Blogging from A to Z challenge 2018 I'm in

Last year, after the Blogging from A to Z challenge I barely blogged for months - or for the rest of the year to be honest. Its taken till this month for me to get back into the swing of posting even a little. After 3 years of the challenge plus lots of other blogging I just petered out. Life got busy. I travelled. I got very involved in Handmade With Love and sewing for Comic Con and Supanova. I didn't seem to have much of a following and frankly figured who would miss me.

I still wrote blogs in my head at times but never got them onto the computer. Sometimes I made it to the computer but didn't get the photos taken ... or edited... or uploaded. It just got too hard.

I have gradually got back to it this month of February... 3 posts in a week. I was on fire (Lol) I looked at my stats - the visits that I had over the week and I was astounded by the number I had. I mean I am by no means setting the world on fire or creating new records but well yes I was... for me anyway. People were reading my blog (at least visiting it) and that has been encouraging. Not commenting though. No one is commenting (hint hint)

And I thought... maybe I could blog regularly again. I was definitely NOT going to enter the A to Z challenge again. I blamed it for my walking away from my blogging. Then I looked back at my A to Z posts from last year and saw I had 250 plus visits. As I say - maybe not earth shattering for many bloggers - small fry to many but for me that was fantastic. So yeah - maybe I would enter again and if nothing else it might get me back blogging again.

So - today of all days, when we are going to be hosting an engagement party for a friend, when we have so many things to get done, when we are going away for several days tomorrow... I have decided that I would enter the challenge and what is more have started to draft some of my entries. Not what I need to be doing and with that I will sign off. With no pictures to pretty this blog up. So I am going to leave it at that. Post this as is and dive into my busy day but I will be back. 

See you all again soon

Z is for Zenith

This month I'm participating in A to Z Challenge, where 100's of bloggers around the world challenge themselves to write every day for the month of April, working their way through the alphabet.  I'm sewing a patchwork block for each letter of the alphabet. Each day I will share that block and a little about the block and direct you to where you can find a tutorial for that block on the Web.

This is the last day of the challenge. Who hoo we made it.

Z is for Zenith

The Zenith block is the only one NOT found on Quilter's Cache. When I looked there, there was not a suitable block for me to use in this challenge so I went to my reliable brain's trust aka my Twilter's group on Facebook and told them of my dilemma and like all good brain's trusts they came to my rescue. 

There were a few other suggestions as well but this one was the best (because it had a net presence and I could link you, my lovely readers, to the pattern) One suggestion was that I design my own (ummm no) but my fall back was to get one of the Twilter's named Zina to choose a block for me that I could call Zina's Choice. 

Anyway I didn't need to resort to designing my own or dobbing Zina in to choose one for me.

 Zenith can be found here  on a website called Patchwork Square owned by Wendy Russell. My colour selection was very similar to the one made by Wendy. I like how it turned out very much. Its made up of a collection of flying geese, half square triangles and square in a square.

Tomorrow I will show you the back of the quilt with this block in plus the finished quilt - you will have to come back again now won't you.

Y is for Yankee Charm

This month I'm participating in A to Z Challenge, where 100's of bloggers around the world challenge themselves to write every day for the month of April, working their way through the alphabet.  I'm sewing a patchwork block for each letter of the alphabet. Each day I will share that block and a little about the block and direct you to where you can find a tutorial for that block on the Web.

Today's block, Yankee Charm is found on Quilter's Cache here 

It's identified by Marcia Hohn (who owns that website) as being from the 1930s. Its a fairly simple straight forward block made up of half square triangles, squares and rectangles.

Marcia has a diagram of a quilt made from Yankee Charms with the 2 colours alternated in blocks. It looks great and has a very much a tiled floor look. I am very tempted to make it... it is going to go on the One Day pile

Its a two colour block on Quilters Cache but traditionally it was a 3 colour block.

I found a few other examples of the block of that name on the internet but which was different. Yet again we run into the situation where a block can develop variations over the year, and where the same name is applied to a variety of blocks

From nancycabotsewalong.blogspot.com

Today is the 2nd last day of the challenge. We have completed 25 days and that means that the final row of the A to Z quilt is complete  The last block will go on the back. This is the quilt top, minus the borders.

X is for X Marks the Spot

This month I'm participating in A to Z Challenge, where 100's of bloggers around the world challenge themselves to write every day for the month of April, working their way through the alphabet.  I'm sewing a patchwork block for each letter of the alphabet. Each day I will share that block and a little about the block and direct you to where you can find a tutorial for that block on the Web.

Today's block, X Marks the Spot is found on Quilter's Cache here. It is an original design by Marcia Hohn. I was intrigued when I started to read the instructions that I had to cut 36 2" squares. These were used to "snowball" all the corners of the rectangles or squares to make the diamonds in the corners and the other designs. It is a much more wasteful way of sewing these shapes but much easier. To do it other ways would require lots of templates to cut designs and well as the sewing of triangles to corners.

Its a fun design. This is my attempt. I love my kombi van fabric. I have used it all up now just about. Sigh.

More than the block itself I love the designs that came out in the diagram of the quilt made from just this block. Another one for the one day maybe list.

U is for Union Squares

This month I'm participating in A to Z Challenge, where 100's of bloggers around the world challenge themselves to write every day for the month of April, working their way through the alphabet.  I'm sewing a patchwork block for each letter of the alphabet. Each day I will share that block and a little about the block and direct you to where you can find a tutorial for that block on the Web.

Today's block is Union Squares that can be found here on Quilter's Cache. It is another traditional block that goes by a number of other names including An Effective Square, Four Crowns, Union as well as Union Squares. It consists of multiple half square, quarter square and square units. It can be sewn with flying geese instead.

It is a popular block for use in making Christmas themed items such as table runners because of the star nature of the block but it is dependent on the colour choices on the whole. 

T is for Tennessee

This month I'm participating in A to Z Challenge, where 100's of bloggers around the world challenge themselves to write every day for the month of April, working their way through the alphabet.  I'm sewing a patchwork block for each letter of the alphabet. Each day I will share that block and a little about the block and direct you to where you can find a tutorial for that block on the Web.

I got these blocks made in January so as to be ahead of the game come the challenge. Originally I was just going to make 8 or 9 but got on a roll and boom.. they were all done. I made one, took a picture, put it up on the design wall with the others, in order. Usually I would choose them from the list of blocks that I had sorted through and selected back in 2016 when I first decided that I would do this for the blog challenge this year. But sometimes I would go back to Quilter's Cache and check out some other blocks and sometimes select one of those. And sometimes I wouldn't copy the one that I chose to my list. 

That is what happened with this block. And when I came to write the blog I couldn't find the name of it. I tried to go through the list of blocks under T on Quilter's Cache but I couldn't see it. I decided that I must have gotten out of order, gotten confused and skipped T and made either 2 S blocks or 2 U blocks but I couldn't find it there either. 

Finally I went to my Brain's Trust ie my Twilter Group on Facebook and lamented my problem there, along with a photo and Vicki, From the blog and podcast My Creative Corner 3 tracked it down on Quilter's Cache. It does indeed start with T. In my panic I must have skipped over that block and not checked it out. Thank you so much Vicki!

So here it is Tennessee, which can be found on Quilter's Cache here (it really can even if I couldn't see for looking). Its  traditional block and is described as a great stash busting block as the whole block is made up of half square triangles, one side common and the others of varying colours and with different coloured squares in 2 corners. Completely scrappy and totally gorgeous.

I loved the pictures and diagrams I saw on Quilter's Cache of a whole quilt made from the block - some awesome secondary patterns developing and a wonderful block for using up scraps. 

Today is the 20th day of the challenge and T sees the completion of the 4th row of the A to Z quilt. Here is what we have so far

S is for Sailboat

This month I'm participating in A to Z Challenge, where 100's of bloggers around the world challenge themselves to write every day for the month of April, working their way through the alphabet.  I'm sewing a patchwork block for each letter of the alphabet. Each day I will share that block and a little about the block and direct you to where you can find a tutorial for that block on the Web.

Sailboat is another pattern from Quilter's Cache and can be found here It is listed as a traditional pattern and an internet search turned up a lot of patterns called Sailboat, or a variation of it. And there were lots of different ones. I didn't see the version from Quilter's Cache turn up else where but there were a number of similar themed ones. The Quilter's Cache version was an "on point" version. 

This was the more common version to be found

or variations of it such as this one

All of the version used a combination of half square triangles and squares to complete the design.

I wasn't overly happy with the way mine turned out... it was very bland and doesn't show up well in the photograph which was a bit washed out.

The version shown on Quilter's Cache was very dramatic when put together in a table runner and would be very striking in a whole quilt

R is for Red Cross

This month I'm participating in A to Z Challenge, where 100's of bloggers around the world challenge themselves to write every day for the month of April, working their way through the alphabet.  I'm sewing a patchwork block for each letter of the alphabet. Each day I will share that block and a little about the block and direct you to where you can find a tutorial for that block on the Web.

Red Cross is a traditional quilt block, which has a number of variations on the same theme. There are also a lot of blocks that are called Red Cross which are very different from each other. Being the name of a famous organisation a number of blocks have been named in its honour (I presume). They are usually self descriptive, ie a block that has a red cross in it! The pattern I used came from Quilters Cache here .

I found one very similar to it on Jenny Beyer's website here. It used mitred corners in it (I avoid this particular technique as I haven't really mastered it)

This is mine. Just to be a rebel I didn't make it in red!

The whole quilt made from the red cross quilt block looked really boring to me. The overall design  achieved could have been as easily achieved by cutting strips and squares. I thought it was nothing and certainly won't be going onto my must do list 

Q is for Quatrefoils

This month I'm participating in A to Z Challenge, where 100's of bloggers around the world challenge themselves to write every day for the month of April, working their way through the alphabet.  I'm sewing a patchwork block for each letter of the alphabet. Each day I will share that block and a little about the block and direct you to where you can find a tutorial for that block on the Web.

I hadn't heard of this block before choosing it for this challenge however it is marked in the Quilters Cache as being a traditional block and when doing a web search I found a number of articles about it and a YouTube video on making it. I found someone's pinterest board on the block here.  

The pattern for this block can be found on Quillter's Cache here The pattern is for a 9" block but I wanted a 12" block so increased the sizes of the units I cut. Instead of 2" squares I cut 2.5" and instead of 3.5" squares I cut 4.5" squares.

This is the youtube video for making the block.

Here's a diagram of a  quilt made using the quatrefoil block

P is for Peace and Plenty

This month I'm participating in A to Z Challenge, where 100's of bloggers around the world challenge themselves to write every day for the month of April, working their way through the alphabet.  I'm sewing a patchwork block for each letter of the alphabet. Each day I will share that block and a little about the block and direct you to where you can find a tutorial for that block on the Web.

Once again the pattern for this block comes from Quilter's Cache and can be found here. It's centre is a pinwheel, one of my favourite block units. Its probably the kid in me. I always loved pinwheels! In a quilt block I love the sense of movement that a pinwheel can create. The whole block is made up of half square triangles - 16 of them in all. - 4 for the pinwheels and 12 for the flying geese units and side units. It would be possible to make the flying geese looking units as flying geese rather than 2 half square triangles but it would use more fabric. 

An internet search found lots of examples of the block in a variety of fabric

I wasn't able to find any examples of quilts made apart from diagram on Quilt Cache. I actually don't like it. Its very messy when put together in the quilt. I feel it is a block that looks great in sample quilt or sashed blocks but not so great on its own