I added a little gold in now as a light color. Using 3 different blues gave a little more zip to the block.
I have been laying out my blocks in the basement on my ironing table but I have the finished blocks upstairs on the design wall. I need to design the rest while I look at the ones I made so I can get an even distribution of colors and fabrics.
I'm not sure if the outside color of this block is charcoal gray or brown or a mixture of both. It is a neutral and is dark so it works well in this Marcia Derse star quilt.
It looks good with the rest of the blocks so that makes it a winner.
It has gotten down near freezing a couple nights in a row and next week we are supposed to have an 80 degree day. It's that time of year when we don't know what to expect. Last year we had 90 degree weather about this time.
Block number 6 for the Marcia Derse fabric star quilt has been sewn. This is one of my favorites.
I had a fleeting thought that maybe I would stop at 6 blocks and just make a small quilt but I don't like these 6 blocks together well enough to stop here. Once I have 6 that I like together I would have the option of stopping and put the rejects into the orphan block box. However if I really like all of them together at some point I will just continue on and make 12 blocks. I think you can see that I don't have a firm plan.
Here is the Marcia Derse fabric star block number 5. I realized after taking the photo that I switched position of the purple and pale green triangle blocks from my original design. The light fabric should have ended up on the edge. I'm not sure if I will change it.
Here are all 5 blocks so far. It is hard to believe they are all the same pattern with the values shifting around.
My son and daughter in law came over late afternoon yesterday and all 3 of us worked for 45 minutes to cut lots of overgrown bushes and get it hauled to the end of the driveway for the last free brush pickup of this year next Monday.
I got block #4 sewn last night while watching some of the new season TV shows but then got busy with something else and didn't load the photos into my computer until this morning.
Here are the blocks so far, 2 with light edges and 2 with dark edges.
This is the first block with a dark background color. I think I will be alternating dark and light backgrounds in the blocks for this quilt.
Blocks one, two, and three on my sewing table.
Block number 2 is sewn for the Marcia Derse star quilt. I have cut some more fabrics for variety for the next blocks.
Here are blocks 1 and 2 together. There will be some blocks with dark fabrics at the edges too.
The purple Million Bells in this pot are having one more big burst of color. They are even deeper purple than they look here. I love the purple next to the lime green Coleus.
After mowing the grass in the nice cool air yesterday I finally got to the sewing machine.
I needed four of each of these two units.
The block is sewn! The darkest purple really is purple and not a black background like it looks here. I'm really happy with this block. I'm making 15" blocks like I did in the quilt I showed yesterday. I thought about 12" but decided the fabric prints would have more impact with larger pieces.
A few Rose of Sharon bushes are still blooming. I'm going to cut down a lot of them before brush pickup on Oct. 1. They are prolific and invasive and I must have over 30 of them on the south side of my house and they are about 8' tall.
This is the quilt that I made in 1990 using the same block that I am using for the Marcia Derse fabric quilt. If you go to this post you can read the story about it. This is an old photo taken with an early digital camera so I really need to get this quilt out and take a better quality photo with the camera I use now.
There was a cute little baby bunny in the back yard eating weeds. If you leave enough weeds in the grass the bunnies don't bother the good plants....my theory anyway.
I had lots of things to do yesterday and never made it to the sewing machine or die cutter. I did put away this pile of Marcia Derse fabrics that I am not using in the star quilt that I have started.
More asters are opening so I need to get another photo today. I always forget about their delicate centers until they bloom again the next year.
I took out the light center square from one of the blocks I showed yesterday and replaced it with the dark purple. I really like this block.
I'm not so crazy about this one because three of the prints are similar in value.
I removed the purple with red circles and put in the light color. It makes the outside of the star float like a wreath and I'm not sure I like that either.
I think I need to sew a few of my favorites and then cut some more of the Marcia Derse fabric into the shapes needed.
The Sedum is getting pretty now. I don't have any of the dark red flowers. Some of the Sedum plants get too tall and leggy and then collapse when the flower are in full bloom. I'm ready to dig out one of the plants and throw it away.
I'm continuing to cut more Marcia Derse fabrics and trying layouts on my ironing table. I figure I can go back to my photos to find the ones I actually want to sew.
Check yesterday's post if you want to see the beginnings of this block. I removed the star points and added the purple with red circles.
Then I removed the pink with blue dots and added a different center, different small squares and removed the striped triangles. I put in the other turquoise triangles with the stripes going the opposite direction and orange dotted triangles. I will try some more today.
The pots of Coleus are the winners again this year. They take a lot of watering but they are showy all the way into fall. I gave my daughter in law the first pot I planted and then finally planted the last tiny little plants in this pot. I just buy the little 6 packs of tiny plants with a variety of colors in each. They fill in fast. I don't have much luck planting them in the ground but have great luck with the pots.
I showed this block pattern HERE on Saturday with many different placements of the darkest fabric. I have been cutting the shapes from many of the Marcia Derse fabrics and decided to lay them out on the ironing table to see how the colors will look.
I changed from orange to pink to see if the softer color combination looks better. I will keep trying more layouts until I get a lot more of the fabrics cut. I'm not sure when I'll start sewing the blocks.
The purple Asters are just starting to bloom. Once again the camera isn't picking up the deeper color of them.
I dug a little deeper and found some more light fabrics to use with the other Marcia Derse fabrics that I showed yesterday. I also added a few more medium value blues.
Then I looked a little deeper into a cabinet and found more medium purples, corals and pinks.
I added those in and this will probably be the final group. I have started cutting some of the shapes needed for my block.
The 2 pots by the garage got a little reprieve for a few weeks this summer and were over at the side of the driveway in the shade. They are still looking pretty good.
I love the Irisine plant in with the lime Coleus. It is looking a little bedraggled at the end of the season but has been a nice bright accent color all summer.
I am thinking about using this assortment of Marcia Derse fabrics in my next quilt. There aren't very many light colored prints in her collections. The 3 beige ones shown here the best choices that I have. The purples are kind of hidden in this photo but they will be very prominent in the quilt.
I have been spending hours sorting squares of fabric into kits. Here are 2 cuts from the same fabric. One person gets a lavender flower and the other person gets a pink flower.
The end of season plants in the pots have lots of holes in them. I don't have the heart to throw them away yet; maybe next month.
Yesterday morning I decided to start chopping down the peonies that are turning brown. I have over 30 bushes so that took awhile with many trips to the weed pile to deposit them. Later in the afternoon I mowed the front yard.
I'm still getting tomatoes. The earliest ones were the 4th of July and Early Girl types. The 4th of July is about golf ball sized most of the time with only a few larger tomatoes. The Early Girl and Rutgers are producing a nice medium to large size tomato, just right for slicing for BLTs.
I drew up this handout for a class many years ago to show how the same block looks so different when you switch the dark value to many different positions. I made one quilt from this block in 1990 and I'm thinking about using it again. The magazine that I saw it in called it Memory but I know I have seen it with other names in other books and magazines.
I really should organize this pile of African fabrics. I was thinking that the large prints in them might work well in a half hexagon quilt. The die is 9" long. I like to always have a cutting project going while I'm working on something else.
When I was in the backyard yesterday I was reminded I need to dig up this Pulmonaria/Lungwort that has hopped out of the garden and into the grass. There is another smaller one about 3 feet from this one.
Another shape that can be cut from the 6" squares offered in the Colorwash 360 class that I mentioned in yesterday's post is rectangles. This die is 2.5" x 4.5" and I can get 2 out of the 6" square or two 2.5" squares and one rectangle this size.
Today is the last day to enroll in my new Online Course COLORWASH 360 with a Bonus: 40 day Virtual Workshop with me. We have students from across the world enrolled and excited to get started on Oct 1. Click HERE to learn more.
One of the items we offered to the Colorwash 360 class participants is packs of 6" squares in both Kaffe Fassett fabric and in batik. There are 2 different kits available in each. The idea for these is that you can either fussy cut or random cut 2.5" squares from them
In this example I would be cutting an area with just red flowers.
On this one I would be fussy cutting the area with the purple flowers with one green twig.
This shows the random cut just straight across in both directions to give me four 2.5" squares. I could cut this way with rotary cutter and ruler or with my die cutter.
I'm going to be cutting a lot of extra squares for my own colorwash art both fussy cutting and random cutting.
I'm trying to center a flower in this 2.5" square.
In this photo I am centering on a dark area. This allows for a lot more variety and lots of choices makes a colorwash even better.
Just 2 days left to enroll in my new Online Course COLORWASH 360 with a Bonus: 40 day Virtual Workshop with me. We have students from across the world enrolled and excited to get started on Oct 1. Click HERE to learn more.
I have an idea for a new quilt brewing and I hope to start on it later this week. Meanwhile I'll keep sewing the neutral 16 patch blocks.
