So Many Kitty Ears

I buckled down and got started sewing the remaining sets of Kitty Ears units for the Lupine Mystery quilt. 

I love how these "Kitty Ears" units kind of have the look of Flying Geese gone wrong, or maybe just gone wiiiiiide.

Cutting the very last set to size with the Simple Folded Corners ruler.

It took a lot of trimming and sewing and pressing, but they got put together. Check out that pile of teeny tiny hsts™!

 But here they all are.  

Twenty-four sets of four "kitty ears" all done. You may be wondering if I had run out of white on white? No, just thought it'd be fun to put in two of my favorite white with black prints. This layout would actually make a very interesting scrap (or otherwise) quilt. Looks like columns of arrows.

  I am so very very ready to move on to the next clue.

More Kitty Ears

 

On the second day of Sew Day, I made more "kitty ears". (sung to the tune of "On The First Day of Christmas") for the Lupine Mystery Quilt. I'm of course, ending up with a whole lot of teeny tiny hsts™

Are my blues arctic blues as they're meant to be? I'd say that some of them get fairly close, but many are way off. I hope it ends up working out. I'm completely using up some of these blues, so this will be the last time they appear in one of my quilts.  

It wasn't all strip cutting, there was some fussy fiddly cutting happening. But at the end, I ended up with nine sets of four (out of the required 24 sets) done. I also cut out the rest of the blue squares that will be needed. Pshew, that was a lot. What a super fun, Super Sew Day(s) it was!

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.

Put a Bowtie on It

Back to working on the BAMQ BOM, this time we're making a bowtie block. I always put up the blocks I've made so far so that I can check on the print mixture and color balance I've got going already. I decided  I wanted a mostly lighter  overall block (except for the bowties), and a fairly large block this time.

There's so many different ways to do this one, but I chose a fairly large quadruple version. My idea was to have a lot of fabrics in this block, mostly light grey prints in the background, some of which I haven't used yet. And then a mix of the darker almost black prints I've been working with. This was my initial layout.

Here's the final layout I decided on. Too bad the dark prints are getting cut in half triangles to make the bowties, I kind of like this look as squares.

Time to use a specialty ruler, the Simple Folded Corners ruler.  I put little sticky bookmarks for the edge lines I'm aiming for.

I chose the No-Trim version instead of the Oversize and Trim version. I like doing it this way, no line drawing or extra trimming required.

Did I sew together that teeny tiny HST™ as well as the folded corner? 

I bet you already knew the answer to that one! There can never be too many teeny tiny HST™s!

All the parts ready to assemble.

And there it is, a quadruple bow-tie block with 15 different prints.

The new block fits in really nicely I think. This is going to be an interesting quilt to try and put together.
 

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.