Tag Archives: Kona cotton

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In October, Allie asked us to make ladders for her Quilts Unscripted Bee. She asked that we make blocks that are at least 8" on each side with a ladder going all the way across the block, edge to edge. "The ladder can be curved, straight, leaning, have mismatched rungs, be missing rungs, anything. It can go halfway up the block and make a sharp 90 degree turn. It can be wide at the base and narrow at the top or vice versa." Allie provided the white background fabric and asked us to use choose from a palette of bright, candy colors... mustard and pickle also welcome.

I always start by building a pile of potential fabrics for my bee blocks. I had yardage of pickle so I pulled some of that as well. The white background fabric here isn't shown, but wouldn't a rainbow ladder on a pickle background have been amazing!? I pulled scraps that were maybe big enough to be the rungs of my ladder. That's how I narrowed down my palette for this one.

This is what the messy middle looked like. I freehand cut non-rectangular white quadrilaterals for the space between my rungs. Then I chain pieced them onto strips of pickle that would be the vertical sections of the ladder between the rungs. This was the order I worked in since I wanted my rungs to stick out of my rickety ladder. Note that due to the varying widths and angles, none of this lays flat at this point. I trimmed the pickle between each white section after this photo.

Then I added on the expansive white background to the right and left of each section. At this point I trimmed the top and bottom of each section in a straight line. Note that nothing is a rectangle here. Just embracing the chaos.

Auditioning the colors I realized I should have had one more section of vertical ladder pieces so I opted to edit out one of the purples.

Measuring for width so that I would mostly have the ladder rungs overhang the pickle, I recut some of the pieces. At this point I added white to the sides of each colored run (not shown).

Here's what it looked like before I trimmed up the left edge of the block. I trimmed down a couple pickle sections before piecing in the rungs to increase the wonk and keep the ladder mostly moving straight up my block.

Tada! The finished block is 13" x 17"

 

For my second ladder I took inspiration from a spiral staircase. This is the sketch I drew from a reference photo.

I decided each of my steps, or ladder rungs, would be turquoise so I pieced oversized pieces of white and turquoise.

I used my drawing as my guide to trim my pieces at the same angles (adding seam allowance).

You can see the creases in my paper because I folded the portion I wasn't working on out of the way when I compared the paper to the fabric. This is the lower section all pieced before trimming.

And both finished sections, untrimmed. This was the easy part... because now I had to make it all go together and add in the curved "vertical" parts of my ladder.

I created a freezer paper template for myself from my paper drawing (a technique I learned in Carolina Oneta's class), marked some reference points and labeled the top edge of each piece with an arrow. (I noticed after this photo that my two white pieces were switched.) Then I pieced each have by sewing the orange onto the turquoise and white sections and then added the large white background section. Once each side was together, I pieced each side onto the yellow.

I am so proud of this block. It finished at 12" x 13". There were so many make it work and trial and error moments that went into it. Is it perfect? No. But I won't point out the little mistakes I made and instead choose to revel in the engineering marvel of a spiral staircase turned into a ladder quilt block that lays flat. :-)

I'm looking forward to seeing how Allie intertwines all the ladders she has received!

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In May, E. A. asked us to make two-color blocks that contained the word "hope."

For my first block I chose Kona Cerise and green to make some skinny strip letters. My skinny strips finish at 1/8" wide. I created boxy letters improvisationally, but aimed for the letters to all be about the same height. The letters are about 6 1/2" tall and the block finished at about 12" x 10".

In my second block I chose a much lower contrast color combination with dark purple and dark grey. I improv cut all the pieces for my letters in a variety of chunky styles.

Here are my finished blocks and here's a peek at the full quilt.

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This month Carole asked us to create some improv slabs to use in half of our half rectangle triangles (HRTs) for her, paired with solid black. She provided a wide range of color options: red, blue, turquoise, aqua, yellow, yellow-orange, orange, purple, red-violet, green, and yellow-green. She gave us a variety of Kona and Bella Moda colors in these hues and asked us to avoid pastels and dark shades. I dove into my stash and pulled fabric from some of these colors.

I was immediately drawn to Kona Acid Lime and aqua. In many cases I used small scraps and just worked with the shapes that I had. One scrap was the aqua curve. I did a slice and insert to add the golden yellow since the aqua was a large piece of fabric. Then I added the Acid Lime (shown in the upper right above). The strip beneath it was built to be added to that unit. Everything else shown here is just organically built with scraps the size and shape they were.

I slice and inserted the strip into my larger pieced curve section. This gave me a section large enough to cut the pieces I needed for a couple HRTs.

I ordered Latifah Saafir's new HuRTy 1 ruler to help me create my HRTs. Great tool! Highly recommend! These are the first two HRTs I created from the slab above. They are 4 1/2" x 8 1/2" unfinished.

The pieced sections on the left all come from the remaining bits in the first photo above. Here I started adding on to the right side of each of the two sections so I would have the width I needed. (Pro-tip if you use solids: Label them in sharpie on the selvage edge so you know what to buy more of when you run low.)

I added yellow to the upper left (which ended up being unnecessary) and to the right side of the upper section. Then pieced the new blue section at the bottom to ensure I'd have the height I needed.

They I trimmed three sides so I could cut my pieces with the HuRTy ruler. See how that yellow in the upper left all but disappeared? And also, Carole asked for no pink, so that tiny pink triangle in the upper right needed to be avoided when I cut my pieces.

Tada! These each finish at 6 1/2" x 12 1/2" unfinished.

Here are the four blocks heading to Carole this month! It will be so fun to see the project come together.

The skills used in these blocks include concepts I teach in Building an Improv Toolbox and Creating a Scrappy Slab. I'm available for lectures and workshops for guild and group meetings, retreats, and other events in-person and on Zoom. And starting in 2023 I'll be offering occasional live Zoom workshops with open enrollment for individuals. Be sure you're on my newsletter list to be the first to hear about those.