Sunday, October 16, 2011

5 blocks in 4 hours - More Jane

I know why I have nick-named this quilt "Crazy Jane" but now you can all appreciate why also. I made 5 blocks today. Each block is 5 inches square. So for an entire afternoon of work I have a bit more than a square foot of this quilt finished! No matter, I know this wasn't going to be a quick and easy project when I started, so I shall just keep on until it's finished!
This is block E-2. I had background fabric and the two football pieces in a baggie. No fabric for the border. So, I pulled the freezer paper off and chose another fabric. The two footballs are appliques, then the border pieces are simply stitched on by machine. Took me about an hour. (I'm not a super speedy applique-er!)
Looks very nice!
On to E-5. I decided to do this using a paper piecing technique, then applique the circle. The hardest part was figuring out how big to cut the pieces for the rays. After that, it was just stitch, press trim until I got each half done. Pieced them together and appliqued the circle. Another hour.
I remembered to use starch on the edges of the circle when I pressed it for the most awesome crisp edge! Just spray a little starch in the cap, apply it to the seam allowances with a paintbrush and press. No basted needed at all and you get the neatest circle you ever saw!
Block E-6. This one was a little scary with some very small piecing and lots of triangles. I jumped right in and decided to just piece it normally using the strategy of cutting the pieces larger than needed and trimming for each step. The very center I made by adding white borders to a print square, then cutting the square in half diagonally to sew with two print triangles. This was then trimmed down to 1 1/2 inches!
After this I just sewed on the print borders with white squares, trimmed up again, then the white triangles and a final trim. I thought I was done at this point, then realized I needed to applique those squares on! They were cut at one inch, then (using spray starch again) I pressed in the two sides 1/4 inch, then pressed the top and bottom in 1/4 inch also. This made a nice tight square that I appliqued down using about 4 stitches in each side! This took an hour also.
I broke from the order to find a couple more blocks I could get done quickly. E-9 was a good choice. It's a simple lattice, and I did it using strip piecing.
I cut 4 colored strips, sewed them with 3 white strips, then cut into sections. Each section sewed together with white strips, then border with more white. 1/2 hour block!
And for the Fifth block - F-4. Been looking at this for a while, not quite sure how I wanted to approach it. The measurements were a bit odd, involving 1/16 of an inch, but I blasted through it and it came out great!
I made a 9 patch with the four large triangles and white strips with a blue square in the center. Then I added small triangles to the corner to fill it out. Another 1/2 hour block and I had time to organize and put away all my stuff. I'm happy to be making good progress on this project, and if I can keep up my current pace should be able to finish the top by my next birthday! (My goal for this year!)

Yes, I'm a little crazy, but aren't we all in our own way?

2 comments:

Paula said...

Wow 5 blocks in 4 hours, that is really good and all so pretty. Well done

Pamela said...

Thanks so much! I can't wait to see what it will look like all put together. Seems like I've been working on it forever!