KCQuilts Blog

This is my final string-pieced  block.  I love the look of the spiderweb and was easily able to figure it out.

I had a hard time with the color selection.  This block was actually my second attempt at the spiderweb.  The first was not as bright and cheery – it had a kind of faded rainbow look to it.  So, I ended up with a leftover quilt block.  Not knowing what else to do with it, I quilted it up with some Insul-Bright and made it into a hot pad.   It looks good on my table, but my husband is afraid to use it.  He claims that white was not a good color choice and is afraid it will get stained.  Sheesh!

I have long admired string quilts for their look and for their clever way at using up scraps.  I have long intended to make one, but have yet to get around to it.  So, I figured that this sampler quilt was a good opportunity for me to give string piecing a try.  Who knows – maybe it will lead to an actual string quilt in the future.

I started out simple, with some squares:

Then, I wanted a hexagon, but I had to make it wonky to get it to fit into the square the way I wanted.  I had to make templates for this and do math.  I’m sure there is an easier way, but I haven’t found it.  Anyway, I like the way this one turned out.

Last, I decided to go back to the curved piecing.  Trying to get the pieces to lay flat with all of those little strips in play was definitely tricky, but it worked.

Dear Blog,

I apologize for neglecting you for so long.  You see I found out this past spring that I was pregnant, which was happy news indeed.  However, I felt so wretched and exhausted that I not only stopped blogging – I stopped sewing altogether.  I started feeling a little better about a month ago, but inertia kept me away from you.  Now, I am doing my best to get back on the bandwagon here.

Here are some rather geometric blocks for you to enjoy:

There are just not enough hours in the day. I have had to take a break from these rainbow blocks because Easter is coming up and I need to make Easter gifts – not to mention the various birthdays that have been popping up. And then June is my daughter’s birthday and I have so many things I want to make for that! I don’t know how so many other quilters produce such a large amount of quilts in the same time it takes me to make one. They must not sleep. Or have children. Or, at least, have my children.

I have made zig zag quilts before, but I used shortcuts to make them. That means that the various zig zags were broken up into triangles. That’s a fine look when your fabrics are mostly sold and the same for each “line” of zig zags. But, I could not conceive of a short cut for this block, since I wanted each piece of fabric to remain whole. That meant that I had to make a template of a parallelogram, cut one out of each fabric, and sew them together without skewing the seams. The sewing them together was the hardest part. The perfectionist in me wanted to outline the quarter-inch seams on the back so I could perfectly match up corners with pins. But the practical side of me nixed that idea and just winged it. It came out pretty well. My only qualm is that the value of each color is not uniform, but I didn’t have enough variety of fabrics to make that happen. So, the light purple is mixing with the dark and the lime green is mixing with forest green. We can all get along, right?

I had a lot of fun with these blocks. The first one was totally inspired by this picture on Flickr. The second is just an improvised and skewed version of a Bento Box Block.  What I love best about these blocks is that I did not plan them out at all – no graph paper, no measuring, no pencils.  It was just me and my rotary cutter and it was so much fun.  I highly recommend.

While planning out blocks to add to this quilt, I had an inkling I might like to try a Dresden Plate.  But I wasn’t sure – it was just SO traditional.  Then I saw this fabulous block on Flickr and knew I had to try it.

Never having made a Dresden Plate block before, I did a quick Google search for tutorials.  I found some useful information, but every single tutorial claimed that I needed to go out and buy a special ruler for making Dresden Plate blocks.  I was not about to buy a ruler for a singular quilt block, so out came the graph paper and the compass and the protractor:

Template in hand, I made quick work of the Dresden Plate.  It was so much easier than I had assumed, and super addicting.

If anyone is interested in trying it for themselves, here are some good tutorials:

• Dresden Plate Block Sew-Along
• Blogtoberfest – Dresden Plate Tutorial
• Easy Dresden “Tutorial”

Just keep in mind that, with a little effort, you do not have to buy a special ruler.  Also, these tutorials mainly advocate appliqueing by machine, but I did mine by hand.  One isn’t better than the other, necessarily, but it is nice to know that it can be done either way.