Hook-ed

Hi Everyone,

Thank you everyone for your feedback on my post yesterday!  It was a fun day to read all of your lovely comments.  I will take pictures of my visit to the quilt museum and share them with you.

Also, don't forget that you have until midnight tonight to leave a comment on this post in order to have a chance to win the giveaway.  I will announce the winner on Monday.

This month's Schnibble pattern was Hook.


The pattern was announced during the big Mid-Atlantic Quilt Fest.  I already had the pattern so I got it out to read and discovered that a 60 degree ruler would help make things easier and then I realized I didn't have one, so we went back to the show on Sunday so I could purchase one.

Sometimes I have a hard time choosing what fabric to use, and sometimes it is easy.  This month's choice was easy.  I opened up my drawer of charm packs, and Bakesale, by Lori Holt, was practically shouting "pick me, pick me!" So I did.  I have lots of solid white to put with the charms.

When I look at the quilt on the cover of Carrie's pattern, above, I see lots of white space.  I know that appeals to lots of you out there, but for some reason, it wasn't appealing to me.  Luckily, I had seen another version of Hook that Carrie made in which she chose to place another fabric as the plain triangle.

The idea of using another fabric appealed to me, and I knew just which one!  I had yards and yards of a Lori Holt striped fabric from a previous line, and it would coordinate perfectly with Bakesale.  So I got to work.  The way that Carrie instructs you to make and cut the pieced triangle star points is just brilliant!  I loved making them.  I assembled the half-block units and lined them up on my design wall.  I cut the alternate triangles from the striped fabric, and...   ... hated them!  The stripe is complex so it looked all chopped and busy.  I didn't really have enough of any other Lori Holt fabric to use and I still didn't want to use more white, so it hung out on the design wall for a while.

About a week later, I realized that I had some red solid.  One of the charms squares I used in making the star points was solid red, so I replaced those with some others and then cut red triangles and put them in place.  Oh boy!  The quilt started singing!!

Then the fun in the construction of this project came to a screeching halt.  It wasn't that it was hard, it was just that you needed to press seams open.  I don't enjoy that.  And then sewing the long rows together, I had to be careful to match the points.

Using fork pins helped.  But not much.  I ripped out a few places and redid some bits of seams to fix some problem areas, and slowly I got it all together.  After that, it was easy to piece the leftover strips in order to make an inner border and then the quilt was all together.

I love the bright, happy, vintage look to Lori's fabrics!  I did sneak in a few scraps of Sew Cherry (from another past fabric line.)

It would have been a great quilt to stitch in the ditch, but wherever the points meet up, there is quite a lump of fabric, so I just took the easy way out and meandered all over it.

I was able to use the striped fabric as the binding!

If you want to see more versions of this quilt, head on over to Sinta's and Sherri's blogs on the first!  They will also be announcing the pattern for April.

Have a great day,
JoAnne