Nebraska State Quilt Guild 2015 Challenge–My Block

Three friends and I decided to participate in the Nebraska State Quilt Guild quilt challenge for 2015.  The rules go like this…..It is a round robin challenge with a team of 4-5 quilters of your choice.  Each quilt will start with a 9” finished center block.  You will build around the center block using borders with the following shapes—pinwheels, circles, diamonds, applique, and some embellishment.  The front of the quilt must have at least one of each shape listed but you may use more of these shapes if you wish.  Each quilt cannot exceed 120 total inches around.  It must be quilted, bound and a label sewn on the back.This is the block I chose to make of batik fabrics.  When I first pieced it I had not planned to add the half circles.  It was so plain looking that I decided to use the Bernina Circle Maker attachment to help make the circles and to do the embroidery stitches I chose from the machine’s menu. As you can see the circle is larger than just a half circle.  You can probably figure out that it had to be larger if I wanted it stitched into the next border and still be a half circle.  There is 1/4” seam allowed on the circle so I stitched out about 3/4 of a circle and trimmed it down to fit.  I first did a straight stitch on the circle fabric then removed it from the machine,  I cut a water dissolving paper like interfacing circle to the inside of that stitching and cut a seam allowance outside of that shape.  Edges were turned under and glued.  I glued it to the finished block with a glue stick.  It was easy to reposition the circle on the Bernina Circle maker as I made sure to preserve the center hole.  Three rows of stitching later and the half circles were all done.  To remove the paper interfacing I will wait and wash the block when I get it done and it will just dissipate into fibers and not be a problem anymore.

I sent it on it’s way to the next person and will be awaiting it’s return to see what my friends did with it.

Until later,
Lynn

You Are My Sunshine

This is a block I made in a class I took from Mickey Depre a few years ago at QuiltNebraska, the Nebraska State Quilt Guild's annual convention.  It is such a cheery block but I never quite knew what to do with it until now.

This year our quilt guild challenge gave me an idea to use this block as part of my challenge.  The challenge was to make a quilt that depicted a song title.  The song I chose was “You Are My Sunshine”.  It is a favorite song of mine as my father in law used to sing it to our daughters all the time so they also feel a connection to the song.I pulled some fabrics that blended with the block I'd but came up with another idea by this time so just started drawing blocks in my Electric Quilt computer program and proceeded to start foundation piecing the different sized sun blocks.  This is just the pieced part of the block as there will be 1/4 circles appliqued to the corners to make them look more like suns.

     

Next step was to add the quarter circle suns to the corners.  I used the Bernina circle attachment and it made it a breeze.  I backed the bright fabrics with a lightweight interfacing then after stitching the circle wrong sides together I turned and pressed them.  Perfectly smooth curves!  This way the edges were turned under and they could be appliqued down on the blocks.

The whole idea of the circle attachment is that the fabric is anchored in the center with a pin which guides the fabric in a circle as it is stitched.  Pretty simple idea but the circles can be adjusted to different sizes and more stitching can be added in the circles easily with this tool.
As you can see I pulled a bunch of red, orange and red threads from my thread stash and did a pretty stitch on each of the circles to add more interest.  I also used the threads to stitch down the blue blades of the foundation pieced sun rays with the built in stitches on my machine.  This is something I have wanted to do for a while and it really added texture and another layer of color to the blocks.

Appliqueing the Circles VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I used a glue stick to position the circles to the blocks and used more of the built in stitches on my machine to applique them.  What fun!  The circles were trimmed to their 1/4 circle after the applique was done.The blocks are done, now to figure out how to put them into a quilt.  Come back for the next installment to see.

Until Later,
Lynn