May………….flowers……
I had this block all designed, took another look at it and
thought, “Are you crazy, woman?” “That’s
a lot of work.” It was redone as soon as
Karl said “I want to go back to Ottawa this year.” Out came the graph paper and I set to work.
I did a little auditioning of fabric for this block. I wanted the green for the leaf to be one fabric, but I wanted both sides of it and I wanted good contrast between them. I took out four pieces of fabric, laid them in the living-room window and took a look. Was it there? Only on one and I didn’t really like it. Boy it was green!
So I went in search of another piece and found it, liked it and used it.
There are several pieces to this block. Two pieces for the leaf, two stems, and each
flower has two pieces. It could have had
three, but I told you these would be simple, so simple they are. I also used two sides of the fabric for the
flowers. I wanted to be able to see the
different sections of each one.
Follow the numbering sequence and after tracing onto fusible
web, (don’t forget to reverse the pattern) fusing to your fabric, cutting them
all out, lay them down in order. Yes, I
do it all at once.
As you may be fusing a light coloured flower to a dark green
stem, make sure that you trim away any extra length that will not be
needed. Take a look at the flower on the
left (#1)……….see the stem length, now check again in photo #2. The stem has been trimmed but there is still
enough to hold underneath the tulip.
#1
#2
For the blanket stitch, I started at the top on the leaf on
the dark green, sewed to the bottom, up the outside and then all around. I stopped when I came to the stems and then
re-started. It didn’t take long. For the flowers I did the small piece in the
middle and then did the larger section.
I drew a line with my pencil where I wanted to straight
stitch. I started at the top with a 1.5
length, sewed to the bottom, turned, went back to the top, and then started the
blanket stitch around the piece. It
worked out beautifully.
Here they are:
A PDF is available for you on the page for the Calendar quilt
You know every month I think, gee this is my favourite block, I'll use that for the label. I better make up my mind soon. I did promise you all a label for the back of your quilt.
Have a good week everyone. Be good. We're off.
Before we go..................................
Last week, our PC decided to act up which is putting it mildly. I think we have a virus, so I shut it down, unplugged it, took the USB port for the printer off, moved the keyboard to a shelf for temporary storage. Our son suggested we get it in to the shop after we burn our files, photos, etc., onto DVD's. (I don't think he knows how much stuff has accumulated over the past 7 years.) We have a laptop for travel, so I moved over to it and some things just appear here -- like the blog -- but no photos, no files. I went in search of some free downloadable programme that I can store things in online and I found one. Its called Skydrive and its by Microsoft. Best of all it is free. I can store things on one computer and access them on another. If you live in fear of loosing everything on your computer here is the link where you can read all about it.http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/skydrive/home
Everything on the laptop is now in Skydrive. I'm hoping to get into the PC when I get back and put all that info there too. It never ever hurts to have backup. Then it can go and be cleaned out.The best part of all of this was that I was thinking and moved all my BOM files over to the laptop. I can't imagine having to do all that work again.
