As Bonnie says in her blog post "there are many ways to skin a cat", and seriously, where did that saying come from? It's creepy!!
Here's what I've been doing with my Orca Bay Step 4.
First, sew my teal/turquoise/green strings and strips onto 5.5" papers (I've done over 20 I think so far, here's 7 of the blocks).
Then, remove the papers
Now I starch them (with BestPress) and press them, hard. I want to ensure they keep their shape, no shifting, no wobbling when I cut them, and no distorting later when we get to the point where they'll be sewn to something else.
Here they are, flat as flat can be.
Now to the cutting.
First, I'm cutting down the center across the strips. No I'm not measuring anything at this point. I know I have a lot of lee-way since my papers were 5.5" square and my strips extended past that point, and we only need them to be 5 1/8th".
This is where they get real pretty.
Using the Easy Angle Companion ruler as Bonnie suggested, I line up the 3 1/2" mark with the bottom of the triangle (or the center cut I'd made), and follow the ruler to make pretty little triangles.
On some of them, I shifted to either the right or the left as much as possible to have a sliver of trimming on one side, but a good chunk of sewn together fabrics on the other side - Crumb Starters!!
How well do they play with my purple strings from Step 2?
Let's see
I think they stand out well enough... and then think of black and whites surrounding them... this is going to be one pretty quilt!
Thank you Bonnie!!!
Since I'm going to be pulling a few out of these and mailing them off to swap with a couple Quiltville friends in the US, I figured I'd better post a picture, before they're depleted.
They went from this....
... to this...
They are adorable! Over 350 half square triangles, unfinished size is 2". They will finish in the quilt at 1.5".
I did them three different ways.
One stack was done with the EZ Angle Ruler...
One stack was done with the pdf page from Quilting and Whatnot's site...
...and the rest were done the InkLingo way!!
Seriously, once I did one stack with InkLingo I didn't want to do them any other way.
I don't know why I didn't think of doing them with Linda's InkLingo product in the first place. I have so many of her other products. Since she's offering a deal/discount to those of us doing Bonnie's Orca Bay Mystery, I figured, what the heck.
And... why buy a package for just HST's when I could buy a product that would also give me a really cool quilt pattern.... I grabbed the Storm at Sea 9" package. I love the looks of this quilt, so it's now on my "future" to do list.
Thank you, thank you, thank you Linda Franz... and Monkey!
Now... since one of the ladies on the Quilt-Talk yahoo chat group posted a recipe for "pasties", I'm going to make them for dinner. :)
I have no idea why... but I just had this insatiable urge to buy fabric today. Seriously, I wake up in the night dreaming of quilts, blocks, colour combinations, ideas for new quilts. I can't stop! I have the bug and it's BAD! LOL
Going to one of the quilt stores didn't interest me. Honestly, there's not a lot of variety in what they have. Sometimes you just have to leave town. So off to Perth Fabrics I went. They have a wonderful store! Lots of fabrics, battings, thread and a whole host of other craft supplies for knitting, felting, painting, flower arranging, cross stitch, scrap-booking and probably more than I even know. It's less than an hour away and it was a beautiful day for a drive.
I picked up a few teal-ish greens (not so green in the picture though) for the Orca Bay Mystery quilt, and that yellow with flowers.. just because I liked it and it was in the bargain bin for 50% off - there was only a meter left.
And do you see this asian fabric? It's gorgeous! I had the lady lay it out on the table, we measured the length of the repeat, and multiplied that by 6, and rounded it out to 4 meters even. I finally found a fabric I want to use for one of those "One Block Wonder" quilts. This will be amazing!
And then, as I thought I was done looking around, there's a shopping cart at the front of the store with MORE discounted bolts. Lookie what I found to be the backing on my Mai Tai's in Paradise quilt (aka cruise quilt)!!
It's perfect!! Across the width of the fabric it repeats this scene three times. The store is trying to get rid of all these summer "hawaiian shirt prints", there were probably three other bolts there with similar patterns. The line up at the cutting table was full. The lady helping me asked how much I wanted and I told her probably about 4 meters... but let's see how much was left on the bolt.
Now this is the fun part. She didn't have a table to use, so she unfolded all the fabric from the bolt, and roughly measured it against a wooden yard stick she was trying to hold at the same time. She figured it was about six meters, and wrote it up as such, and gave me 35% off instead of the posted discount of 30%. Guess she was happy to get rid of it. Anyways, when I got home into my office, I refolded all the material. With this one, I measured. There are 7 yards (yes yards). Convert that to meters and you get 6.4 meters. She did a pretty darn good measuring job!
I'm probably only going to need about 4 meters of it for the back of the quilt, so I told Jim I may have enough left to make him a shirt... and the ladies on the cruise know how much he loves his hawaiian shirts! LOL He'd wear them everyday to work if it wasn't for the drab, navy, black or tan company shirts they make them wear. Apparently, it's even written in the company policy manual "no hawaiian or loud shirts".
I don't know about you, but I think a predominately male workplace could use a bit of colour - and I'm not just talking the language! hehehe
Needless to say, I got my "fix" today.
*does happy dance*
I did these yesterday. These are sooooo cute! Seventy-two 3 1/2" string blocks for Bonnie's Orca Bay Mystery.
See my bright pressing board cover/sleeve underneath them? I made that first thing yesterday morning before I started on the string blocks.
I'd asked Jim to cut me a 24" by 24" board from the wood in the garage a few weeks ago. I layered it with batting and then canvas. It works well, a nice hard pressing surface... but it was starting to look pretty grungy.
As I looked at my stash, I saw this fabric. It's one that I had to have when I visited Aunt Beth's Quilt World in Navan, Ontario (just outside Ottawa), several months ago during a Poker Dash Shop Hop. I had already picked up a couple fabrics that I wanted, and just as I was heading to the cash, this one caught my eye. It's so bright and cheery! Didn't know what I was going to use it for until yesterday morning. Now I have a pretty cover that I can just take off and wash as needed.
Now I need to sort through the trimmings from the string blocks... new additions to my crumb bin! Yay! I have a story about crumbs... but will save that for another blog post.
While I was at it, I cut up the 168 papers for the 4 1/2" neutral string blocks I need for Jamestown Landing. I have a ton of neutral strings. Really don't think I'll even make a dent in that basket after 168 blocks.... but for now, those can wait.
... on to Step 1 for Orca Bay.
The quilting world is a-buzz! (well, at least any followers of Bonnie Hunter are).
She has posted the first step of her new mystery quilt today, Orca Bay.
Needless to say, I will be joining in, even though my Roll Roll Cotton Boll still isn't done. :)
I don't know what it is though, I can't seem to keep my mind on one project these days. Every time I check/read blogs, I see new ideas, new crafts, new gifts to make.
A couple of days ago I made this, one of those funky leaf bowls.
I remembered seeing them somewhere and did a search. Quilt Canada had members make them for their big conference. You can find the pattern here. I had a hell of a time zig zag stitching the edges. That probably took more time than any other part of it.
I had to modify the pattern a bit. I didn't have the fusible stuff they suggested, something similar to TimTex, so I just used a couple pages of Heat and Bond on a scrap piece of fabric in the middle, between my inside and outside layers. It works for me!
Then, Cathy and Denise decided to try something new. Faux Applique. The author even has a tutorial on her website to give an idea of how it's done. Guess what? PLAY TIME!!!
I couldn't find the textile medium that Helen suggested in her tutorial (of course not - some things are just next to impossible to locate in this country). And when you really have the bug to make something, you don't want to order online and wait a week or two for the product to get to you.
Searching the craft and art stores locally, I found Michael's has a product by Martha Stewart, a tintable fabric medium.
According to the description, this should work.
"Mix with Martha Stewart Crafts Acrylic Paints for a softer, more flexible finish when painting on fabric. Mix 1 part medium to 2 parts paint. Heat set projects for permanence and washability. Waterbased."
I'm not mixing it with one of her paints, I'm using pencil crayons!
In my Quilting Designs program (from EQ), there was a cute little flower picture. Simple is better right? Especially when you're just trying something out.
Here's what mine looks like right now.
I didn't want just solid coloured flowers so I tried to shade them a bit, overlapping the colours.
This piece is about 6 inches by 6 inches. And no I didn't forget a flower and stem, it only had three. :)
Anyways, once this dries (in 24 hours) then I can heat set it and then I'll do some free motion quilting around it, maybe just outlining... not sure yet.
This could make a nice little cover piece for my kindle!
Alright, now I'm off to finish putting the borders on my cruise quilt. I've made a promise to myself. Even though I'm going to follow along with Bonnie's new mystery, I'm going to get the cruise quilt and RRCB to the flimsy stage before I even start cutting for Orca Bay. (yeah... right!) LOL
Well, maybe not crazy in that sense, but definitely crazy in love with Bonnie's designs. Ever since I received the Australian Homespun "Blue Issue" magazine (volume 12, issue 6) with Bonnie Hunter's pattern, Jamestown Landing, I've wanted to make it in reds.
My mom's favourite colour is red and I want to make it for her. So on Sunday I dove into my reds and neutrals, ironed, starched, ironed, starched, cut 2 1/2 inch strips til I thought I was going to go insane.
Then I took a break from all the ironing and cutting strips and started cutting half square triangles. Ok, this is going to take f o r e v e r! LOL
Bonnie's pattern takes 840 half square triangle blocks, each made with one red triangle and one neutral triangle. I stacked a red strip and then a neutral and then another red strip and another neutral so I'm cutting four triangles at a time. Stack them in piles of 40, and voila! I have 14 piles, 540 cut.
I thought, whoohoo!! Over half done. Then I did the math again and realized that's only 20 blocks in each pile.... I actually need a total of 1,680 triangles, half of those red, half of those neutral.. eeeek!! I'm only about 34% done.
Oh well.... it's the process right? And it will be gorgeous when it's done.
I'm doing all this while expecting to start Bonnie's new mystery quilt, Orca Bay.... and I still can't decide on my colours for it.
What was I thinking???
