Quilts

Criss-Cross Finished!

October 15, 2014 Elizabeth E.15 Comments

It all started with a request to join the Friendship X and + Swap, me digging out one lonely block from the back of the closet, marooned there from when I’d started to make the blocks but abandoned the project, and an invitation from Krista. And now I can show you the finished quilt.

Lounging around on my new gate in my re-done landscape.

To go with this scrappy quilt, I used up odds and ends of binding ends, plus cut a few more pieces here and there.

The back: IKEA music fabric.

Some days you make a fancy printed label, but when the fabric is so fun with lines and notes, I think some days you should write the label. So I did.

The stained glass effect of the front showing through the musical back. It’s done!
For more posts about this quilt, type “cross” into the search box on the right; you’ll get several, including one that has a diagram of the pattern I used.

This is #136 on my 200 Quilts List.

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Quilts

Friendship Swap for the Cross-X Block

September 26, 2014October 15, 2014 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

Criss-Cross

Today is the day we reveal our quilts made in the Friendship Swap of the Cross-X blocks (some call them the + and x blocks). I got started on this through an invitation from Krista of KristaStitched, who is now found more commonly on Instagram. She wrote and invited me to play along, and since I’d always wanted to try out this block, I agreed. Susan of PatchworkNPlay and Carla of Lollyquiltz set us up a Flickr Group and we were in business.

I’m sure you remember these photos, as we kept track of our progress. Well, all of a sudden we were done, and then all of a sudden there was a deadline of today to get the quilt done. So, what you see up there is my quilt top (or flimsy), as the quilt is at the quilter, and since I was a bit slow in getting the top done, I don’t have the final “finish” on the quilt. Soon, very soon.

However, I don’t think I have to worry about my partner Krista finishing her quilt top before I will. She was working on a better and bigger project, which arrived several weeks early! Congratulations, Krista! Having Baby Rita here safe and sound is waaaaay better than a quilt top. Many thanks to Krista, Carla and Susan, for inspiring us to a Cross-X quilt top.

Thought you’d like to see what the inspiration was for these blocks, in the early days:

This quilt by Setsuko Inagawa, which used an old block by Nancy Cabot, caught everyone’s eye. The pattern diagram and the current origins (from Badskirt) are *here.*

UPDATES: Here are some thumbnails of the completed quilts or quilt tops, with links to their blogs.

Carla, from Lollyquiltz

Carla, from Grace and Favour

Susan, from Patchwork N Play

Cindy, from Live A Colorful Life

Heidi of Libellen Quilts

Jane of Jane’s Fabrics and Quilts

Quilts

March Cross-X Blocks

February 28, 2014October 15, 2014 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

It’s Cross-X Blocks time again! The last Friday of every month, Krista of KristaStitched and I post about our swaps that we’ve done. Above are the eight blocks I made for February, four for Krista and four for me. Our Flickr group is *here* if you want to see what everyone is doing.

Here’s mine, all alone after sending my blocks off to her.

My organizing fetish surges to the front at times like this, as I like to see our progress. Krista’s ahead of me, having sent me two March blocks. I have to get going to keep up with her!

And here they are, all together. I can’t believe the number of blocks is growing this fast.

I like playing with the blocks because I get to look more closely at what Krista’s been up to. Here are four of my recent favorites of hers (above and below).

And one last shot of the blocks, made up in Madrona Road (with a few oldies). I hope Krista has her sunglasses!

Quilts

Friendship Cross-X Block Swap, January 2014

January 30, 2014October 15, 2014 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

Since it’s the last Friday of the month, it’s time to post our Friendship Cross-X block swap blocks. Say that one five times really fast. Our Flickr group is *here* and you can grab a quilty pal and start anytime! Above are my four blocks, and no, you’re not seeing double. Well, you are, but it’s supposed to be that way.

Krista, of KristaStitched, is my quilt-swap buddy, and I sent off her blocks and received some in return:

Look how nice they play together. We began to notice some variation creeping into our blocks, and took the time to really study what was going on them.

I did a search on these blocks and found this display (not our blocks). I’ve circled the different blocks; can you see why? It’s the weensy little background triangles. As Krista and I talked we noticed that most of these tiny triangle blocks, or as I refer to them, the backiest-of-the-background triangles, are from the same fabrics. I don’t think others in the Friendship Swap run into this, because all of theirs seem to be controlled colors and hues. But Krista and I decided to go for it, and make ours scrappy, so are discovering things about the block that we hadn’t noticed before.

We now plan to make sure our backgrounds (our backiest-backgrounds) are all the same, and to keep with our two basic rules: 1) add some text somewhere in the block and 2) keep a strong contrast between the X and the + parts. Sometimes the littlest changes can have big impacts.

And here they all are together!

Come back tomorrow, February 1st for the reveal of our second challenge of the Urban series: Structures. There are eight of us doing this Four-In-Art Art quilt challenge (so named for the four challenges we have a year), and I’ll present mine as well as link to the other quilts.

100 Quilts · Creating · Quilts

Cross-X Swap, January Update

January 10, 2014October 15, 2014 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

Krista sent me these too close to Christmas to post (and besides, no one was reading any blogs that week anyway), so here they are on the New Year, now that we’ve all put away our decorations, celebrated, vacuumed and have actually resumed some sense of order in our lives. Or at least pretend we have.

We are in the (I can never get this right) the Plus and X Friendship Swap. Or the X and Plus Swap. I just call it the Cross-X swap, as noted in the title, and all our blocks — thus far swapped — are on my pinwall, above. Cool, huh?

As of this post, she is all caught up, but I’m now 4 blocks behind for January. I can just hear her saying “Neener, neener, neener!” I’ll catch up, Krista, I promise. I notice that usually we try to make the background all the same, but in her blocks sent for January, she’s varied the backgrounds. I’m trying to decide if I like her new twist, but she’s very creative and a really wonderful swap partner, so I need to be open to new ideas. We try to blog the last Fridays of each month and hey–it’s only the 10th, and I need to get out several blocks promised for a cooperative group quilt, two bee blocks, and I’m working really hard on my Amish With A Twist-2 quilt, too.

Quilt Frolic has a new home. During Christmastime, all our children and grandchildren came home, and my youngest, Peter, and his wife, Megan, stayed with us the entire week while waves of family moved in and out of the two other available rooms.

I had this quilt on their bed, and one morning Megan was relating a conversation she had with Peter about how much she like this quilt. “I mean, I really like it,” she said. And she asked my son if she thought she could, like, borrow it, or even have it.

Megan, that is music to a quilter’s ears! I gave it to her on the spot. I was thrilled that she liked it well enough to want it, and I think she was thrilled to take it home. Megan really liked the fabrics in it–a combo of Amy Butler and some Anna Maria Horner–a kind of fabric that suits Megan well. She did get it into her teensy little carryon for the trip across the United States, to their home on the East Coast.

I am glad that this quilt has gone to someone who loves it!

Creating · Quilts

Cross and X Quilt Block

June 4, 2011October 15, 2014 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

In my last post I talked about Zombie Quilt Night. Well, at least that’s how I felt.

So, in exploring my really overwhelming list of blogs in my Google Reader, I began to see this block appear:

and

These two are made by a quilter in London, and these photos are from her blog. I found the Flikr pool if you want to see some more. I like these blocks because it’s obvious you can use scraps and whatever, so long as you use a bland background and differentiate the cross fabrics from the X fabrics. The blocks together look like this:

and

These are from Stawberrylicious’ photo stream, but couldn’t locate her blog (I admit to being ~~dumb~~ untutored about Flikr, yessirree). It’s nice to feel some enthusiasm for a new idea–that always gets my hands into the fabric. There’s lots of potential for novelty fabrics and word fabrics, and cool prints.

(Update: I found her blog. You have to be invited to view it.)

This interest in an old block by Nancy Cabot was apparently generated by Setsuko Inagawa’s quilt:

Somebody with a blog named Badskirt has developed a tutorial for this, and although the pictures are spot on, I am doing some wondering about the measurements. See below.

I kept looking at the blocks on Flikr and noticed that the angled wedge didn’t always line up properly into the cross in the middle. I drew it up on my quilt program:

I realized part of the trouble many of the blocks I found on the web seemed to be a 7″ block. But this is a five-segmented block, so the measurements are more true if they are done in units of five: 5″ block, 7.5,” 10″ block etc. So, I checked her measurements–they are fine–so what I saw constructed may have been others not being careful, or using incorrect measurements.

For a 10″ block, the templates (with seam allowances included) look like this, with that long center strip 2.5″ x 6.5″, the square measuring 4.5″ and the other small blocks 2.5.” My program prints out the snowball blocks as two triangles, which I cut out and tape together to get the measurement. Or–just just cut squares 2.5.” I’ll probably stick with the 7 1/2-inch blocks because I like the repetition of the small blocks.

I wonder if anyone else is like me–that even when you’re working on a project, you need a spark now and again to keep interest. I heard an interview with Andrew Zuckerman on Swiss Miss’ Creative Mornings series and he said “I hate every project three months in. I’m exhausted. I’m questioning whether it’s any good. I’m unhappy. [But] that’s just the process. You have to get through that. You have to commit. . . there’s no pulling out–it has to work. And then it works out, because of the commitment. There’s always failure when you don’t see it through fully.”

Just knowing I have Cross and X block possibilities in the back of my mind, will help me get through the Lollypop Trees process. I hope.