Marly's Quilts: Leaders & Enders

Friday, 2 October 2020

One Monthly Goal in October

My goal is to layer and start quilting my shoo fly quilt.

I made these blocks as leaders and enders between July 2019 and May 2020, in response to Bonnie Hunter's L & E challenge. I assembled the top in July, when I chose this as my goal of the month and posted the process here. For the last two months it's been hanging in my studio. Now it's time it was quilted.

Last week I managed to buy some double width fabric for the backing so I'm all set to go. I think I will use an all-over swirls pattern to quilt the centre, with maybe a different design on the setting triangles, but that's a decision I'll be making later.

I'm linking this post to:

Click on the buttons above to see more handwork aspirations in October.

Keep safe; keep healthy

Happy sewing

Marly.

Wednesday, 1 July 2020

Shoo Fly Leaders and Enders: a new goal

About a year ago Bonnie Hunter suggested making Shoo Fly blocks as leaders and enders. I've never been very successful with the L& E challenge, because

I can't stop what I'm working on to cut more pieces for the L & E
With chain piecing I use the pieces I'm working on as L & E

This year, however, I have sixty-four 4.5" blocks.

That's considerably more than I've made in the past. For a few weeks I've been thinking how I would lay them out, with which block would I combine them. While various ideas occurred, most would involve buying more fabric, while the object is too use scraps. Yesterday I saw the answer - not in my imagination, but in Bonnie Hunter's blog post! Shamelessly I'm copying her and combining the Shoo Fly blocks with 4.5" 4-patches. Yesterday I cut up almost my entire draw-full of 2.5" strips into 5" and 7.5" strips, and found a few 2.5" squares along the way.

My goal for July is to convert these strips into 4-patches and to make a top, which should measure around 50" square. A reasonable size for a lap quilt I think.

In case you're wondering what happened to the wonky log cabin table runner: yesterday evening at the bee I started hand quilting it! I think it will be finished ....