350 Blocks Project: Starting a New Year

Shelly is kindly hosting the 350 blocks project again this year. The goal is to make 350 quilt blocks in 2017. It's a lot of fun to join in and keep track of the things I make. If you are interested, the 350 Blocks button below will take you to the project page.

Since I never did my final report for last year, I'll start with that. After being behind all year, I actually managed to exceed 350 blocks!

I was secretly working all year on a Christmas quilt to surprise my husband. I'm thrilled to say that I pulled it off! He had no idea what I had been up to, and he hadn't even seen any of the fabrics. I made 50 blocks for this quilt. 42 of them are on the front, and I used the rest on the back.

Since I had some fabric left over, I also made 30 four-patches to play with the extra blocks on the quilt back. I love the simplicity and symmetry of this one.

I'm also a fan of leaders and enders. I made this table runner entirely with the leader/ender method. If you haven't heard of it, check out Bonnie Hunter's post here. There are 40 hourglass blocks in this table runner.

All together, that gives me 120 blocks that have yet to be counted. And my grand total for 2016 is... 386 blocks! I really wasn't sure that I was going to make it to 350 last year. I'm excited that I exceeded the goal.

Now that it's February, it's already time for me to start counting this year's blocks. Fortunately, I'm doing well so far. January saw me putting together all of my units for Bonnie Hunter's En Provence mystery. I made my quilt smaller and I tweaked the layout, so my blocks don't match up with hers.

I made 9 main blocks:

A total of 12 sashing blocks in 4 styles:

4 cornerstone blocks:

And 12 edge blocks to finish the design around the outside of the quilt. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of those, but I do have a picture of the whole quilt! It's currently quilted and waiting for binding.

As you may know, I'm a big fan of using up my scraps on the back of the quilt. This time, I have 6 more blocks hiding out on the back.

That gives me 43 blocks in January. It feels good to be starting out the year ahead of the curve! Hopefully I can stay on track this month.

350 Blocks Project: October Report

Another month has come and gone. I can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving! I've started thinking about Christmas already. I'm hoping to get gifts handled early this year.

October was an especially fun month because I got to attend two quilt retreats. Considering that, I finished a remarkably small number of blocks, but I had a blast.

First up are two leader/ender blocks. I forgot to bring my leader/ender project with me to the first retreat, so Jen kindly shared hers. I had fun playing in her scraps to make these two wonky stars.

While at that retreat, I finished the units for My Blue Heaven, finished the remaining blocks, and assembled the top. I downsized the blocks, and they are adorable in miniature. It makes me want to make a whole quilt out of them, but I am calling this one done. That's 23 more blocks in the bag.

The last block I finished was a charity block at the annual guild retreat. Each person at the retreat is given the pieces to make one block. Everyone makes their block by Saturday night, and a couple people sew the top together before we leave on Sunday. This is the same style of block that we did at last year's retreat. It goes together quickly and easily, and it looks great when the blocks are put together. You can see last year's finished quilt here.

I just looked at last month's post to add up my total, and I realized I never counted the blocks of the t-shirt quilt I made! I will be posting the details of that quilt in the morning. It included 20 t-shirts. I am counting each of them as a block.

I did better than I thought last month. 2 wonky stars, 23 My Blue Heaven blocks, 1 charity block, and 20 t-shirt blocks gives me 46. That puts me at 266 blocks for the year. I only need 84 more blocks to hit the goal of 350. So far, I haven't made any this month, but there is still plenty of time.

350 Blocks Project: August and September

Summer was packed this year. I was much busier than normal, so quilting took a bit of a backseat. I visited family in Colorado, went to a wedding in California, took classes with Bonnie Hunter, enjoyed a quilt retreat, and just wrapped up an amazing week with my sister here in Montana.

Thanks to the retreat and a deadline, I was still able to knock out quite a few blocks. First, I completed 90 blocks for this quilt top.  It's the bonus project for the top that I finished in June. I already had all of the units made at that point. I sewed them into pairs in July, then finished the blocks and top in August.

Rather than stashing the strings that were left from cutting for these quilts, I decided to use them right away. I made 18 of these string blocks for the back of the bonus quilt.  String piecing is a great project for retreats. The lack of concentration required allows for more visiting with friends, and the space there is better than what I have at home.

The last thing I did in August was make these two blocks for the back of the quilt. The blue/purple fabric will surround them, so it will look like the grey rectangles are floating on the background.

In September, I put together this wall hanging for a local quilt show. The show will include a display of a variety of ways to quilt the same top. All of the local longarm quilters were invited to make this project in these colors, then to quilt it as we saw fit. I'm counting this as 6 blocks.

All told, that's 110 blocks in August and 6 blocks in September. That more than doubles my total for the year! I'm up to 220 blocks now.  That still leaves me 40 blocks behind, but October should be a good month. I have two retreats and a commission quilt to help me along.