What's Happening in the Studio

I am feeling rather accomplished, having finished the Petals of My Heart top at long last.  SInce I do not want to do anymore with it until I show the ladies at our quilt guild on Monday I decided to do some catch up on this years block of the month.  Still working on those little triangle leaders and enders...

This past spring I had the joy of attending a quilt show with my niece and her daughter.  It was my grand nieces first quilt show and I had a wonderful time seeing the quilts through her eyes.  Have you ever seen anyone moved to twirl at the sight of a quilt?  That is the joy this exhuberant lass found as she moved from one quilt to the next exclaiming all the while how good she was at finding "all the beautiful quilts."   With her in mind I decided that this years BOM quilt project would be for my grand niece-I am hoping that her love of quilts will continue, and to someday have another quilter in the family.  

 The 2014 BOM from The Quilt Show, designed by Janet Stone this year, seemed like a perfect fit: letters of the alphabet represented with quilt blocks.  With several babies making appearances this year who just needed quilts of their own,  I had not gotten very far along.  While this is not a UFO, as all of the pattern is not yet available, I decided it was time to catch up.

I should mention that I have been ill for the last week, nasty business of a chest cold that has just wiped me out, and apparently affected my brain function.  Simple tasks can have surprising results.


Something is wrong with this picture...

There, that's better.  My seam ripper is getting a workout this week...

Undaunted I move to the next block.  I like to lay my block pieces out on this handy little board.  I covered a piece of strudy cardboard with a scrap piece of Warm and Natural cotton batting-it is the perfect size for moving pieces easily from the cutting table to the itoning table to the sewing table.

Everything is cut and ready to go...

First step, make half square triangle units using my preferred method.
1. With ruler draw line down middle of square.
2. Sew 1/4 inch from the drawn line (on both sides of the line.)
3. Cut on the drawn line to make two half square units.
Tip: Using fine grit sandpaper on a clipboard makes marking easy as the fabric square stays put.

Mark

Sew

Cut

Cute little half square triangles (HST's)...

Learning something new here...Place large square just so over HST unit, stitch and press...

Do the same thing on the other side of the HST...
Tip:  A stiletto helps to keep those little corners lined up nicecly and feeding straight into the machine.

Look what we end up with!  Reminds me of kite demonstration I saw last year.

Time to trim  the tails off of these little fellas.  A multiple step process that had me a little nervous.  I must have triple, triple checked before I took my knife to the first one.  
1. lining up the 1 1/4 inch marks with the red triangle.
2. lining up the point of the red triangle with 1/4 inch mark.

Everything looked so good at this point, a perfect match to the pattern's directions.  Just one little problem; when all was said and done the short sides of my trianglew were supposed to measure 3"...mine were closer to 2 3/4."  Oh, why did I decided I could quilt when my brain is not functioning so well?! But just in case the mistake was in the pattern I proceeded to the next step. The new unit needed to measure 2 inches-Look at that a little room to spare.  (If I had only realized at the time that in trimming I was losing a tad off my 1/4 seam allowance for the points to come out right.)

I was soooo happy at this point.  Blissfully unaware I stitched the yellow and green strips together and cut them into the units I needed for the block.

Everything is looking good for the layout...

I stared at my block in disbelief-What happened to my nice little points-they have all been flattened, poor things.  Maybe I will redo this block at some point, but in my current state I decided it was good enough: sometimes the perfectionist just needs to take a deep breath and move on.  So I deem the Duck and Ducklings block done.

Now it is time for me to take a deep breath and do a little dancing in front of all the beautiful quilts.  Here is to my grand-niece and the joy she brings to the world of quilts.

Happy Quilting!
Deb