The Darling Dogwood

Monday, January 30, 2023

Round Robin #2 - Stars

Welcome back to the Stay at Home Round Robin! This week it is Wendy's turn to tell us what to add, and she picked stars! Be sure to link up with her this week at Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life.

Stars are fun because there are sooooo many options! I recently took advantage of the deep end-of-year sales at Accuquilt and bought some new dies. One of the dies I bought is the Rising Star block-on-board, and this seemed like a great time to try it out! It's a 10" (finished) block, and I'm doing a row by row format with each row finishing at 40", so that meant making 4 blocks. They came together rather quickly. I am using Island Batik scraps for this quilt, and intentionally did not choose one background fabric. The background fabric from this row was also in last week's spool row, but not as background.

So here are my three rows so far. I haven't actually sewn my rows together yet, as I haven't decided on my layout. That's one thing I like about doing this as a row by row, as opposed to the medallion style I've made the previous two years--I can wait longer to actually put it together, since they are all the same length.

Be sure to visit all the hosts today to see the different stars we made! And here's the full Stay at Home Round Robin schedule if you are sewing along:

January 16th Center Blocks: Gail @ Quilting Gail
January 23rd 1st Round: Spools -- Roseanne & Sue @ Home Sewn by Us
January 30th 2nd Round: Stars -- Wendy @ Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life
February 6th 3rd Round: Chris @ Chrisknitssews
February 13th 4th Round: Anja @ Anja Quilts
February 20th 5th Round: Emily @ The Darling Dogwood ⮜ That's me!
February 27th 6th Round: Gail @ Quilting Gail
March 13th Parade: Show off your finished SAHRR!

Monday, January 23, 2023

Round Robin #1 - Spools

Welcome back to the Stay at Home Round Robin! This week it is Roseanne & Sue from Home Sewn By Us who tell us what to add, and they chose spools. I'm honestly not sure I had made a spool block before!

I hadn't decided how I wanted to make my spools when I noticed that a quilt magazine I had out on my table had a spool block, though not in the quilt pattern I had been looking at! So I planned on that block without actually looking at the instructions. Turns out it was for an 8" block, and I didn't want one that big. No problem, I could figure out the components from the picture and size them down, and was even able to cut the pieces with my Accuquilt. The picture I followed was from the Norfolk sampler by Wendy Sheppard in the Spring 2022 issue of Quilter's World.

I made my blocks 4" finished. Since I'm doing a row by row format this year and I started with a 40" row, that meant ten spool blocks. I made them all with the same fabrics. I decided to orient them all the same way, rather than alternate the tilt of the spool. Here are my spool blocks with my "center" row. I haven't actually stitched the rows together yet, as I haven't decided what order I want my rows.

If you are playing along, be sure to link up each week because there are prizes this year! Every week that you link up, you will get an entry into our drawing, which will take place after the March 13th parade. Here are some of the sponsors and prizes:

Island Batik 3 fat quarter bundles
Hobbs batting Queen Size Wool Batt
Aurifil Thread Colour Builder: (3) 50 wt Milan Grey spools
Prairie Spirit Alpacas 12″ x 18″ Alpaca /Wool pressing mat
Oliso Mini Iron – your choice of color!
Fat Quarter Shop $25 gift certificate
and MORE!!!

Here is the schedule for this year's Stay at Home Round Robin. And be sure to visit all the hosts today to see how we each added spools to our quilts.

January 16th Center Blocks: Gail @ Quilting Gail
January 23rd 1st Round: Spools -- Roseanne & Sue @ Home Sewn by Us
January 30th 2nd Round: Wendy @ Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life
February 6th 3rd Round: Chris @ Chrisknitssews
February 13th 4th Round: Anja @ Anja Quilts
February 20th 5th Round: Emily @ The Darling Dogwood ⮜ That's me!
February 27th 6th Round: Gail @ Quilting Gail
March 13th Parade: Show off your finished SAHRR!

Monday, January 16, 2023

Stay at Home Round Robin 2023 - The Beginning

Welcome to the 2023 edition of the Stay at Home Round Robin! What is a Stay at Home Round Robin, you ask? It is the brilliant idea of Gail of Quilting Gail. In the Before Times, guilds or other quilting groups might sponsor a round robin, where a quilter would make a center of a quilt and then pass it on to another participant, who would add a round then pass it on, etc, until the quilt was returned to the original center-maker. When everything was in lockdown during Covid, Gail had the idea to do a round robin solo. She invited some blogger friends, including me, and we each pick a quilting element that is the prompt for that round.

Everyone is invited to sew along. We'll pick a new thing to add to the quilt each Monday. The full schedule is below. If you decide to sew along, there are sponsors and prizes this year! Each week's post will have a linky party, and you'll get an entry to the prize drawing for each time you link up. Link up for each week, get 7 entries. Decide to only do 4 rounds? That's still 4 entries!

January 16th Center Blocks: Gail @ Quilting Gail
January 23rd 1st Round: Roseanne & Sue @ Home Sewn by Us
January 30th 2nd Round: Wendy @ Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life
February 6th 3rd Round: Chris @ Chrisknitssews
February 13th 4th Round: Anja @ Anja Quilts
February 20th 5th Round: Emily @ The Darling Dogwood ⮜ That's me!
February 27th 6th Round: Gail @ Quilting Gail
March 13th Parade: Show off your finished SAHRR!

This week, you choose your center. The last two years, I've done my Stay at Home Round Robin (SAHRR) as a medallion-style quilt. This year, I decided to do a row by row format. The beauty of SAHRR is that it's your quilt! Don't like a round? Skip it! There are no quilt police here, we promise! I was dreaming of a vacation and beaches, so I decided to channel that into my opening round.

I bought the flamingo die for my Accuquilt last year (2021) during holiday sales and hadn't used it. This seamed like the perfect time. I added some palm trees to reinforce the tropical, beachy look.

I am super pleased with my row and the flamingos. Doesn't looking at it make you want to be on a beach in the sun?

All my fabrics are Island Batik scraps; I'm not using a particular collection this time. I'm starting with a row that is 40" across (finished). I did decide that I would add 1" sashing in between each row and I chose Island Batik's solid cobalt.

Be sure to check out each of the SAHRR hosts to see what they chose for their centers! Then join us each Monday as we reveal the next round and show you how each of us interpret and incorporate it into our quilts.

            Gail @ Quilting Gail
           Roseanne & Sue @ Home Sewn by Us
           Wendy @ Pieceful Thoughts of My Quilting Life
            Chris @ Chrisknitssews
          Anja @ Anja Quilts

Have additional questions? Gail may have covered them in her introductory post, or leave a comment here. In closing, here are my completed SAHRR quilts from the past two years.

2022, Unnamed

2021, Ursa Major

Saturday, January 14, 2023

A Start to 2023

Happy New Year! I know I am a bit late with that, but the last two months of 2022 were pretty terrible for me and I'm still dealing with a lot of things, and haven't been able to write blog posts in a while. I've been sewing as much as I can, though, and should have things to show soon.

In the meantime, I'm excited to be starting 2023 as an Island Batik Ambassador, my fifth year with the program. I am honored to have another year with this great company working with their beautiful fabrics! There are some fun challenges in store for this year! There are quite a few new faces for 2023; you can see the full list of Island Batik Ambassadors here. And we're each getting an introductory post this year! Mine hasn't been posted yet, but if you keep an eye on the Island Batik blog, you can read them all as they go up.

I never did announce a winner for my giveaway that went with the Crayola Explosion quilt from the Lone Star blog hop in December. Cindy L. is the winner of a set of strips from the Chickadee collection; I've emailed to let her know and will hopefully get to the post office this week.

I have some fun quilts planned for 2023! I hope your year has been off to a great start, and I look forward to seeing what we all can make this year.

Friday, December 9, 2022

Lone Star Jacket

Quilt Coats are quite the trend right now, even beyond the quilting world. I don't normally care about fashion trends, but I do like the idea of a quilted coat or jacket. Problem is, I have zero garment-making skills. I have tried and the results have not been good. I have wondered if I could go the sweatshirt-turned-into-a-quilted-jacket route, and have watched this tutorial with Edyta Sitar several times for the method. When I learned that one of the Island Batik challenges was the Lone Star, I thought a lot about making a quilted jacket using a sweatshirt for the challenge since a Lone Star would look fabulous on the back of a jacket. Ultimately, I decided it was too risky and moved on to design a Lone Star quilt.

But I couldn't get the idea of a Lone Star on the back of a jacket out of my head. Jordan Fabrics has a tutorial for a smaller Lone Star, and I thought if I made the strips narrower, the Lone Star might be small enough to fit on my back. So once I had chosen my fabrics for Crayola Explosion, I looked at the fabrics I hadn't used and tried to find a combination of 5 fabrics that I liked. I ended up repeating two fabrics. I decided to applique the star to the back of a denim jacket. My biggest problem was that I really didn't want raw edges. I bought some skinny pre-made bias binding and used that to encase the edges. That worked well.

My plan is to keep this jacket at work so I have something to throw on when I'm cold. With the variety of colors, I figure I can wear it with anything. The fabrics are Island Batik, of course, from the Chickadee collection, and I did use Aurifil thread and Schmetz needles. I've worn it at work a few times now and gotten many comments on it. I'm pretty happy with it, and I love that I can kind of hop on the Quilt Coat bandwagon without needing to make the garment!

If you like the Chickadee fabrics, I have a giveaway on this post until December 23rd to win a set of 2 1/2" strips from the collection--it's not a full jelly roll, just one each of 18 fabrics from the collection, but there are lots of bright colors.

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Crayola Explosion--a Lone Star with Island Batik

The Lone Star is a classic quilt pattern. This month, Island Batik challenged their ambassadors to make a Lone Star with one of the newest fabric collections. I've made a Lone Star once before, back in 2004 (pre-blog) and I used QuiltSmart's fusible interfacing. Since I used QuiltSmart interfacing for my June challenge, I decided to look for an alternative. I found a fabulous tutorial on YouTube from Jordan Fabrics. This tutorial uses 2 1/2" strips AND is made without Y seams. Sold! (And I'm not the only ambassador who used this tutorial!)

Though I loved the Jordan Fabrics tutorial, I knew I didn't want my colors to be random. I was feeling low-tech, so I started with a printable Lone Star and got out my colored pencils. I love this design, but would have to add a purple from the basics collection to the already bright and wonderful Chickadee. I also wasn't sure this would allow for enough of the 20 fabrics in Chickadee. So I then turned to EQ8 to plan my fabric placement. I loved a lot of layouts, but really wanted to showcase as many of the bright fabrics in Chickadee as possible. My final design includes 15 fabrics in the star itself and a 16th as the binding. I used the always-available Coconut from the Foundations collection as the background.

I loved the Jordan fabrics tutorial! I did not use the off-cut sections as she does, but I did save them and I have an idea on how to use them, it's just a matter of finding the time. I did mark and pin my intersections, which is time-consuming but worth it. I am not normally a pinner but in this case it felt important, and I'm happy with my point intersections. One thing I did do that helped a lot is print out a copy of color placement from EQ. Then I marked the sections of three that the pattern/tutorial create, so I would have an idea of how to piece it and how to lay it out.

The products featured in this post were given to me by Island Batik, Accuquilt, Schmetz, Hobbs, Prairie Spirit Alpacas, and Aurifil.

One of the best parts about this method is that it uses 2 1/2" strips. I cut mine with my Accuquilt Go! cutter and their 2 1/2" strip die. I was able to cut all my strips fairly quickly and they are so accurate! My pressing mat from Prairie Spirit Alpaca was great for helping to press seams as flat as possible. I quilted it with Aurifil Thread color 1135 Pale Yellow. I used Hobbs 80/20 bleached batting, perfect for quilts with a light background. All stitching was done with a Schmetz chrome needle.

cutting strips with AccuQuilt

In addition to the larger Lone Star, which uses 20 2 1/2" strips, Jordan Fabrics has a tutorial for a wall hanging Lone Star as well. I had a fun idea for a bonus Lone Star project. I used this second tutorial, but I knew that I needed it even smaller for what I had in mind. So I cut my strips for my "baby Lone Star" 1 1/2" wide but otherwise followed the tutorial. This one uses 5 different fabrics. I used 3 that weren't in my full-sized Lone Star, plus 2 repeats, meaning I used 19 of the 20 fabrics in the Chickadee collection. Here is my baby Lone Star--come back on Friday to see my bonus project!

Small Lone Star

Chickadee was designed by Kathy Engle for the Whimsical Workshop. This collection is full of bright colors and makes me think of the original Crayola marker packs I had to take to school as a kid, So I named this Crayola Explosion.

Want a chance to win some Chickadee fabric? I cut an extra 2 1/2 inch strip of each fabric except the binding fabric, so I have a set of 18 2 1/2" strips to give away. See the Rafflecopter below to enter. Be aware that I likely won't ship the prize until the new year, as I don't love going to the post office close to Christmas. Any blog comment will count, but if you need a prompt, tell me what classic quilt pattern is next on your to-make list.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Stop by and visit my friend and fellow ambassador Preeti Harris @ Sew Preeti Quilts and see what she made with the Chickadee collection. And be sure to check out all the ambassadors throughout the month of December for their Lone Star quilts. You can find the schedule here.

Monday, December 5, 2022

Lone Star Blog Hop

Today starts the Lone Star blog hop featuring Island Batik's newest fabric collections. Each Island Batik was sent one of the complete collections and tasked with making a Lone Star quilt.

I was sent the Chickadee, designed by Kathy Engle as a signature collection for The Whimsical Workshop. Chickadee looks like a child's crayon box! It was a lot of fun to work with and I can't wait to show you what I made! I'm early on this hop, so you'll only have to wait until Wednesday.

Here is the full schedule, which takes us through almost the entire month of December. Be sure to check out everyone for a whole lot of Lone Star inspiration! And Island Batik does a new giveaway every Friday during the hop, so be sure to visit them weekly! Some ambassadors will also do their own bonus giveaways, so don't miss anyone!

WEEK 1

December 5