Wonky Blocks

Oh, ONS why must you disappoint me? Orders should not take upwards of three weeks to ship. And if they do, you should send out emails to let your customers know. Honestly, if I hadn’t sworn off buying stash, I would be too annoyed to shop with you again any time soon.

On a happier note, yesterday I was able to lug out the sewing machine and transform the dining room into my sewing studio. (Delusions of grandeur, I haz them.) I got, more or less, caught up on the Craftsy Quilt Block of the Month class.

May’s lesson was log cabin blocks, but with a twist naturally. The first block is made more or less like a traditional log cabin block, except that the size of the strips used varies.

Modern Log Cabin

The second block is a wonky take on the log cabin. Strips of random colours and widths are sewn in, and the are trimmed at an angle to get a sort of five sided square.

Wonky 5-sided Log Cabin

It took me a little while to get the hang of this block, which is why the “centre” is so far off to the side. But, once I got going, I really fell in love with this method. I’m planning on making myself a lap quilt made up of only this block once this quilt is done. And, I’ll be using my carefully hoarded collection of Hello Kitty fabrics. I still need to find a few more fat quarter or half metre cuts to have enough, but I think I can manage that. 😀

You might have noticed that I haven’t posted April’s blocks yet. Well, they did turn out nicely, as the pictures below show. The method of the month was English Paper Piecing, which is essentially cutting out wee bits of fabric, lacing them around a paper shape, carefully sewing them together, and then removing the paper shape. You can either sew a whole bunch of shapes together as your quilt top or you can applique them to your blocks. Since this is the Block of the Month class, we took our shapes and did the applique method.

Hexi Stripe Block

Lovely, eh? But there is a problem. Since my fabric stash was in such a mess, I grabbed black broadcloth rather than black quilting cotton. They are not the same thing. Thankfully I noticed before I trimmed the stripe block! (And my fabric stash has now been tamed.)

Hexi Block

Also, I noticed before the block above was actually complete. I haven’t yet had the heart to pick out the stripe block and applique it to the proper fabric. I’ve promised myself to get to it before the end of June. I’m much less annoyed with myself about it now, so I’ll probably do it shortly. Next month is the modern nine patch, which I am really looking forward too.