Sentimental Stitches » Block of the Month

Acorns & Cherry Trees

Gay — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 23:16:51 +0000

It’s hard to believe it’s September! This summer has gone by very quickly. In the last week we’ve had temperatures in the 90s and then yesterday it barely made it to 60. The sky is beginning to get that look of fall and I’ve noticed some of the trees are beginning to change colors.

If you follow me on Facebook you might remember my grumbling one evening as I walked around the cottage.

It seemed like no matter where I walked I was getting acorns stuck in my sandals. It had gotten to be quite annoying. There seems to a bumper crop this year and they’ve been dropping from the trees for weeks.

I decided to make the best of things, put my thinking cap on and began to gather nuts like a little squirrel.

I’ve been taking those nuts and working a little magic and creating the cutest little felted wool acorn pincushions!

Aren’t they adorable? Each one is unique.

Because the acorns are so large this year they are about 1″ x 1 1/4″ which is great for sitting on the table next to me when doing applique or embroidery.

If you find a double top it’s a real treasure. I’ve learned they are pretty rare and usually a little smaller than the singles so these little twins are about 3/4″ each.

In all my days of looking I’ve only found one triple top but it sure turned out cute.

After I made the first couple of pincushions I knew I couldn’t keep this to myself so Clutch and i have been making daily rounds to collect the best acorns we can find and turn them into pincushions so you can have a little piece of the cottage too.

You can find the Acorn Pincushions in the Online Store - HERE
and the Acorn Pincushion Twins – HERE. I hope you’ll like them as much as I do.

It’s time for the September Beyond The Cherry Trees block and this month’s block is one that is still in pretty good condition as far as the fabric goes. I was surprised after searching and searching that I couldn’t find any hidden stitches in this one. The block does have a lot of applique spread across it and maybe that’s the reason our quilter didn’t add any extra designs.

Hard as I tried, I just couldn’t draw a wonky squashed circle in another block in this quilt. I started with a 10″ circle and added the flowers and leaves around it. The leaves even look like the oak leaves on our acorn trees.

Lots of little finger leaves

Not as thin on the inner flowers

It’s a corner block and there are some nice designs in the border area.

That’s it for today. You can get the Beyond The Cherry Trees block – HERE

Beyond The Cherry Trees & Sally Post Floral Sampler August Blocks

Gay — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 05:18:32 +0000

I’m right down to the wire on posting these Block of the Month patterns but wanted to finish all 24 blocks of the Midget Mania blocks first. It was fun picking out new Midget Blocks and I printed off foundations to do some sewing myself.

Finding the hidden stitches in this months Beyond The Cherry Trees block has been so much fun and there’s been a lot of them to find.

This is one sorry looking quilt block. As you can see there isn’t much left of it. The original green fabric has not only turned brown, it’s falling apart too.

It was a surprise to find that the background fabric had been pieced to make the piece of fabric large enough. It made me wonder if that’s why the quilter put so much effort into the quilting on this particular block.

There are twelve quilting designs within this single block! How cool is that? I never know what I’m going to find when I start searching for the designs hidden in the stitching.

There are two flowers quilted within the flower pot and an arc on each side down near the bottom.

These designs extend over the seam line into the block above.

These are on the lower right side of the block next to the flower pot.

Did you ever wonder how I go about finding these designs? This flower on the upper left side will give you a little bit of an idea. I know all of the background is quilted in a clamshell design the size of a quarter which measures about 14/16″, okay a little less than 1 inch.
Believe me, that 2/16″ wouldn’t make a difference to me. I can’t imagine quilting clamshells that small across the background of a quilt this size! I’ve gotton so that I can look past the little clamshells until I see stitching going in another direction. Sometimes I can tell what the design is but other times I have no idea until I start restitching the original in a darker thread. There are times, like with the flower in the picture above, where I’m not quite sure if the two clamshells at the bottom are an added design element for the flower or just the beginning of a new area of background quilting so I guess.

These are on the lower left of the block and just cross over the seam line into the block next to it.

Here's a closeup of one of the flowers inside the flower pot and the arc down at the bottom.

You can get this month’s Beyond The Cherry Trees block HERE
and
Sally Post Floral Sampler block HERE

Been Lost Beyond The Cherry Trees Quilt

Gay — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 02:59:53 +0000

Gosh, I have missed all of you. A trip to Grand Rapids sure sucked the hours out of my days and I’ve had one son and then husband and the other son here at the lake with me for some vacation time so you can imagine how busy it’s been around here. Even Clutch slept for a whole day after everyone went home.

The weather has finally turned to summer so I’ve been trying to finish up the raking, trimming and weeding. Somehow during the weeding process I got myself into rock digging.

I’ve dug and pulled and dug and dug some more. I worked to the point where my son said “Stop Mom, I’ll buy you some rocks”! What a sweetie, but there’s something about unearthing a 50 year old rock garden that pushes me on. I have rested the last couple of days due to age related aches and pains but I’ve got some beautiful stones and only a small section left to check for buried treasure.

Take a look at those steps. Aren’t they the most pitiful mess you’ve ever seen? We thought maybe the chipmunks had been digging tunnels under them and that caused the tip. There’s been much discussion about whether to use a 3 ton jack (whatever that is) to lift them up and put sand underneath. We’ve all thought about taking out our frustrations by smashing them with a sledge hammer and considered just building a section of wood steps right over the top of them but……….

we discovered one of these little buggers is actually the critter who has taken up residence under the steps. He swims under the last section of dock and right down the melon size hole he dug at the shoreline to get to his mansion under the steps.

I got me a lawn chair and got me a gun and just like Granny Clampett I’m going to be hunting muskrat! Wish there was a way to trap and release but he’d be back in no time. Gotta save those steps.

For now Clutch is on muskrat patrol!

Back to stitching – I’ve posted the July blocks for the Sally Post Floral Sampler quilt and the Beyond the Cherry Trees quilt.
The Beyond the Cherry Trees block for July is in honor of the National Cherry Festival that was held this past week in Traverse City.

The U.S. Navy Blue Angels were here this year so most of us locals kept our distance from town so that gave me plenty of time for all that pulling and digging.

Click on the picture to go to it’s Flickr page. You can see the stitching details on the original size photo.

There’s as much going on in this block as there was at the festival. We have hidden stitches galore.

A flower……

another flower………

and a third flower!

two leaves………..

a star…………

and four cute little hearts in the center!

The border section right above this block has some interesting quilting hidden in the stitches too.

I’ve studied and studied the embroidered stems on the cherries. The thread has faded to nearly white. The dark thread you see in some of the pictures is where I stitched over the lines so I could see them for tracing.

The thread is heavier than quilting thread but not glossy like perle cotton. I’ve looked at tatting thread and haven’t been able to find a color to match the green. Anyone have any ideas?
Each stitch is about a 1/8″ long chain stitch with a single strand of the thread.

Shipshewana Amish Quilt – Section 14

Gay — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 03:34:18 +0000

My progress on the Shipshewana Amish quilt came to a screeching halt. I started to put some of my sections together

sorry this picture is so lousy!

and just wasn’t happy with some of the colors I’d chosen. No design wall here at the lake and I only had a small basket of solids with me so…………..it’s time to put on the brakes and step back. I’ve already switched around the flying geese units to balance the blue and turquoise. I really don’t like the way the colors in the fan section (I know you don’t have that one yet) look but I’m too lazy to make two more blocks so I’m auditioning a couple of replacement fan blades and a different handle.

Until next time – here’s Section 14 for you to work on. I’m off to finish watching the John Mayer / Keith Urban Crossroads on CMT while we wait for a thunderstorm that’s headed our way.

Shipshewana Amish Quilt – Section 13

Gay — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:31:56 +0000

I am happy to say we are on the home stretch with this fun Shipshewana Amish Mystery Quilt. I am pretty darn pleased with the way it’s coming together.

I uploaded Section 13 this morning.

This is an easy section with a rotary cut, machine pieced block and three quarter square triangles sewn together for a filler unit. Remember, there’s a new tutorial for making quick sewn quarter square triangles. You can find it HERE if you need some visual help.

Three more sections and we’ll have the center finished!

When Quilt Blocks Go Bad – Shipshewana Amish Section 12

Gay — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:16:25 +0000

You’d think after quilting for over 30 years I’d be making practically perfect blocks with every one I stitched. Well, what a joke that is! In the last couple of days I’ve flubbed up two of them!

At first glance this Snail’s Trail block looks pretty darn good.

If you look at the illustrations for the Shipshewana Amish Mystery Quilt Section 10 you’ll see my snail is trailing in the wrong direction! Oops…….. Does it matter?
In some cases it might but in this one I think I can live with the snail traveling backwards. This is an easy mistake to make when you’re foundation piecing because the foundation is printed in a mirror image so the block will appear correctly after it’s sewn. If you don’t keep that in mind when marking the color placement on the foundation you can end up with a block like mine. I know better but oh well………….

This bad block is part of Section 12 uploaded today. I didn’t double check the black triangle after sewing it to make sure if extended into the seam allowance on the side of the block. I was already frustrated because I hadn’t added enough extra fabric to my measurements when I cut those pieces so I had to be extra careful when sewing them and guess I just got in a hurry and didn’t see my mistake until I had finished both of those 6″ blocks and sewn them together. Drat! I just can’t leave that bad boy as it is. I really don’t want to separate the two blocks and make another one so I’m going to frog stitch the end of the seam where mistake is and sew a little triangle of the background fabric on there so I have an extension into the seam allowance on the side.

This is what Section 12 looks like. It’s kind of a group of what I call filler blocks but we’ve now made enough sections I think I better work on an assembly diagram for you. I have four sections to make yet but with only a small group of solids with me at the lake I don’t know if I’ll get them finished. Right now I better fix the bad block and have a go at that diagram.

Shipshewana Amish 10 – 11 and Triangle Tutorials

Gay — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 02:44:37 +0000

I finished my two basket blocks from the Shipshewana Amish quilt and have been working on some of the other blocks. As I was sewing I wondered how everyone was sewing half and quarter square triangle sections together. I know I’ve tried just about every known technique and keep coming back to the same ones. I decided to share what I do with you because there’s quite a few filler sections made with either

half square triangles

or

quarter square triangles.

There is a tutorial on making half square triangles HERE and one for making quarter square triangles HERE.

I uploaded the instructions for Section 10 last night and Section 11 tonight. I’ll do my best to upload another section in the next day or two. Clutch has been doing a pretty good job of being patient while I’m sewing.

There have been a couple of times when he’s decided enough is enough. I couldn’t believe it when he climbed right up on my stitching on top of all the pins and needle while I went to get a cup of coffee and had no intention of moving when I came back.

Does that face not say “no more stitching for you!!!”

I think I’m liking it!

Shipshewana Amish Quilt Section 9 and Eight Point Star Tutorial

Gay — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:26:51 +0000

I’ve been keeping busy catching up on my own blocks for the Shipshewana Amish Mystery Quilt. Now that the drawing for the whole quilt is complete I’m jumping all over the place making a block here and a block there. I should focus and put a section together so you can see.

I just uploaded the instructions for Section 9. It’s a fun double star that I think you’ll find easy to piece. Tonight I’m going to piece the two baskets from Section 3

As I was working on the eight point star for Section 8 I took some pictures and put them together in a little tutorial on how to hand piece a block like the Lemoyne Star that has “Y” seams. You can find it HERE in the Instructions under hand piecing.

It was a cold here last night and there are frost advisories for tonight. Is this June? Clutch will be deep under the blankets tonight!
I think I’ll get settled in and start on those basket blocks and the instructions for the next section.

June Block of the Month & Shipshewana Amish Pattern

Gay — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 14:38:11 +0000

Clutch and I have been in Traverse City since May 20th. The days just seem to fly by. We’ve had hot weather, cool weather and a little bit of rain. There’s been a bit of excitement with the furnace and plumbing acting up but it’s all worth it. I’m just grateful to be here. I can’t speak for Clutch who is hiding under a couple of quilts and glued to my body because it’s a chilly morning.

I added this month’s Sally Post Floral Sampler block which is one of my favorites because it’s a water lily just like we have on the lake here at the cottage. I hope you enjoy making this block.

This month’s Beyond The Cherry Trees block is a bit of a mystery. See the little red dot in the picture? It’s actually a tiny appliqued circle!

And that circle is a perfect little eye. You can see what looks like quilting showing the shape of the bird.

Closer inspection shows not only the quilting lines but also the applique stitches that once secured the fabric chosen for the bird. All that remains are a few little threads in the tail area. There isn’t enough for me to determine what the fabric might have been. Looking at the other fabrics which have broken down in the quilt our options are green, yellow, cream or purple. I’ll let you decide which one you’d like to use in your block. I’m tempted to use the purple to balance the purple fabric used in the grape vine block (we haven’t done that one yet).

I’ve been working on other projects too. Sometimes Clutch gets pretty frustrated with all that stitching and puts up his own blockade of sorts – right on top of the pins and needles!

Here he is looking mighty disgusted on top of the quilt I was working on for baby Olivia in my Kenny Chesney “old blue chair”. What a guy!

Now I don’t want anyone to drop their laptop or fall off their chair but…………..I’ve finished the design work on the Shipshewana Amish Mystery Quilt. I uploaded Section 8 this morning and will try to finish the rest of the pattern instructions over the next week uploading them as I get them done. I brought a small basket of Amish solid color fabrics with me so I’m working on the blocks too. As soon as I’m sure I won’t be tweaking the remaining sections I’ll post a picture of the whole quilt. Hopefully you’ll think it was worth the long wait. I am pleased with how it’s turning out.

More news later about the second line of fabric “Lady Grace” that was released as Quilt Market in Minneapolis, MN and three new patterns to go along with it. Right now I’ve got to crack the whip and get back to the Shipshewana Amish patterns.

It’s Been Almost A Month Since Shipshewana

Gay — Thu, 13 May 2010 21:27:50 +0000

I know it seems like I’ve fallen off the face of the earth but I really haven’t. It’s just been one deadline after another and as my dear friend Brenda said “you need an assistant”. Problem is, I can’t afford to hire one so it’s just lil’ ol’ me for now.

If you haven’t already downloaded them, I did post the May block for the Beyond the Cherry Trees quilt and Sally Post Floral Sampler. That leaves finishing the Shipshewana Amish Mystery quilt and the Charm Square Twist for the So Sew Easy Schlep Bag as unfinished promises.

I received the first strike-offs for the Petticoats & Polka Dots fabric. I can’t tell you what a strange feeling it is to see your name printed on the selvege.
Quilt Market is taking place next week in Minneapolis so be sure to ask your favorite shop owner to stop by the Blue Hill Fabrics booth and place their order for the whole collection. It will be shipping in September. They should also ask to see my second line “Lady Grace“!

I’ve been busy working on samples for the booth. It seems no matter how much you think you’ve figured it all out ahead of time there’s still that last minute craziness getting ready for market. I can tell you that all of the orders from the Online Store have been sent out.

I’ll show you pictures of what I’ve made as soon as I can but while you’re waiting, grab a cup of coffee and take a look at my last couple of days in Shipshewana. I spent time at Sarah Davis Ltd. and then checked out some of the great quilt kits you can get at Lolly’s Fabrics.

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