Quilts on Barns - #35 Lemoyne Star

The Lemoyne Star is located at W8051 Highway 67 in Sharon, WI. It's always been one of my favorite blocks; especially in red, white and blue.

Sometimes a little Cre8tivity goes a long way...

For the longest time I've been trying to come up with a large scale design wall for my Quilt Studio.  Nothing seems to be the perfect option.  Today I had a burst of cre8tivity and within an hour my mini Design Wall was mounted.

I knew I had a few sheets of foam core board in the basement from back when I was matting and framing pictures.  Sigh...I really need to get back to that hobby too.  I have lots of cool pictures that I could mat and frame to hang around the house.  Anyway, I was wondering why I couldn't just hang a piece of foam core with Command Strips the same way I hung my thread holders.  I knew I was out of spray adhesive but I did have a chunk of cheap white flannel left over.  I ran out to Michael's and bought a can of spray adhesive and a package of the Command Picture Hanging Strips.

Next it was a stop at Office Max to pick up a few packages of photo sleeves and a binder.  When did binders become so expensive??  I mean it's JUST a binder.  Just a standard three ring binder.  My last stop was Target to pick up some miscellaneous  itsms and a roll of masking tape.

I came home, I sprayed my foam core board with adhesive, smoothed out my white flannel, wrapped it around back and masking taped the raw edges.  I put on a few of the picture hanging strips and stuck it to my closet door.  Now it can be taken down if I wish.  I have a few more pieces of foam core board,  so I may make a few additional ones.

The rest of the afternoon I spent making 6" blocks.

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Here's my cute little design wall:

Quilts on Barns - #34 No Place Like Home

There's no place like home! There's no place like home!

That's all I can think about since we visited barn #34 located at N2772 US 14 in Darien, WI 53114. Like I was waiting for Dorothy to be hanging out around the side of the barn. I've never seen this block before and I think it's quite striking.

Quilts on Barns - #33 Carpenters Wheel

Carpenters Wheel is one of my all time favorite quilt blocks. This one was located at N4197 County Road P, Delavan, WI 53115. This barn was a little difficult to track down due to the amount of things painted on the front of the barn.

The quilt block was on the side and unless you walked approximately two city blocks into the fields you wouldn't be able to see it. Of course, you know which option I chose...

EQ Learning Curve

Last night Jen came over to sew.  She worked on two different projects while I worked on ONE block.  When I drafted it, apparently I made it a lot more difficult than it needed to be.  I didn't step back and look at the whole picture.  If I had, I would have realized right off the bat that Triangle Paper was the way to go about this block.  I chose paper piecing.  I printed my foundation and sure it was in a million pieces but I figured, EQ thinks this is the best way, so I'm going to go with it. So I piece all of the sections and then I spent about an hour just looking at it trying to figure out how it went together.  I just couldn't get it to match up to the picture I was working from.  It all seemed to be backwards.

When that finally dawned on me I ran down to the computer, took a screen shot of the foundation lay out and reversed the image.  Sure enough, I was able to put the pieces together.  Lesson number 1 - when you're working with a block that isn't symmetrical you need to Mirror the block when you print out your foundation patterns...

I decided to proceed, and just put the block together anyway since I was already this far.  HA HA HA. Easier said than done.  It was first then that I learned Lesson number 2 - look at your foundation pattern before you print it...really, really look.  I Sure, I had two clean halves but I didn't have four clean quarters.  NOOOOOO, I had a bunch of pieces that I had to partially piece...inset seams.  Lots of inset seams.

Here's the line drawing of the "correct" mirrored image.

This one is the incorrect, non-mirrored image.  The one that is looking like the block should be and yet, I forgot to think backwards.

Either way, do you see all the crazy inset seams that didn't dawn on me when I printed it??  I finished the block, it came out pretty good even with the inset seams.

Right away I decided to re-make the block with triangle paper.  But, take 2 didn't go quite the way I planed either.  When I printed out the 3/4" finished half square triangle sheet I forgot to un-check the "scaled" box   I sewed the first few lines before I realized this.  I just tossed it, ran downstairs and printed a new one.  Making the block the third time around went much quicker.  Ok, actually assembling it, this was only the second time.  It went much quicker and it came out awesome.

Now tonight, I'll remake the block from Thursday night and then hopefully I've learned enough new things in EQ to put together the next batch without issue.

Quilts on Barns - #32 Corn & Beans

Barn #32 showed us a different color variation than the last time we saw the Corn & Beans block in Racine County. The barn was located at N4534 County Trunk P in Delavan, WI 53115.

10!! My Holly Girl turned 10!

Yesterday was a big day in our household...Holly turned 10!  The one people food that she gets to partake in is pancakes.  She gets beyond excited about pancakes.  Mike made her a special Micky Mouse one and decided she needed a smiley face out of redi-whip.

Hindsight is 20/20.  We should have cut the pancake up before setting it down because she tried to eat the whole head at once.  Oh well, her birthday only comes once a year!

Her birthday celebration must have been exhausting because she was giving me the "I need sleepy" eyes not too long afterwards.

Sure, she got to sleep...I headed to the sewing room and cranked out 3 of the 6" blocks that I've been working on. The first one, I'm really excited about because I drafted it from scratch and then subdivided it enough times until it could be easily paper pieced. I nailed it too...and then I thought the center seam could be a little closer so I ripped...and subsequently made it worse. I'll be making a new one. One of the issues was I used paper straight from the printer instead of switching to a lighter weight newsprint paper.

The third one will be much more relaxed once I remove the paper. Again, I need to remember to switch to the newsprint when I print the templates.

Quilts on Barns - #31 Smell The Roses

This farm had a lot of green houses which would explain the "Smell the Roses" quilt block. It was located at N5088 County Trunk O, Elkhorn, WI. With the angle of the sun, it was a very hard quilt block to get a good photograph of.

Quilts on Barns - #30 Milky Way

Barn #30 was certainly difficult to find. I wasn't able to pull the address up on the GPS so I had to use an address "close" to it. The address was supposed to be N5624 County Trunk O. In the end, we found it because of my Mom's keen eyes. We corrected our entry and just saved the GPS Coordinates: N 42.69502, W088.63050.

Quilts on Barns - #29 Tree of Life

The hands down coolest spot we stopped at during the Barn Quilt journey was at the Tree of Life Barn Quilt located at the Apple Barn Orchard and Winery - W6384 Sugar Creek Road in Elkhorn, WI 53121.

We saw quite a few quilted items in their gift shop from many of the Nancy Halvorson books that Mom and I own. It gave us lots of ideas of things to make. And then...we got to test wine. YUM! I had just finished chatting with my friend Regina about her crazy day at work so mom and I decided we had to have a taster of wine in honor of her. They even had this funny sign that said:

I bought a really yummy bottle of Honey Crisp Apple Harvest Wine. That's saying a lot considering I'm not a big wine drinker. I'm dying to pop that baby open!

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