The Rocket Block, new version

Hello, everyone.

The rocket block has been prototyped already.

Today's block is a modification of the basic block, to fit a 4 x 8 spot in the baby quilt.

Trying a different way to make the nose cone

 I did get a little bit forgetful while lining up the bits and pieces to make this block. At the end, the nose cone row was too wide. But all the excess was in the blue sky fabric, so no problem.

Here I drew a stitching line on the lighter fabric--love those automatic pencils for this!--and sewed a piece of sky into place. Press, trim, and good to go.

The main rocket body here, with the top part of the fins.

 The main rocket body is 3 inches tall. The fins reach below the base--obviously, this rocket is what is left after jettisoning the first stage.

The flame from the rocket engine.

 The flame was just going to be basically house-shaped, but there were these little bitty triangles lying around, and real rocket flames aren't shaped like houses. So I stuck the tiny triangles onto the other corners of the red piece. (The top corners here were done "snowball fashion", that is, a square was sewn onto the corner of a larger square. After pressing, the same was repeated on the adjacent corner of the larger square.)

And our intrepid astronauts are on the way to someplace!

A note on the quilt: after making the navy and gray plane, I concluded that it was too dark and dull for a baby quilt. Babies like brights! So instead of navy, the darker backgrounds will be more like this one.

Native plant, but not in South Texas

Hello, everyone.

When we were in Illinois, I was struck by this plant we saw at Pere Marquette State Park.

This is a mayapple.  Actually, either a pair or the start of a clump! This was along the walking path on a hill.

It's possible that mayapples grow in East Texas, but down here there is neither enough water nor, I suspect, enough winter chilling.

Just for pretty: flower and landscape

Hello, everyone.

Wild passionflower (native plant in South Texas)

Ranchlands of Starr County, Texas

Today's new block: an airplane

Hello, everyone.

After whipping out the little windmill yesterday, I decided to try something more complicated. This is my first time for this block, and it went reasonably well.

Here is how it went together:

Plane color: gray

Background color: navy

Measurements in inches. To convert to metric, multiply inches by 2.54.

8x8 Plane block     

Overall plan: have a base of 2 x 2 squares. Add corner bits as needed for diagonal seams, as in Snowball block. Instructions are based upon creating sub-unit squares and joining them to make the whole block. No inside corner seams are used.

The diagram of the block. 

Nose tip and tail tip:

Cut 1 each: 1 7/8 x 1 7/8 in background and in plane. (This will produce 2 Half Square Triangle  (HST) squares.)

Mark diagonals on lighter fabric, place on darker fabric with right sides together, and sew 1/4" away on each side of the drawn line for 2 half square triangles. Cut the sewn triangles apart along the diagonal line. Press them and trim "ears." (These will be the airplane propeller) 

Cut 1: 1.5 x 2.5 piece in background color.

Cut 2: 1.5 square pieces in background color.

Cut 2: 1.5 square pieces of airplane.

For the tail tip, join 1 plane 1.5 square and 1 background 1.5 square to make a rectangle. Press.  Join unit to 1.5 x 2.5 background piece. Press. Square up.

For the nose tip, join 1 HST and 1 background 1.5 square. Press. Join 1 HST and 1 plane 1.5 square. (Note that the plane-colored triangle points away from the plane-colored square.) Press. Lay out the rectangles so 1 HST + background will be on top and 1 plane + HST will be on bottom. Join to form a square with the HST pieces diagonally across from each other. (See the diagram.) The color of the propeller should be on the upper part of the HST. Press. Square up.

For tail wings and rear fuselage:

Cut 3: 2.5 x 2.5 pieces in plane.

Cut 6: 1.5 x 1.5 pieces in background. Sew background pieces to opposite corners of plane pieces.

Join tail tip to one wing piece. Join other wing piece to rear fuselage piece. Press all. Join wing-fuselage piece to tail-wing piece. Press. Square up.

For front wings and front fuselage:

Cut 4: 2.5 x 2.5 pieces in background.  

Cut 8: 1.5 x 1.5 pieces in plane.

Sew plane colored pieces to two “top” corners of background pieces. The diagonal seams should meet in the middle of the background piece edge. Press and square up.

Cut 3: 2.5 x 2.5 pieces of plane.

Cut 4: 1.5 x 1.5 pieces of background. As with the rear fuselage, sew the background pieces onto opposite corners of 2 plane pieces. (Third plane piece is fine as it is.)

Join 1 mostly-background piece to one mostly-plane piece. Top right plane colored corner of larger background piece should adjoin the top left corner of larger plane colored piece, creating right wingtip. Press and square up.

Cut 2: 2.5 x 4.5 pieces in background color. 

Join the right-wing rectangle just created to one of the 4.5 x 2.5 background pieces. Press and square up.

Join this square to the tail square. Press and square up.

Repeat this step in mirrorwise fashion: Join left wingtip piece to background piece with top left plane colored corner of background piece adjacent to bottom right corner of wingtip piece. Press and square up. Join unit to second 4.5 x 2.5 background piece, press, and square up.

Join third plane colored square (the one with no odd colored corners) to background piece with the plane colored corners adjacent to the unadorned square. Press and square up.

Join nose section to last background piece with plane colored corner square adjacent to plane colored triangle and HST adjacent to unadorned part of background square. Press and square up.

Join front fuselage section to nose tip section. Unadorned plane colored square is on left bottom of new square. Press and square up.

Join this square to left wing square. Press and square up.

Join with tail section rectangle. Press and square up.

Another new block for me: windmill

Hello, everyone.

This will be just a short post. The baby quilt will have some 2" x 4" blocks in between the larger ones, so today's block was an experiment in making something that size.

It's a simple little windmill, made of a 2" x 2" pinwheel for the top part and a square with angled roof for the bottom part.

It may or may not eventually get a little door, just to further the resemblance to a windmill.

It did use up a collection of half-square triangles that had been originally put together for the heart block, but left unused.

Stash busting for the win!

Tutorial: the boot block, as I do it (photo heavy)

Hello, everyone.

I looked at the boot block and realized that it's not completely obvious how to get it to go together. Order of operations matters with this one.

This is to make a dark boot on a light background, with a contrast heel.

 There are two different widths of fabric strip used.
On the left, pieces with no diagonal seaming. These are cut to 1.5" for the light strips and 3.5" for the dark square.
On the right, pieces with diagonal seaming. These are cut 1 7/8" wide. The light cubes are 1 7/8" x 1 7/8". The odd width one at the top is also 1 7/8" tall, but it's only 1.5" wide. It could as well be a cube like the others--I was playing around with making the slope at the back of the heel less sharp.

Before proceeding farther, all the pieces were starched and ironed. This got them to stay put while being sewn.



All of the light background squares, plus the one small rectangle, were marked with sewing lines.

These pieces go on top of the partner piece, right sides together of course, and then the seam is sewn from the end which is in the middle of the longer piece toward the end. This avoids the sewing machine eating the corner of the pieces.




The many bits and pieces are grouped into sub-assemblies. Each sub-assembly is pressed before being joined to another piece.


It is good to trim the assembled bits to the proper dimensions right after pressing. On the picture of the boot top edge pieces, you can see how the excess fabric was trimmed off. The after-trimming height of the assembled strip is 1.5".

Three of the sub-assemblies, arranged
in a group. 

The navy solid is the heel, and its rectangular background piece is sewn on. Using a rectangle instead of a square for the background bit meant trimming the assembled piece to get rid of some odd shaping. After the trim, it was laid in the group for the picture.
The longer medium strip is the vamp, the part where the arch of the foot is, and its square background piece is sewn on.
One of the shorter medium strips is the toe. In the first picture, the front background piece is sewn on.
 (Not sure why the proportions look so odd to me.  The trim bits on the right are sewn at 45 degree angles, but they look like who-knows-what here. Probably goofed up in the cropping! Sorry.)

The toe now has its second background
piece.

Here the top edge of the boot shaft has been put together. First a square of background was sewn to one end of the strip, and pressed, and then the second square was sewn to the other end of the strip and pressed.

Using the rotary cutter and the squaring template makes trimming much easier on the squares.

The heel is joined to the toe piece.

Returning to the bottom part of the square, the heel is sewn to the lower background piece of the toe. This is most of the bottom row done. Press and trim if any bits are sticking out in funny places.

The shaft (the part above the foot) 

Here the curved top has been sewn to the square block. The shaft of the boot is done.

The 4.5" long piece of background was sewn to one side of the shaft. Be sure to sew it onto the same side as the toe. Otherwise, you will have to pick the stitches out and move it over. Press.

The vamp of the boot is added to the bottom of the shaft next and pressed.

This is a good time to use your squaring template to make sure the block is still a good rectangle.





The 5.5" long strip of background goes onto the toe end of the boot now. Press.

The block needs to be squared up
after new pieces are added.

The boot sole piece goes onto the bottom now. Press.


The squaring-up got photographed this time.










The last piece to add is the 6.5" piece of background, which goes on the heel side of the block.

If you leave this piece off, it still looks like a boot, but the block will be 5.5" wide and 6.5" tall. This is an awkward measurement and proportion to use in a quilt. I like to add the final strip so the block will be 6.5" square.

The new block with its prototype

Block Play: hearts

Hello, everyone.

The baby quilt will have varied sizes of squares. Some of them are 4" squares, which while somewhat small is a common size and useful for dotting like confetti throughout the arrangement of larger blocks.

I had sketched out a 4" pieced heart design, and stitched up the first one as the lines on my graph paper suggested. It was almost like the heart blocks to be found on Pinterest, with lots of pieces. (I guess those ladies are working from 2" units, not 1"--as their blocks don't have the wonkiness I found in the many seams.)

This was going to be irregular and unpredictable, just because of the many small blocks and seams. I commenced to exploring ways to reduce the number of seams. The first heart was on a gray background.

The first block, on the left, and the second, on the right.

 The first change tried was to switch to two larger half-square triangles for the bottom part of the heart. This improved things a little, but there were still a lot of seams on the top. The many overlapping, angled seams make the final assembly difficult.

I tried again, this time using a technique with half the number of vertical seams.

Tracing the seam lines on the small squares.

 I cut some squares and strips to a wee bit larger, giving room for the angles: 1 7/8" inch instead of 1 1/2". This was to allow for trimming later.

Here the sewing line is being drawn on the back of the white squares. To the right, a drawn seam positioned on top of the strip as it will be sewn.

The strips, sewn, before assembly into the top portion of the
heart. (Face up on left, face down on right)

After sewing the two strips with squares at each end. There is excess fabric at the top, but trimming will wait for one more seam to be sewn: the center vertical seam.














All three of the heart blocks, from oldest to newest.







As the use of many different fabrics isn't one of the purposes of each individual heart block here, I'll try to stick with the third method of assembly.