Make It Merry Month Three

I anxiously awaited my Month Three installment to Make it Merry. I was having fun with this ongoing kit assembly and vowed I would not get behind. Wouldn't you know it, though. I was on travel to my daughter's family in Oklahoma from July 16th to July 25th. Month Three arrived two days after I left.  When I returned I had less than a week to prepare before I had a visit from my son's family of six from Denver. My sewing room would be commandeered for an extra bedroom.  I basically had a three week forced hiatus and would have to scrambled to make up that time.  A couple days after the last visitor left I got the notice that Month Four was about to be shipped. Life can sometimes get in the way of quilting. I really had to hustle to stay on top of this. But I did. Doggedly.

In Month Three the assignment was to make six Block #4's and two Block #5's. I cut out the fabric for the Block #4's and assembled them before cutting out the fabrics for the Block #5's. I will admit making 24 HSTs for six Block #4's was getting a bit tedious but I loved the fabrics, prints, and colors so much I forged on. Perhaps I felt the pressure of the soon-to-arrive Month Four breathing down my neck... ? The method of making the HSTs a tad oversized and then trimming them down, does take a bit more time but they come out so crisp and precise. The night before last, when I could not fall asleep, I got back out of bed, crept quietly into my sewing room, and trimmed down some more of those 24 HSTs. Around 3:30AM, the soothing, repetitive motion did lull me back into a zone where I could go back to my bed and succeed in falling asleep. I finished the remainder the next morning and lined them up on my Fat Quarter Shop trays. I just love those trays for organizing and prepping pieces.

Assembling the Block #4's was rewarding since they came together so exactly. All the points were where they should be and did not get nipped off. I also love the subtly of two very similar greens and two very similar reds. Dual colors add depth to the block and are worth the need to be alert and careful during assembly. I religiously followed the pattern's instruction for pressing direction for each seam. Some seam preferences were not as obvious to me, but I stayed the path, having faith it would make sense in the final assembly. 

Making 16 HSTs for the Block #5's went far more quickly than making those 48 HSTs for the Block #4's. That there were only two Block #5's as opposed to the six Block #4's was clearly the source of the relief. Here is a Block #5.

And here are the eight blocks from Month Three.

The six Block #4's and the two Block #5's from Month Three are near but not quite at the corners of the wreath. Can you locate them? Hint: The two Block #5's are on either side of the bow.

Note to the Grammar Police out there:
I realize that using an apostrophe with the Block # notations is incorrect since it shows a possession rather than a plural. Block #4s and Block #5s did not look right since it seemed to designation the block number ID as 4s or 5s. I suppose for consistency I could have also used the apostrophe with the HSTs, but in that instance, I decided for grammatical correctness over consistency. HST's had no plausible excuse to be wrong. If I can defy the Quilt Police, I can also defy the Grammar Police. Hmmm. I never considered quilting as a rebellious hobby.

May Roses and Pansies

The Pieceful Patchwork kit for May by Shabby Fabrics has a theme of Yellow Roses and Purple Pansies, a great visual combination since they are on opposite sides of the color wheel. I learned that these two flowers are also a great pairing for another reason. Roses and pansies require the same growing condition and so pansies are often used around the bases of rose bushes to lend color during the roses’ dormant season. Although it is quite common that many quilters also love gardening, I am not one of those. I have a black thumb. I learned the pansies-with-roses tip from a sookegardenclub link which asserts that to plant these two flowers as companion plants for fall and winter “is a winter marriage made in heaven”. My fabric roses and pansies were fun to make and came out so precise and cute.

When I think of yellow roses the song that comes to mind is The Yellow Rose of Texas. The version I remember most is the one sung by Mitch Miller Chorus in the mid 1950's.

I found this pansy song on YouTube. It is so juvenile I cringed when I listened to it, but I learned a lot from it. It is included in this post just for kicks… and knowledge.

Since this banner is for May, I also had to include the song The Lusty Month of May sung by Guinevere in the musical Camelot.

Now what's left to do is the backing, quilting, labeling, and binding. I am leaving those activities for another day and another mood.