Little Blocks Quilt Finished

The Little Blocks quilt is finished and has been delivered to its new home. I have also written the quilt's story. I like this quilt and may very well make another version of it.

I've been getting everything ready for my Liberated Birds Classes I'll be teaching at the Night Owl Quilting Studio later this month. (They have added two more class dates to the schedule.) I went through my class kit and updated some data and went through all my samples and example pieces so I had it all clear in my head about what I wanted to say and demonstrate. 

Years ago I set up a separate travel kit so I don't have to pack my tools when I have a class, and I know I have everything in one place, ready to go. I went through that and got that ready to go. I haven't taught an in-person class since before the pandemic (2019), and I am very excited to teach again. I had printed copies of my tutorial for reference in the class, and the kit reminded me that I have updated the tutorial since, so I ordered printed copies of the newest version. I've made a list of the quilts I want to bring with me. I'll bring Crowing About It, which is the quilt made from birds students have sent me.

The weather has been good for working out in the garden and I've been clearing the old raised bed in the yard. It's less work than I thought it would be, and I'm enjoying it. I want to plant tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans, snap peas and some corn. All that in addition to my usual herbs and lettuces. I got about a third of it done, but the weather is supposed to be rainy all week, so I don't know when I can get to the rest of it. I have a gal who will help me out, so I won't overtax myself.

I was assembling a planter box on Friday when I got bitten by some bugs on both wrists. Now, mosquitoes love me, and their bites always swell up and remain itchy for days, but these bites were just next level. There must have been ten bites on my wrists and hands and all swelled up and were crazy itchy. I tried all the anti-itch anti-bugbite stuff I had but nothing seemed to work. These bites drove me crazy. I had a hard time sleeping, and actually woke up in the middle of the night dreaming of being itchy, and scratching both wrists. I tried applying ice, and that seemed to settle things down a bit.

I made it through Saturday, and had the same hard time sleeping Saturday night. The location of the bug bites made them sensitive whenever they came in contact with anything, like the sleeves of my shirt,  putting my hand in my pocket, or anything I touched. I had an antihistamine cream I had been using, but when I checked the tube it had expired in 2022. 

I drove to the drugstore and showed my wrists to the pharmacist. He winced. "OH! Does it itch?"

"Is the sky blue? It itches every single minute."

He told me where to find the Cortisone creams and said to buy the cheapest one. When I got home and looked at the directions, it said to apply it three or four times a DAY! Well, three or four times a day was about three or four times less than I needed! No matter what I had done, the itching never stopped.

I knew it would go away eventually, but sleep was what I wanted most. After applying the Cortisone cream thoroughly, I realized that perhaps the swelling was making things worse, so I took an ibuprofen before I went to bed.

This morning the swelling has gone down, and it's almost bearable.

So anyway, that's what's been going on in my neck of the woods!

Quilts Quilted!

 

I picked up three quilts from Janet-Lee. This is the Harlequin quilt. It is going to be mine, so I chose PINK thread for the quilting. I love the quilt design.

This is the Kangamangus quilt. I'm not usually a brown person, but I love this quilt.

This is the Little Blocks quilt. The squares are 4-1/2" square. 

The backing of the Little Boxes quilt has bumblebees on it, so the quilting design has bumblebees in it.

I've made all the bindings for these quilts, so I'll be getting right to work.

You can see photos of the quilts here.

Finally - Sewing!

 

There's nothing like getting a big project done and then doing something you like as a reward. I made a bird. And not just ANY bird, a freaking Majestic bird.

I started with this bird. I found a piece of the green wing fabric, and it said it wanted have something blue in it. Alas, it came out a bit more bland than I would have liked, but still. So then I moved on to the other one.  They make me laugh. 

I added the last row to the Little Blocks quilt.

In the Great Stash Clean Up I found this fabric I had bought a year ago. I found six yards of it. Not only did I iron it (finally)...

I cut it into two three yard pieces and sewed them together. Now it will be the backing of the Little Blocks quilt.

Going to be awesome!

I had an idea for another tutorial, one that I am tentatively calling "The Easiest Quilt Ever," so I'm working on that. I think Julie's squirrels have migrated to my studio...

If you want to make some birds, (and you really do), you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

and oh, I joined Facebook. I'm still not sure how it works yet, but I'm there as me.

Murphy Visits

 

We all remember Murphy. Murphy's Law states that if anything can go wrong, it will. 

Can you see it? The quilt is all sewn up, but can you see the big glaring No-No?

Since I added a row of blocks to the left edge of the quilt, the big double sized blue block is now right smack-dab in the exact center of the quilt. 

Dammit.

There is, of course, only one thing to do, and that's rip it out. I decided I could shift the blue block to the right, and decided to do that by rotating it and the white and pink blocks to the right of it 180 degrees and sew it back in the empty space those blocks occupied. Problem was, there was a light blue block that would have sat right on top of the big blue block, so that one had to get replaced as well.

Major ARGH!

HOWEVER! I have learned that when you goof up like this there is only one thing you can do. Take a deep breath and just get to work. Fix it, and do not get emotional about it. Don't get angry, don't swear, don't grumble, and above all, don't put it off.

OK so that's done.

I like the way the center blocks are all off center, and the dark centers and the light centers kind of blink. It's fun, and I might make another one.

But I want to continue reorganizing my stash first.

OH: Here's a plug. Last year I so enjoyed Magpie Murders on PBS. They have another season this year, called Moonflower Murders. They are both murder mysteries and what makes them unique is each one is a murder mystery set in another murder mystery with many of the cast members playing dual roles - one in each. It's a clumsy way of describing a very elegant, enjoyable series. Moonflower Murders just premiered on Sunday September 15th, so if you want to watch it will be easy enough to catch up. I highly recommend both seasons.

The Little Blocks Get Sewn

 

I started sewing the little blocks together. I decided to start where I could reach.

Since there are five double sized blocks in the quilt, I couldn't sew them in rows. Oh gee darn.

While it looks like the big middle section of the quilt is all sewn together, it really isn't. There are groups of 2 and 3 rows sewn together.

Also, in all previous photographs, there are 13 blocks in one horizontal row. It wasn't quite as wide as I wanted, so I added a block to the left-most end of each row. The final quilt will be 14 x 16 blocks.

Here I have moved the bottom third of the quilt aside and lowered the middle third so I could move the top three rows of the quilt lower on the design wall, making them easier for me to reach to sew together. It's going pretty quick, and I'm having fun, "watching" tv while I sew. 

It is lovely weather, so I've got the windows open for the great breeze and the sound of the birds singing. I think the thing I enjoy most about being retired so far is simply enjoying the daylight.

A Lesson in Color

 

This was the last photo in yesterday's post. I have marked it up to show the areas that I think need work. If you look at them, you will see they are darks that are clumped together. I talk all the time about being wary of too many darks close together. 

Notice I said DARKS, not color. I'm going to give you a Big Hint. Pay attention. This is IMPORTANT. 

Value Supersedes Color.

You can say it another way. Value beats color. Whenever you design a quilt, I don't care what the COLORS are, the VALUES are more important. 

Every color has several properties. 

Hue is the actual color (Red, Yellow, Green, etc.) 

Value is the lightness or darkness. There is LIGHT BLUE and DARK BLUE. This is value. 

Intensity is the brightness. Do not confuse Intensity with Value. Think of an Orange. A real orange you eat. That's pretty much a true Orange color. That is Orange at its most pure, it's most intense. If you think of a light orange color, it isn't as bright. It has lost its intensity. A light orange isn't as intense as a real orange, neither is a dark orange. which gets closer to the color brown. Any time a color moves away from itself, it loses intensity. A lemon (a real one) is about as true to a true yellow as you can get. Because Yellow is so LIGHT (value) it loses its intensity pretty quickly. Yellow has a narrower range of value than a darker color, like blue, red or violet (purple).

OK, back to the quilt. In the areas that are circled in the photo above, the blocks are too close in VALUE so they make a dark blob. I do not like dark blobs, so I will have to break those apart.

The photo above shows my changes.

In the group at the upper right, I replaced the red block under the purple one with an orange one and switched the black one with the light green that was above it.

Moving to the left, I replaced a dark green block with a lighter green one.

On the far left, I swapped the pink and red blocks that were on top of the black one.

In the bottom group, I replaced the red block with a pink one.

This wasn't as easy as it sounds. EVERY color is affected by the color it is next to. Since each block has FOUR neighbors, I had to be careful not to create another dark area or a too light area. And since my own personal rule for this quilt was not to have two blocks of the same color sitting next to each other, it got complicated. 

I had made 12 different kinds of blocks: Yellow, Orange, Pink, Light Green, Dark Green, Red, Light Blue, Dark Blue, Light Violet, Dark Violet, Black, and Light blocks. In some cases I had to rearrange neighboring blocks to get the design the way I wanted it to look.

One note: In the camera, things always look a bit darker. The camera lens is not quite as sensitive as the human eye when it comes to distinguishing value. That can be an advantage for a real person, because the camera will often "pick up" a subtlety the human eye may miss. I can't tell you the number of times I have thought a quilt looked good, only to be reviewing the photo on my way OUT of the studio and see something I missed in real life.

These little blocks often became what I call "shape shifters" because while when I held one in my hand and thought it would be perfect for an empty spot, I'd put it there and suddenly it would look wrong, and I'd have to try a different block.

Yes, in some cases I went back to my sewing machine and custom made a block to fit into a particular spot.

How do I work this out when I design a quilt? I put the blocks where I think I want them to go, then I go across the room, take my glasses off (I am nearsighted) and look at the quilt. Sometimes I squint. I am not interested in the color at that moment, I am interested in the VALUE. 

Because of this I am very careful where I place my COLORS. I am always conscious of Value first. COLOR placement is secondary. I can think of two common color combinations where quilters get tripped up all the time: Red and Blue (often in red, white and blue quilts) and Red and Green (in Christmas quilts.) I see quilts using these two combinations all the time where I feel the quilt isn't successful because the values of the two colors side by side make the shape read as one thing instead of two separate, discrete things.

The eye notices CONTRAST first. It is hard wired to do this because it helps us see things in front of us. It helps us distinguish one thing from another. It grabs our attention. There are several kinds of contrast, and value is one of them. But it's the biggie.

So remember:

VALUE supersedes COLOR.

Now I am off to sew my blocks together.

Lotsa Little Blocks

 

I made more little blocks. I have black blocks, dark blue and light blue blocks, green and light green blocks, pink blocks, red blocks, yellow and orange blocks, purple and lavender blocks. Then I made some light blocks. For the light blocks I used colored centers.

I had enough blocks to start putting them up on the design wall. You all know I don't really start designing in earnest until I've got all the blocks on the wall, but I can already tell this is going to be fun.

This is the first pass. I could already see things I wanted to fix, but I was tired, so I went to bed.

The Little Blocks

 In July, I started making some little blocks because I was tired of making slabs. I was inspired by the High Five quilt in the book Sunday Morning Quilts. These kept me busy when my son and granddaughter were visiting other family members.

The finished blocks are made log cabin style, and end up being 5 inches square. Naturally I used my scraps and stuff I found in the big bins that need to be sorted and organized.  I cut a bunch of 2" squares of lights to use as the centers.

My DGD seemed unimpressed with the arrangement on the design wall, so I asked her to have a go at it, and this is what she came up with.

I made the blocks in groups of ten. They took about an hour to make and I had some fun with them. I set the project aside to make the Cobblestones quilts.

I started making blocks again last week. With the blocks finishing at 4-1/2" that meant I would need 224 of them to make a quilt about 63" x 72".  I clipped the blocks together in groups of ten.

Oh, one more thing...

There are about five of these double sized blocks throughout the quilt.

This is gonna be fun.