Mosaic Piecing

 

Time for some teeny-tiny piecing with teeny tiny HSTs™for the mosaic table runner 2.5" blocks I'm filling in the final layout with.

A little bowtie block.

And some of the bright bright bright neon yellow solid for a little bit of an interior frame. Started out with .75" wide strips.

There it is, a 2.5" square. I figured that some of these smaller pieced centers would be interesting to look at up close while this is on our table.

I started piecing together some of the sections of the layout. It's going pretty easily to join up the various sizes which all fit together mosaic-style.

This is likely the final layout I'm going with.

Bad Bunny Trimming

 

After making those Flying Geese blocks for the Bamq BOM, I ended up with a bunch of teeny-tiny HSTs™ to iron and trim. All because I didn't bring the special ruler along with me and so I had to make the Flying Geese blocks the "wasteful" way. I wasn't feeling up to going to Costco for our usual Super Bowl speed run, so I set up with my iPad on my sewing table and watched some of the game as I pressed. I may use these teeny-tiny's in the quilt that I make out of all the Bamq BOM.

And then I trimmed all of them. It was such a great halftime show. It was like a little mini history lesson and musical and dance party all rolled into one. I don't know Bad Bunny's music at all, I've only encountered him in movies like Bullet Train. He is quite a performer.

I know just enough Spanish to be able to catch a lot of what he was saying and singing, but I looked up the translation of how he first introduced himself: "My name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, and if I'm here today at Super Bowl 60, it's because I never, ever stopped believing in myself. You should also believe in yourself. You're worth more than you think. Trust me."  What a great message to start out with! 

I had a hard time simultaneously chair-dancing and trimming, but I was careful to take turns so I didn't cut myself. I can see why he's the most popular current artist these days. The NFL was smart to ask him to do the halftime show, they're looking to get a wider range of fans watching worldwide, and the ratings were record-breaking, at least for the halftime.

I'll admit I was crying a bit at the end, Bad Bunny saying "God Bless America" (the only words of English that he spoke) and then naming off all of the countries that comprise South, Central and North America was so beautiful and moving to me. The football that he had been holding the whole show (he got more yards rushing than the Patriots did, hah!), he then held it out and you could see that it said: 

TOGETHER WE ARE AMERICA.   

The big screen at the stadium displayed this very powerful message:

THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE. 

Here, here!

That was a really good combination to keep me going until I was all done.

Afterwards, I loved reading all the how-they-did-it information about the complicated production of the half time performance. It was really quite impressive technically, because the limitations of not ruining the real grass playing field and getting set up and off on time. The couple that was shown being married during the performance, actually got married.  This interview with one of the 400 people who wore 50 pound grass costumes (seen above) is a great behind-the-scenes peek of how something like this works. That would have been very fun to be a bunch of grass!

In case you missed it, here's a link on YouTube to the whole thing.

Safe Harbour

 

Another Patchwork Palooza block is done, it's the sixteenth. This one is named Safe Harbour so I thought the tree/bee fabric in the center would work. I really like how the first center triangle's fabric design swirls around the center square. More teeny tiny HSTs™ to add to my envelope that's getting a bit full now.

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.

Patchwork Palooza #11

 

This week's Patchwork Palooza block was a pretty easy one, so I played around with different fabric choices. This one was too busy for me.

I thought this was a better look.

All done with the 11th block!

And of course the resulting teeny tiny HST's to add to my envelope.

Here's how it's looking so far, without the sashing and cornerstones as we still don't have the official measurements yet. I think it's working out color-wise so far. I may move some of the blocks around in the final version.

Old Town Aftermath

 So, my teeny tiny HSTs obsession was well fed with the piecing of the Old Town quilt. And regular sized HSTs as well!

And extra Flying Geese, and triangles and strips of various widths. What will I do with them?  For certain, I promise I will not be making a back out of them. Maybe a matching pillow or something like that?

Now Presenting the Ninth

 

Block nine for Patchwork Palooza was an interesting one, I don't think I've ever made this one before. Also, I think it's the first time that I've re-used a fabric (the grellow polka-dot) in this project so far. But I needed a 2.5" strip and it was the only one I could find in my scrap box. The central square is leftover from one of the Community Giving quilts that I quilted. The image isn't exactly centered here, but close enough. The brown checkered fabric worked great, but the other one was maybe not the best choice here, although it does give the block more variety and movement. I do like the little bits of white that peek through. Hey, at least my points mostly stayed pointy.

Here's a group photo of my teeny-tiny-HST's™ collection for this project so far.

8th Palooza

 I guess this is an all Patchwork Palooza blog now, whoops, sorry. So here's the latest and greatest, the 8th block. I'm pretty happy with my fabric choices on this one.

And of course there were a lot of teeny tiny HST's™ to be made out of the cut off corners.

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.

Revenge of the Teeny-Tiny HSTs

As I mentioned a week ago, there are a lot of Teeny-Tiny HSTs leftover from working on making the Bohemian Wife quilt blocks.

Creating something out of these waste teeny-tiny HSTs is probably not the best use of my time, but I just want to see if I can do something interesting with them.

I had some very long strings of these as I sewed the pairs together. If I had stopped sewing then and there it would have made a very festive banner.

But I persevered and here they all are, ironed but very untidy and uneven.

All trimmed up! I think instead of sewing these all together in a big mish-mosh I'll include some more solid alternating squares to set them off. Or to keep the maximalist thing going from the front, piece them together and use these as the sashing for the bigger blocks.

Okay, the Teeny-Tiny HSTs are handled, so I'm moving on for now.

Back to Boho

I'm so glad to be  back to making quilt blocks without paper. It's such a relief. The teeny tiny HST's are accumulating as I make my way through the "filler blocks" of the Bohemian Wife pattern.

I like these three recent blocks, especially that middle one. The two crazy Kaffe Fassett prints as borders really work together.

There's a lot of adding borders of various sizes to other blocks, it's going to be hard to keep track of all of these.

 I have to make 36 more of these blocks.

I'm going into production mode by pre-cutting the squares that will be the centers. More and more teeny tiny HST's.  Will I perhaps make them into a block that will be swapped out for one of these square in square's? Seems likely.

Here's how it's looking, beginning to fill in somewhat. Some extra blocks are up there, they'll likely end up on the back of the quilt. There's a good mix of colors and patterns. I'm trying for a not too focused on one color or pattern with this one.