O's (with X's)

Monthly, I get together with a small group of quilters called the Cut-Ups. Each month we make a quilt for charity from a block pattern one of the members picks. For my assigned month of September, the block I chose was from this O-Strip pattern by Gudrun Erla. I liked the colors it was shown in — or maybe I was just not in a creative mood — but I asked the ladies to make one or two blocks in red or gray or black. I provided the background fabric and the instructions for one block. 

The sides of the O were from 2½" x 7½" rectangles and the top and bottom were from 2½" x 4½" rectangles. I asked the ladies to not trim when they added four outermost corner sew-n-flip triangles of the background fabric. I cut off the corners myself when I got the blocks back and made half-square triangles with the trimmings. Each O block yielded four HSTs which I made into pinwheels. I had 18 blocks which I joined in three columns of four blocks each and two columns of three blocks each interspersed with the pinwheels.

I had to finagle a bit, nipping in a few horizontal seams to make columns equal height. After all, not everybody's ¼" is exactly the same, and the variations do accumulate. I filled in the top and bottom of the pinwheel columns with rectangle of a background fabric of fitting height. Four 1½" wide vertical sashings separated the five columns. I had enough background fabric to make 3½ " wide borders all around. Actually, my border width was determined by how much background fabric I had and not vice-versa.

The backing contenders were selected from combining a collection of eleven lengths of grays (9½ yards total) I had from a shopping spree focused on purchasing grays at the 2022 Houston Quilt Festival and four other shops in Texas: Creations, One Quilt Place, Things In a Room, and The Quilted Skein. The grays on the back of the O's quilt were those I had deselected and decide not to use in my Tipus and Treetops quilt in September of 2023. See? I knew I would find a use for these other grays and repurpose them somewhere else. The O's backing uses three grays.

For the binding I joined together lengths of red, black, and gray. The binding is ready to go. Off to the far right is a closer look at the background fabric of the top.

This post was started February 14th after I had assembled the top, made the binding, pieced the backing, and layered the quilt. Then the quilt sandwich - and the post - just sat in limbo. As of today, I am back working on this O's quilt. I've begun using the Handi-Quilter Swish Template template for the FMQ. I've also included a sneak peek of part of the quilt back. But for now I plan to quilt, not blog. With my "Sew JO" back in motion since my 3/26/25 Renewing MOJO post, I want to keep up my momentum — better yet, my "sewmentum"

More SewJO

Based on my previous post about Renewing Sewing MOJO, I needed a bit more small project therapy to regain my SewJo. I still had several block-of-the-month kits remaining from the 2006 JoAnn Spice Meadows Series. With all the colors pre-decided and all the  pieces pre-cut this was a perfect SewJo restoring project. This is Block 11, Capital T. It is destined to become part of a community quilt.

The Capital T block incorporates four flying geese blocks in purple/beige and four flying geese blocks in gold/beige. Here are four joined pinwheel blocks I made from the corners cut off in the flying geese construction. This "bonus" block is destined to be added to a collection of other orphans.

Members of my small quilt group are currently sewing other blocks from this series and will be turning them in to me. Hopefully this small project is nourishing their Sew-JO as well. I will publish a follow-on post once other blocks from the series are collected and joined together. It will be fun to see what arrangement will emerge and what role sashings may need to play. For more information about this 2006 block of the month series from JoAnn's fabrics, see my post Empty Bin Incentive dated February 19, 2024. 

Renewing Sewing MOJO

I was appalled to note that the last time I published a post was 2/11/25. I have excuses. We were on a week's vacation to Albuquerque with college friends. An emergency room trip for my husband stretched our stay an additional four days while he was in the hospital. In addition, we both contracted Flu-A and we were both laid low til that subsided. I certainly did no major projects during that episode.

The situation is a Catch-22. Quilting and sewing lifts my spirits and moods yet my energy level was down. I had other projects in progress. I had posts begun for them but the projects were paused or stalled at some decision points. Borders on a blue/orange quilt? FMQ pattern on an O's quilt? I needed something small and quick requiring minimal brain power to speed my road to recovery and creativity. I opted for Strategy #3 Simple Projects  from Karen Brown's YouTube video  Help? Where's My SewJo...6 Strategies to Overcoming Sewing Burnout (at time = 3:11). 

I found these green and mauve pieces in my sewing room during a pre-trip tidying session. They date back to a small quilt group I was in at work, long before I retired twelve years ago. They were filed away with a pattern that had no correlation whatsoever to the precut pieces of fabric. "Filed" is a generous term; more accurately they were randomly buried and they surfaced. I had four triangle pairs, (enough to make 4 HSTs) and twenty squares (enough to make 5 four-patch blocks). "What can I do with these?" I wondered.

Coincidentally this classic quilt block configuration is called Jacob's Ladder. By the way, when I was Googling for images I came across this wooden version of a quilt block on Etsy. Striking, isn't it?

Maybe I can finish this into a placemat for Christmas gifting. My guild supplies Meals on Wheels with quilted placemats during the holiday season. I may back this with Christmas fabric and extend it into a rectangular placemat shape with fabric from my stash. Whoops. I had nothing that would blend with this colorway. The palette is decades old after all.  A bit of googling color history revealed that mauve was prevalent in the 1980's. No trouble. A quick trip to my local quilt shop and I managed to get an appropriate dark green... and in a versatile stripe, too.

Now I have yet another UFO but at least I know my way forward on it. Stay tuned.