Wednesday 17 September 2014

Relaxing Robin linky party

At the beginning of the year, Dawn, of SewYouQuilt2, started a Relaxing Robin, in which participants started with an orphaned block and finished with a quilted item (quilt, table runner, whatever).

I really wanted to join in but selling our house and moving interfered with my sewing plans so I never got past the second step, which was adding the green border here.
 
I decided that working on that UFO would be my 'Something Old' project for September and got into an email conversation with Dawn.

We decided that we would do the Relaxing Robin together (company is more fun, don't you think?)

Do you have an orphan block that is calling out to you to save it from the orphanage? Would you like to join us? Don't be scared off by the title -- the block never leaves you until it's finished!

Here are the guidelines -- I hesitate to call them 'rules'; this is supposed to be fun and we all know there are no quilting police.

1. choose a block from your UFO pile to work with. If you wanted to, you could make the centre larger by sewing some together, two, three, four etc. have fun! if you sewed 3 for example runner style then you could make the finished quilt rectangular instead of square.

2. add a small border. This could be a plain border, pieced, appliquéd etc but make it small. try and use a color not used in your block for added fun later on

3. Add appliqué. could be to the small border, could be to the inner block, or could be an applique border itself. again, try out options and have fun

4. add some triangles. this could be flying geese, pin-wheels, etc. again, have fun with this. there are many blocks and ideas with triangles.

5. using some of the fabric in the first border make another border of your choice

6. make a border that has squares in it; 4 patch, checkerboards etc would be welcome here. again have fun

7. finish as you wish. this can mean another border or if you think you are done, quilt and bind up the baby.


These are suggestions: you can switch the order or eliminate steps altogether if they don't work for you and your block. To be honest, I got hung up on the appliqué border (step 3) which is probably why the project stalled in the confusion of moving!

I have an idea for a needle-turned appliqué but you won't see it until later because I want to sew on my machine not sit around hand-stitching! So I'm bending the guidelines to suit myself -- with Dawn's blessing!

Would you like to join us? There will be a linky party but we haven't finalised the details of when and where yet. Here's the link to Dawn's current post.

In the meantime, let's free those blocks from the orphanage! ;-)

3 comments:

  1. I always wanted a bunch of people-6-to do a round robin quilt! I did organize a handful of us to make a bunch of blocks once. It isn't easy to do that any more for me.... I do not have any orphan blocks! I do have a box of blocks from my grandmother which I always thought should go in a quilt-they are all samples of quilts she has made through the years.They would need borders to make them all work together. I could try to work out something with them on the design wall!

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    1. Yay! I would love to have you join us! If your grandmother's blocks wont work, you could make an "orphan block" from all the scraps you must have from all the quilts you make!

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  2. hey Lynne I put the linky up on my blog. I am thinking of a row quilt for me this time. so excited to get to working on it. then I could use more dresdans and some crumb blocks maybe and what have you.I am excited and cant wait to see how we progress see ya in the sewing room!

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