This year, I made it a goal to start participating more in quilt-alongs, swaps and challenges. So when Trina from In An Otter Life asked me team up with her and Mindy from Quilting Mayhem for the Bonfire Block of the Month Sister Swap, I just couldn’t refuse. How fun to make and trade blocks with your quilty friends!
The Bonfire Quilt is a Block of the Month QAL from GenX Quilters and works out of the book Sister Sampler Quilts. The book includes setting instructions for three sampler quilts total, as well as lots of blocks. You don’t have to have a partner to participate; many people are making two sister blocks and keeping them both for their own quilts.
Here’s how we decided to run our swap: We each chose a color we wanted represented in our quilt. I chose teal, Trina went for plum, and Mindy opted for orange. Trina and I then chose two colors we thought would work well in our palette ( the green and grey). We all get to chose our own fabrics for our blocks, as long as we stay within the palette. We’ll make three blocks each month- one to keep and one for each of the other ladies. The plan is to post our blocks to the blogs on the final Wednesday of each month (as you can see- I’m late this time!)
So, I needed some fabric! Yay, fabric shopping!
First, I shopped my stash, but only found a few scraps that fit what I needed.
My next stop was Gossypium in Issaquah, WA. My husband’s office (when he’s not working from home) is conveniently located 0.7 miles from this amazing fabric shop. If you follow me on Periscope, you saw my ecstatic scope showing off my purchases.
As you can see, I only got three of my colors this time around. I figured that was enough to get me going for the first month. I plan on doing some more searching for my main orange and grey, as well as picking up coordinating fat quarters of all the colors as I find them.
With fabric in hand, it was time to start thinking about assembling my blocks. Although I owned and had watched Ann Petersen’s Playing with Curves Craftsy class, I had never actually DONE any curved piecing.
So, I refreshed my memory by watching Ann’s lesson on sewing gentle curves and made a couple of practice blocks. These blocks turned out well and are actually going into another quilt that I’ll talk about later this year!
After the practice blocks, I felt ready to jump in with both feet.
I’m not going to lie. These blocks took a long time. They were hard. There was lots of seam ripping and resewing because I wanted my circles to line up just right.
I wasn’t frustrated, though, because I kept in mind that this was a skill building activity. They didn’t HAVE to be perfect, but I wanted to TRY and make them the best I could.
I’m looking forward to the rest of the blocks in this QAL. I know there’s at least two more blocks with curved piecing, so I should be an old pro at it before the year is done!
Happy Sewing, ~L
I also have three binders (organized by color) for scraps that haven’t been cut into my standard sizes. I keep bigger pieces here that I really love and don’t want to cut small, as well as tiny scraps that I may want to use for paper piecing. The bigger pieces are in plastic paper sleeves while the tiny bits go in baseball card sleeves. I’m careful to always keep these binders upright, because you can imagine what would happen if they were turned upside down! 
laurel poppy & pine 