More On Stamp Blocks

I cut out some new stamp centers for the Stamp Quilt.  It's really fun to fussy cut these great animal designs.

But there are more left to cut, like this lovely owl.

That's enough for now.

Now that I have the stamp centers, I need to cut some more Stamp Stripe fabric. I'm cutting it at 3" wide and making sure I have the "perforation line" as the guide. 

The stamp centers each have to get marked on the centers and corners. I was using a mechanical pencil, but then I later switched over to using a Frixion pen.

Then the Stamp Stripe pieces have to get marked at the center as well. It's a lot of fussy stuff, the cutting, all the marking, but it ends up working just about every time.

And then there's also all the pinning!

I'm up to a whole four blocks whoo hoo!  Elven more are cut out and ready to assemble. Then it will be fun to puzzle out how to put them into a quilt top as they're all different sizes and orientations. I think there will be some filler pieced pieces that I'll be making to fill in the empty spots.

Two More Stamps

 Two more blocks made for the Stamp Quilt. I decided to make the version of this quilt with various sizes instead of all the same size.

The original Disco Kitty looking so cute.

The Frog Prince, I apologized to him for cutting off his knees.

27,000 Photos! That's a whole lot isn't it?

Fussy Fussy

The very fussiest of cutting is happening today because I'm cutting out the centers for the Stamp Quilt.

Included with the pattern is a printout that you can cut up to help visualize the centers with a seam allowance sized frame before you actually cut them.

At first I was thinking of doing all the same size, but I'm now leaning towards having varied sizes. This is a 4" center.

This is a 3" center.

And finally a 2" center.

 

Eyes Have It

 

Over the last couple of days, I got the fussy-cut Rock Candy table topper all sewn together and quilted. Mostly because I really want to put the blocks for the Slopes quilt up on my design wall. Here's how it looked when I got started.

The six triangles being assembled. I love how easily this goes together, having those diamond and triangle corners notched off really helps me.

The two halves are all ready to go together. I reminded myself how to sew this bit as it's the hardest part to get right by re-watching the very helpful video that JayBird Quilts put out.

Tah-dah! After playing around with this for so long, I'm so happy that it's all sewn together, woohoo! My eye-centric version, of course I'm calling it "Eyes Have It".

I added the borders and got to quilting and am putting on the binding right now. I went with just outline quilting as it's so busy anything fancy would be lost in the happy color chaos.

Visual Decisions

 

Here's a decision to be made in four pictures. I've been fooling around with this fussy-cut Rock Candy arrangement for a week now. This is the original plan that I started out with.

The first fabric I tried for the "solid" above was much too busy so I substituted this light blue Mineral fabric instead. I like the look of it a bit more.

I thought it might be interesting to see what it would look like if I had the outer round be in the darker blue Mineral fabric in my stash. I do kind of like this arrangement. The border strips and binding could be in that same darker blue as well. Or I could use the blue version of that same fabric I tried in the first picture as the border and binding. Decisions decisions....being made visually.

This is how it is looking right now. I combined the two colors of Mineral on the outer ring. Now I'm thinking maybe it really just needs an actual solid to really show off the fussy cutting and calm down the whole thing. That Mineral fabric really has a lot of visual motion to it. Also after all this hemming and hawing I will find myself with almost enough pieces for yet another Rock Candy table topper...

To The End

 How is this month nearly over? To me, it feels like it's been a weird and short one. Travel to Arizona, another long power outage and then the snow excitement on top of it. 

I got the five Pantone Project blocks done and pressed. 

I like putting the finished blocks and fabric squares up with the postcards for a little group picture. Looking at it from a distance, it shows me how close to accurate I got in my colored fabric choice. It also highlights the possibilities of how these blocks can be put together. Look at that cool combo of the peach/beige and the green blocks it makes a super interesting almost star block. 

I've also been playing with the fussy-cut Tula Pink fabric table topper, Rock Candy that I posted about earlier this month. I thought that it might look better, or just show off the fussy-cut fabrics a bit more to have a less busy fabric as the "background". I chose a light blue print, one of the Minerals. And I think that second round really sets off the star well. I moved the busier print to be the outer ring and it looks better.

But maybe I should do the outer ring in the blue Mineral print as well. I stuck a couple in the upper section and I think it might work out better. Maybe I'll just do the borders and binding in the busier print.

Eyes Have It

I've gotten a lot further along on fussy cutting out diamonds for the Rock Candy table topper that's in process. Is it on my monthly to-do list? No, no it is not, ahem. I. think the opportunity came up after I had made the list or something like that.

As I was immersed in cutting out Tula Pink fabrics for the Stitch Happens quilt, I decided to do some picking and choosing of images with eyes and/or faces. Gosh, these are *fun* fabrics to work with.

There are two rounds of "solids" that I'm contemplating to separate the busy-ness of the fussy-cut diamonds. I want to be able to see them. I think the interior round will be lighter than the outer one.

I only have three spots left and four colors of eye fabric. Which ones will repeat? Stay tuned.
 

Solid Choices

Post Pineapple Express Storm Report: Our power is still OUT, cell service is BACK, internet is still very miraculously ON. Our solar production is just barely powering the house, with a little trickle left over to recharge our nearly depleted backup batteries. So there'll be no sewing for me today unless the sun really really starts shining on this day in-between rain storms or that PG&E gets around to turning our power back on.

I've signed up to make the Temperature Quilt with JayBird Quilts over the next year. She had some recommended tools on the first class instructions, so I went ahead and got them. First is her new release of Fussy Cut Shapes templates. They have a nice see-through yet still dark 1/4" edge which helps to figure out your fussy cutting placements. I have found that I like fussy cutting (go figure, right?!) and I think these are really usable sizes that work well with her other rulers.

The second tool was one I haven't used before, it's the Clover Hold It Precision Stiletto,  It has a silicone tip which is grippy for guiding fabric through the machine. The silicones also heat resistant, so you can use it with your iron.

Instead of doing this quilt in all solids, I'm considering using hand-dyes and/or small prints in addition. These ones in the picture are the ones left over from making the Sightlines Triptych. The problem is having enough of one particular fabric to represent that particular temperature throughout the making of the whole quilt. Also, I really really like the look of the all-solids quilt.

Along with the tools, I (of course) bought some fabrics. It's always to not pay shipping, that always works on me.

I'm pretty excited about the Pantone Color of the Year for 2023, Viva Magenta. So I ordered some of the Kona solid color of the year, Crush, which is awfully close. Along with it, I chose a few other hot colors, for a quilt I want to make this year, potentially entitle Hot Hot Hot. My initial idea is to make two versions of the same block with each color, using the Crush as the foreground and the background. I'll have to plan that out in EQ8 I think.