7 Community Giving Blocks

 

At the September Sew Day (which feels like years ago), I picked up a bunch of Community Giving block packs. These sixteen square blocks are the standard that they like to use.

I got into production mode to get them all sewn together.

They're a fun, diverse group of fabrics playing against the white or white-patterned backgrounds. Seven more to add to the stack.

Blocks For Giving

I was getting very tired of working with the red and neutral from all the Old Town mystery quilt flying geese over the last few days and switched over to something quick. Something that I could actually pick up, sew and actually finish. When I went to Sew Day back in December, I picked up a couple packs of block ingredients from the Community Giving Table.

As usual there's a huge variety in the fabrics. Some are pretty great, current ones, interesting vintage fabrics, solids of various weights, and then there's the others (eyelet?!).

When you look at the blocks all together, it's certainly is an interesting variety. I'm so curious to see what this quilt turns out to look like when it's finished! 

I'm so glad to have actually:

 A) Sewn something and B) Finished something. 

 

Stars & Flowers

 

Here are all the blocks I've been making lately. All 12.5" square.

The solids really work in this one well.

This is an older print, but it's A) The Right Color B) Not Too Contrasty. I think it works just fine. You can really see that the outside light color is a pale peach in this photo. Not white or off-white.

This might be my favorite print I used in this block, a little more current.

This one is cool too, although the directionality maybe doesn't work out too well when doing the 2 at a time HSTs.

Of course this picture has them in the wrong placement, but oh well, you probably get the idea. 

Friendship Star

 

I'm making a practice Friendship Star block for another project, and I thought I'd use some of the blue and yellow and green fabrics I'd pulled for the Sunflower blocks for the Wrap the World in Quilts Ukraine Project. These means making a bunch of HST's, I'm using the 2-at-time method, so out comes the marking tool and an erasable pen.

I had to cut them all down to size, ao I used the mini rotating mat that I have and it really helped speed things up.

That's a lot of trimming! But now they're all the right size (4.5") so hopefully the block will go together easily.

I laid out the blocks to check out the placement of the colors.

A view of all the seams on the back, pressed open.

There it is! Another 12.5" block done.

Two Sunflowers

 

It's finally cooled off enough to actually go get some sewing done. I went back to the second Sunflower block I've been working on. I had to re-do a couple of these flying gees+ triangle units, which was well worth the effort.

Otherwise this block would not have gone together...at....all.

Yay! I really like this one. I'm happy that I used that batik sunflower fabric. And that I got the directional yellow print triangles lined up well.

This one looked even better after a little pressing with a hot iron.

I really like both of these blocks! I hope they will be useful in the Wrap the World in Quilts Ukraine project.

A Sunflower

 

A picture of the first finished Sunflower block that I cut out and sewed together yesterday at Sew Day. I like this one a lot, even though sunflowers of course have those dark brown centers, I wanted to break up all the brown with some colors. That's why I chose the center fabric. I almost went with all batiks for the rest but I liked the mix of crisply defined pattern and the more mushy patterns of the batiks.

The second block is in process but I really need to iron some segments before I assemble the whole thing and it's once again Too Hot to turn the iron on. Seriously...a whole entire week above 100 every day?!?

Some Sunflowers

 

Today at Sew Day for Bamq, I worked on a couple of donation blocks for a cool project for Wrap the World in Quilts in Ukraine. They asked for "happy" and/or sunflower blocks. This first one was made from instructions from friend Jaye, it went together well. No photograph of the finished blocks yet.

And then I found an interesting Sunflower block in EQ8 which requited a template (the lighter blue fabric). It's partially assembled now. Sew Day wrapped up earlier than usual as it was very hot inside and out. Final pictures of these blocks will come later when it cools off.

Orla Blocks

I love when BAMQ's Community Giving coordinators make up pre-cut block packages for us so that we get to contribute to making a brand new quilt top as a group. They're really nice to use as leaders and enders when you're sewing other projects. I got these at the May meeting when I attended in person, but then....they were just gone. And then I of course forgot all about them. I didn't think to even go look in the trunk of my husband's car, as this was soon after my surgery, he was schlepping my stuff around. This last week when we did the grocery run, I spied the block packages just loose in there, so now here they are, all made up.

This Orla block is a really cute design, and the quilt will end up looking great I bet.

I just need to measure the rest of the pre-cut pieces before I start sewing so that can ease in some space in the seam allowance. I had to add on a tiny bit of blue to one piece to make the blue block up above. I'll just say it "adds interest" I guess.

Two Big Blocks

 

I finished off sewing together the two big donation blocks (16" I think) for the BAM community giving quilt. Meeting is this Saturday and I wanted to turn them in.

It's amazing how much it shrinks up when you've sewn together 8 seams, 1/4" at a time really adds up.

I like how the two blocks look together, it will be interesting to see how the pattern of the whole quilt.

The 9x9 block, much less successful visually than the other one. The grey squares don't stand out enough to my eye. I hope I wasn't supposed to arrange the completely random fabrics in a certain way. There weren't instructions about that, so I just went for an even distribution of the repeated fabrics. But maybe overall it'll work.

I like the modern feel of this one a lot more.

I liked the way this corner looked on the wrong side when I was pressing the seams open.

There's some oddness going on with this white fabric, some strange variations in the weave or something. Also, as I was sewing the bigger pieces I was noticing that the edges were rolling up slightly and there was a huge amount of give in all directions when stretched. I'm pretty sure it's a mostly cotton along with some lycra. Aiyiyi, whhyyyyy? It turned out mostly square so it worked out on this block, but sheesh alive. I know we're working with donated fabrics and all, but this should have had a warning. I'm glad I'm not sewing this quilt top together or quilting it, no thank you very much. I'll leave that to others who are better equipped to handle that specific sort of quilting.

Five Pantone Project Blocks

 

Now that I've made two of each type of block for the Pantone Project, I'm going back around for round 3. 

After making these five blocks, I'm up to having made 60 now (out of 100). I really like how this group of colors looks together.

I think I'm really into this using the same background on each block that we're doing in this project. It really sets off the fabrics so well. Even with all the varied colors it's cohesive.

Some of these blocks are quite simple which is nice. No paper piecing required.

I did this Chevron with templates, including sewing a Y-Seam (eek!)

This wide stripe was paper pieced so that the stripe would end up in the right place to play well with the other blocks.

Ahhh the simplicity of the good ol' four patch. 

While sewing together the five Pantone Project blocks, I used the squares of the 9-patch donation blocks as leaders and enders.And voilá all 8 are done and ready to turn in.

As I was piecing the last of these blocks I noticed that the fabric on the lower left featured a logo for the Roaring Camp Railroads, our local steam train. It either takes you up into the redwoods or down to the beach. I thought it made for a funny block when use along with the Cal fabric.Very specific to me personally and quite local yokel-ish.

And speaking of local yokel stuff, c'mon, pumpkins for sale on 9/4/23?!? That's too soon by several weeks, maybe a month? I love Halloween a whole lot, but really, early September?

Community Scrappy Log Cabin

This month's Bay Area Modern Quilting Sew Day was Saturday, and I came prepared to sew some modern scrappy log cabin blocks using the Community Giving scrap stash. Peggy got us started with the above as a suggestion, which she got from Zen Chic.

I first made two nearly identical blocks, these are 13.5" square. It didn't occur to me that this wouldn't necessarily be the best thing since we were going for scrappy. I was just in the zone and thinking I'd be super efficient and get two blocks done.

I was just drawn to the blues in the scrap bin I guess. I was also cutting some more piecing for my Metro Twist, which are mostly blues and oranges, so that may have been the actual inspiration.

We use the room dividers as design walls. Everyone sewing added their blocks as we got them done. It got big fast with the large block size. I did one more block using some of the same blues along with a lot more orange (it can be spotted on the left).

We arranged and rearranged until we liked the look. There was some discussion about whether or not to add sashing to the block but we decided they looked fine butted up together. I helped sew the blocks and rows together. I think it turned out really well! Very happy and colorful. I think the solids used along with all the new and old prints makes it have that more modern look. Low pressure (doesn't have to be perfect) and very fun sewing along with the group.

 I also turned in my four Churn Dash blocks so those are no longer hanging around.