Working on My Rolling Stone Blocks

For some reason I decided I was in the mood to tackle my Rolling Stone blocks this week. I think it's the colors I was wanting to play with because I've enjoyed working with these fabrics so very much.

Chain piecing

Having several projects going at once always gives me an opportunity to jump around and mix up the colors I'm working with from day to day or week to week. Even if (for example) a couple of my projects have blue in them, I will have different combinations of colors together with that blue which is refreshing and kind of 'wakes' me up if you know what I mean.

Trying to stay organized with my piecing

Chain piecing is definitely something I try to do as it seems to burn through the piecing so much faster. I have a tendency to get in a zone though, so I have to be sure and stay very organized with my book right in front of me or a finished part (or block) for quick reference.

Rolling Stone parts

I love seeing the parts start to come together even if occasionally I start to question my fabric combinations. The thing with scrap quilts is that you never really know until the end when you put it ALL together. The plan for these blocks involves putting them with my Scrap Basket centerpiece. It's all still a bit iffy as to layout, but the idea would not leave me alone.. so onward ho!

The wrong colors

These fabrics and colors seem so whimsical, vintage and modern all at the same time--a great project to work on right now as the weather wants to be gray and gloomy right at the moment. I just realized today that the center squares for the Rolling Stone blocks were cut out of the various colors instead of the background blues. *groan... That's me. Wasting good fabric because my brain refuses to think straight when I'm trying to be creative. What's up with that anyway?

My Happy Flowers

I am in love with fabric right now. The different textures and prints. How they play so nicely together or maybe even when they don't. Then this yellow! So different from my normal buttery yellow golds I've been buying for years. Occasionally I pick up something random 'just because' and recently I realized that I have a small stack of very odd yellows (compared to my normal stuff, that is).

Prep work for Happy Flowers

Aren't they yummy? I'm so enjoying the crisp, tart, puckered-up look to them. During my recent trip to Portland, I found myself in a JoAnn's one evening and somehow ended up with just over a yard of this black stripey linen. Will it fray badly even though I pre-washed it? It has the very best feel to it and I literally could. Not. Resist. Plus it was 40% off or something wonderful like that. It's definitely destined to be my block background unless I get totally scared away from it.

Yep, gonna go for the bilious green stems

Then I'm seriously thinking about using the weird green/gold fabric for flower stems, which I suppose would be obvious since it's already prepped for that same purpose. When I bought this fabric, I picked it up and set it down at least three times, then showed it to my mom just to see how badly she would gag over it. It's so ugly, it's positively gorgeous, which makes no sense whatsoever.

I cannot even begin to describe how happy these flowers are making me feel even though it's early days for them yet! Sometimes I think we tend to over-think things and this project feels very 'go-with-the-flow'. I'm hoping that will help balance out the tedium of working on some current ufq's.

Rolling stone block with Scrap Basket

Just playing, I decided to make a sample rolling stone block to see how it might look next to my scrap basket centerpiece. Wrong colors of course, but I've been eyeing this block pattern for a couple years now wondering how I could work it into a quilt project. For some reason I started out making my sample block from directions that included TEMPLATES, which generally I avoid like the plague. On the first try I forgot to add seam allowances so the fabric pieces had to be dumped into the scrap basket/garbage as necessary. Second try I did something wrong with the triangles. More for the garbage (now you see why I make sample blocks?). Then finally I got smart and re-did the entire pattern with rotary cutting directions I measured out by myself. Approx. 2 hrs. after initial cutting I had Success! One properly finished 9" block!

Um.. tonight while sitting in my corner of the couch where the lighting is very good for hand quilting, I remembered a book I've had for years (Block Party by Marsha McCloskey). It's currently sitting on a shelf in my quilting room. Oh yeah, and it just happens to have full rotary cutting directions for 9 blocks, including the rolling stone block--I know it does. Yep. I'm the idiot. Obviously much more focused on fondling my fabrics right now than figuring out the most efficient way to cut up my fabric. lol