October Flying Geese and Pumpkins

The theme for the  Pieceful Patchwork banner for October from Shabby Fabrics is autumnal. There are two Flying Geese blocks (... call to mind migrating birds...?)  and two Pumpkin blocks. The color tones are subdued oranges, charcoals, and blacks like Halloween but not particularly garish or scary or witchy in theme. As usual, I cut out the fabrics and organized the pieces in my tray with Alphabitties. I used blue Alphabitties for the pumpkin blocks and black Alphabitties for the flying geese blocks.

Flying Geese Block
The instructions were for making the flying geese by attaching speckled-cream squares, which are the sky, at four corners of a larger color square which is the birds body. This method yields four flying geese rectangles at a time with very little waste. There will be no bonus pinwheels for me from the sew and flip method for flying geese that yields one rectangle at a time. I happened to have in my tools the Bloc-Loc Ruler to make 3" x 6" flying geese. Sewing and trimming by this method made short work of generating 16 flying geese units, four each of a black/speckled-cream or orange/speckled-cream color combination. I also put into service my rotating mat to speed up the trimming. 

These 16 units are joined into two 8-unit blocks. The blocks have opposite polarity of the center pinwheel and they will go in opposing corners of the banner.

Pumpkin Block
Each pumpkin block has a saw tooth star at its center, made from flying geese units. The instructions called for a finished flying geese unit to measure 1½" x 3". The closest sized Bloc-Loc ruler I had was for 2" x 4" finished. That was OK. I used only the top edge where the point was to get that edge accurate using the ridge feature of the Bloc-Loc ruler. I trimmed the bottom edge using a regular ruler so that the height was 2". Then I trimmed to two side edges, once again with a regular ruler to measure 1¾" out to each edge from the center, giving a 3½" width.  Yes, having the desired size Bloc-Loc ruler would have been easier, allowing trimming all four sides without switching rulers. But Flying Geese Block-Locs are pricy, on the order of $40 each. They are certainly worth the convenience for making many units but I had only a few to make and so I improvised. I had two saw tooth stars to construct, each needing four flying geese units.

After adding orange borders to the top and bottom of this star, central to the pumpkin, I then used the flip corner technique, chain stitching to efficiently add on a yet different orange background corners. Once I fed one star through, I fed the second one through without breaking thread, repeatedly bringing the rear star around to the front. The cut off corners however were too small to make bonus pinwheels. I suppose I could have. but the effort would have been extreme for the small finished size.

When I used the same flip corner technique to add the speckled cream background corners to the full size pumpkin, I was able to salvage the four corners from each pumpkin and have two pinwheels as a bonus.

The stems I made one at a time because I wanted them to be mirror images and I was afraid I'd get confused if I tried both at once. The second photo shows the two pumpkins as reflections of each other.

I added a striped sashing between the blocks, satisfied that both the flying geese blocks and the pumpkins blocks had mirror images in diagonally opposed positions on the banner. Aa a last assembly step. I add the inner charcoal and outer black borders.

Next up is the sandwiching and quilting. Then I will add the labels, a hanging sleeve, and finally the binding. I have to remind myself that for these banners, the assembly of the top takes me less time than the quilting and completion. Once I acknowledge this fact, I become more patient about the time commitment to finish the final stage. I consider my self primarily a piecer, and only secondarily an FMQer.

Christmas Celebration Ornament Row

An “Ornament Row” is the sixth row in my Christmas Celebration quilt from the Shabby Fabrics' Christmas Celebration Row Quilt series, pattern by Coach House Designs. There are five blocks to make in this sixth installment, each with three ornaments. The fabrics are from the Emmitt and Ivy Sweetwater line for Moda. The balls are made from five fabrics as shown with a tape measure for scale on the first photo. The strings for hanging the ornaments are either red, green, or blue as shown on the left side of the second photo. The ornament tops are striped fabric, shown on right of second photo.

I prefer to work with assigned piece letters rather than a piece description. To me it is easier to say use "A" rather than use a "2" x 3 ½ " piece of Fabric 1". I write the letter in on the pattern instructions and also add letters to any figures. Then I use my Alphabitties to label the pieces as I cut them out and stack them.

I chain pieced the white corners on all fifteen balls first, all the H/D subcomponents. I did these fifteen units assembly line style. Even when trimming the corners, I lined five up at a time and trimmed the corners with one fell swoop of the rotary cutter. 

Here are five balls in the representative colors, with all four corners of each trimmed and flipped. I considered not trimming them, since the triangle being removed is so small, but then I was concerned that untrimmed dark print might show through the white. Being a small triangle to snip off had another advantage. I felt no obligation whatsoever to make these into pinwheels as I often do with leftovers from the stitch and flip method.

Next I chain-pieced the side additions to all fifteen ornament tops (first and second photo), followed by the side additions to each ornament string (third photo).

Now the challenge was to create the correct combination of ball, top, and string for each ornament. To keep the fabric locations clear, I write each fabric number in the block diagram for each of the five ornament-trio block according to the chart of fabric locations chart in the instructions. Of course it helps to have the color designations handy to correspond to those numbers.

Here are the three ornaments A, B, C from Block 1 individually, and then joined as a trio. At this point I began to layout each three-ball block one at a time. Chain-piecing at this stage was limited, since I had to move carefully to match balls with tops with strings. 

As I made the other four blocks I added them to the right of the growing row. I pressed that center horizontal seam alternately up or down to reduce the bulk at the interface between blocks. 

Here is the row of five ornament blocks up on my design wall, added to the previous rows from this project. Oddly, I felt a bit of sadness when I completed the final block; I really enjoyed working on this quilt — the colors, the symbols, the mini-prints. I excitedly anticipate the 7th installment of borders and sashing. 

This final photo shows the tools of my trade that streamline the assembly and helped me be organized, all gathered on one of my melamine trays from the Fat Quarter Shop. At the top is a Clover thread cutting pendant, but I insert it upside down in an empty spool and use it to slice all the threads from chain piecing. To the left are my Wonder Clips and below are my pink Alphabitties.