Sunday, January 31, 2016

Moon and Star Sister Blocks

With 38 minutes to spare, here are my lovely finished blocks created for the first month of the Bonfire BOM, hosted by AnneMarie of GenXQuilters. (Actually almost 12 hours remain but I liked the sound of 38 minutes better...). Apparently I an drawn to an orange and blue combination, as I thought I was doing something different in the second block (did I not even look at the first block??)  

Yes....there is an inset CURVED seam, preparing for which I slightly gritted my teeth and went forward (kind of like dealing with the "A" word)("A" as in applique). I looked at the text in "Sister Sampler Quilts" and watched the video link AnneMarie made, which actually makes the whole process look easy. I hand-pieced the seams in the first block (the one with the beige tone background), in the second block I did both hand and machine piecing on the curved seam. You don't want to use a lot of pins unless you're hand-piecing (stitch remove pin, stitch stitch remove pin...) and then if you machine piece you could run over a pin and break the needle of the machine. If you hand-piece it's much smoother, more consistent BUT you cannot trim or at least you have to really really really be careful trimming your block to size.

Here is the first month of craftsy's 2016 BOM, "Garden Charm," in a horizontal pose.
(Craftsy shows it vertically, as it were). It was an enormous challenge for me to adhere to the florals. Except for one BasicGrey which was needed as it had both green and pink tones, it's floral-ish. Flourish with the floralish. The tutorial did not provide for working with HSTs, you cut a square into diagonal quarters and sew individually (which allows for so much greater stretching error when sewing on the bias and feeding long ends so I sewed the "short" ends of the right triangles). The pattern calls for pink floral for the first border but this cadet blue volunteered. The next section is dogtooth (another pink floral) and an ivy green floral border. RJR designer and Thimbleberries founder Lynette Jensen created this pattern and the teaching videos and there was a kit available at craftsy.com, when I clicked on it today, it was available for $119.00.

Lynette Jensen said to experiment and move the hourglasses around until you liked the arrangement and to ensure there was the pattern of cream/floral throughout the block. The cream/floral pattern is intact in my block, but I didn't work the placement enough. I've found that the most casual comments of instructors are often the most influential - as I scowl at my clumpings of browns and blues. Below is what I will use for the outer border - Arabella by Marianne Elizabeth. 


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