Stamp Quilt Start

 

This week I received the newly released Alison Glass Stamp Quilt border fabric just in time to start the sew-a-long she's holding. I also got the official ruler which seemed like it would be very helpful. This picture is before I took the sticky white backing off of the ruler, that's why the words are backwards. I also bought two of her embroidered patches. Aren't they fun? I feel like I need a jean jacket to sew them onto. I'm always too hot for a jean jacket these days. Maybe I'll put them on my recycled/reused jeans tote bag instead.

Here's the ruler with the white sticker off, the white is now the actual scalloped stripe that is printed on the fabric.

This is what the stamp quilt blocks look like. I am planning to cut various sizes of motifs from Tula Pink fabrics to use as the stamp art.

On Background

 
Time for some background checkerboard action. I cut out some 4.5" squares to use in the Trinket quilt out of the Painter's Palette in Blackberry that I bought for just this very purpose.

It really does read as black when it's up on the white design wall. My first configuration was 9x15, nope too long and skinny to be useable.

11x15, much better.

I used my initial coloring page sketch to start filling in the white spots. I decided to not piece additional paper pieced blocks, 40 is enough for me. Instead I'm cutting out 4.5" squares (fussy cutting mostly) of the fabrics I used in piecing.

Sixteen more to go and then I'll get down to sewing the rows together. Now that there are other colors to compare to, I can see the background fabric is a dark purple. I like it.

Trinket Blocks All Pieced

 

This is the last group of Trinket blocks, except for the two bonus optional ones, and now I have to decide whether to make more or what. I'm honestly kind of tired of paper piecing at this point. I may do fussy cut squares of the Alison Glass fabrics to sub in for blocks in the checkerboard arrangement I wanted to do. I think I need to cut out the background squares and put it up on the design wall to see how it looks before I decide.

This one looks like a tie, or if you turn it on its side, a fish.

A moth or butterfly?

A small heart.

A cat's head?

This one ended up a bit wrong, but it's okay enough for me.

Weekly Trinkets

The weekly Trinket quilt blocks have been made and posted on Instagram with all of those hashtags, #trinketquilt #trinketsal #trinketsal2023 #Alisonglass (it's a bit much really).

I like this arrow!

Either two mountains or reversed a little crown.

A boat? A hat?

A kind of 3-d block?

A not exactly pointy paper airplane. I think I need to re-sew this one as the point is going to be lost in the seam allowance.

 

Twenty Trinkets

 
If the new Lightbox is out and being used, you know it's time for Trinket sewing.

I thought this was going to be the hardest of this week's blocks but it wasn't. Sure it was a bit fiddly but it went together pretty easily.

Here are all five of this week's blocks.

I like this one a lot, it's really quite 3-d if you get the colors selected and placed correctly.

I have to work on this one a bit more, it's not quite aligned.

A little hourglass.

I got the words aligned, but turned two of the ovals sections. It doesn't visually bug me enough to unstitch.

When I make another one of these I think I'll try a solid for the star.

And to celebrate the completion of Twenty Trinket Blocks, here they are all together.. Oooh I love how this just vibrates up on the wall. These fabrics just glow and hum together.

Beautiful Fruit Blocks

 

Time to make this week's Trinket quilt blocks, Shapes #1-#5. I printed out the blocks and apparently my printer needs some new ink, as it came out in stripes on the little pictures of the blocks. Luckily I have the pattern book to refer to. For my first round of blocks I'm following the color choices in the pattern. Then when I make the duplicate blocks I'll use my own color picks.

I used my hand dandy Lightbox and clear cutting mat for help.

Lots of fussy cutting happening this time.

"Beautiful Fruit, In A Jade Lake." Having fun with the word fabrics as you can see.

This one came out a little bit off, but I still like it.

Reminds me of the Berkeley Campanile, hmmm I wonder.

for you Darling Strawberries

Oooh, that diamond worked out perfectly! So excited to see it. I did the trick of sewing the two sections together with a long stitch to check on alignment, and then shifted slightly before re-sewing with a short stitch.

Five More Trinkets

 

I was on a roll, so here are the next five Trinket SAL blocks. 

For the most part these aren't too hard to piece, even for 4.5" blocks.

This one didn't really need to be FPP of course, but it turned out very nicely.

I like this one, although the background print loses a bit of definition to the hourglass shape.

This one is very odd, but I like it. Reminds me of a plant growing in a field if you get down to ground level and look.

This one was the hardest to do of the five. Do you see the little square in the center of different colored fabric? I tried to fussy cut that little design and it almost worked.

The difficulty rating of this block was mostly due to the teeny tiny center strip it required.

It certainly doesn't help when I make silly rookie-level mistakes like this one.

But eventually all three sections were ready to be sewn together and pressed open.

Two weeks of Trinket SAL done!

First Five Trinkets

The first week of the Trinket SAL is almost over and I've gotten the first five blocks done, right on schedule and everything. As you can see, I'm having fun making fabric choices. Finally, I "get" to use these yummies. They weren't in that annoying precious fabric category in my head, but they were right next door.

I'm using the new light box I got and finding it very helpful for making sure the fabrics are fitting over the lines with enough seam allowance.

The pattern includes a color guide for the block and for the first round of blocks I'm just going with it.

Why did I put off getting a light box for so long, this thing is awesome! I think light boxes used to be pretty pricey and very clunky/big so I just didn't get one and made do with a sunny window. But this is an LED version and is super lightweight and A4 sized. I think I need to make a storage case or something for it though to keep it safe and/or portable.

So here's the first five blocks, photographed on the new Oliso wool pressing mat. That and the good lighting makes them look so good

Some fussy cutting is of course involved here. I just love that little abacus.

I messed this one up many times, but eventually got the hang of the very small lines.

I'm so glad that AG has some word fabrics for me to use. That's definitely a thing for me lately so it's nice to carry on with in this project.

So...off to a good start, and so far so good and all of that.