BSC Year Three Round-Up

I waited to post this thinking I migghhtt get another piece done for the final prompt, but yeah, I didn't get to that due to sickness and then travel. And then, unfortunately, I missed the farewell zoon gathering with the group as I was just getting home from said travel. Oh well. It was a most enjoyable season - my second with Block Studies Collective with Tara Faughnan @tarafaughnan. Finished projects aren't really the goal in BSC; it's all about a 'block' prompt and a color palette. But I really like to have finished pieces to show for my experiments, and for this round, I made finished 5 small quilts - two of which I hand-quilted - and a drawstring bag. So here are each month's finished, with a link to a post 
about each one:


Crosswalk

Garnish

Star Brite Lined Drawstring Bag

Shattered with guest presenter Jen Carlton-Bailly @bettycrockerass

Pillars 

Shift 

Playing with Tara's prompts and palettes was definitely a treat these last six months. Working small made it all very doable. Plus it was wonderful to see the work from my fellow participants. Fingers crossed I'm able to join in for Season Four.

Shift

Believe it or not, this is the final month of Season 3 of Block Studies Collective with Tara Faughnan @tarafaughnan. Sad but true. Once again, my fabric pull was a combo of Tara's suggested palette and colors from my stash that were close to what I didn't have. Though I originally pulled a few more, the fabrics I ended up actually using were Konas Windsor, Blue Jay, Sienna, Cerise, Woodrose, Yarrow, and Dusty Peach.

The design for the month was hexagons, and though Tara gave several more options of shapes to try, I really did love the hexies best.

They were quick and easy to paper-piece, and I made oodles of them.

Eventually, I stopped and worked up a layout. In retrospect, I maybe should have stuck to clearer hexagon shapes, but you know me. I like seeing what other shapes can be created with adjoining like colors, and that's kind of the way my piece developed.

Obviously, I made a much simpler pieced back for my little quilt, using cut-offs from my original piecing.

I quilted with Aurifil 50wt 2975 [Brass], with the beginning intention to echo on each side of all the hexagons. But after doing just the sides - not the tops and bottoms - I liked the look, so let that be enough.

I'm regretting trying to do precision sewing when I was still under the weather, as I see a spot now I would have tried harder with if I'd noticed it in time. At any rate, I love this little design, and again, the palette was half the fun.

This piece finished at 15" x 15.5", and one day soon, I'll share all of my Season 3 projects together.

Pillars

This month of Block Studies Collective with Tara Faughnan @tarafaughnan felt a bit disjointed, interrupted my some mid-month travel. The prompt was Pillars, with the encouragement to hand-piece, so I opted to go that route for the blocks at least. My fabrics were a mix of Tara's suggested palette and colors from my stash - Konas Sienna, Geranium, Lupine, Thistle, Grapemist, Blueprint, Blue Jay, Teal Blue, Pool, Aruba, Key Lime, and Summer Pear.

The blocks were basically stripes with optional 'caps' top and bottom.

Though I began with a thicker thread (what was I thinking?), I switched pretty quickly to Aurifil 80wt, which was very nice for hand-piecing.

The quilt backing was also pieced, using my scraps to simulate a block from the front.

The only truly disappointing part of this project was the batting scrap I used, which was a little too puffy for my liking. But I survived, and I enjoyed the quilting more once I gave it all a press mid-stream.

For quilting, I used a variegated Wonderfil Fruitti FT16 [Grapes], which complimented the colors in the quilt nicely, I thought. Plus, it's a dream to stitch with. 

With a running stitched binding in Kona Geranium, the little quilt finished at about 13" square.

One thing I did with the quilting that was quite unusual for me, was to leave all the knots from my quilting threads showing on the surface, with both the quilt front and the binding on the back. For some reason, I thought that suited this piece, and it was indeed, very freeing to do.

Shattered

This month with Tara Faughnan @tarafaughnan and Block Studies Collective was a little different, as we had a guest designer, Jen Carlton-Bailey @bettycrockerass. If you know Jen, you know curves are part of pretty much everything she does. So it was a bit of a surprise that our blocks for this month began with multi-colored HSTs.

Curves were in our future though, and when it came time to cut those, I chose to use Jen's 4.5” single template. I loved that they allowed just a bit of extra leeway for trimming.

THEN it was time to rearrange the blocks to determine a final layout. Unfortunately I didn't take photos of the other arrangements, but in every one, I was definitely trying to lay out similar colors together.

For the backing, I pieced together all the cut-offs from my quarter-circle blocks, then added a couple of fabrics from my original bundle. This was almost as fun as the front!

I chose to straight-line quilt the piece using Aurifil 40wt 1231 [Spring Green], and bound it with a skinny black and white stripe - Tiny Treaters Stripe Charcoal, knowing Jen loves a stripe.  

I thought the small scale and improv nature of this particular stripe suited the piece well. Plus it's a favorite.

My Shattered quilt finished at 12.5" 16.5", and I'm quite taken with it. Both sides. I'm sure glad I took the time to explore this month's prompt, as it was so, so satisfying.

Block Studies Collective | Star Bright

Another month, another challenge and bit of color exploration with Block Studies Collective and Tara Faughnan @tarafaughnan. The theme, Star Brite, was basically a chance to master y-seams. There were all sorts of star variations we could try, and I decided to go for the scrappy string piecing option.

I worked from stash this month, pulling solids as close as I could to Tara's selection, saving my favorite for the background. Thanks to two zoom meetings on the same day, I was able to completely piece my star. I sent a picture to my daughter Rachel @snippetsofsweetness, who thought it looked very springy, and perfect for a gift bag. Lightbulb! Jeni @incolororder had just posted a lined drawstring gift bag pattern for leftover 12.5" quilt blocks. Well my block wasn't actually leftover, but I still thought it sounded perfect to use this block to try Jeni's new bag variation.

My block was just 11", but it was easy to adjust the pattern to suit my block. I just made the accent 4.5" rather than 5" wide; thus the lining was cut 11" x 15".

So it may have taken me over four hours to piece that multi-colored star, but it only took about 30 to sew it into a bag. Can't beat that. I got to try out the y-seam challenge, and still have a finished project in record time.

Block Studies Collective | Garnish

As planned, I did work from stash this month for the Block Studies Collective with Tara Faughnan @tarafaughnan. I didn't have all the suggested colors, but that's ok. I definitely had enough to work with.

Problem was, I let the month get away from me working on other projects, and made just a handful of the assigned orange peel blocks. In fact, the one in the upper left in the photo below got tossed somewhere along the way, but I'd made one more, so I had four small blocks to work with when I got back to it.

So I decided to just let that be it, and to finish them into a little quilted piece before moving into next month's assignment. A little sashing, a little mitered border, and it was ready for quilting. 

I used a serpentine stitch - quick and fun - using Aurifil 50wt 2423 [Baby Pink].

Then I bound it in Kona Pepper. So nothing too complicated for this month's BSC challenge, but in the end, an enjoyable little (9" x 10") piece. Honestly, after orange peels also being the prompt for this month's bee sewcial blocks, it's not like I didn't get a little practice.

Block Studies Collective | Crosswalk

After enjoying the last season of Tara Faughnan's @tarafaughnan Block Studies Collective, I was already planning on signing up for the current season three. It's a six-month membership in its third season (I didn't participate in the first), that begins with a palette and a block to focus on for the month. This month is Crosswalk, with the palette shown below. Actually, this is the Kona version of the palette; Tara's official palette is a mix of solid brands, and I'll order that a time or two, but this time I ordered on my own.

Truth is, you don't need much fabric for these studies, so I think next month I'll work from stash, but it is always extra fun working with one of Tara's palettes. That said, I didn't use quite all of it in this little (10" x 12") study.

As I'm writing this, hubby asked me what I made this piece for, and I told him about BSC, a monthly prompt and palette, and that what it basically boils down to is play. I made it just for fun, and in that spirit, I decided to go ahead and hand-quilt it. I used a batting sample that ended up being puffier than I like (no offense!), but as advertised, it was easy to quilt through. I used Wonderful Spagetti 12wt [SP35-Coral], which I've really come to like for hand-quilting.

So that was an enjoyable little interlude. I'd planned on trying more variations of the block, but other things are calling to me. So it's back to some machine-quilting on a much larger project. I've got hours yet to go.

BSC Round-Up

Recently completing six months of Block Studies Collective Season 2 with Tara Faughnan @tarafaughnan, I thought it would be fun to share all of the projects I made during that time. Among them there are four small quilts, a pillow, and a mounted canvas. This was my first season joining the collective, and I found it at times challenging, but not difficult in the least. I especially enjoyed learning some tips from Tara, and especially some new ways to consider using traditional blocks. Note that Tara didn't give any pressure to make finished projects with our pieces. Play and experimenting with shapes and colors was primary. Still, I liked the idea of completing something with each prompt, so here are my six finished projects with links to a post about each one:

Hourglass - Sands of Time

Log Cabin Pillow

Abstractions - Abstractions Redux

Wayward Arcs - Arcs

Big Slice - Octad

Grid Work - Mesh

Do you have a favorite block shape or color palette you've played with lately? I think it's a good thing to make time for now and then. I'm certainly glad I did.

Abstractions Redux

So here's where I left things on January 3 - putting my Block Studies Collective Abstractions piece away and just moving on. To be perfectly honest, I had already given half of my Tara Faughnan-curated bundle of fabric to my daughter, but I kept the pieced bits and the long strips of fabric I'd already cut. So I had a little to work with if it ever called my name again. Luckily, it did.

Honestly, it was hard for me to say good-bye to the season of Block Studies Collective with five finished works, and this pile of unfinished business. Suddenly, I wanted to see if I could make something with it. And that's where this part of the story begins.

I just started brand new with the bits and strips of fabric I had left, not really knowing how big I could go with it. The goal was to mix things up a lot more than I did on the first go-round. And I liked that much better. That said, I maybe should have paid more attention to trimming blocks as I pieced them, as things looked a little more improv-y than anticipated. But actually I was kind of ok with it though. It felt like mine.

At this point, the piece was about 13.5" square, and rather than make a mini quilt with it, I decided to finally try Kelly Spell's @kellyspell tutorial on How to Mount a Quilt on Canvas. 

I purchased a wrapped canvas that measured 14" square x 1.5" deep. I'd actually not been sure what size I wanted when I went to the store, but they were all out of 16" or even 12", so I grabbed what they had. And then after debating whether or not to quilt my piece, I decided yes, I would hand-quilt it. So I added a 2" black border to it, knowing full well my finished edges would not be square, and basted it on Quilter's Dream Cotton Request Loft (low loft). Then I loosely hand-quilted it with Wonderfil Spagetti 12wt SP202 [Charcoal]. 

Once done, I added the black facing per the tutorial to finish it up. It's not perfect, but I like it, and I learned a couple of things to pay closer attention to next time. 

I highly recommend Kelly's tutorial, and if you wonder why the staples on the back aren't more numerous, as she suggested, it's because we ran out. I'll be adding several more once we restock. But still, I feel good about the finished piece, and even better about doing something with those fabric bits. Truth is, I still have that original discard, so time will tell if I revisit it yet again.