Jen's Quilts

This year I thought I would take on a quilting challenge, so I signed up for Aves , a Block of the Week quilt by Kathryn Kerr of Green Avenue Quilts . Every Sunday starting 21 January 2018, I receive the instructions to complete one block for the quilt. The plan is to complete the current block before the next one is released. Week 10 Looking at the pattern as a whole, I was guessing which block might be next, so it wasn't too much of a surprise when the weekly email showed eight 3 1/2" blocks. These will end up adjacent to some of last week's blocks, so I guess I will be getting some more assembly instructions soon. The block design was straightforward but fiddly. I was dealing with 1 1/4" pieces, and a lot of them. But it was just standard piecing, so after cutting everything out I was able to get started straight away. There has been a lot going on lately, so my goal was to get finished as soon as I could this week, and then be lazy and/or do something else until...

This year I thought I would take on a quilting challenge, so I signed up for Aves , a Block of the Week quilt by Kathryn Kerr of Green Avenue Quilts . Every Sunday starting 21 January 2018, I receive the instructions to complete one block for the quilt. The plan is to complete the current block before the next one is released. Week 9 Be careful what you wish for. Yes, I wanted to give the large circles a break and go back to the smaller blocks. And that is what I got - three inch blocks - but eight of them. With only three colours involved, the cutting out was done in an hour or so, and the pile of pieces I ended up with was so tiny in comparison to what I have been working with recently.  And seeing as this was another week of foundation piecing (and I needed to print the templates out at work), I then had Sunday afternoon off to enjoy the sunshine and do as I please. Did I go enjoy the sunshine?  No.  I ended up in front of the sewing machine again, making...

This year I thought I would take on a quilting challenge, so I signed up for Aves , a Block of the Week quilt by Kathryn Kerr of Green Avenue Quilts . Every Sunday starting 21 January 2018, I receive the instructions to complete one block for the quilt. The plan is to complete the current block before the next one is released. Week 1 Another sale at the usual fabric shop meant I was there in the morning when the place opened to try and pick up some more fabric for the quilt.  I managed to pick up two important bits that I have been lucky to not need yet. When the email came through about the weekly block, it was the ring of triangles as expected. However, I was quite exited to find that there was also the first set of instructions for assembling the blocks - which required more blocks to be made to attach to the four 6 1/2" blocks I already have. So Sunday afternoon was spent cutting out pieces for both the ring of triangles and the assembly blocks.  Good thing ...

This year I thought I would take on a quilting challenge, so I signed up for Aves , a Block of the Week quilt by Kathryn Kerr of Green Avenue Quilts . Every Sunday starting 21 January 2018, I receive the instructions to complete one block for the quilt. The plan is to complete the current block before the next one is released.. Week 7 I was right, it was time for another big block.  It was one I was actually looking forward to, as it was an interesting design.  Being a long weekend, I had plenty of time to cut out the millions of blocks required, but unfortunately, being a long weekend I couldn't get started until after work on Tuesday, as I needed to print out the foundations that I was to sew the fabric onto. Every night after work I would come home and sew a bit of fabric onto each one of the 40 paper foundations, press the seams, trim them to a quarter inch, then pin the next bit of fabric ready for the next evening's sewing.  As I am a bit of a chain stitcher, ...

This year I thought I would take on a quilting challenge, so I signed up for Aves , a Block of the Week quilt by Kathryn Kerr of Green Avenue Quilts . Every Sunday starting 21 January 2018, I receive the instructions to complete one block for the quilt. The plan is to complete the current block before the next one is released. Week 6 The block for week 6 looked easy peasy, but knowing where how it fit in with the rest of the quilt, I had a feeling it might be the last straightforward one for a while. I did a little bit every night, and was finished by Wednesday evening. During the process, I couldn't figure out why some of my squares were not working out quite to the size I expected, and were running a little small.  I did a test on my scant quarter inch, sewing a number of tiny pieces together and seeing the size of the strip I ended up with, but there were no issues there.  I'm now thinking it was a particular small ruler I was using, so I've put it away and will ...

This year I thought I would take on a quilting challenge, so I signed up for Aves , a Block of the Week quilt by Kathryn Kerr of Green Avenue Quilts . Every Sunday starting 21 January 2018, I receive the instructions to complete one block for the quilt. The plan is to complete the current block before the next one is released.. Week 5 When the email with the pattern arrived as scheduled on Sunday, I couldn't wait to get started on the good looking block. But with my guest still in town, I had to wait. I managed to cut a few pieces on the Monday evening, and on Tuesday evening I had the house to myself for a few hours and was get started on the sewing - but only after finishing last week's block first! There was a large number of pieces to be cut for such a small block, and this time the iron-erasable pens came in handy - I could label the different colours and shapes from A to O. On Wednesday I caught a lucky break - my house guest wasn't around when I arriv...

This year I thought I would take on a quilting challenge, so I signed up for Aves , a Block of the Week quilt by Kathryn Kerr of  Green Avenue Quilts . Every Sunday starting 21 January 2018, I receive the instructions to complete one block for the quilt. The plan is to complete the current block before the next one is released.. Week 4 With very little time to sew this week, I was eager to get started when the new block dropped on Sunday. The 6" block was appreciated, but it had a whole lot of curves and angles. With all the odd shapes, there was no way I could even start this without printing out the templates, something I can't do at home since I no longer have a printer. All I was able to do was put the required fabric to the side (I had what I needed for this block) and do a quick refresher on Y-seams, as I could tell from the pattern that if I wasn't sewing a curve, I'd be sewing a Y-seam. Monday evening was spent cutting out the templates (printed at wor...