Whew! And I Thought This Was EASY?

These blocks are tricky. As careful as I've tried to be (methodical and deliberate as well) I almost blew it!

Don't tell Lori, but I almost made another pillow! Yikes! That would be bad news for two reasons: 1) I'd have to duplicate all that effort to make yet another useful block, and 2) we'd have to re-name this blog! THAT is definitely not in the "stack!" ;-)

You see, there are lots of little squares of fabric that must be sewn into strips.
Then the strips are sewn together, one by one.
The next to the last strip(at this point, it's at the top of the front block) was inverted.
Can you tell? (oops!)

So, I removed the stitches, realigned the strip
and re-sewed the seam. The photo below shows the block
after I finished adding the final strip. Ta-dah!

Now we have a total of 11 completed blocks... plus that odd pillow one.

Just to refresh your memory, here's a close-up of the pillow.

I'm the one that must claim authorship of the pillow block.
But I'm striving to make up for it, and
we only have 31 more blocks to go (for a total of 42).

What do you think, Lori? (Lori is home cutting strips and sewing them together
to make the green and white triangle blocks.)

by Shady

Shhhh.... don't tell Lori...

...but I've made another block (correctly!) today. :-)

(Today's sleet and freezing rain has reconfigured the events of the day... which means a Free Day with No Specific Plans! Hurrah!)

This photo shows the seven blocks we had after leaving our last, and final, quilt class. It's looking pretty good, isn't it? Each finished block is 12" square. There are enough blocks to sew one strip of seven blocks together. To make the finished quilt, we will be sewing six strips, of seven blocks each, together and adding three borders, around each of the four sides, of different fabrics and widths prior to making the "sandwich" of the sewn quilt top, batting (inside layer), and backing (the underside of the quilt). Then it will be hand quilted by Lori and me and perhaps a few other quilting friends. The final step is to add the binding.

Okay! Here are our 8 (eight!) quilt blocks. What do you think, now? I arranged them this way to be able to better appreciate the over all design of the finished quilt. Be watching for a few variances.


The overall design will remain the same, but details will vary because we are using coordinating fabric scraps that remind us of Christmas. At this point, the scraps we've used have created 8 blocks. We will soon be incorporating those coordinating fabrics into other blocks. It should be fun!

Well... maybe we could tell Lori, after all.

Second (and final) Night of Class

Shady and I had four blocks and a pillow going into the second night of class, and seven block and a pillow coming out. Only 35 blocks to go! I haven't told Shady this yet, but that amounts to a total of 1848 pieces of fabric in the blocks of our Jacob's Ladder Quilt! Shhh!

Here are some pictures from our second class:

I am thankful for strip quilting!!!!

Yippee, close to completing one more block!

The Diligent...

Of course, some of our classmates were a little more industrious between classes and came into the second class with all 42 blocks completed!

Those quilters went home from the second class with something that looked a lot like a quilt top!

I think we're the only ones with a completed pillow block, however! ;-) Lori's piece.

Midst Gales of Laughter

Last night my husband returned home from a meeting, only to be met by gales of laughter eminating from the basement. Hmmmm....

Background: My friend Lori and I had decided to take a quilting class. Three weeks ago, we attended our first class. We measured, cut and sewed little pieces of fabric; each creating one single 12" quilt block after 4 hours' of instruction. We were on our way to making a Jacob's Ladder* quilt. Only 40 more blocks to go!

Back to the Basement: So, in preparation for tonight's class, we met in my basement last night to sew at least one more block each. Hopefully we have time to make another in class tonight. We'll see.

Back to the gales of laughter...

This is what each block is supposed to look like.


Do you see a discrepancy here? Yes, that is my block...
top right corner. Soon to be a pillow. :-)

And, a Blog is Born! "One Quilt and a Pillow."

I created one more block today. Now we have four good ones!
I still have an hour before class. Maybe I can sew one more?????
Lori and I will take turns posting from here on in.
You can trace our steps in the making of our quilt.

*Do you suppose we could call the quilt Polemonium? :-) by Shady Gardener