Friday, November 5, 2010

Joan's Windows with Two Sides Bordered


Here is the intersection of four of the blocks. You can see the 1/2" finished frame around each block. Varying these colors would make for a very dramatic quilt. I was trying to play it down some with the gold.


Here is the pieced border. I cut up the extra strips I had already cut for the center and used them so it would sort of match, but it would be hard to tell if a stray got in there!

What appears to be spots are drops of water from the iron. Didn't wait for them to dry.

Lastly, a picture of my progress tonight. I did not have anything else to do. My oldest four were at college or work and my youngest four were watching a movie. I'm so lonesome I could cry.

~Joan

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Joan's Windows



I worked on a cool quilt tonight. I was rewarding myself for cleaning off my cutting table. I feel like a new woman!!

I am not into randomness when it comes to quilts. I typically select the blocks with carefully measured and very precise units. But not for this one. It's in a magazine. The name of the pattern is Sonja's Windows. But my name is not Sonja.

You piece two blocks that are later trimmed to 14" square, so I cut a bunch of scraps from my cutting table top into 15" lengths. All I did for the set of two blocks was make sure I didn't use the same fabric in each. I didn't try to match the colors in each block or anything. I also used a variety of widths of strips. From one-inch to three-inches wide.



Then you lay the blocks so that the seams of one go horizontally and the other is vertical.

Trim and pin. I pin very sparsely. The fewer pins the better.

My camera is acting up. It skipped the picture of sewing a 1/4" seam around all the edges and then cutting diagonally through the sewn blocks. The next pic shows me peeling back the left triangle to reveal that block.


Here are all twenty of the blocks laid out with sashing. There will be sashing all around the edge as well. My camera also pretended to take pics of sewing a one-inch cut piece of gold around each block. That will be a half-inch finished frame. It really sets the blocks off.

I haven't picked a border fabric yet. If I remember correctly (and I rarely do), there is a border of another color, then a pieced border with the half-inch finished gold on both sides, then another outer border of the same color. Green? Blue? Cream?? Black??

This makes a very large throw. So fun to piece. You just piece five sets of two blocks and you end up with 20 blocks.


My camera has been giving me fits. The pictures are slightly blurry and it doesn't save each picture I take. Hmmm...old age? I mean of the camera, not me.

Naturally I used every color imaginable in this quilt...blues, blacks, pinks, purples, oranges, greens, golds, creams, browns...it's all good.

~Joan




Child, Where Have You Been?

The above is a picture of scenery in Canada. I don't think THAT is where she's been. My sweet, sweet Susanna saw my Steps and Stars quilt from the back (neatly folded in my sewing room). She said, "What's that?" I pointed out the nifty quilting from the back. She opened it up and commented, "I've never seen this before!" She spends far more time in my sewing room than all of my other 7 children combined. Proof that I could sew a queen-sized quilt right under someone's nose and they would not notice.

~Joan