Stay at Home Round Robin finish

 We finished this quilt yesterday, the day before the finish parade. It got its binding on yesterday and its final picture yesterday as well. The sixth and last prompt for this was “quilters choice” which was a great choice. I had hoped that the final prompt would allow me to add a couple of plain borders for the finish, so that is what I did. It pulled it all together very nicely. I did a simple cross hatch quilting design up to the centre block. But because the centre was a bit off sized compared to the rest, I couldn’t continue the cross hatching without risking a lot of pleats and puckers. So I did a very simple large free motion stipple in the centre. It got finished with a diagonal striped binding. This is such a fun way to spend the long winter days. I’ll link up to the finish parade here

Stay at Home Round Robin, prompt #5

 Last Wednesday’s prompt was “two colours to make anything you like”. That one didn’t take much thinking at all. I wanted something simple and also something in scale with what I’ve already done. That led me to the Simple Blocks library in Electric Quilt 8 where I chose Diagonal Strips to be done in 4 inch finished blocks, the same as the previous borders. I am running low on the colours I picked for this project. Ideally the blocks would have been aqua and orange, but I’m out of the orange, so I did aqua and yellow instead, alternating with aqua and white. It now measures 44 x 60 which is very close to the size I’m aiming for. Depending on what the next prompt is on Wednesday, I may declare this done by adding a couple of plain borders to it. I’ll link up with the rest of the round robin participants here.

Stay at Home Round Robin, prompt 4

 The fourth prompt for this year’s round robin came out last Wednesday, to add curves of some sort to our quilts. They could be in any form we chose, curved piecing, applique, vines, circles, anything that we chose. As usual, I had great and grand ideas of what I wanted to do, but none of them quite worked. I played around with adding Dresden Fans, colourful wheels, drunkard path blocks and they all just sat there saying “meh”, totally underwhelming in the way they looked. But then inspiration hit, facilitated through a video call with my friend Gail, who had a split Drunkard’s Path block up on her design wall in the background of our video call.  Back to Electric Quilt 8 I went and drew up a version of that split block. I really liked it. But then I had to figure out how to do it. I only have one set of templates for a Drunkard’s Path block, and it finishes to 7 inches, much too big. I settled on cutting background squares at 10 inches and circles the size of a sandwich plate which were then appliquéd down using a zig zag stitch on my sewing machine. I then cut them into eight sections and sewed them together, resulting in a 4 inch finished block. A perfect fit for the rest of the quilt.. The original thought was to have These blocks going all the way across. But I quickly changes my mind when I realized that I’d have to make more of them and then have leftovers. So I pulled the previously used quarter square triangle idea out into this border to finish it off. I really like it. The quilt now measures 44x52 inches. I’m looking forward to this Wednesday and the next prompt. I’ll link up to this week’s party here.

 

Stay at Home Round Robin Prompt 3

 This week’s prompt asks us to use a block or blocks inspired by the animal kingdom. It could be applique or pieced. 

• A block or unit named after an animal: Bear Paw, Monkey Wrench, Snail's Trail, Birds in the Air, Shoo Fly, Puss in the Corner...there are so many!  Looking for something simple?  There's always that classic quilt unit, Flying Geese.
• Applique of an animal
• Pieced block that looks like an animal
• Fabric that contains animals

There are so many blocks named after animals that it is hard to choose. So, I went searching through my EQ8 libraries for some ideas. I finally narrowed it down to a choice between two, the choices being determined by the size. I didn’t want a large block or blocks, since I don’t want this quilt to end up larger than a lap quilt. I was wavering between a design called Migrating Geese which I planned on putting at the bottom and top to turn the quilt into a rectangle, or a block that I found in EQ called flying goose. I finally decided on the flying goose, using a 4 inch finished block. It looks like a variant of the Birds in the Air. My quilt is now 44 inches square. I was able to bring the black fabric from the centre of the quilt out into the edges and used a large scale blue and orange floral The orange in the middle now feels like it fits with the rest of it. I’ll link up to this weeks party here

Stay at Home Round Robin, prompt 2

 I want to thank everyone who commented last week about liking the orange in the first round of my quilt. It made me feel so much better about that choice. I was so excited waking up this morning, knowing that the second prompt was today. The prompt was “double", which could have been anything. The first thing I did was put the word “double” into the search function of my EQ8. It gave over 150 results. I started scrolling through them and came up with a few ideas. I wanted to do something complex and fun. But when I started plugging the complex and fun blocks and ideas into my quilt layout, none of them spoke to me. And then I realized that the complex and fun didn’t fit with the rest of the quilt. So I went back to very basics. I decided to do a very simple double four patch. I had some octagons left of the floral fabric that could be trimmed to 2 1/2 inch squares, so I decided to use those as part of the four patches. And then to finish the round off, I did a double stripe. I introduced a wider stripe of tone on tone white, just to calm things down a bit and to give a bit of a break between this round and whatever comes next.I’m happy with it, so far. I’ll link up to this week’s party here

Stay at Home Round Robin 2026

 Our Prayers and Squares group was cancelled today due to copious amounts of white stuff falling from the sky and blowing around making travel anywhere dangerous. So, what’s a girl to do when she can’t go out anywhere?.... Stay home and sew, of course. The first prompt for the round robin was given yesterday, to add hour glass blocks to our centre squares. It took me a while to get it done. First, I measured the centre block wrong. Somehow, I thought it was 24 inches square, so I started sewing with that measurement in mind. I had the borders done, started to pin them to the centre, only to have a big, oh oh moment..... the border was too big. I re-measured only to find that the centre is 21 inches, not 24. There was some ripping and improvising involved to end up with a solution. It doesn’t look as good as I'd hoped and the orange is a bit more overpowering than I thought it would be, but done is better than perfect. I’ll link up to Brenda’s blog, Songbird designs.

Stay at Home Round Robin

 It’s the time of year to begin another Round Robin. Starting next week the hosts will be giving prompts for what to add to our centre squares. There will be six different prompts, one per week, and then the reveal. It is a busy time, but so much fun. A great way to pass the winter months, or at least a couple of them. This week we start off by showing our centre squares. Mine is a piece that I was working on last fall in an attempt to finish an English Paper piecing square I’d been working on. I finished it and trimmed it down to have a uniform 1/4 inch edge so I can add the rest of it by machine. It currently measures 24 inches square, which is a nice starting point. I’m going to take it with me to Prayers and Squares tomorrow to find coordinating fabrics. I’ll link up to the Centre Block linky party