Welcome to the fiftieth edition of Saturday Quilting Bring & Share! I feel like there should be some sort of celebration… Anyway! It’s very good to have your company on this virtual sewing day 🙂 Bring along your project(s) and share in some of the news and inspiration doing the rounds of the Worldwide Quilting Community. Do share links and news in the comments box at the end of this blog post. Thank you!
My projects for this weekend are: 1. To baste Dashing Stars ready for quilting
And 2. Piece the Scrappy Trip Along quilt top. I finished the final blocks last night and just had time to put all of them up on the design wall.
When I began the trip along my intention was to piece the blocks in this repeating diamond design but I’ve seen so many lovely variations at #scrappytripalong2019 that I’m all of a dither now! Here are some possibilities I put together on EQ7. There must be many more variations….
My actual design wall setting and these ideas drawn on EQ7 are based on block layouts of 4 horizontal and 6 vertical (although my design wall photo shows the quilt on it’s side – sorry to be confusing!). This does make for slightly odd proportions – the quilt would measure approximately 48″ x 72″ – a bit too long and narrow maybe? To correct this I tried a 4 blocks by 5 blocks layout on EQ7 (which would measure 48″ by 60″).
To my mind this would be better proportioned BUT I don’t like the way the patchwork pattern loses it’s symmetry with that top row of blocks not being reflected in the bottom row.
So, an alternative would be add wide borders to the long sides of the 4 x 6 setting to give a slightly better proportioned quilt (say 60″ x 76″):
Or I could play around with alternative layouts which I can be handle being asymmetrical :-D:
So much to think about! I wonder if such an indecisive person as myself should be working on projects that allow for so many variations?? I shall leave the blocks up on the design wall, within eyesight, while I baste the Dashing Stars quilt and, who knows, I might make up my mind about the layout?
Here are a few of the blog posts and articles that have provided welcome distractions from the whirl of options in my mind this week:
How do you stitch down the binding around your quilts? Do you cut your binding on the grain or the bias? Yvonne gave her thoughts on the subject of the durability of binding. The contributions in the comments section are very interesting. My thinking has changed… I was advising students that machine stitched binding is more durable than hand stitched binding, but now…
Melony was surprised to find that internet searches from an insurance company were finding their way to her pattern shop. It is a strange/funny/mind-boggling story! She also regularly posts about quilts popping into shot on TV – this month an episode of the Waltons got her thinking…
Here is a great picture tutorial: make a little sensory play blanket for a baby. The tutorial by Julie Herman aka ‘Jaybird Quilts’ is great but oh! my goodness! the photos of baby Nate, the blanket tester, are just so cute!
Leah Day has produced a detailed tutorial describing how to piece a Square-in-a-Square block. This simple looking patchwork unit is the basis of the Economy Block and takes a bit of care in the making to keep all the sides consistent.
I wonder if you ever get to sew with your Mum or another member of your family? Rebecca shares how her Mom has come to the rescue on more than one occasion 🙂
Happy Stitching!
Allison
PS. I’m very happy to say I will running the Scrap Buster Workshop at Purple Stitches in May. See my Workshop page for details 🙂
Sticking with my rainbow with black & white quilt top: This week I added to my patchwork and quilting experience by creating a patchwork layout with blocks on point with sashing between. The first time I’ve stitched such a layout. I was glad to find a 
