tara Faughnan also likes Wonderful 12-weight “Spaghetti” threads, and she has a lovely package of them in her shop. I ordered it as I’d like to try the Wonderful 12-weight threads. Those two big spools are threads I’ve had for years, for decades actually, that I bought for a quilting project when I wanted a thick-thread look.

I won’t let myself start quilting this quilt, although my fingers are itching to start it, especially after taking Tara’s online class on hand quilting, where I got a much-needed refresher on hand quilting. I’m going to practice delayed gratification until I get the quilt from hell all together–and except for its borders, I’m close to that moment. Yeah!

I really love this quilt. It is the last of my Churn Dash block series–with fabrics made from the Cotton+Steel/Ruby Star Society stash I had collected and which I cut into strips about three years back so as to USE these fabrics. This is my 211th quilt.

I love this backing–bought with birthday money last year from Bryan and Corinne. It’s a current Sarah Watts fabric called “Firefly Nature Forest Owls on Ash.” It’s from Ruby Star Society, the new group created by this group of designers who once went under the “Cotton+Steel” name.

The pantograph is “Whirlwind” (Urban Elements)–and its swirls are so lovely on this quilt. The quilting here is awesome, if I do say so myself, as the Innova stitch is just perfect all the way over the quilt. That’s probably due to Innova’s visit with Rob Engime at Olde City Quilts, Burlington, New Jersey, while I moved. I know he worked on Innova while she was there–just making sure all was tip-top with her. I quilted with a light and soft sea green/blue thread from Signature cotton threads. That color choice worked well too.

Most of the blocks are just color combinations I thought pretty–gleaned from the last of these fabrics which I had cut into strips. A few centers are fussy cut, but not many. And I love, love, love the black and white striped binding–always a favorite of mine for quilts that will support it. This quilt does.

Here’s another corner.

And a picture from the middle of the quilt. I’ll use this picture for the cards I make using inserted pictures of my quilts into a photo card.