Palooza Almost Top

 

At Sew Day, I also sewed all of the cornerstone/sashings onto the Patchwork Palooza blocks. By the end of the day, my right wrist was really tired (and I had my brace on too!) so I packed them all up without pressing the seams. As I unpacked everything from that bag today, I ironed those seams, and the blocks as well. Then even with them grouped together in columns, I tried to arrange everything the same way as I'd had it originally. I got pretty close, but thankfully I noticed the boo-boo before doing any more sewing.

Then I remembered, there was the left hand side of the quilt top-to-be, those sashing/cornerstones hadn't gotten sewn on. 

So now that all ironing is done, I'm nearly ready to sew this top together! Except for a little more rearranging

Arranging Time

 

Another day, another short sewing session so I don't over-do it with my wrist. It's feeling a lot better, but I'm trying to be careful. Thankfully, I found that I had already cut out the majority of the remaining Patchwork Palooza sashing strips at Sew Day earlier this month. That made it easy to sew the cornerstones that I cut out yesterday.

The pile all ready to be ironed.

Nice and flat.

All ironed and ready to go up on the wall with the blocks.

Now it's arranging and re-arranging time. Looks like I made some extras? So that means I have more flexibility and can take out the cornerstones that are either too prominent or distracting.

Palooza Sashing

 

A great Bamq Sew Day, and I brought along all 42 of the Patchwork Palooza blocks and background fabric for the sashing. It took a while to cut out all the sashing pieces. I sewed one piece on the right hand side of each block, including the chain blocks.

Then I moved onto working with the cornerstones, the ones I'd cut out months ago were 2.5" but the pattern calls for 2". Just a little trimming.

I sewed one cornerstone to the end of a piece of sashing. Now to cut out some more cornerstone pieces.

This is the coloring page for the Patchwork Palooza quilt, and I dutifully colored mine in as I made the blocks over all the weeks. Which is pretty useless actually. This is more for when one is planning out the arrangement of colors in your quilt. I also could printed out by accident the quilt design plan, which I also didn't follow. It's going to be my own choices from here on out as far as where each block ends up.

Two Months Together

 

I took the plunge and tried sewing the first sashing strip between the January and February columns for the Temperature Quilt. It's really fighting agains the Old Town background here, but it really looks quite good.

I especially like how the bottom looks.

It took a lot of fiddly pinning and slow stitching, but they got done pretty easily. Yay, I feeling like the dam has finally broken and I'm on track to get this quilt top together.

Temperature Sashing

After getting all of the twelve monthly columns trimmed and right-sized, I now have a number to work with for the length of the sashing. That means that I'm now moving on to cutting up some sashing strips from the Painter's Palette Onyx black that I'm using. And then I'll be piecing them together to make them long enough to go between all the columns. 

Oooffff, I forgot how hard black on black sewing is.I need to turn all of the lights on to do it now. Guess my eyes are indeed getting older. Okay, all eleven strips of sashing are done, now to start piecing together this thing! 

On Background

 

I made up six of the background blocks, so that  I could see how my Patchwork Palooza blocks would be looking. Hmmm, I'm really not so sure of the look of this.

But now that I was actually looking at this layout, I began to realize there was another piece missing, there is supposed to be sashing with cornerstones left to add in to the mix here. I think that will help the look of this piece. 

Unfortunately, I don't have the measurements for the sashing yet, so instead I used the 2.5" strips that would make up the rest of the background blocks that I'd already cut out. This is just for test purposes. With this extra sashing it looks a whole lot better to me. Just being set off a bit more from each other works for the blocks. 

"Making visual decisions visually" is proven to work once again. 

I then cut out 2.5" square cornerstones out of solids or looks like solids. They look a bit oversized here, but I think that's because they're not sewn in yet, it's all just pinned up on the design wall. That seam allowance really adds up. But, I'm sold on these setting blocks, I think they will work out.

All The Borders

 

Well I took my own advice from yesterday and just tried out the sewing of the pieced sashings and cornerstones to the finished blocks. And they went together quite easily. Before I knew it I got one whole column (that's five blocks) done. They're still individuals, not sewn together in a column. I'm going to use the "chunking" technique that friend Jaye uses to put together her quilt tops

But the work on the blocks was not pressed, as it was too hot by then to turn on the iron. That's for this nice cool morning before it starts warming up. The three borders are also hanging up on the right ready to go as well, after some ironing.

City Sampler Addition

 

Added on one more row to the City Sampler, and one more piece of sashing. 

Here's how it looks now before I iron the seam. Only two more rows left for me to sew on.

Eeee! I'm so psyched this is almost together!

Inspo Block 2

 

The second round of sashing strips are laid out on the finished 9 sashed four-squares blocks from the inspo block that I was working on yesterday.

I sewed the sashed four-squares on to the sashing with the seams side up so I could make sure the seams all ended up sewn open in the same way.

Cut the 9 sections off of the sashing strip.

First two strips added, the last two strips laid on top.

And done!

Block Inspo

 

This interesting block was on the donation quilts table at the most recent BAMQ meeting and it's been on my mind ever since. I wish I'd measured it, but it was a pretty big block, I'm guessing it was somewhere between 12.5 to 14.5" square or so with the individual squares probably 2.5". I tried researching the block to see if there were examples and found something similar called Grandma's Windows, but it wasn't quite the same thing. 

I am not that much of a quilt block detective so I soon gave up as the block looked fairly easy to assemble on my own without a pattern. Instead of cutting out a bunch of 2.5" squares, I decided to use one of the charm packs I've been hoarding for no certain purpose. This was the purpose it turned out!

If you're counting, that's 36 squares. These are pretty cute fabrics, but not really my style so they're perfect for this experiment.

For the smaller sashing I guessed that it was probably .75"and the larger sashing 1". How funny, as I was writing this I noticed that friend Jaye also posted just yesterday about the very same block, GMTA* and all that. She thought the sashing might be 5/8" and 3/4". So...I ddi a little test sewing some extra squares together using the two sashing combinations. Yes I wrote the sashing widths on the selvedges ends.

I thought the .75"and 1" sashing looked about right, so I went with that choice as it's easier to measure and manage. I wasn't too worried about the fabric placement, but I like the idea of the four corners being the darker solids and I just didn't want too many similar patterns right next to each other.

I sewed the squares to the smaller sized sashing.

I pressed open, then sewed the matching square from the pair on the other side of the sashing lining up the edges of the squares.

I cut those apart and then sewed them on the long side to the crossways sashing. And repeated on the other side of the sashing, making sure to line up the seams.

I cut them apart into squares and pressed them. I think it's looking pretty great. Onto sashing #2 tomorrow.

*GMTA=Great Minds Think Alike