Hello! I have reverted back to Legacy Blogger.

Yesterday it was 108 degrees at my house. No wonder I was in a foul mood when I posted. (could you tell? ;-)) We live about two miles from the beach on the central coast of California. I don't think it was much cooler on the beach itself. This might actually be a record high here. We do not have air conditioning, but rely on a few strategically placed fans around the house. One (rotating) in the living room, one in the bedroom pointed at the bed, and one about three feet behind my sewing machine, pointed directly at my head. You can probably figure out where I spent most of the day yesterday! 

Mostly I worked on machine quilting large fans across my Summer Sampler. In addition to pin basting, I went ahead and spritzed a tiny bit of 505 basting spray here and there, avoiding the edges as I was doing this on my dining room table. So far so good, everything is staying in place with no drifting, stretching or pushing. Which can be an issue for me, even with a walking foot. I'm using the stencil I got from Barb (Fun with Barb), and then extending the fans even larger with the guide on my walking foot.

I also used the technique (see arrows) where when you butt up to the prevously stitched fan, you turn and stitch down the one you are butting up to (directly on top of the previous stitching) for the width of your blades, about 1/2" in this case, then pivot again and sew your next fan blade going the other direction. This avoids having to end your stitching and start again, leaving all those loose ends to bury. It does take a lot of pivoting though, and could be challenging with a large quilt. I hope this makes sense.

Meanwhile ...

I've been looking at this antique quilt on Pinterest.

 I'm not the only one. Barbara Brackman featured it on her blog about Madder quilts a few months ago. Katy (katyquilts) was also inspired, and made a darling mini from her madders.

I happen to have a stack of madder prints begging to be used, and a few stacks of shirtings, many of which qualify more as scraps. Perfect for making four-patches. So away I went!

(btw in the photos my madders look browner than they are in real life. They're closer to the original, but maybe not quite as "orange".)

First I played around with an on-point setting with the idea of using this print for side triangles, but ass you can see, that wasn't going to work.

Then I laid them out in a straight set and played around.

Julie K had just sent me this cool cheater medallion. I love it, but I don't think it belongs in this quilt. (note: I also have a big stack of reds that are begging to be used, so you will see this again.)






 Meanwhile, I kept making more four-patches and the top grew.

I was trying to think of ways to make the quilt more interesting and engaging, so as I went along I increased the number of the more eye-catching fabrics.  Then I put them up using the "true random" (aka paper bag) method so that there would be random groups and lines of the same fabrics. This helped a lot, but I still thought it might appear somewhat ... boring?

Then I got the idea of adding a "rogue block"* which turned into several, which imo, was exactly what this quilt needed.

*"rogue blocks" being the brilliant idea of Janet Olson, the Rogue Quilter, when she used them in her 365 challenge quilt.

Voila!  Nothing like the original inspiration quilt, but my goal was to make it look "old", and I think I've accomplished that.  In keeping with that idea, I may do fans again, but meanwhile I'm waiting for a piece of fabric to arrive (a nice  vintage-looking shirting) for the back.

I had to revert to Legacy Blogger in order to manipulate my settings, but I believe your comments will again go to my email. I hope Blogger fixes the many snags with their new format, and in the meantime keep giving us time to figure it out - and to revert to Legacy when we need it. (are you listening, Google?)

love,
Sandyy