Hollow Blocks + Strips

So I've been putting together all of those hollow blocks (as I've come to call them). Today I made one set of strips to go in between the blocks. I love the way it turned out! There are going to be five of these total. I wish I would have made these wider with maybe only one row of blocks. I think I would have liked more color and less of the Kona natural. That's ok though! I'm going to use every last bit of color from two jelly rolls.

Not bad for my first attempt at free handed piecing. Everything seems all nice and straight. One thing about the jelly rolls that I'm not too crazy about is they have way more blues and greens than any other color. There is probably more blue than all of the other colors put together. They need more pink, purple, and orange! It's been really hard to arrange the colors to look random without a ton of blues and greens all bunched together.

144 Blocks

Finally something quilt related! I finished making the hollow block squares for my solid colors quilt today.

That's 144 blocks made out of 36 different colors! I got kind of bored and tired of making these blocks, so I did some highly scientific number crunching and completely redesigned the quilt!

(Don't worry, I normally draw much better than this!) I'm going to alternate two rows of hollow blocks with three rows of these color strips and have a strip of Kona natural in between.

It's kind of hard to describe, but it makes sense in my head. I'll probably cut the strips into 12 inch long pieces. I'm going to piece together the leftover scraps and use them in the back of the quilt along with a pretty solid color (maybe like aqua blue).

Time to start piecing the blocks together!

Free Paper Piecing Patterns

I spend a lot of time making these patterns, so I thought I would offer them for others to benefit from and use. If you do use them, I'd love to see what you make! Click each picture, then right click to save...

This is the one used in this quilt.

These were used in this quilt.

I haven't had time to use these yet!

Let me know if you have any questions! It seems like Flickr won't let you download the original size unless I upgrade to Pro. I'm not ready to do this yet, but if people are interested in my patterns, I would consider upgrading. Save the large size, paste it in Word, Powerpoint, Photoshop, etc., then change the size to the appropriate original size. I also use legal sized paper and print two per page to save paper.

I found this excellent Youtube video that explains how to do paper piecing.

Color Blocks Update

I'm up to 10 colors! I'm trying to decide if I want to sew some little flowers or something in the middle of each block. I've got some rainbow variegated thread that I've been saving which I think would be perfect for this project. I just have to figure out how and where to use it.

Rainbow Jelly Rolls

I got some fat quarter bundles and jelly rolls for Christmas, but I hadn't really had time to do anything with them.

I was admiring this quilt the other day, and inspiration struck in the middle of the night! What I love about the quilt is the bright, rainbow of colors. So I thought this would be a good way to display my rainbow jelly rolls. It is based off of this free pattern. I'm going to go with 5 inch squares, and I made my own pattern to paper piece the blocks because I'm still not confident in my ability to sew a straight line ;-) I can get 4 squares out of each color with a little 1 inch strip left over. I'm thinking I can use the scraps to make some kind of border or in the binding. I've done 3 colors so far. The background is Kona Natural.

Jessica