Brinton and Butterflies

Turquoise, green and hot pink butterflies!

It's time for the October Kaleidoscope of Butterflies link up, and I've done nothing at all on my "official" butterfly project, Down in the Garden. I can't believe it will soon be two years since Ink Week (really Ink Fortnight), and I still haven't finished embroidering the blocks. Oh, the shame!

Yes, well, maybe I would have more finishes if I actually did feel shame.

This project, however, Brinton Hall, is steamrolling over everything else. Today I made the 60 3" hsts that I'll need for the second border. The fabrics were all chosen and rough cut over the summer. Today I just had to pair them, sew, and trim.

And a few of them even have butterflies! Out in the real world, I'm also seeing the Monarch butterflies steadily heading southwest along the lake shore again.

I was careful to make sure every hst was a unique combination of fabrics. It was a fun day!

They will finish at 3", and I will set them with 1" warm beige sashings. Leigh Latimore's design uses 1/2" sashings, but I feel like these strong prints need more room to breathe. Plus, the math worked out perfectly! That is always my sign to stop tweaking the design. :D

In fact, I have been redesigning, and tweaking, and redesigning again, this project since the beginning of the summer. I've changed it so many times that I lost track of the different counts. So I had more hst fabric cut than I needed. And, apparently my final design will only need 16 of the hexagon rosettes, even though I made 20!

But, the end is in sight, because I have simplified the final border by removing all the handwork. None of the handwork in Latimore's outer border is in the original Anna Brereton quilt, so that was an easy decision to make.

I will make the pieced "square in a square" block, because that was in the original, and I think it is a good looking block! I am keen to get started on that, it should be a good challenge. Lots of quarter square triangles!

So, this has been 54 of the 60 hsts. I made them in sets of 10, but 9 fit so nicely on my rotating mat there.

Now, I really have to crack on with Something Fishy!

OMG for October

Just a short post for today. One Monthly Goal (OMG) has been going since January, but this is my first time participating. This month I really want to get the binding sewn onto my Cardinal Stars quilt. I quilted it six months ago, and it has been languishing because a) summer is too hot to sit with a big quilt in my lap, and b) I want to make a fancy two-colour binding, and I haven't been 100% sure of how I want to do it.

But, now the weather has cooled off, and I think I have a reasonable plan. The binding strips were cut long ago, and when I opened the box, I was surprised to see that I even ironed the red ones in half already! So I am primed for success. :D

Here's the before photo:

Check out all the other goal-setters at the October link up, right here.

Log Cabins and Stars

For the Gwennie-Inspired Medallion quilt along, the theme for Month 3 is log cabins, and the Month 4 theme is stars. I hoped that my bear claw blocks, that I rejected in Month 2, would still be useful. This is their chance! Mama bear and baby bear are now Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, the two most familiar constellations in the northern sky.

In North America we know the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper, which are the brightest parts of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. In Europe they see it when it is rotated around, and call the Big Dipper the Plough.

The Big Dipper has seven stars, and the Little Dipper has six, so I chose seven big bear claws and six small ones, and filled them out with some log cabin piecing. Two for one!

But really, it was the "log cabin" theme that unlocked the entire design for me. I thought it would be different to wrap strips around the whole medallion, log cabin style. A few others had the same idea! From there it was a short hop to the idea to continue the light/dark layout through all the borders.

I also sewed together all the small "crumbs" that were left over from the log cabin strips, and used them to fill in a few of the gaps.

And I used the brown and grey printed plaids from the centre block to make two 1/4" (6 mm) key line borders. I've been keen to try this tutorial by Barbara Robson for a skinny border, and I'm happy to say that it is easy and it works!

Those are the same plaids, by the way, that I've been using to make rosettes for Brinton Hall.

The last theme, for Month 5, is "Something Fishy." That will fit perfectly on the remaining two blue sides of the medallion! It's all coming together now. :D

Fortunately for me, Lori says the final link up will be open all month. I'm going to take a week or so to finish it up before my next post. Might as well do it right!