DWM: swap blocks and a new flimsy (with design notes)

Erika and I spent Saturday morning as observers at the Palos-Orland AAUW STEM conference for 5th graders. That's 60 miles from here (50 miles from Erika), not a part of Chicagoland we are familiar with.  We'd like to have a similar event for girls in our area and we wanted to see how they do it.

I went to breakout sessions on subjects I was interested in.  Prof. Morag Kersel, the archaeologist, was great! She had the girls practice "excavating" by searching for chocolate chips in cookies and plotting where the chips were found.  Her research site is Follow the Pots .

"This is AWESOME!" one of the 5th graders said to a friend as they moved from one workshop to another.

In the studio this week:

"Twinkle Star" is this month's block for Block Lotto.  They look complicated, but because of Sophie's great instructions they were easy to make.  (9.5" unfinished)


Last Monday I had 20 batik HST blocks on the design wall. I was going to let them sit while I attended to other quilting obligations (such as the Twinkle Stars, guild BOM, potholders for the UMW holiday fair) . . . but one block led to another and another until I'd made 16more blocks. I admit I was getting tired of HSTs.  I chose the background fabric as I went without deliberately selecting "this green" to go with "that red."   How to set them?  Side-by-side, alternating light and dark backgrounds, was too busy.  I tried simple sashing, but that 'framed' each block and made it hard to focus on the strong direction of the HSTs.  I've used two sizes of sashing for previous quilts (here and here).  That was the solution for this design.  Note that I did plan the skinny sashing -- dark and light alternate -- and the cornerstones are directional. I decided that to add a border to 'corral' the blocks.  736 HSTs, 7-1/4 yards used (and hardly a dent in my batik stash).

BTW, here is a picture of the quilt that inspired this one.

Quilt (c) by Pam Buda

It's by Pam Buda and was featured in the October issue of American Patchwork & Quilting. She used CW reproduction fabric, made 7.5" blocks, and a strippy setting. Obviously I took the idea and ran in another direction. Pam's story of the AmP&Q photo shoot is here .


This is a fairly unscheduled week for me -- hope I can catch up and rest up before a very, very busy beginning of November.

See what other quiltmakers are working on with these link-ups:
 Patchwork Times
 Quilting is More Fun Than Housework
Love Laugh Quilt .