Gone To The Beach: 03.20.2016

Sunday, March 20, 2016

Welcome Spring! And Pokeberry is Done!

Yay, Pokeberry!

But first things first, Happy Spring to everyone.

We are expecting snow here at the beach. Love the Alert's commentary:

The Equinoxes often bring stormy weather, and snow in late March is unfortunate but commonplace. One last chance to make hot chocolate and snuggle under the covers while the snow flies. I enjoy winter so I don't mind.
This week I finished my Pokeberry Quilt! Yay! Here's a link to my very first post about Pokeberry, back in June: click here with credits and explanations, because as my friend Lisa pointed out, not everyone who visits here is a quilter!

I had to piece the backing. I inserted a strip of the robin's egg sawtooth fabric. The solid is a soft flannel, a very pretty violet/blue/grey. Nicer than the photos look.

The label will go under the line of sawtooths.

This is a label someone gave me, I've been saving it. It looks very Pokeberry-ish, I think.

I learned a new to me trick making this quilt. I love learning new skills, and never having taken a class I sometimes am not clued in to what everyone else knows. Like: how to make large amounts of sawtooths! My previous method was to piece long bias strips of the two colors then laboriously cut each HST [half square triangle, my non-quilter friends] with a template. Time consuming but very accurate. Not fun if you need about 150 hst's for a big border. Thank you, Jan Patek!

One last press and it's off to the quilter in the morning, depending on the snow accumulation, of course. I asked for allover Baptist Fans and I am sending black batting. My quilter agreed with me that black batting was a good idea for this quilt. It's Hobb's Heirloom 80/20. I could not find 100% cotton batting in black. I'm petty excited that this project is done! And I still love the funny weeds, the pokeberries.

Next I went back to poor neglected Summertime. I quickly pieced the Four Patch /Nine Patch cornerstones. I had to sub yellow on some of the corners so that there was not pink on pink making an odd visual.

Because of this I suddenly last night realized these blocks are directional in an odd way. The navy squares slant off parallel instead of pointing to the center. I'm pretty sure I did the earlier cornerstones wrong! Oh well.

I hope the colors come together. They're not as ugly as the pix seem but a bit sad. My idea was "blueberries/ raspberries/ lemonade", very summery. Looks like a drought to me though.
The applique border will have brilliant rose red yoyo flowers and blue and yellow birds, on green stems and leaves. Perk things up?

I also remade my second block for Westering Women. I couldn't bear to use more of my beloved hoarded turquoise, so I subbed. The new block, on the right, is the correct size but to me it lacks the snap of version one.