Spinning Wheel or Pinwheel or Flying Kite

 

Time for me to make the very last BAMQ BOM block. This one has a lot of names:  Flying Kite or Spinning Wheel or Pinwheel. It's a lot of triangles and a strip with a 45° angle on one end. 

I will be honest, I had a hard time laying it out, maybe if I'd used all different fabric for the "blades" it would have been easier for me?

I'm liking how it's looking at this point, and I'm also glad that I chose to make the 12" version.

There it is, all done! Now to start figuring out a good layout for all the blocks I've made so far.

Alternate Lupine Block

I had all the ingredients out, so I made one of the "alternate" blocks (ie not a Lupine Star) for the Lupine Mystery quilt. Just to see how one of them looked. I like it a lot, it's very different than the star block.

 Here's how it will look with all the Lupine Stars. It's a very cool secondary pattern. 

I even went through the Ohio Stars and the Kitty Ears and HSTs to match them up so that none of the fabrics are repeated in each block. And to make sure the colors and prints worked together in each block. It's quite a stack, isn't it?

Now they're all ready to sew once I'm done with the Lupine Stars which are also all laid out. Okay, back to all the block assembly sewing left to do.

Grey Birds

 Time for me to make another block for the BAMQ BOM, so it's back to the Box o' Greys.

This month it's Birds In The Air, and I'm going to use an EQ8 version.

I made two of these blocks, and I really like how they turned out. I almost want to make two reverse blocks to make a big four patch out of them.

More of a Bowtie

 

I got a question about my original Bow Tie block that I made for the BAMQ BOM, why did I make it look like little butterflies? Good question! So, I thought I would try to make an actual bowtie looking block.

I used the same pattern to make the same size block,  and shaded it in for myself on the directions. That helped. I still don't see the shape as a bowtie, but I like how it looks.

And of course, now there are even more teeny tiny HST's™ to add to my envelope.

So there's how it all looks todgether.

Bam Bom Catchup

 

I realized I of course had missed out completely on the July BAMQ B.O.M. This month is square in a square. My studio assistant pretended to be napping but she was keeping a sharp eye on me.

Especially when I used the spray bottle of starch when it was time to iron.

There it is, a nice big block. And yes, I wish I had paid more attention to the direction of the dots. But it's not too bad.

All together now! It's getting pretty big, and I may go back and make some more of the alternative versions and sizes of the blocks.

X-Plus Block

 I was struggling with the X-+ block for the BAMQ BOM, and it turned out that the template I printed out wasn't at full size. Soooo, no wonder it didn't fit! Started over with these directions for a 12.5" block. I almost 

I had to interrupt my studio assistant's nap time. And clean off the felt pressing pad. Usually I cover it up, but he always takes advantage if I forget to.

All pressed, including the bonus HST's. They're not teeny tiny but they will probably make it into the final quilt somehow.

All together now. Hey, I actually like this one! After all the hassling around because of my mistake in printing it really wasn't a hard block to do.

Note to self: Always check the size of the printing - not fit to print, but 100%

I may still do the giant (24" square) version.

Here's how all the blocks are looking together. Some of the "mistakes" from making this block are on the upper left, they may or may not make it into the quilt.  It certainly would make a very strong border if I continued those!

Community Quilt Finish

 

At the most recent Bay Area Modern Quilting Sew Day (just last Saturday) we worked as a group to complete a quilt top. Let's just say...it took the entire day. I brought other things to work on, but I only took a short break to trim some of the pink Lupine Mystery flying geese blocks.

The design of the quilt was great (I believe friend Jaye was the one who suggested and supplied the pattern), and as usual our organizer, Peggy was super prepared with printouts and instructions and block making kits. It made the whole process easier. We were making a quilt made up of two blocks, the above is the more complicated one. The other was all white with two colored squares in opposite corners. I believe I sewed six (maybe eight) blocks total.

It makes for a wonderful quilt, doesn't it? As you sew. the blocks seem very disjointed and maybe a little ugly given the random fabric combinations (it's as scrappy as it gets), but then it all works out together to make such an interesting quilt. We buckled down and sewed together the blocks and joined the rest of the sections together. Some was chunked, some was not. I was sewing the last long seam to put the two halves of the quilt together at our usual departure time of 4pm. Everyone else was all done and packed up, and then my bobbin ran out. Of course! 

But I rallied and sewed on, and was able to hand it off to our wonderful member Laura McHugh, who does the long-arming for us, who was waiting. As I finished the last seam, I held up the final result and don't have a picture. Laura posted this one on her Facebook of the quilt on her long-arm setup, and it's already been beautifully quilted! Amazing what a committed group can do together.

Palooza Fifteen

This is the last block I'm catching up on making and posting for Patchwork Palooza. And it's a very different and interesting design. I have to say that I'm glad that I used that dramatic fabric 

I really love that Tula Pink tiger, so I'm happy to get to feature him again. And of course on the side: teeny tiny HSTs™

There's all fifteen of them together. I think its a good mixture so far.

Palooza Fourteen

 

Continuing on with catching up with the Patchwork Palooza block, onto number 14. This was one looked tricky to me, as in I had to keep track of which fabric was which number.

I laid all the parts out for the block before going past the first sewing step to make sure everything was in the right place.

After the next step, I did the same.

All together correctly and the points are going to stay pointy.

It's really starting to fill in.

Palooza Thirteen

 

Patchwork Palooza block went together very easily. 

I'm re-using some of the same fabrics, as they were the bigger pieces in my scrap box.

But I think it lends a bit more cohesion to the whole thing. Instead of having all of the fabrics only used in one block which was where I was intending to go with this back when I first started.

Patchwork Palooza #10

 

Coming in hot with Patchwork Palooza block #10. I always think of this orange/fuchsia/lime green as being "hot". I like this block, it has a lot of movement and there are a lot of possibilities with it. I'm liking that I'm getting to use my 2.5"x4.5" Flying Geese Bloc-Loc ruler so much, it really works out when doing the four at a time method. And this is made with scraps from recent projects.

Hotz Blox

 

I recovered from my successful trip to Spokane and actually made another Patchwork Palooza block.

The block instructions were Flip-n-Sew, so here are of course, some teeny-tiny-HSTs™ to add to my collection envelope.

Okay that's six blocks done now! And they don't exactly go together, but they mostly do, which will work as I add even more scrappiness.

And I'm terribly proud of myself for turning on the iron when it was a record setting hot day today. I'm used to it getting hot in August, but 106F is really quite a lot.

A More Challenging One

 

Block number five for Patchwork Palooza was a little bit harder. I had to label the fabrics to follow the pattern instructions.

I used a lot of spray starch as advised, and it really helped.

To this point, all was well. But then I realized that I had to trim all of these down by Quite A Lot. sigh.

After messing up the first one I trimmed down, I stopped myself and thought about it. You've got two diagonals that have to end up dead on in the corners. And the trim down to size 3 and 1/8ths! Which adds up to not exactly an 8.5" block. I don't need any help ending up with a slightly small block thankyouverymuch. sigh again.

I re-did the one piece I messed up and chopped the rest down to size. It went together pretty well after that.

So, yeah, not my favorite block so far, but it's done, it's almost 8.5" and I'm caught up for now. Or until I check my email for this week's block. Also, I continued on with the orange, blue, green color scheme, but introduced purple and yellow to be able to branch off.