Inspiration and Setting Ideas for this month’s Block
First the inspiration. When I was taking an old UFO to finished top a while back, I decided to add a pieced border made of squares.
Sophie’s Ring around the Lone Star
I liked it so much, I thought it could be a good idea for a lotto block. like our block, my border is scrappy with a not quite random placement of squares.
You might use this month’s B9P blocks as the main dish, for a scrappy quilt made from the complimentary colors yellow and purple, along with some white and gray … which is strangely similar to the color palette for this year’s MQG Charity Quilt Challenge color palette of primary colors with white and gray (and cream and black).
Or you could use it as pieced sashing and/or borders with a focal fabric, big 18-inch blocks, or, as I show here, 4-patches made from a couple of square 9-inch blocks. I added 4 1/2-inch 9-patches as the corner stones in this layout-made from the March, April and May lotto blocks.
How Can I Improve the Mailing Info?
Once again, some lotto blocks have arrived at the wrong destination … and I have to wonder if there a better way to organize the mailing info I email to everyone each month?
Given that sending out personal messages to everyone who participates would be too time-consuming and prone to more errors (by me), I’d appreciate your ideas on how the mailing info could be better, more clear, etc … leave a comment with your ideas (or email me, if you’re more comfortable with that.)
FYI, fortunately, in this case, the error happened early enough that a couple of us that have not yet mailed can send our blocks where those wayward blocks were supposed to go.
Do you know?
Not sure if it is ok to ask this question on Block Lotto so I am going to go ahead and ask. I absolutely love to pick out fabric and piece quilts and on the throw size I quilt myself but on larger ones I have someone local quilt them. My question is…. Does anyone know a good way for me to list and sell them? I have about 13 quilts right now for sale at excellent prices. They are beautiful too! Quilting is my therapy and my hubby tells me I need to get rid of some! Thanks all! Elizabeth
Star Blocks
Sent my star blocks today! Should receive on Monday. I cannot wait to see the finished quilts~
Still hopeful
It’s not been a good year for me in terms of playing the block lotto – some months, I’ve just been really busy, and some months I’ve been uninspired or the blocks just weren’t me. There’s probably a bit of lazy in there, as well 🙂 I do, however, really like this one, so I’m hoping this weekend will afford time for at least a couple of blocks – one of the things which was going to keep me really busy this week has been cancelled, so I’m hoping that time might translate into a little block lotto stitching… Loving the blocks so far!
Looking Ahead – Fabrics for May
I meant to include a note in yesterday’s sneak peek post about fabrics we’ll be using in May, for those that like to plan ahead.
For next month’s blocks, I’m giving you a palette of four possible colors–white, yellow/gold, purple and gray–and asking you to pick three of the four for each of your blocks. The fabrics can be solids, tone-on-tone prints or multicolor prints that only contain white, yellow/gold, purple or gray.
The placement of the three fabrics in the block will depend on their value. Here are some of the fabrics I pulled from my stash as candidates for my blocks. Can you see that, while if I use white, it will always be the light, the other colors could possibly be used as the light, medium or dark? I’m showing you how they look in black & white, too … which is always a good sanity check for checking value.
It looks like the darkest gold would only work as a dark when combined with white and a light gray or purple … but I might try that just to see how it turns out …
Easy X Flimsy Ready for Quilting
Here is the quilt I assembled from the beautiful Easy X blocks. I had to make a few to complete some of the color areas, but it has all the blocks sent by you Block Lotto folks. I took it to the quilter yesterday and she will work her magic on it and I’ll post a picture of the finished quilt. It will be a graduation gift for the youngest daughter of a good pal.
Some Sampler Ideas for 2015 Lotto Blocks
A few people has asked if there will be a sampler quilt design, a QAL or *something* this year and I keep promising to share some thoughts on quilt sampler ideas for this year’s blocks.
As I was enjoying a quiet moment with my morning coffee, I thought that IF only I had started another quilt-along sampler this year, *I* would have been forced to make blocks for myself for a sampler quilt … even if no one else played along. It’s not like I don’t have a plan … but I just haven’t been able to get started.
For those who have liked the blocks so far this year and think they would like to make a sampler quilt, I spent some time this morning drawing some quilt layouts in EQ (and I am just learning, so they are rough) to share.
The first thing to consider is that this year, we will make 8 blocks that have a finished size of 9-inches square and 4 blocks that are 4 1/2 by 18-inch rectangles. Here is a representation of their relative sizes.
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I think of these as building blocks that can be combined in many ways. Here are two.
A small sampler (table cover or play quilt) that is 45 inches square (before adding borders), can be made from 2 of each of the 12 blocks plus four 5-inch squares for the corners and borders, if you wanted them. I added a narrow border in this layout for a quilt that is 49 1/2 inches square.
In this layout, I used different colored blocks to represent the blocks we’ll make in future months.
This layout could also be used to make a quilt using fewer than 12 sampler blocks. You might choose one square block and one rectangle to make a quilt. Below is an example using three of the blocks we’ve made so far this year.
Can you see how easily this quilt layout can be made larger, if you add the square blocks in 2-block increments (which correspond to one rectangle block in the border).
For example, if you added two more rows of square blocks, with one more rectangle on each side and wider borders, you would have a nice sized throw or single bed-sized quilt.
The blocks this year will work well in a row quilt, which is where I’m likely headed … if I can ever get started.
If you make a quilt where each row is some number of each of the 12 blocks, you will end up with a quilt that is 90-inches long (without borders). The number of each block you make will determine the width of the quilt. 10 each of the squares and 5 each of the rectangles will result in a 90-inch square.
A quilt made from 7 each of the squares and 3 (and a half) of the rectangles would be 63 inches wide (before any borders are added) look something like this. In my drawing, I added narrow borders for a quilt that is 68 by 95 inches.
Instead of making half an arrow, I added two 4 1/2 inch squares (finished size) between those blocks … for the rest of the rectangle blocks, it will be easy to make a half-block (hint, hint).
In this layout, you could order the blocks in any way of your choosing and you could easily repeat a block you liked to substitute for one you didn’t like so much …
I have doodled one more quilt, a large medallion style that I can try to recreate in EQ7 if anyone thinks they might like to make it. It has many more of the rectangles than the square blocks and would work well if you had a focus fabric you wanted to feature.
direct link to bubbly blooms pattern on Michael Miller website
I also could not make the link work in the March instructions. Here is a direct link to the Michael Miller free pattern. Even with linking to this, it would not download at first; I had to “retry”. https://www.google.com/#q=bubbly+blooms
Blooms
I can’t seem to download the PDF for the “Blooms”. Am I doing something wrong?