Block Away

Moda Blockheads II Block 35, Gibby, was so much fun! I decided to change up the suggested color scheme yet again and try to include as many of my snowflake scraps as I could in one block. I also decided this would be a great block to make into a gradient.


Block 36, Rolling Flake, I mean, Rolling Stone, was going to have a nice crocheted white snowflake in the center until I began slicing up the pieces. I often look at the black and white block map for inspiration, and it suddenly occurred to me I could put four tiny white snowflakes in each of the corner blocks.


Except that I'm running out of design ideas for tiny snowflakes. So I thought perhaps I should incorporate the tree skirt panel leftovers once again.


The tree panel snowflake scraps are VERY scrappy and pretty darned small. Some of the flakes I picked for Block 36 were not quite big enough or even straight enough. But I knew I'd be lopping off each corner, so I decided to use pieces that probably wouldn't have been included in this quilt any other way.


Once the corner blocks were done, I just had to play around with the layout until I found something I liked.


The final arrangement turned out really cute, in my opinion. And I didn't have to applique any snowflakes!


Block 38, Anchor Point, was an adventure. I needed 12 2.5-inch strips 4.5 inches long. I didn't have enough fabric in the first three colors I picked. I finally settled on this medium blue snowflake fabric, and I was sweating beads by the time I got to the final strip. That short little piece at the top of the photo below is all I have left! But I made it!


The dark blue batik bled a bit into the white while I was pressing. I guess I haven't used that particular fabric next to such a light fabric before.

And then after I finished with the dark blue, I realized two pieces are inside out. I've done that intentionally to mute a color in the past, but it was a complete accident this time, and I wasn't about to frog the block when I noticed. You have to look really close to see the booboo, and I think that's the Quilter's Rule. If you can't see it at three feet away, it's design, not error.

In spite of the antics, this is a pretty awesome block. It's another block I can see using to make an entire quilt. When I commented to Lizard that it looks like a snowflake inside a star inside a star inside a star, he said it looks like a temple block. He's visited a few temple open houses with me, and he said the motif reminds him of some of the themes he's seen in temple architecture. I think that makes this block even more special to me.


Posting a photo of all my blocks so far in a potential layout resulted in the most comments I've ever had on any post I've ever done.


I'm also a "visual storyteller" and "conversation starter" now. Wow!


One of the questions I frequently get is what line of fabric am I using. Well, it's about 22 years of collecting blue snowflake fabrics.






I thought it might be fun to share some of the projects I've made with blue snowflake fabrics I've collected over the years. I don't have pictures of everything I've made because 22 years ago, I didn't know I'd one day wish I had pictures of everything I've ever made. I'm not sure I was taking pictures of everything I made 15 years ago... Ten years ago, maybe!


McKenna Ryan's "Moose Junction" is one of the first projects into which I incorporated several different blue snowflake fabrics.


Some of the fabrics I used for my first wall hanging (which still hangs above my bed to this day) were leftovers from one of the first panel projects I ever made... polar bear pillows and quillows for my adopted kiddos for their first Christmas together with me. Below is a segment of the coordinating curtains I made for their bedrooms back then (a different fabric than the quillows, but you get the idea).


The pillows and quillows are long gone, but I still today have a few small scraps from our Snow and Klondike days!

In the annals of undocumented snowflake stitching (that I can remember) are at least two aprons, about four pinafores, some doll dresses and doll quilts, a big wallful of lap quilts, even more quillows, a ton of pillows and pin cushions, a twirly skirt, numerous scrunchies, at least two crochet bags different than the one shown below, a dinosaur and a pony. Man, I should make another snowflake pony, but with a single horn on its head!!!


Snowflake Heartburn is the granddaddy of all my WIPs. I don't know that it will ever get done. Once I began collecting blue snowflake fabrics, I thought it would be cool to include at least one block of every fabric in this quilt. When I first began, I didn't have enough varieties of fabric to make all the blocks different, so there were five or six blocks of each. Last time I pulled the project out, I replaced all the duplicates, and if this quilt ever does get finished, each snowflake fabric block will be unique.


Charmed by Snowflakes probably is my favorite finished blue snowflake quilt so far. I think Blockheads will jump ahead of it by miles!


I've used some scraps in ticker tape quilts.


There are other quilts still waiting to be finished.


Sometimes I use a blue snowflake fabric I don't like as much for the backing and/or binding of a quilt.




Some snowflake strip leftovers got fashioned into a new winter crochet bag.


There also are a host of panels and background fabrics that have yet to be made into quilts and/or other projects.






As well as fabrics still waiting to be made into clothes.


Some blue snowflake fabric did make it into my wardrobe.




I even made my own turquoise snowflake batik, which I incorporated into a jumper.




I've also made blue snowflake fabric of my own via Spoonflower.






Scraps from my Spoonflower fabrics are making their way into a few of the Blockhead blocks. I'm thinking about incorporating one of my Spoonflower snowflake fabrics into a block of its own. I'm still determined to make my quilt different from the other potential 31,000 quilts being made during this challenge!


Linking up with Busy Hands Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

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Block Your Head

I was never a metalhead, but three of my siblings played this song endlessly while we were growing up in New Mexico. One sibling has since converted to country western, but the other two never stopped banging their heads. This song brought back some real memories when I played it after coming up with the idea for today's blog post title.

All of my brothers and sisters (I was the oldest and the first to drive) would bang their heads to the appropriate segment of "Bohemian Rhapsody" in the back of my powder blue fleet Ford Maverick (my first car) back in those days in an attempt to help power the sad little engine up over New Mexico's big hills.

Nowadays, I'm a Blockhead in Colorado, driving, cycling and hiking up even bigger hills, and one of the mountains I'm still trying to conquer is my Moda Blockheads II project, which I'm still behind on by more than a dozen blocks.


I made really good progress last week after getting stuck on a block the night before we left for New Mexico for my grand niece's quinceanera. I had been working on Lincoln's Platform, Block 28, and really wanted to finish it before the vacation. However, I'd cut out all the pieces before assembling the block, and by the time I got to the border section, the outer pieces didn't fit my block.


I'd had this same problem a couple of times last year when I had to take breaks from blocks because of work. I'd started the project on one sewing machine, which gave out, then continued working with another machine. It seems not all quarter-inch presser feet are created equal. Once I realized that was the problem last year, my final block sizes were once again consistent.

But then I was forced to take a three-month break from any kind of sewing during last year's fourth quarter due to not having a life outside of work. When I got back to sewing again this year, I'd forgotten about the presser foot on the newer sewing machine. My blocks weren't all coming out the right size.

I went to New Mexico stewing about how to fix Block 28 when I got back home. I even considered leaving it as is, without the border, because it was an attractive block and I didn't want to cut more 11-inch strips because I was running out of the solid royal blue I've been trying to incorporate into most blocks so they work well together.


At one point during the vacation, I thought I'd just sew all the 11-inch strips together into one long strip with an additional piece of solid blue about five inches long when I got home and recut the strips so they wouldn't have seams right at the edges of the strips. By the time I got home, I'd decided a couple more yards of royal blue won't hurt, and I then could just recut the strips and use the short strips in another project... I've got another selvedge crochet project going on the side, and I've been adding all my narrow scraps to my fabric "yarn" ball to make it bigger.

Once I finished Block 28, I fell in love with Blockheads all over again, about my fourth time now since last April! This block turned out really cool, even if it is just a tad too large. My plan for joining the blocks will take care of everything that doesn't fit perfectly, I think. But that part of my project is still a secret!


Block 29 is supposed to be Courthouse Steps, but I turned it into a log cabin because I like the layout and color scheme better. This block was finished in no time, and I think it's beautiful.


Block 30, Gaudi, is simply gorgeous, but it got under my skin and ended up taking three nights because no matter what I did, I could not get the center block to come out the right size. I initially thought I must be making my seams too small again, but the block was coming out too small, and my seams were NOT too big! I ended up making the center block over again three times before I discovered the version of the pattern I'd downloaded had been updated because the rotary cutting instructions were not correct.

As a result, I've got one little block center I'm saving for a future block because it turned out so cute. If it doesn't fit into one of the official Blockhead blocks, I may design another block just to include it in my project.






The best part of this particular adventure is the correct pattern was big enough for a bigger snowflake!

I'm actually running out of large scraps big enough to fit some of the larger Blockhead patterns. I had planned to do the cross pieces in dark snowflake fabric, but only one scrap was big enough. So I used the solid. I didn't have enough large light-colored scraps for the fat stripe sections, but those sections would be trimmed from rectangles into triangles. So I used up more of the snowflake scraps from the still-yet-to-be-finished tree skirt panels.






This is yet another block I really like, and I could see an entire quilt with just different renditions this block.


Block 31, Interstellar, was one and done so quickly, I was able to start on another block the very same night. This is another block in which I couldn't resist the temptation to incorporate my own idea. I replaced the star in the quarter circle with a crocheted snowflake.


Block 32, X-Quartet, also worked up very quickly.


I've been trying to catch up in order, but when last week's pattern was released, I had an instant idea of how to do my own thing. I love both the official Block 47, Bird Basket, and the alternate, Rainbow Vine, but neither fit into my snowflake theme. I'd been wanting to do a plain, solid block with a snowflake, and the oblong size of Block 47 gave me the opportunity to use THREE snowflakes!


After finishing 47, I played with my blocks again to see if there is any way to put them together on-point. I think it might possibly work, but I'm going to need a few more 6.5-inch blocks. Blocks 33, 34 and the alternate Block 34, Happy Scrappy Basket, are beautiful, but they are 12.-5 inches, so I'm skipping them for right now. I may make Block 33, Star Power, and the Block 34 alternate after I finish a few more 6.5-inch blocks because I could always put a bigger block in place of four smaller blocks and then use the four smaller blocks to fill in the edge gaps. For right now, though, I'm plowing ahead to see what other 6.5-inch blocks I'm missing.


Linking up with Busy Hands Quilts and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

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