Catching Up - Penguin 9 patch chain

I finished the Penguin 9 patch chain last weekend, but forgot to photograph it until now.  Some corners came out great, others didn't match too well.  I'm tempted to applique a scattering of penguins over the most egregious corners.  The yellow is still a little overpowering compared to the penguins. It will be interesting to see how adding the penguin border changes the character of the quilt.

I am almost finished with the quilts in Volume 1 - and fast approaching the borders class.  Though I have jumped ahead for the Dolphin Signature quilt as I do need to try to get that one done before school lets out in two weeks.

Dolphin Signature quilt - horizontal rows

This is my first quilt using sashing and corner stones. I spent much of Saturday squaring blocks and constructing the rows.  The next step will be to attempt to sew the rows together with matching corners.

For the cornerstones, I chose a teal both for the coordination with the dolphin fabric and also the relation to ovarian cancer.  The borders on this quilt will be first white and then the teal again.  To make the sashing strips, I first sewed 16 8 inch strips onto one long teal strip. Then trimmed each of the teal squares and pressed them.  Those 16 were joined to 8 then to 4 (kind of like sporting tournaments - as an aside, the UNC Women's Lacrosse team made it to the final four this afternoon) and a final white strip was added.

I then pressed the narrow strips and realized that the 9 patch strips, which were not fully pressed, would be pressed to the same direction - so I repressed the strips in order to be able to butt the seams together when I join the entire top.

This particular top is providing a number of learning opportunities.  And while it is not a part of the quilter's academy series, I'm not sure why there weren't any sashed quilts in Volume 1.  I did read ahead to Volume 2 in order to make sure that I'm doing it correctly.

I set up a bolster of blankets behind the ironing board so that I could prop up the various pieces as I was working on them throughout the day.  Miss Monkey tucker herself between Mike's pillow, the blankets and the ironing board and observed my progress between her naps.

Dash kept me company too, but stuck to the floor for the most part. Though thankfully not underneath my chair.

FNSI Results

All 25 9 patch blocks have been completed now - and laid out in order.  The next step was to add sashing.  On Friday night I added the vertical sashing to 20 blocks (the last 5 to be attached on the other side of the sashing.

The blocks were stitched onto strips of sashing by column - but the next trick was to make sure that as I squared and trimmed blocks that I didn't lose the carefully chosen order (well maybe not that careful - but I did have certain ones I needed in each corner for symmetry). 

When I stitched the blocks to the sashing, they ended up in 5,4,3,2,1 order from top to bottom - so I put a pin in the top of each to represent column A,B,C,D or E and this morning started cutting and trimming blocks - the first off the bottom of each set and then stitched the blocks into rows.  To not lose track of the rows, I placed the 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 pins into the leftmost block. While this works for a small quilt, I don't think I'd want to do it with an 10 row quilt (too many pins).

I've pulled out the coordinating fabric for the cornerstones and outer border, so need to get back to cutting and stitching in hopes of getting the horizontal sashing strips ready to go.

Friday Night Sew-In Tonight!

Dolphin Signature Quilt

Tonight I'll be working on a special project.  Our school nurse was recently diagnosed with cancer.  I'll be using some of the 9-patch blocks I made from the challenge last fall to create a signature quilt from the kids at school.  Our school mascot is the dolphin, so I'll be using the dolphin fabric blocks and adding sashing. Next week, I'll take the quilt in to school to get it signed.

Monkey will be at the ready - helping, and probably getting bored by another trek through Pirates of the Caribbean.  She is not nearly as excited as I am by the movie opening tonight. We are planning to see the new one tomorrow at the I-Max.  Dash will likely provide his two cents as well.