Month: July 2021

Block 10 – Spin Class Qube Workout QAL

Block 10 of the Qube Workout QAL is ready for download. This block isn’t complicated, but offers some oppostunities for experimenting with color combinations and lots of practice for half square triangles mixed with other units.

This is the beginning of a new week and last week was just a little too much excitement for us. One set of grandchildren went on an outdoor Colorado vacation while the other set of grandchildren were home with very very bad colds. The colds were so bad that the children were tested for Covid – all were negative, but they were sick. Will they go back to summer school? Days after they went home with a cold, someone at the school did get Covid. The parents are making decisions. While the adults around here are all vaccinated, the children are not. It is interesting that none of the adults got the cold.

We had lots more excitement with a mouse in the house (which is now gone, thank goodness). That’s a funny story I’ll tell you later. But we ended the week with putting up a basketball goal. That is the final step from our construction last summer. The children have really missed the basketball goal. Ted did most of it, but I got up on the scaffolding with him to help hold the backboard while he put the bolts into it. That’s my pink water bottle.

And there’s a mailbox story too – LOL. I think we should all stick to quilting this week.

 
 

Block 9 – Sailboats Qube Workout QAL

It’s a rainy and cool July Monday in NC. The relief from the heat is truly welcome. And the block this week is called Sailboats and is perfect for a wet day. It is an abstracted version of the sailboat blocks that we usually see.

You can find Block 9 here in our 10th installment of this QAL.

  
 

Castle Wall – Block 8 of the QAL Sampler

Good morning! It’s Monday again and time for some new blocks. These blocks were fun to design. (you know my Dad and my husband have both always said, “if you’re not having fun, do something else”) But these blocks are fun. This design started with the chisel. And the block for the Mix & Match Corners Qube is all Chisels except for the center Square on Point subunit. And the Mix & Match Angles Qube uses the Kite shape which is just perfect for that block. And finally, we get to use Shape 8 which is the rectangle for the Mix & Match Qube. This is a link to the page with the new blocks.

 
 

Quilt Settings: Circle of Nine

One of my favorite quilt settings comes from a book by Janet Houts and Jean Ann Wright called Best of Circle of Nine. I haven’t used it since I made the Sister’s Choice quilt for my sister in 2016. However, in making the sampler quilts for the Facebook AccuQuilt Qube group and thinking about settings, it came to mind again. And it gave me a wonderful setting for some other blocks that have been sitting waiting to be used.

As I always say, quilts come about in their own time. And this star quilt has finally come to it’s time. This is a picture of my progress with these stars and this setting.

Floating Stars
Floating Stars in Circle of Nine setting

And this is an image from EQ with borders added to complete the quilt. This is so much better than a horizontal or on point setting with sashing.

 
 

Under My Needle in the Eye of the Storm

Elsa came through this week on her way to the Northeast with a little wind and a lot of rain. I decided to bind a couple of quilts that were waiting. The first one was for my granddaughter. She’s worked on it off and on for a couple of years. She’s a good stitcher, but prefers working with animals and playing softball. It’s a beautiful quilt and I used a pantograph called Batiks to quilt it. I also volunteered to bind it for her.

Rail Fence
Rail Fence

The second quilt is one that I made with a charm pack. It’s just a split nine patch and is lap sized. It’s a Riley Blake fabric. It is a pretty quilt and the fabrics are beautiful. Sometimes it feels good just to do something quick and easy and finish.

Split 9-patch
Split 9-patch

Sherry and I had lunch on Friday. It’s so nice to go out to lunch again for good food and good company. It was a great way to finish the week. Many of our favorite restaurants in Chapel Hill are no longer open, and we miss them. Fortunately one of our favorite places in Graham is still open and it was nice to eat there. 
 

Color Challenge – Block 7 of the Qube Workout Sampler

This week is going to be fun. We’re taking the Blocks from last week’s Sampler and doing a color challenge. Sometimes when drawing these blocks, I look at the uncolored diagrams, and without color, a completely different block appears in my mind. That happened with last week’s blocks when I was creating them and thus, we got this week’s blocks from that. It was so much fun that I almost couldn’t keep it a secret. But here they are. I hope you love them as much as I do. You will find instructions here.