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Color Play Friday: Rose Petals

Spring has sprung in the Pacific Northwest! We’ve had a gorgeous week of blue skies and white clouds, the weather is warming up, and the tulips are in bloom. Lately I’ve been finding myself out in the garden more and more.

Color Play Friday is hosted by Trina from In An Otter Life and me. If you’re new to Color Play Friday, head over to my Color Play Friday page to see the rules and my palettes and bundles from previous weeks.

This week’s photo is of some rose petals from my garden. We have the old-fashioned kind of roses that are super hardly and smell SO NICE. We also don’t use chemicals on them, so the roses from our garden are edible! Each year, we pick the first blooms, rinse them off, and use them for rose petal baths or add them to a salad.

For a list of edible flowers (and warnings about eating them safely), check here.

Rose Petals Palette and Bundle

After my super-pink Starbust Bundle, I was a bit ‘pinked’ out! So when Trina picked this photo, I knew I had to go another direction with it. I’ve also noticed my tendency to pick bright, saturated colors and wanted to stretch out of my comfort zone a bit. I focused on the burgundy in the darker petals, the little bits of green, and the grey and beige reflected in the colander. Everything is much more muted and dusty than my normal choices, and I ended up loving it!

I started with the Heather Ross print, but you can see that Cotton and Steel dominated my bundle this week!

Here are the fabrics I chose:

Kaffe Fasset, Shot Cotton in Pewter

Alexia Abegg, Paper Bandana, Painted in Grass

Heather Ross, Mendocino, Underwater Sisters in plum

Timeless Treasures, Sketch Basic in Berry

Sarah Watts, Honeymoon, Hot Springs Purple

Rashida Coleman-Hale, Zephyr, Whirlwind in Dust

A note about scale:

While I believe scale is a very important part of fabric selection, the fabrics shown in my Color Play images are not always perfectly to scale. I do my best, by you should always double check scale before ordering!

Don’t forget to head over to the other blogs and see what they came up with! The fun of Color Play Friday is seeing the differences and similarities between everyone’s bundles.

Participants this week:

Laurel and Pine (that’s me!)

In An Otter Life

Quilting Mayhem

Quilty Dream

Shimmy and More

Love Hazel Honey

123 Quilt

Jennifer Lewis

Here is our photo for next week!

Are you enjoying Color Play Friday? We’d love for you to get in on the fun and create your own Color Play post! You can create a bundle of fabric, select yarns or embroidery threads, or create a project inspired by our photo. Be sure to let Trina or I know so we can link up to you. You can get in contact with us at colorplayfriday@gmail.com

Click below to sign up for the monthly Color Play Friday newsletter. In it, you will find a recap of the month’s bundles from Trina and I, updates from both Laurel, Poppy and Pine and In An Otter Life, and announcements about upcoming special events.

I hope you can join us next week!

Happy Sewing, ~L

Sister Sampler: Time and Energy

It’s time to show you this month’s blocks for the Bonfire Sampler Sister swap. I’ve been making three blocks each month and swapping with my friends Trina and Mindy. You can see the last two months here and here.

Let me just put this out there right away- these blocks are appropriately named. With double the curve piecing units than the last two blocks, I really needed to give myself time and mental energy to get them done.

That being said, I can tell that my skill with curves has improved over the last several months. Getting a consistent seam and lining up those curves was much easier this month. I’m very thankful for that considering how many I had to do.

One reason I’m super thankful for this swap is that it’s showing me areas I need to improve. Making something all by yourself is very different than collaborating. I don’t want to give my partners anything less than a gorgeous block they can use, so I’m finding things as I go along that I could definitely do better.

One thing I noticed in the first two months was that some of my blocks were slightly smaller than they should have been. I thought that I was doing a proper quarter inch seam, and couldn’t quite figure out what was going on. After doing a little research and meticulously measuring my seams, I realized that I was making them slightly larger than a quarter inch- when they really should have been a SCANT quarter inch. I also started pressing my seams with steam in order to help my blocks sit flatter.

Both those improvements gave me the results I was looking for- these blocks are consistently the 9.5″ they should be.

Life lesson: Sometimes in order to get better we have to go back to the basics, relearn what we think we know and humble ourselves enough to correct our mistakes.

Along those lines, I started thinking about how on our blogs, Instagram (and now Ello!), we show a lot of finished projects and beautiful blocks, but neglect to show what went into making them. So, it is my goal to show more of the process. The mistakes, bumps on the road and wonderful tedium of day-to-day quilting.

So let’s take a look! By the time I started taking process photos, my HST units were already done, but here is the method I used.

The first shots we have are the curved units. This by far took up most of the time making these blocks. Once the pieces are cut, you notch the centers then pin them. While sewing, I kept reminding myself; “Slowly, Slowly, Slowly said the Sloth”. Sometimes my seam would wobble too close to the fabric edge and I’d have to go back over it. But taking time to do it right was worth it! It helped me get better. I set the seams, then pressed from the front. By starting my pressing on the outer part of the curve (white portion) first and then doing the inside (green part), I was able to reduce the chances on making the unit wonky with my iron. There are great instruction in the Sister Sampler book for trimming and squaring up these units.

Once all the units are done, it’s time to line them up and sew! Getting the curve edges to line up well is the biggest challenge of this block. As you can see, I used glue basting to help keep things in line. Before setting the glue with the iron, I pinched the seam on the wrong side of the fabrics to the scant quarter inch point then turned to the right side to check that the curves lined up. Once the glue basting was set, it was only a matter of keeping my seam allowance in check while I stitched. I opened up the final seams on this block to reduce bulkiness. Take care when separating the area where you glue basted. One final press from the front, and this block was ready to be trimmed up and photographed!

Here are the final finished pictures of the blocks. Time and Energy 1 Time and energy 2 Time and Energy 3

Happy Sewing! ~L

This week, I’m linking up to:

Modern HST Sampler: First Quarter

As you may know, this year I’m participating in the Modern HST Quilt Along from Blossom Heart Quilts.

We are now three months into the year, and I wanted to show you what I’ve done so far!

LPP Modern HST Sampler Blocks

In addition to the six blocks, I did a couple of extras as well.

(Side note: I am currently working on THREE quilts with white backgrounds and the are TOUGH to photograph! Every bend and wrinkle shows!)

Alyce is hosting a link-up on her blog for anyone who’s doing the quilt along to post their progress and enter to win some great prizes. There’s still time if you want to whip up some blocks (they don’t take long!) and enter.

Happy Sewing! ~L

Sotak Handmade: Megan Tote

This month, I had the pleasure of pattern testing the Megan Foldover Tote for Svetlana at Sotak Handmade.

It’s a gorgeous bag with lots of versatility! It can be made larger or smaller depending on where you clip the strap, or you could just remove the strap completely and carry it by the handles.

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I made this bag for my daughter, and now that the pattern is released, she’s looking forward to getting to take it out around town! She and I selected the fabrics together.

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Outer fabric: Bari J, Petal and Plume, Peacock Waltz Festal

Top trim: Benartex Metropolis

Inner lining: Kona Berry

Topstitching thread: Gutermann Color 938

If you’re interested in purchasing this pattern or another one of Svetlana’s gorgeous patterns, visit her patterns page!

Happy Sewing! ~L

Burst Your Stash Winner

To everyone who participated in our Burst Your Stash giveaway -Thank you!!!

This was our first big event with #colorplayfriday, and we are already planning more! If you want to learn about these events be sure to sign-up for our monthly newsletter by clicking below.

And on to our winner!!

Congratulations, Sarah S.!

Sarah is one of our new Color Play Friday participants and was our first newsletter subscriber, so I was so pleased that she won!

You can head on over to In An Otter Life to see who won Trina’s bundle.

If you didn’t win this time around, don’t fret! Stash Fabrics has made Trina’s and my bundles into one big Burst Your Stash bundle. It’s available for purchase on their website here.

If you make something with these fabric bundles please use hashtag #burstyourstash so we can see them!!

Happy Sewing! ~L

Color Play Friday: Dry Sparkling Company

Happy Friday!

Trina and I have some giveaway winners from last week that we will be announcing this afternoon- stay tuned!

If you’re new to Color Play Friday, head over to my Color Play Friday page to see the rules and my palettes and bundles from previous weeks.

This week’s photo is one of Trina’s. I’ve been eyeing this one for months now, knowing it would be a challenging Color Play for me. And of course, I waited til 10pm on Thursday night to get started. I procrastinated big time this week!

Dry Sparkling Company Palette and Bundle+

This one was tough. Orange, green and purple is not a go-to combination for me! But I really wanted to get all three colors together into a bundle. Thankfully, I found the Sarah Campbell Folk Birds print that had all three colors combined beautifully. I’m still not entirely thrilled with the blenders I chose for this bundle and would love to work on it more in the future to get it just right.

I’m really looking forward this week to see how the other participants interpreted the picture. I’m sure I’m going to be thinking “Why didn’t I think of that?!” when I see what beautiful bundles they come up with!

Here are the fabrics I chose:

Elizabeth Hartman, Rhoda Ruth, Starlight in Petal

Sarah Campbell, Melodies, Folk Birds

Karen Lewis, Blueberry Park, Dalmation in Kumquat

Timeless Treasures, Hatch in Papaya

Tamara Kate, Origami Oasis, Mountain and Valley

Patty Sloniger, Into the Deep, Mermaid Scales

A note about scale:

While I believe scale is a very important part of fabric selection, the fabrics shown in my Color Play images are not always perfectly to scale. I do my best, by you should always double check scale before ordering!