One more triangle and Lovey Boy Roy

I think Dear Jane may have been an improv piecer, because the triangles have weird wedges and slices. Gwen Marston says if you don't have enough fabric, add some. Too much, cut it away. This makes for some very interesting patterns. However, I didn't sign a rule book, so I'm making the blocks with combinations of piecing and applique that make sense to me.

And here are the four triangles from Fabadashery's draw: the seventh position. That means that these triangles are in the seventh position on the top, bottom, left and right sides. Since I am not making these according to a plan, I expect my placement to be different.

And here is Foster Kitten Roy deciding between good and evil. And to his credit, he is listening to his better angel lately and is working on becoming Lovey Boy Roy. That kitten purrs and enjoys a good head massage with strokes on his forehead, cheeks and under his chin. In this particular case, he went with the dark force and began attacking me and became "Go To Your Room Roy."

Dear Jane triangles

Roy the Foster Kitten still has biting issues. He is supposed to get a time-out when he bites, but that hasn't worked. So now I leave for a time-out when he bites me. I go into the sewing room and work on the Dear Jane quilt. I finished three triangles. For each of the applique hearts, you can imagine either my puncture wound or Roy mewing to be let into the sewing room.

Bird Collective

October is the month for brown over at the Rainbow Scrappy Challenge. One of my block collections features a bird that sports the color of the month. Brown owl and Eagle made such a ruckus I thought they were about to kill each other. That's when I heard a lip smacking sound from Mr. Vulture. I picked Mr. Vulture to represent the brown bird and that stopped all the fighting and left Mr. Vulture to look for a new breakfast.

Here are the birds I have so far to represent each color of the month. Noticeably absent are Mr. Cardinal for red and the Oriole for orange.

Roy the foster kitten said he would be glad to settle any and all disputes if only I would rescind his banishment from sewing room.

Roy Update

I'm back! Yes, it's me, Roy the Pet Therapist Secret Agent, back on duty conquering all the detritus littered all over the floor of my foster house. Admittedly, a lot of the stuff is colorful and makes delightful sounds. But really, no kitten should have to work this hard.

The shelter is having a half-off sale on cats and kittens for the month of October...so that is why I was reassigned back to this foster house for another couple of weeks. I am definitely a full price kitten. In the meantime, I'm working on my halloween costume.

Buffalo Tree Hopper

Here is the Dear Jane E4 or Buffalo Tree Hopper. In the book and quilt, there are set-in seams from the points of the diamond at top left and bottom right to their respective corners. I switched the seam lines because there was enough fiddling going on to make the tree hopper wings, legs, horns or whatever those extensions are. (To see a photo of an actual Buffalo Tree Hopper, visit the Fabadashery blog here.)

Otherwise, there was not much sewing today. I have been tending to Roy who was under the weather after the trip to the shelter yesterday. He actually sat in my lap and licked my fingers...that's how sickly he's been. He said it was due to the devastating news that he remains assigned to a severe fabric hoarder for two more weeks. But I have since learned he's been hoarding his own foster internal parasites and the medicine he received yesterday is forcibly evicting them. (A good reason why fostering is easier in a pet-free home.)

More Dear Jane blocks

This could be a study in contrasts, but its really just two more Dear Jane blocks. The top block is C12 or Family Union and the bottom block is F13 or Tour de France. Yellow was an obvious choice. And as a reminder, the blocks are 5 inches unfinished, so the smallest squares in the nine patch are half inch finished. The nine patches are 1.5 inches finished.

Meanwhile, Roy the Kitten went to the shelter today for a check-up. He bit no hands, including mine, leaving me looking like a delusional nut case. And yes, I did hear some chuckling in the carrier on the way back. So Roy will be staying at Kitten U for a couple more weeks working on his independent studies: plastic bag and eating.

Dear Jane Melissa's Cross

I recently began making Dear Jane blocks to follow along with the Fabadashery blog.  I thought it might expand my piecing horizons (eg. applique and paper piecing) but I find myself reverting back to my usual flip and sew techniques. This block is  B11 or Melissa's Cross and you can see Fabadashery's interpretation here. Oddly, the version in the actual antique quilt and the pattern in the Dear Jane book by Brenda Papadakis are different. This meant I went back to the drawing board, I mean graph paper, to draft my own version, shown above.

As usual I start with strip piecing. I should also mention that I began by making the block with 1 inch cut (1/2 inch finished) strips of background fabric, but this didn't leave enough room for the circular wedges. I then started over with 7/8 inch stips and a 7/8 inch square center. The large dark squares are cut from a 2.5 inch strip.

Then the three strip sets are sewn together.

Next, I made chalk lines one and 7/8 inch from the corners of the large blocks and aligned my strip of 7/8 inch background fabric to those marks. Then, just like a flip triangle, I sewed a 1/4 inch seam and ironed the flap back.

I sew and flip the four strips around the block. (The picture here shows the construction using one inch strips--but for my final version I used 7/8 inch strips.)

Next, I cut two 3.5 inch squares of the dot fabric--that I also used in the center square (following Faberdashery's three fabric version). I cut these on the diagonal to make 4 right triangles that I then attached to the light fabric stripping--covering up the pyramid fabric squares. At this point I trimmed away the fabric pile-up on the back of the block.

I had intended to cut a circle out of the block I had made and applique it to the background fabric, but realized that I might as well use Dale Fleming's six-minute circle. So I made a five inch square of double freezer paper and drew the circle on that. I demonstrate how to make these inset circles here and here and here.

The freezer paper  template is used to make the background circle which is laid over the pieced block and sewn along the crease in the fabric (using a zipper foot).  The excess background fabric is cut away. In the version sewn here, the flaps are still ironed outward which creates a less than lovely outer ring...so I will fix this by ironing the flaps to face inward.

Here is the finished Dad's Plaid (Dear Jane A7).

And here is a collection of four recently completed blocks.