Modern Blocks Quilt a Long: January 2014 Everything Equal

 

One project that is continuing into the new year is the And Sew We Craft Modern Blocks Quilt a Long. This month’s block was selected by Alyce of Blossom Heart Quilts. You can find a tutorial for the Everything Equal block on her blog here.

Alyce’s Block

Alyce mentioned that she specifically chose this block as an opportunity to use some of the smaller scraps that remain after cutting the previous nine blocks. I did manage to use a few of these scraps, but I also wanted to use this block as an opportunity to integrate all of the prints into one block to help tie the quilt together. I know normally in these posts at this point, I would share a fabric key. But this time I am going to be a little lazy, because instead of 2-4 fabrics this one has all of the Juliana Horner prints that I own (yes, I am missing 3 prints from the Rosette line). So instead I’m just going to skip to the block reveal this time!

I am pretty happy with my fabric placement and construction, but it was a simple block… I did have to use a few of the prints more than once, but it all seems to balance out nicely.

I haven’t decided on a layout yet, and we still have three more blocks so there is plenty of time. I think I will definitely add sashing and cornerstones between the blocks. I might remake a few of the blocks too (second row right, and third row center). Or I might even make a few extra blocks so that it’s 16 or 20 instead of 12, who knows?!?! I’m really happy that I have joined in on this particular quilt a long, the monthly block allows enough time to enjoy the process free of stress. Make sure you head over to the linky party to see everyone else’s block!

xo,

Winter has arrived.

Each time I start to type, I have the greatest desire to remove my splint… Or just give up before I hardly get started, I suppose this is a test of my patience.

You see, winter arrived in full force this week, just in time for the solstice, and I fractured my right wrist when I slipped on the icy sidewalk in front of our house. I definitely underestimated the layer of ice that had rained down the night before. But it was the last day of finals, and I had things to do…

Anyway, its fractured and splinted now, and I still have things to do–but I have a pretty good excuse for not doing them…

=====Nine Days Later=====

Well, I started writing this post Pre-Christmas, but with the splint and the fresh fracture I just didn’t have the patience for it… Now, I have a neon yellow cast which I will wear until February. And, I need to practice typing with it anyway because my life will not wait for it to heal. Yes, it was my right wrist and yes, I am right-handed. About as frustrating as it can get…

But anyway, before visiting with the orthopedic surgeon today, I did a little bit of cutting and sewing with the splint on. You see, I had a grand plan to finish some WIP’s and start a few new projects during this break. So I ordered some new fabrics and was very excited to work on the Tone it Down quilt designed by Lissa of Moda Lissa for the American Patchwork & Quilting Quilt a-long. I finally ordered some Essex linen to make up a few projects from Ayumi Takahashi’s Patchwork Please book. I will be working on Elizabeth  of Don’t Call me Betsy’s Lucky Stars Block of the Month  in 2014. Working on my Lala Salama 100 Quilts for Kenya quilt. And continuing the And Sew We Craft Modern Blocks QAL and Crochet a-long blanket!

I had big plans for this Holiday from classes! It was the last day of Finals week when I injured my wrist and on the same day I began to receive some of the beautiful fabrics I  had ordered! Then for Christmas, I received a generous gift certificate for the Fat Quarter Shop from my parents. My pre-order of Vintage Quilt Revival arrived on my doorstep, along with the rest of the fabrics I had ordered pre-injury (I mean, those holiday sales were crazy good right?).

So, as I said, I did a little bit of cutting and sewing between the time when I injured my wrist and today’s orthopedic casting. For starters, I spent a good amount of time cutting fabric for the Tone it Down quilt. Just last night, I finished cutting all of the bright fabrics–leaving only the low volume background fabrics to finish up. Right about now, I am wishing I had a die-cutting machine… I think I could manage cranking that with my left hand since I have been strongly advised against using my right hand for much of anything beyond typing.

I also, cut and stitched up a Prettified Pincushion from Patchwork Please with my new Essex linen.

There are a couple of other great little patterns in that book that I would love to work on, I admittedly got on the Zakka 2.0 bandwagon a little late after seeing all of the darling projects pop up during the Zakka a-long. I am pretty excited about the Happy Hexagon trivet, Sweet Trips Embroidery Pouch, Vintage Pencil Case and Triangle Patchwork Box Pouch, all are far too cute (take a peak at some of these in the flickr group.)

That’s all I managed during those few days surrounding Christmas. Maybe I can sew with my hand in the cast, but I probably won’t be able to do much else (rotary cutting, crochet, etc…) The good news is that I officially finished my Master’s degree (yay!), the bad news is I am pretty behind on a lot of other things (graduate assistantship hours, journal submissions, conference abstracts, literature reviews, class prep. *the exciting life of a PhD student*), but maybe I  can catch up a bit now that I wont be tempted by crafting… We’ll see!

Oh, and Happy New Year! To quote Walt Disney, “Keep moving forward.”

I won! We did it!

Hey! Guess what?

I won the October prize for the And Sew We Craft Modern Blocks Quilt a Long! With your help, I received 120 “Likes” making my block the most “liked” block, and therefore the winner! Above is a photo of the October “Best Friends” block, and below is a photo of my prize, a Fat Quarter bundle of Cypress Acacia by Tula Pink! The sponsor of the October prize, The Fat Quarter Shop, also included a free pattern for their quilt Layer Cake Lemonade. I am so thankful that there are excellent sponsors out there, who give so freely of wonderful prizes, it makes being part of the online craft community so much fun!

I am so happy to have won this prize, I think Tula Pink’s fabrics are really lovely. Now, I will need to buy the fat quarter bundles for the other two color ways in the Acacia line. I think, I am a little OCD about having complete collections… But really they are lovely, and why wouldn’t I want them? So keep an eye out, as these fabrics start popping up in projects in the next  few months. I am not sure what I will do with them yet, but I am very excited to get to work with them!

Finally, I want to thank all of you who took a few minutes to travel over to the Linky party at And Sew We Craft to vote for my block. If you only made it over to vote once, I thank you, that is awesome. If you went back on multiple occasions to vote for my block, I cannot be more thankful for your support, you are amazing people!

xo,

Modern Blocks Quilt a Long: December 2013 Crossroads

Welcome back!

I am here to share the December block for the And Sew We Craft Modern Blocks Quilt a Long. This month’s block is “Crossroads” originally designed by Angela Pingle blogger of Cut to Pieces, chosen and instructed for the Quilt a Long by Amy at Actually Amy. If you would like to attempt the block yourself, and haven’t purchased the Modern Blocks book (compiled by Susanne Woods), you can find a tutorial led by Amy here. Below is Amy’s block, sewn from Little Apples fabrics by Aneela Hoey for Moda, which by the way is currently on sale at The Quilted Castle.

This is another block in the quilt a long that works best if you have a novelty print like those from Little Apples because you can fussy cut the larger pieces, as Amy did for the children playing and the clothes. Because I am using all-over non-directional prints, I really didn’t bother fussy-cutting any of my pieces, but I did choose to use that extra space for larger prints which I haven’t been able to utilize throughout all of the blocks. I also, chose to maintain my background solid to create continuity within the blocks.

So, above is my fabric key, I chose to work with Terrace Main in orange cream, Bouquet in sprout, and Rosebed in Pomegranate. All of these fabrics are from Juliana Horner’s 2013 Rosette line, designed and sold exclusively at JoAnn’s Fabrics (which makes it really accessible when you live in a town without amazing modern fabric shops.) When I purchased my fabrics, back in June/July, I purchased 9 of the 12 prints in the line, there were a few I just didn’t love to pieces at the time. But now, I am really wishing I had purchased those other prints so I could have the full collection, unfortunately those three have sold out at my local JoAnn’s, and they don’t seem to be bringing them back. They are available online, but only in full yard cuts and I really only want half yards, so I’m on the fence about ordering them. But I will mention, that Juliana Horner has already introduced some new fabrics at JoAnn’s in November. I went ahead and snatched up a half yard of each of those too, and am in love with the colors and prints, but that’s for another post.

So here she is, a little unconventional as far as color combination, but I think actually quite lovely.  This was a challenging block to match seams on, and I think I could actually create it with greater success, if I re-organized how the blocks are pieced. But I won’t, because I am overall pretty happy with the outcome.

A few photos to swoon over…

And an updated photo of all 8 completed blocks, thus far. Not too shabby!

The plan is for 12 total blocks, so we are already 2/3 finished with the blocks.

However, I finally purchased the book, and I think I might just make up a few more blocks, maybe an extra four, so it is a 16 block, or even an extra 8 so that it is a 20 block… There are just so many blocks in the book that I want to try, and where better to put them than in a sampler quilt! (There are by the way, 99 blocks in the book, but I won’t be making them all, for this quilt at least!

So, why not pop over to the Linky party to see what the other quilt a long participants are whipping up this month! Also, be sure to return tomorrow for a very special post also related to the Modern Blocks Quilt a Long, which I know some of you have been asking about!

xo,

Where We Create

Did you see my making space featured this week as part of  And Sew We Craft’s Where We Create blog series? I shared a little bit about my space and a few photos of my different work stations and storage spaces. I have a few additional shots from a wider angle, I wish, wish, wish it were not so dark and ugly…

But amazingly I can work in there so much easier than past spaces which were small and beautiful. I guess it really is what’s on the inside that counts, and inside these ugly walls and terrible carpet there is a lot of space!!! (Again, I apologize for the blurriness of these photos, it’s just the lighting that I’m working with in this basement!)

So behind that wardrobe, coat rack, and the yarn/fabric shelf is where we hide household items like the Christmas tree, and such… But I am becoming more and more tempted to absorb that space into my crafting area… I’ve also recently purchased a rolling clothing rack, which I plan to hang a lot of my apparel items and fabric on.

This was still pretty early after our move in this summer, so it’s not a total mess yet! I have also added another large table in the center of this open space for cutting and drafting garment patterns.  Originally I was planning to purchase a new larger loom to take up this space since I sold my last one, but that hasn’t worked out yet… Also, I don’t really want to think about getting it down those stairs, or back up again when we move some day!

I admit, this isn’t my prettiest set-up, but it does function the best! Anyone remember this beautiful set-up from Manhattan, Kansas?

In this house, I actually had two rooms all to myself for my “making space”. One room was for everything I wanted to work on, while the other room was specifically for weaving projects. The first room was a gorgeous yellow and white, the second room was teal and white. So much color and so much light! I was spoiled!

Dreamy, right? So bright and lovely… Sigh. Do you have your dream making space? Someday I hope to combine these two places, the ample room of the current one, with the bright setting and colors of the previous rooms…

xo,

 

Modern Block Quilt A Long: November 2013 Pogo Stick

Okay, I’ve been sitting on this post for well over a week because it took me that long to scan my fabric key, but here it is folks! The November block in the Modern Block Quilt A Long hosted by And Sew We Craft. This month’s block is the Pogo Stick block chosen and instructed by Rosalyn of Sew Delicious. As a reminder, all of the blocks completed for this quilt a long are from the book Modern Blocks by Susanne Woods, which I finally purchased from Joann’s this week with my Veterans Day coupon. But you can find the book almost anywhere online, Amazon, Book Depository, etc.

Above is an image of Rosalyn’s block, and  you can find her tutorial for the Pogo Stick  block here. So every time I piece a block for this quilt a long, I always take a look at how the tutorial host has put it together, and also how Amy at And Sew We Craft has put her’s together. Viewing the other blocks really helps me make decisions about my own block, and as I didn’t own the book until now, I can only assume that they pieced their block pretty similarly to what is in the book.  In this case, they both pieced the foreground element in one print and the background either as a solid or a separate print.

Which, I think looks lovely on both ladies’ blocks, but two things occurred to me while I was deciding how I wanted to arrange my block. First, the block is called pogo stick, so what part of the pogo stick are we looking at here? Second, how can I use more than one print in my block, but also retain the solid background fabric that I have used throughout all of the others? So I decided to break the block into a few different elements of the so called “pogo” I separated the square from the side pegs and then separated the center pole and arranged my fabrics from lightest to darkest in an attempt to create depth. So my pieces looked more like this:

I kept my off white background fabric, then chose Posy Navy for the side pegs, Bouquet Sprout for the square, and Garden Main Floral for the vertical pole. All of my fabrics for the entire Modern Blocks quilt a long are from Juliana Horner’s 2013, Rosette fabric line designed for JoAnn’s Fabrics.

Now the question becomes, was I happy with my deviation from the two reference blocks? Yes, yes I am very happy! I actually love the outcome of the Pogo Stick Block. It was so simple to piece, yet came to be such an awesome modern graphic composition! This is one block I can definitely picture as an entire quilt! And with a little google searching, you will see that others agree, there are numerous full Pogo Stick quilts out there and maybe someday soon I will have made one of them!

Be sure to head over to the Linky Party at And Sew We Craft to view the other quilter’s Pogo Stick blocks! I really enjoy seeing the little twist everyone puts into their own blocks, and this month there is plenty of variation!

Happy Hopping!

Help me win!

Hi friends!

This month the Modern Blocks Quilt-a-long prize is going to be vote based rather than a random drawing. The prize this month is a: Fat Quarter Bundle of Cypress Acacia by Tula Pink for Free Spirit Fabrics. I sure would like to win, so if you don’t mind head on over to And Sew We Craft Block 6, scroll all the way to the bottom of the post and click on “Like” beneath block #2 by CollectCreateCirculate.com (which is my blog title). My block is pictured in this post, so just look for that on their website and click “Like” beneath it!
Don’t worry, you won’t receive a bunch of crazy emails for liking my block, your “like” is just one more vote for me to win some awesome fabric!

Recently I have been getting whipped by another block, so it’s time for a come back. I can only win this with your help! Show me the love! There are eleven days left to vote, and each day as my votes increase, so does the other block’s and somehow she always stays about 8 votes ahead. So if you can go back to the website a few times! You can only vote once a day from the same ip address, so I could use help from supporters of this blog to make up the difference!

Please, please, please, don’t make me beg! I would love to do some fun projects with the Cypress Acacia fabrics and share it here for all of you to see!

xo,

Modern Block Quilt a Long: October 2013 Best Friends

And she’s on a roll!  And by “she” I mean me! The ladies of And Sew We Craft posted the October block yesterday! They are in Australia, so for them it was right on time (10/01), and for me in the Midwest United States it was a day early (9/30)– which was fine by me! This month’s block is the Best Friends block, it was hosted by Anorina over at the blog Samelia’s Mum. She gave a little background on the block, apparently the original designer is Angela Pingle who runs the blog Cut to Pieces. I have never come across Cut to Pieces, so I am excited to have another crafty blog to check out.

Above is Anorina’s block, she used a directional print so she utilized some special cutting instructions so that her elephants all run the same direction. Her tutorial for the October Best Friends block is here!

Amy at And Sew We Craft shared her Best Friend block in this month’s Modern Block Quilt a Long Introduction Post. She also cut her pieces with a directional print, and even fussy cut the adorable center piece to align the hula hoop girl!

I love what they both did with their directional prints, but In order to keep with my theme, I also wanted to maintain a similar use of my background fabric, so I cut the larger rectangles from my neutral solid. I was somewhat bummed to leave so much of the block blank when everyone else is employing such awesome prints for their blocks, but really this meshes better with my other blocks.

 Again, I used Juliana Horner’s 2013 Rosette fabric line which is sold exclusively at JoAnn’s Fabrics, which by the way I am in love with. It is so sweet with it’s blend of traditional and modern motifs and colors. This month I made it back to JoAnn’s and found another print (Ivy Tangerine) that had apparently arrived late at my local store, so of course I had to buy it and introduce it into my blocks!

So, the block construction was easy-peasy. It does include a partial seam, but really it isn’t difficult and from the front you can’t even tell which seam was the partial seam!

And since we are six months into the quilt a long, I decided to post a photo of all six blocks that I have completed so far! Half way there!

Are you working on any quilts right now? Did you join the Modern Blocks Quilt a Long? Let me know what you are up to in the comments!

xo,

Crochet a Long Update

Just a quick visual update on my And Sew We Craft Crochet a Long blanket!

My blanket is approximately 80 inches wide, and is now about 11 inches tall. This is only about 1/8 of the way finished!

Now that the blanket is heavier my stitching has slowed down somewhat.

Not to mention I just don’t have nearly as much time as I had before the fall semester started.

Onward and forward!

xo,

Modern Block Quilt a Long: September 2013 Escalator Block

Bada-boom! I finished up the September 2013 Escalator block for the And Sew We Craft Modern Blocks Quilt A Long just in time! Phew!

Escalator Block Layout

 

This block was chosen from Modern Blocks by Cate at Life Behind the Purple Door. The escalator block was originally designed by Ann Haley. Like myself, Cate is still quite new to the quilting scene, but she did an excellent job explaining the cutting and construction of the block. Cate’s block is pictured below, and her tutorial for the block is available here!

Cate at Life Behind the Purple Door’s Escalator Block

When I first began constructing this block at the beginning of September, I had a real brain fart and couldn’t figure out what to do with the 2.5″ squares and the 2 .875″ triangles… My brain could not figure out what to do with the extra .375″. So I sat on my cut pieces for the rest of the month, without piecing them (not to mention the first time I started piecing them I had laid them out in the wrong order! displayed in the top un-pieced image above, this is the wrong layout. Don’t follow that image!) Instead, check out the illustrated tutorial I’ve shared below!

 

Cutting vs. Stitching Dimensions

 

Once again, I worked with Juliana Horner’s 2013 Rosette line for JoAnn’s Fabrics. And, like always, I constructed a little key to keep in my quilting notes.

Once I figured out the cutting versus stitching dimensions, the block was very easy to construct! And it was an excellent distraction from my academic work. I took my time to carefully align my corners and am really pleased with the finished block.

Be sure to check out all of the other participants September Escalator blocks at the Linky party!

We’ve completed five months of the twelve month Modern Blocks Quilt A Long, and the next block should be available very soon! Can’t wait to see what’s next from the ladies at And Sew We Craft!

xo,