June Aurifil BOM

This is the June Aurifil DOM block called Summer Fun by Annette Plog.
It was quick and easy summer sewing.
The only problem is that I did it wrong!
I did not even notice the mistake until I went to post the pattern link above and realized that I sewed the block incorrectly! Those HST blocks are supposed to point out out to the corners, not in to the centre. Well, we're going to call this a "creative take on the original design".
Then I visited the block link up page and discovered that several other quilters also made mistakes added their own creative adjustments, so now I'm happily linking up!

**Thanks to Deanna for pointing out that although my block is not like the pattern instructions, it is exactly like the block that is on the Aurifil webpage, and the same as the one that host Pat Sloan made. 
And anyway... potato, potato...it's all good! LOL


And here are all the Aurifil sampler blocks I've  made since last year. Such an interesting block collection!

To see more design wall postings, hop over to Small Quilts.
Also linking up to BOMs Away Monday!

Aurifil May Block

The June block will soon be posted so I had to get going on my May DOM block by Andrea Tsang. The hold up was that I just didn't have the right solid fabrics to get the gemstone effect. Once I decided I wasn't going to worry about that and just use the fabrics I had on hand, I was off to the races!

Here's my Ruby Red block. It's a lot of empty space there on the bottom right. I think I'm going to have to put another block in that space. I know the "modern" quilters like empty space, but I'm not very modern. I think my version looks like I forgot to put something there!
I did notice an error in the pattern if you are going to sew it. To make the small ruby blocks in step 4, you use the 2" squares, not the 3.5" squares.
To see more versions of this block, click here.

Here are all my Aurifil DOM blocks on the design wall. It's an interesting collection and the split apple block from September is my favourite so far.

To see more design wall postings, hop over to Small Quilts.

Scrappy Saturday

The RSC colour for the month of April is aqua. 
This is a colour that I don't often buy, don't notice at the quilt store, and used to dislike (see quilt retreat report from 2007!) But participating in the RSC has helped me to become friends with this colour and to see the benefit of using it in scrappy quilts. 

The March Aurifil BOM designer of the month is Sedif Imer and she designed a block called Harvest Block. I used some scrappy aqua fabrics to make the HSTs for this block. 

Here are all the Aurifil blocks that I have made so far. There are a few from last year's Aurifil DOM and a few from this year.
Hop over to the Aurifil linkup to see more versions of the Harvest block. Also linking up to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge.

Aurifil DOM

Aurifil's "designer of the month" for February is Natalie Barnes. She created a block pattern called Hanalei Garden and it was a doooozy to sew!
Wow it was a challenge. The instructions have you cutting 140 pieces for this 12" block. I combined some of the sections for a little less cutting. I also reversed the light and dark sections and like how it turned out.

Here are my 6 blocks from last year's DOM with the 2 from this year on the design wall. It will be an interesting sampler quilt for sure!

Hop over to the Aurifil link up here to see more blocks. There are many beautiful variations, and many of them actually look like flowers, which is what they are supposed to be :) 

And then hop over to Small Quilts to see more design wall postings.

Aurifil DOM on the Design Wall

I wasn't going to do the Aurifil DOM project this year because I didn't want to start another quilt. But once I saw the January block I knew I had to try it. I decided I would just add the 2019 blocks to the Aurifil blocks that I finished last year so I really won't be starting another "new" quilting project... I'm just making last year's project larger! 

The name of January's block is "updated wedding ring block" and designer is Beverly from Flamingo Toes.

For my version of the block, I reversed the light dark placements. 

I adored making the little 4 patch blocks and it made me want to get out my Omigosh project again so I could make more of these little framed 4 patch blocks.
And I made a double stitching line on the corners so I have 16 little HST baby blocks to play with.

It was a fun block to sew, the pattern was well written and the block came together perfectly. Love it when that happens!

I only finished 6 blocks from last year, so here they are on the design wall with my newest addition at the top. I love these fabrics and this colour combination. 
Click here to see the linky party of all the submitted blocks.
Click here to see more design wall postings.

September Aurifil DOM

The designer of the month for Aurifil's September block is Sharon Holland and her block is a fun version of a red/pink pieced apple - click here for the pattern. Pat Sloan made her version of a white apple which inspired me to make a two colour apple from light and aqua fabrics.

The cutting and piecing of the 42 pieces was complex, which is exactly the kind of quilt block I enjoy sewing. I was totally in my happy place! But because it was complex, I couldn't even listen to music while working on it... silence was required for concentration, and that hardly ever happens in my quilt studio. 

My 2018 Aurifil DOM blocks

Part of why it was complicated was because I had two sets of apple pieces (half white and half aqua), and two sets of background pieces (half light aqua and half black). I made it into a harder challenge than it needed to be. 
That's okay because it was FUN! 
And it gave my brain a welcomed relief from all the other regular worries of life while I was immersed in this construction project. That is just one of the many things I love about quilting!

Here are my Aurifil blocks on the design wall. The paper pieced block on the bottom left is too small... it will get some kind of border to make it larger when it's time to build the quilt.

I love 💙 love 💙 love 💙 love it even more when, after all that cutting and sewing and pressing, the block turns out to be the right size!

To see more September Aurifil blocks click here to go to the linkup.

Aurilfil DOM 2018

The August Aurifil DOM (designer of the month) is Rebecca Bryan. Her block is called "Rooftops of Amsterdam" and involved a lot of cutting and sewing of small pieces ... which is my favourite thing to do! 


There are 49 pieces to be exact!

Some of those black rectangles were pieced from scraps, and I was intent on using up my smallest bits!  😁

Here is my finished Amsterdam block. It was really fun to sew and no seam ripper was used in the construction process. It went together perfectly.




Here are all the Aurifil blocks on the design wall. I'm missing a few blocks in this year's series... one block I'm still working on, and two patterns I will replace when I find ones I like more. 

Aurifil DOM

Aurifil posts a new block pattern each month in their Designer of the Month project with the interesting theme of "The Places We Go". I made their DOM last year (click here to see it) and really enjoyed it, but some of the blocks this year have been more challenging. January's block has been "in production" since January LOL! I didn't like the bridge block for April, and couldn't visually figure out what the June block was.

But then came July's block which is an easy log cabin variation called "Beach Houses" by Sherri McConnell. It involved cutting lots of 1.25" strips but once the cutting was done, the sewing part was quick and easy.



Here is my finished block.
To see other finished blocks, hop over to the June Aurifil link up.


Below is a photo of the 4 Aurifil DOM blocks I've made so far this year.

Aurifil DOM on the design wall

My design wall has been propped up once again and although unsafe, it is usable at the moment. On the design wall today are my Aurifil Designer of the Month blocks.

Here is block #5 called Santa Barbara Tile by Minke Kim. The photo tutorial on Pat Sloan's blog was excellent as it helped me figure out how to sew this unique block together. It was an interesting construction method and surprisingly came out to the correct size. My only concern is that the outside of the block is all bias edges, so I stitched around all sides to hopefully stabilize it until it's sewn into the quilt (likely some time in 2020!)

Here are my first 3 blocks. January's block is still under construction, and I'm not going to make the paper pieced bridge block from April. June's block will be posted this week, so I'm right on schedule. I love it when that happens!
To see many creative versions of block #5 click here for the linkup. To see more design wall postings, hop over to Small Quilts.

Aurifil March DOM

Aurifil DOM block

The Aurifil block for March is called "Lisbon Tile". It is a paper pieced pattern by designer Jo Avery  from Scotland. It's been a while since I did some paper piecing, so I was really looking forward to starting this month's block. 

I try to chain piece as much as is possible with paper piecing. With this block having 4 quadrants, I sewed the same section consecutively on the 4 blocks. It was so fun to enjoy some paper piecing again! 

Here is the first quadrant finished.

I used 5 fabrics... a white, a black, and 3 teals.

What took me the most time with this month's block (the pattern was posted March 15th) was my inability to get the pattern to print out at the correct size.

February and March DOM blocks

Printing a pattern from a computer website rarely goes well for me, and I was unable to resize the block to get it to print the pattern at the correct size.  I even tried downloading the pattern to a USB stick and printing it at Staples. It still didn't print out the correct size. I also tried to resize it on the photocopier which made it more wonky and not square. 
WAY TOO FRUSTRATING!
I briefly considered redrafting my own pattern to the correct size using the old fashioned pencil, ruler and paper method, but considering how much time I had already spent on this block and didn't even have a pattern yet, I just decided to go ahead and sew it as it was. My block measures 11 3/4” instead of the desired 12 1/2”. As you can see, it's not even close to the size of the February block. Oh well, it turned out great and was lots of fun to sew, and I'll have to fix the size problem with sashing or some other kind of magical solution when it's time to put the blocks together!
You can see more finished blocks here.

Addendum... my friend Jackie just printed out the block pattern without difficulty, so it's clearly an issue of my lack of technological finesse :)

Retreat Report

Quilt Retreat 2018 is in the history books now. We have been retreating together as a group for over 10 years. All of the relaxing sewing time, the hilarious shenanigans, and the wonderful conversations with creative and wonderful woman have come to an end for another year. I will miss them so much since many of us only see each other once a year. 

Work space of an anonymous retreater!

It's probably a good thing that retreat is not longer than it is, because during olympic years we stay up way too late watching the coverage. And then we get up early and hit the sewing machines to work on our quilts. The thing that is missing is  s l e e p ! And a human can only operate for a limited amount of time on little sleep. 
In the next week I'll be showing updates for all the projects I worked on. Of course I started 4 new quilting projects while at retreat and here's the first one...

the Aurifil 2018 DOM. I completed their 2016 quilt in November and am happy with how that turned out - you can see it here. I really enjoy making complex blocks with many pieces and decided to start their 2018 project. Although I'm looking forward to making the January block, I had to skip to the February block because January's block requires a printed pattern which I didn't have at retreat. So I started with February's block which has 31 pieces. It is fun and easy to sew if you're organized and follow instructions well.


Here is the February block called Birch Ball by featured designer Scott Hansen. You can see many interesting versions of this block at the link up at Pat Sloan's blog. It looks like most people are going with the black and white idea for their sampler blocks.






When sewing the connecting corners, I always sew a second line to turn the cut off corners into HST blocks. I decided to save these each month and see what they might become. These are the leftovers from February's block.
Further project updates will be forthcoming after a brief nap!

Finished Quilt!

The October and November UFO is finished! 
This the Aurifil BOM pattern from 2016. The layout is by Pat Sloan and her finished blue and white quilt can be seen here. It is so exhilarating when a labour intensive project is done done done! I know that you understand how many hours went into picking out fabric, cutting out all the pieces, constructing the complex blocks, sewing the sashing and blocks into a quilt top, basting, quilting and then finally binding the edge of the quilt. 

I machine quilted each block differently so it really is a true sampler quilt with each block being unique in the design and in the quilting pattern.



For the first time ever I had difficulty sewing the binding onto this quilt because there is no quilting in the borders... just stitching in the ditch in all the border seams. 

Making mountains out of molehills!

I tried to sew all the way around the edge of the quilt before attaching the binding but it didn't help the problem of the build up of fabric in front of the needle. I think it's because some of the outside border pieces were a bit too long. If I would have done some quilting in the border, it would have pulled in the excess fabric. Instead there was a little hill of fabric at many of the seams and I ended up having to tack down a little fold with applique. I hope it's not too noticeable in the finished quilt.

My motto: finished is better than perfect!

Here is the back of the quilt. Nothing fancy, just 3 hunks of fabric sewn together. Maybe you can see the quilting design... straight lines in the sashing and each block quilted with a different pattern.

The finished quilt measures 61" X 80".

Hop over to One Monthly Goal to see more projects finished in November. Linking up to Finish it up Friday at Crazy Mom Quilts.

UFO of the Month

It has been hard to think of working on another UFO since I finished the Scrap Vortex. It's like when you've just finished reading an epic book and you don't have any interesting in starting to read another book and getting to know a whole new cast of characters when you still miss the ones from the book you just finished.  
However, I am setting the goal of finishing my 2016 Aurifil sampler quilt. 


The first step is to piece a backing. There is still some of this Sweetwater border fabric left, so it will feature prominently in the backing. 
Hop over to One Monthly Goal to see the UFO goals for May.

Aurifil BOM Quilt Top

You never know how a project is going to turn out, especially when it's a mystery BOM. I would love to know the statistics on the number of quilters who start a BOM and actually end up with a finished quilt. Some interesting quilty statistics can be read here from the 2014 survey of American quilters, but there are no statistics gathered on the number of blocks sewn/started/sitting in UFO cupboards.
I have my fair share of those that may or may not become a finished quilt one day, but I have learned something and increased my skills with every block I have sewn. And every once in a while, blocks actually do become part of a quilt top.
Here's my most recent accomplishment...
the Aurifil BOM from 2016 (free patterns are still here). The size of the quilt top is 62.5" x 82".
Although it is a 2 colour quilt, it really is a true scrappy quilt with it's huge variety of red and white fabrics. I was determined to not buy more fabric to finish it, so I had to substitute another red for some of the block sashings. Many of the sashings are pieced from scraps. And the inside light sashing is a different size from the border sashing because I was running out of that yardage too. It was a huge logic/math puzzle (not my strength) which makes this seem like a bigger accomplishment to me than usual!
This will be the perfect project to be quilting during Canada's 150th birthday year!
You can get the instructions for Pat Sloan's layout here, and see a few finished quilt tops at the link up.
To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday - 2016 Aurifil BOM

Aurifil BOM blocks

The 2016 BOM quilt layout was posted over at Pat Sloan's blog and I really like it. I finally got myself organized with the blocks pressed, a light and a red sashing fabric chosen, and got to work putting this quilt top together. 
I didn't organize the blocks in the order of pattern release by month, since I thought some of the blocks were a bit similar and needed to be more separated from each other. 

After deciding on the layout, the next task is to double border each block. I've almost finished bordering half of the blocks.

To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Design Wall Monday - Aurifil BOM

I was a little tardy in finishing the Aurifil BOM blocks for 2016. By the end of the year only the December block remained unsewn. The last block is a paper pieced flower block designed by Amanda Herring.
My 5 fabrics were organized back in December, but it took me a while to get the pattern printed, and to gather the concentration required to sew it.
Because I am used to sewing smaller blocks, the pieces seemed very large to handle. And no matter how I worked with each section, there was a lot of fabric wastage (which I will use in my 150 Canadian Women blocks, so it's not really "wasted" at all, I guess).

This is the pattern with 6 sections having 5 pieces each.
It doesn't look like it should have been that hard. 
But it was!
Why did it take me over 4 hours to put it together??

I can't explain it!!

Here is the 12th block for my 2016 Aurifil BOM project. Although the striped fabric doesn't match up perfectly around the centre, it's close enough for me, and I'm very happy with how it turned out, all things considered!
When I'm back in the quilt studio I will get all 12 blocks up on the design wall. I can't wait to see the suggested layout for these blocks and get them sewn together. 

You can see many variations of this block pattern over at Pat Sloan's blog here. To see more design wall postings, hop over to Patchwork Times.

Aurifil Day!

It's Aurifil day today! 
Because guess what came in the mail for me? 
It came all the way from Milano, which is in Italy y'all!
And it's for ME! 
From Mr. Aurifil! 
I was making strange high pitched squealing noises opening this package... good thing no one was home to witness that embarrassing spectacle! Just look at all these gorgeous threads in the Pat Sloan collection! OMG! Only a fellow quilter would understand my excitement!

I received these threads just for participating in the monthly BOM this year and posting my photo on Pat's link up. I beside myself with this very generous gift and have to thank Pat Sloan our most wonderful host of Aurifil's BOM. She had to track down my thread which got lost somewhere, but she found it and here it is... safely under my care and in my house! Can you believe it? It's like Christmas came early, only Santa didn't get the memo that I'm really on the naughty list and brought me all this amazing thread by mistake. Don't tell him!

Sew...
I had to get to work making up Block #11 for my Aurifil block collection. The pieces have been cut and ready for a while and just sat there on the cutting table waiting patiently for attention. It didn't really interest me as much as the other blocks, so I had to focus to get it done but I really like how it turned out! The pattern is called Geese Tracks and is by Kim Niedzwiecki.

Here are all my blocks on the design wall. The photo is a little dark, but you get the idea... it's really RED! I'm sure I will sash the whole thing and put lots of neutral space in to calm it down a bit more.
You can access all of the block patterns at the Aurifil pattern page.

And FYI Aurifil has organized a design team and has already planned a 2017 project. It will be a colourwheel BOM and you can read more about it here. I'm sure it will be hard for me to resist again next year!

Aurifil BOM

Did you see the September Aurifil blocks posted over at Pat Sloan's? Take a look here at about 30 variations of the same pattern. It's amazing how each quilter's version of the block is unique. I thought maybe some of the quilters changed their layout design because they looked quite different. But when I studied the blocks, it was simply due to the value placement and your eye notices different parts of the block design.

Anyway, on to October's block which was the quickest and easiest block so far. It's called "Chip off the old block". You can read the designer interview here, see the block pattern here and see the finished blocks here.
This block is a bit odd on it's own, but a whole quilt of these scrappy blocks would be a fun stashbuster.
Only 2 more months to go and these blocks will become a quilt!