Nebraska Views

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Piecing Friendship Part 2

For the first border I pieced a repeat of the triangle shapes that are in the stars. I used the same fabrics from the setting squares as I didn’t have any of the fabrics my friend used in the stars. The problem is this border is too big to fit the pieced interior. I needed a 3/4” border between the two to make it fit.

Ideally I wanted to use the dark blue with the tiny bright colored stars but that was not going to happen. I didn’t have enough for that border plus another planned border on the outside of the pieced border. I love challenges like this so had to put my thinking cap on.

I chose to use the light blue with the bright stars for the 3/4” border and for the corner squares in the pieced triangle border. It is Ok but it bothered me for some reason and I think it was the value - not enough contrast between it and the light yellow.

This border just didn’t thrill me but I didn’t have enough of the dark blue with the stars for it and the one I planned to stitch outside the triangle border. I thought of another idea – add a skinny 1/4” border of the dark blue.

I appliqued it down by machine using clear thread and a tiny buttonhole stitch as I didn't want to try piecing it or ripping out the light blue. Here it is stitched down and the quilt laying on the dark blue fabric to simulate the last border then a couple of skinny strips to maybe simulate binding and a corded strip. Looks OK but……I still don’t like it.

I kept looking at it and looking at it trying to convince myself it was wonderful, great or maybe just OK but the more I looked the more I disliked that border. Now what? Well it was back to my stash and see what I could come up with. After pulling many fabrics I settled on a dark blue the same shade as the one with the tiny stars. It took me a while but I finally got the offending border ripped off and replaced with the new fabric. A much better look. Also replaced those corner blocks with the yellow fabric and I like that look better too.

Since this is the only time this fabric was used in the quilt I decided to add another border clear on the outside to repeat the fabric. Now I like it!

Quilting is next so must start planning it now.

Until later,
Lynn

Friday, February 7, 2014

Piecing Friendship Part 1

My first idea was to set the friendship blocks on point and piece an alternate block of a bright colored fabric square surrounded by dark blue fabric. I only had this much planned out but liked it so stitched it together in diagonal rows.

I chose bright colored fabrics to coordinate with the friendship blocks I received for my alternate blocks. I wanted the star blocks to stand out but a solid fabric in that space was just too much color if I used the bright fabrics or too dark if I used all dark blue so split the difference and used both.

The photo makes it look skewed but that is just the angle I took the photo I guess because it really is square at this point. I started piecing this quilt the end of August working slowly as it has taken me months to get it finished. This has been one of those quilts that I have thoroughly enjoyed working on, planning and contemplating each step of this quilt.

Until later,
Lynn

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

A Friend Indeed

A year or so ago a very good friend mailed me a couple 3” friendship blocks each week. They were such a nice thing to look forward to when I was dealing with treatments for a health issue. It was so nice to get the special envelopes with the blocks as they really gave me a boost. They are cute little things aren’t they?It took me a year to come up with an idea on how to put them into a quilt. I know, that is maybe a way of saying I am just slow, but I really did want the right design to show off the blocks. I will reveal the design later on another blog post but first I will show you what I did to the blocks. I decided to reduce the yellow a bit on each of the brightly colored Friendship Star blocks. I added the triangles of the light blue fabric with the tiny bright stars to each of the corners and did it the easy way by starting with squares.

Adding corners to blocks

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The squares needed to be cut 1 1/2” to fit the corner. I pressed each square in half diagonally then stitched along the fold line after they had been laid on each corner like in the photo. The next step was to press the square back over the corner then trimmed the underneath block and excess light blue fabric away to get rid of the extra bulk those layers of fabric added.