Rachel's Day

Rachel had quite the day. She had a piano recital at 3:30, then a violin recital at 7:00. Above is a pic of her piano teacher (in the white skirt) and all her teacher's students. This was the most fun recital ever. It was just so enjoyable. All the pieces were well selected and executed. Every student did such a good job. I was sorry when it was over.

Rachel is in the front row in the plaid skirt. She won the award for obtaining the most points in the point system her teacher had for practice times, extra work, pieces learned, etc. I am so happy for her. She will be attending a live symphony orchestra performance with her teacher soon as a reward.

~Joan

Baby Quilt Half Pieced

Here is the layout of the batik baby blocks. They don't seem to have as much red as they did when I was at the fabric store!! But once I get the outer border on, it will look better...I hope.



Here I have about half sewn together. I usually have much smaller units. There is not much size lost after the units are sewn together on this one, so it will be fairly large (for a baby quilt). The top left corner is sewn together and the bottom right is not. Not much difference in size, is there?

The unsewn pieces on the right have little papers with the row numbers. I love setting quilt blocks on point, but it does make sewing the rows together a little more complicated. Having the rows numbered help me keep things in order.

I am taking a break from working on this...not feeling 100% today.

~Joan

Baby Quilt Progress

Here is what I meant in the last post by double sewing the diagonal seams. When the block units are sewn, usually one would cut 1/4" away from the seam and throw away the extra (yikes!). I simply sew another seam before cutting so that I have an extra (very small) half square triangle set. I am trimming them down to 1-3/4" square after ironing, and they will make some very cute little pinwheels. I think I'm going to make a third baby quilt from all the pinwheels. No sense throwing them away, right?

I use my presser foot as a guide, sewing a scant amount away from the left edge of the foot. No, this is not the standard 1/4" seam allowance, but it is sufficient.
Here I am showing the measurement of the seam before cutting. You can see that ideally it would be 1/2", yielding a 1/4" seam on both sides. This slightly smaller measurement has never been a problem in the past. I just might get one of these out of all my small meant-to-be-discards.

Here is my small pile of double sewn units ready to be cut and ironed.

Last, but not least, is the progress on this top so far. My children were doing part of their yearly achievement tests this morning, so I sewed while they were racking their brains for the correct answers. I know they are going to do just swimmingly like every other year!

You can see the red setting triangles in the picture here. They bring out the red in the fabrics. There are ten different batik fabrics in the blocks. This is about half of the quilt. The outer border will be PURPLE!!

~Joan

Beautiful Batiks

I have had one more quilter ask me to trade a set of 25 blocks for my spool quilt. We both sewed them yesterday, and in about two weeks, we will get to see each other's work. My new b-friend lives in New Zealand. So eager to see Leeanne's work!! Her blog is "quilt me kiwi".

In the meantime, I have been wanting to sew a small quilt with batik fabrics for some time. I was curious how they would sew up. I wanted a variety for a baby quilt and found a jelly roll on eBay for a very low price. Yesterday I went to Mary Jo's and got the background fabric (which is a light tan batik...hardly stands out from my design wall fabric). The setting triangles are going to be a mostly-solid-looking red batik. The little pinwheel in the bottom right corner is made from double sewing the diagonal seam when putting the units together. I think I'll incorporate those into the back of the quilt. Aren't they cute? The little pinwheel measures 3" square. The two-piece units from the larger pattern (called "Kitchen Sink") measure 4-1/2 " square.

Now I'm sending this pic to my friend to see if she's up for this type of fabric or if she wants something more traditional. I make all my friends I Spy quilts when they have babies, but she got one two years ago. Time for something new.

~Joan