Planning the Alabama Beauty Blocks

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Quiltobsession

These three little stacks of pieces represent the next three blocks for the quilt. I’m still searching for the right name for it, so until then it’s simply “the quilt”.

I can see that working with the quilt is going to become more difficult the larger it gets unless I start putting it together in quadrants. I’ve pretty well decided on a setting of 12 by 12 blocks, so I think what I’ll do is make four segments of 6 by 6 blocks. That should make it somewhat less cumbersome to deal with until the end when I will join the four segments. It’s rather amazing to realize that I’m over halfway done the first of four segments. This is going together faster than I had anticipated.

On Linda’s blog yesterday, she showed some great layouts using controlled colour placement in the Alabama Beauty blocks that give totally different effects. One of them gave me an idea for a quilt with the Improved 9-Patch block, which is another block that I do want to play with, although not a king-sized quilt.

I’ve joined in on the One Flower Wednesdays with Karen and Valentina. At some point today I will be making at least one or two hexagon flowers, which I will show tomorrow. I have an idea for a small lap quilt that will incorporate a few hexagon flowers made of 1″ hexagons and I think I’m going to use a small border of flowers made with half-inch hexagons to surround this piece when I get it to whatever size I finally decide on as large enough.

We had another gloriously sunny day on Tuesday. The leaf buds on the trees on the roof garden are really starting to swell and show a little green. With any luck we’ll have leaves in front of the living room window hiding the other high-rise towers before the end of the month.

This shot of Lester makes me laugh. This was taken only moments after he had been brushed. I don’t know why he does it, but as soon as he has been combed or brushed, he immediately starts licking and chewing on his ruff and looks so unkempt! In this shot, I’m not sure if he’s meowing at something out on the roof garden or if we caught him in the midst of yawning.

According to Mr. Q.O., Smudge was thinking about “where’s dinner?” in this shot.

Alabama Beauty Circle Blocks

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Quiltobsession

Another row added and now six circles have appeared. The more of these blocks that I do, the quicker I’m finding it is to stitch them. What takes more time now is choosing the fabrics for the next row. I’m trying to not have circles of the same colour next to each other.

It is now 27″ by 36″. Once the next row is added, it will be 36″ square. I’m thinking that I may work on this in 5-row sets so that it doesn’t become too difficult to handle. That will make it a bit more complicated choosing the fabrics for the first row of each set but a little careful planning should be all that’s required. I hope. I’m thinking that it will end up composed of 12 rows of 11 blocks but that decision is one I’ll make once I get closer to finished. I don’t think this will have a border.

I’m still trying to decide on a name for the quilt. One candidate that keeps coming to mind is Spring Circles.

We got pictures of the cats awake. Smudge, once again taking over my desk chair.

While Lester was relaxing on the pink chair.

More Alabama Beauty Circles

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Quiltobsession

Now there are four complete circles showing. This is really a fun top to put together as each row reveals another set of completed circles. It’s like watching a bit of a mystery unfold. Winning the quilt frame has absolutely decided it. This will be a king-size quilt. I was hesitating as the thought of basting it for quilting was rather daunting. But with the quilt frame meaning no basting, once I finish adding rows and rows of blocks it will be ready to quilt immediately. It will be solely a matter of getting the batt and a backing ready.

Mr. Q.O. keeps asking me if I’m making drapes with this one. He’s kidding, of course, but it makes me think of a picture in the book, The Patchworks of Lucy Boston, in which a hexagon patchwork is used as a window treatment. I’d love to find a fabric that looked something like this that could be used for drapes.

Finding a name for this quilt is already something I’m thinking about. At the moment, it’s known in this household as “The Thing”. Not very flattering. It really does deserve a nice name, I think.

It poured and poured and poured rain some more on Wednesday. But suddenly, the roof garden is looking greener and greener and the first daffodil has bloomed. I think we’re to have nothing but rain and perhaps even a thunderstorm or two today. Hopefully we see the sun again on Friday.

The cats know what to do on a rainy day. Curl up and snooze. Smudge, in one of his classic poses that always manage to make us laugh:

And Lester sound asleep.

Alabama Beauty – Second Circle

Posted on April 6, 2010 by Quiltobsession

It seems that getting that first group of blocks done so that the first circle appeared was the hardest part of making this quilt. Now it’s almost putting itself together. There’s a little planning to make sure each block is going to have the right fabrics on the outer edges to match up with their adjoining blocks, but once that’s done they’re amazingly fast to put together. As I’m pressing as I go, the top truly will be done when I finish the last block. I’m already wondering about how to quilt it. It’s a done deal now — this is going to be king-size quilt.

Monday evening I picked out some more shabby chic prints to add to the mix, cut them to the size needed to print my templates and now I’ve got enough prepped to keep going for a few weeks. While I was prepping them, I was thinking about favourite types of fabrics. I always seem to fall back to shabby chic for large scrappy quilts. Do you have a favourite type of fabric that you always seem to go back to?

Monday was another absolutely gorgeous day. Warm as an early summer day, clear blue skies, an absolutely marvelous treat for early April. There are more and more green shoots showing up in the roof garden flowerbeds and the vines on the trellis are starting to show green leaves as well.

Both cats spent time on the windowsill Monday. We have finches flitting about in the trees which I think they’re finding as fascinating as I am. In the evening, Smudge relaxed.

Lester was back in his favourite spot in the pink chair.

First Alabama Beauty Circle

Posted on April 5, 2010 by Quiltobsession

Watching the circle appear as I joined the fourth block to the first three made me smile. Now there’s no stopping me on this. I love the look I’m getting with all these shabby chic fabrics. Sort of like an old chintz print in an English cottage somewhere, I think. Mr. Q.O. keeps looking at it and saying it looks old. Just the look I’m after!

Putting this together is actually less of a planning nightmare than I had anticipated. The bonus of it is that, as I’m joining the blocks as I go, when I’m finished making the blocks the quilt top itself will be finished. As I want a fair number of circles to appear, I think this will end up as a bed-sized quilt. Maybe even king size. That I’m not sure about yet. But it will be large.

We had the most glorious weather on the weekend with highs in the mid to high 20s Friday and Saturday. Sunday was mild as well. Although we had fairly strong winds for a while on Saturday night, it wasn’t the heavy wind storm they initially predicted. And no rain. An absolutely perfect first long weekend of the spring/summer season. The leaves on the crab apple trees on the roof garden are starting to make an appearance.

Smudge has been busy watching out the window with Lester. We didn’t get a shot of him but Sunday he was very intent watching something. Here he’s in an almost headless cat pose.

Lester relaxing Saturday night after a lot of watching out the window during the day.

Planning the Alabama Beauty Blocks

Posted on April 1, 2010 by Quiltobsession

It’s a bit of a change for me to be planning a scrappy quilt but to get the circle effect, I have to lay the outer pieces out to make sure I’m going to have the right ones in the right spots and stitch the 3-piece units before adding them to the peel. Here I’ve laid out the four 3-piece units just to make sure that I’ve got everything stitched the way it needs to be and am now going to start stitching them to the peel for the fourth block. The grey that shows in the photo is not the fabric I’m using for the peels in this next block.

Curved piecing is something I cannot get enough of, it seems. With all the matching points that are printed on Inklingo shapes, it’s so easy to put these together and the curve in these is so gentle that I don’t even need to clip the seam allowance.

The gardener was back again on Wednesday. Our forecast is extraordinary. Friday and Saturday they’re saying we’ll have temperatures of 25C and a humidex reading of about 29C. I don’t think I can ever remember it being that warm at the beginning of April. I’d bet a lot of people go back to work on Monday with sunburns!

The weekend begins now for me. I finished work late Wednesday night and have plans — although with our weather forecast, they may get changed a bit. One of my plans is to once again try to organize my fabric into smaller containers that are easier for me to handle. I currently have most of it in Rubbermaid containers that are a bit too large and heavy for me to move easily. I found some great smaller ones at Staples last week so I plan to organize and move most of it into those. That should make it easier for me to handle things. I hope.

Lester spent a fair bit of time on the windowsill Wednesday watching the gardener.