First Light Designs

Happy Friday! I have two causes to celebrate today:

Number one: I’ve completed the top of Berried Treasure, based on my own 4-Patch Wonder pattern. The Dear Husband obliged by taking this photo of me with the top late this afternoon:

The top measures 69″ x 83″ at the moment. I made an error in calculating the length of strips for the outer borders. They’ll still finish at a generous six inches wide but the quilt will be a couple inches smaller all around than its fraternal twin Framboise, made years ago with the same focus fabric in a different colorway.

Number two: The DH and I are celebrating our 44th wedding anniversary today — woohoo! We just returned from a lovely dinner at A Cena, one of our favorite restaurants in Portland.

It’s been a good day!

Here’s a peek at the first mitered corner on my current WIP (work-in-progress):

The inner border finishes at 1/2 inch and the second one at one inch. The inch-wide border is one of several pieces I have in my stash of “Spin Dot,” a lovely blender by Timeless Treasures Fabrics. It’s from the same line as the royal blue blender I used in the corner and side triangles (as well as the 12 inner blocks you can see in this post from Feb. 23).

You may not be able to see from the photo above that the blue border is lightly metallic. Normally I would have chosen a bolder fabric but nothing in my stash seemed just right and I felt that the pearlized effect would complement the luminous light blues in the focus fabric.

My first mitered corner went together beautifully. Let us hope the remaining three do as well!

No, I haven’t dropped off the face of the earth. I even posted an entry on March 16 that mysteriously vanished along with its comments after I had agreed to a month of website design services – for a fee, or course — provided by my website host, GoDaddy.com.

Here’s the backstory:

In late February I notified GoDaddy that some of my readers reported they couldn’t leave comments on my blog posts, and my latest post wasn’t showing up unless I rebooted my computer. GoDaddy convinced me to pay for a month of website design services to address these issues and make my website even better. Much to my dismay, the marketing team introduced a series of errors in the appearance of my website, including extra spaces between blog titles and text, missing spaces between words in random blog posts, and weirdly enlarged and cropped photos replacing my standard logo at the top of every page and post.

At the end of the month of so-called design services, my blog was back to its previous normal look – but the blog post of March 16 and its comments were still missing, despite my repeated requests to GoDaddy to restore them. The comments on my post of Feb. 23 also mysteriously disappeared, never to be seen again.

When GoDaddy emailed me on March 27 that “we’ve completed your request,” I immediately responded that it had NOT been completed and I wanted the missing blog post restored. This is the message I got in response: “Thank you for reaching out to us. Your email has been received and will be responded to on a first-come-first-serve basis.” That was well over a week ago. As you can imagine, I’m not holding my breath waiting for a response.

So what was in that March 16 post that disappeared? It was titled “Website Woes” and included a brief description of what was happening to my website posts. It also included a photo of my current Work in Progress, Berried Treasure, taken after the blocks were sewn into rows, the rows joined, and the setting triangles added. Take a look:

Yesterday was the first time in weeks that I’ve spent a significant amount of time in my sewing room. I’m working now on the borders (three of them) for Berried Treasure and should have something to show you very soon.

. . . on my current 4-Patch Wonder quilt. The second set of sashing strips has been added to my blocks, and here the blocks are arrayed in their final position ready to be sewn together in diagonal rows:

I moved only two blocks — switching the second and third ones in the third row — before proclaiming the setting complete. Now the big decision is what fabric to use in the setting triangles — the ones that go around the entire quilt to make it rectangular.

My two top candidates are the yellow fabric I initially chose for the wide sashing, which I think may draw out the yellow background in the 4-Patch Wonder blocks very nicely, or the royal blue used in the wider sashing strips. My fear is that the blue will be too strong. I’m going to sacrifice a 15″ square of each fabric and cut them into four triangles to audition them side by side, and then I’ll report back. Do come back to see what I chose!

It didn’t take very long at all to lay out all 32 blocks for my current 4-Patch Wonder quilt made with the blue colorway of Lakehouse Dry Goods’ “Raspberries and Hydrangea” fabric line:

Back in 2011 when I was working on Framboise, my version with the pink colorway, I spent hours and hours moving the blocks around on my design wall before settling on a layout. What was different this time? I had the pink version as a reference! The blocks are not the same in the two quilts but there is enough similarity that the process of sorting blocks with differing levels of value and pattern and then arranging them on the design wall went very smoothly the second time around.

Here are the first four rows with the second set of sashing strips added:

Now you can really see it taking shape.

Once I have all of the sashing strips added, I’ll review my block placement choices. There will be opportunity to make changes before sewing the blocks together.

Here are five of my final eight 4-Patch Wonder “faux-kaleido” blocks, bringing me up to the 32 blocks needed for my current Work-in-Progress:

The other three blocks got mixed into the ones I had already made and I didn’t want to take the time to identify them. You’ll see them soon enough in the final layout.

All 32 blocks now have the first set of sashing strips around them:

I have to determine the final layout of the blocks before adding the second set of sashing strips because 12 of the blocks are sashed with one fabric and the remaining 20 with another. If you look at Framboise, the pink version I made in 2012 . . .

. . . you can spot the 12 blocks sashed in that bright pink fabric and see how they are surrounded by the other blocks sashed in pale green. Essentially the odd rows have four blocks sashed in one color and the even rows have three blocks sashed in the other.

Now comes the enjoyable (but somewhat nerve-racking) task of arranging the blocks on my design wall. You can see that some of the blocks have very little light background color and others have a lot so I’ll be looking for that perfect balance as I arrange them.

This is really where my obsessive-compulsive nature kicks in. Not only do the blocks in each horizontal row have to look balanced, I also have to be pleased with the way the blocks look in the diagonal rows. Am I up for the challenge? You bet!

Here’s another group of 12 faux-kaleido blocks, set on point as they will be in my finished 4-Patch Wonder quilt:

I’m going to make one more set, even though I only need eight more blocks. I can then pick my favorites and put the leftovers on the back.

The fabric I ordered online for the outer borders has arrived and it’s just a skosh darker than the piece I had in my stash. The larger piece in the picture below is the darker:

Can you even tell?

I’m still pinching myself over my good luck in finding this 2½-yard length of fabric. I’ll be able to cut my outer border strips on the lengthwise grain, avoiding the necessity of seams which would be unavoidable with border strips cut on the crosswise grain, i.e., from selvage to selvage.

The fabric came quickly from an Etsy seller in California. It was neatly wrapped in tissue paper and sported this cute little sticker:

I’ve already decided on a name for my current Work-in-Progress: Berried Treasure.

Just my luck . . . as in the good kind! If you read my last post, you know that I’m playing around with four-patch kaleidoscope blocks (what I call “4-Patch Wonder” blocks) in the making of another quilt from my pattern of the same name, using a different colorway from one of the versions I’ve made from the pattern.

Instead of making the next set of 4-Patch Wonder blocks, I started playing around with possibilities for the narrow and wide sashing strips that surround the blocks. My pattern calls for two variations. I had already decided on the first combination of a medium green leaf design for the narrow sashing and a vibrant dark blue dot (“Spin Dot” by Timeless Treasures) for the wider sashing. I made a couple of test blocks.

For the adjacent blocks I was considering the same green leaf for the narrow sashing and a pale yellow blender that matched the background yellow of my focus fabric. Here are the two blue test blocks with the yellow test block:

Okay, the yellow blender is very pretty . . . but it’s not sensational. I was hoping for something with a little more pizzazz, especially because the yellow background of the focus fabric is slightly metallic with a lovely subtle scroll design. I looked at my pink version, Framboise . . .

. . and thought, “Wouldn’t that pale green print in the wider sashing strips be sensational in the blue version?” Of course I had no hope of finding it after all these years. After all, I made Framboise way back in 2011.

But wait! Didn’t I have a bit of that pale green fabric left over from the pink version? I started digging in my stash and was amazed to find a large remnant measuring 32″ x 54″ — enough to make the wider sashing strips. Oh, but wouldn’t it be nice to have enough for the outer border, too, like I did in Framboise? Just for fun, I made a test block. And I loved the combination:

The product info was on the selvage; what did I have to lose? With very little hope in my heart, I googled “Sweet Dreams by Robyn Givens for SSI Quilting” — and was absolutely astounded to see a 2½-yard piece for sale on Etsy. Friends, what are the odds? Of course I bought it on the spot and am eagerly awaiting its arrival. Even if the dye lot is somewhat different from the piece I have, it will be enough to make the outer borders without having to piece them.

Although it was my plan to have these two versions of 4-Patch Wonder share the same focus fabric in two colorways, I didn’t expect to use some of the other companion fabrics as well. It will be fun to compare them when they are done. Fraternal twins! I can relate.