A Long Distance Quilt Along

I come from a family of quilters and crafters.  They work with wood, make clothes, knit, crochet, make pottery and of course quilt.  They are amazing and partially why I love to create.  Unfortunately for me they are not close by, so we mostly share pictures long distace.

So, when my Aunt asked me to join her, my grandmother and their friends in a quilt along I just had to say yes.  Even though I can't meet with them in person each week, they text me pictures of their blocks and I send back pictures of mine.

Here is the book they chose to use for thier project.

This is not a book I would have chosen on my own.  It is older and the blocks don't actually have any instructions.  They have full sized outlines of each block so I think you are meant to make your own templates.

But, just look at this inscription...

I am all in!  How I wish they were closer.

First, I found some color inspiration on pinterest and printed it out.

Then, I headed to my stash and pulled lots of pretty fabrics that matched my inspiration picture.

Then, I got to work.  They were already a few weeks in, but I spent an afternoon getting caught up.

Here are the blocks we've done so far.  They finish at 9 inches. Remember, there are no instructions.  Some were easy to measure and rotary cut.  One I had to make a template for and another I paper pieced.

This first one had small, skinny pieces but it was easy to measure and cut.

This one I had to make templates.

The stripes on this one were easy, but I had to do a little quilty math to figure out those stars.  I used the sew and flip method for the points.

This is the one I paper-pieced.  I'm sure there is a way to do the math, but my brain was not having it, so I copied the page to scale and paper pieced the center.

This was another straight forward rotary cutting pattern.
I did have to play a little with the colors to avoid seeing arrows in the design.  For some reason, I just didn't want those arrows.

Another easy rotary cutting pattern.

Now, this one was a little tricky.  I thought I was doing great with my measurements.  And I even decided to simplify the bottom row.  There are just too many unnecessary seams in the drawing.  But when I finished my block was 1/4 inch too short.  Hmm... I couldn't figure out what I did wrong, so I just took the bottom layer off and redid it 1/4 inch taller.  Perfect.

Another one with simple measuring and cutting.

More simple quilty math - this has been really good practice for all those quilty equations.

And finally, this week's block...

At first glance, it looks a bit overwhelming.  But, as soon as you see it as a 9 patch, it looks much easier.

The hardest part was keeping all of those different fabrics straight.

I even found a few ways to get rid of some seams.  I missed a few opportunities.  Oh well, learning experience.

I am so enjoying this!  Stretching my quilty brain to problem solve, seeing everyone's completed blocks and breathing life into some of these older blocks with fresh colors has been so fun.

Thank you for stopping by!

Tracy