Stichin' for Kitch'Inn

Sister PurpleBoots has moved. She isn't exactly really close by anymore yet she's not terribly far, far away either... she is in my "happy place" now, so I guess that makes it ok. She bought a historic home in Mahone Bay that had been operating as The Amber Rose Bed and Breakfast for some years and she's currently up to her ears in renovations bringing the place up to date.

Holy cow! So. Much. Work.  This place was lovely...in a sleeping-at-your-Nans-house sorta way... but it really needs to come into 2018 with the rest of us. Certainly Sister PurpleBoots has her work cut out for her but not to worry, she has an amazing eye for decor and a great sense of style. I can't wait to see it all decked out and dressed up in modern finishes with ample artwork and piles of kitch.

She asked me to stitch up some cushions and bed runners for each room. I've just completed the 3 runners and have started the pillows. I made improv slashed squares for the first one that graded from light to dark, left to right. I think it's about 25 by 85 inches.

Have you ever made these kind of blocks? I started with 7" grey squares and a pile of strips. I laid them all out and auditioned the colourful skinny strips before I started cutting and inserting them just to be sure that the placement of colours was happy-making. The block construction process looks like this:

Just remember that the pieces you put in first and eventually slice through again will be in the background and the ones you put in last will be on top, or in the foreground. I like to use a bit of Best Press when working on blocks like these because it keeps things nice and flat and helps to stabilize all the bias cuts.

Once you are happy you've got the patchwork "looking right" then you can square it up. In this case it was cut back into a 7" square. If you don't plan on putting in too many pieces or if you want to add skinny strips it might be wise to start with a block that's a couple inches larger than you're looking for in the end because as you cut and sew in the bits the block might get smaller... no seam allowances, right?! A couple of these in the lighter section were tricky and I was just able to squeak out the 7" finished square.

Remember how I mentioned I sometimes put up a table out in the landing to give me a bit more space to work? It works out there pretty well and sadly for those who have to share that space in the house with the quilter it's fast becoming part of the decor... as are the bits of fabric that get tossed around in my slicing and dicing fury! What's the big deal with a bit of cotton-y goodness mixed in with the roving dog hair anyway? With Mr. Recipes working in New Brunswick these days it's unlikely that anybody other than me will have to deal with sweeping it up. Not-So-Little PurpleBoots exclaimed one afternoon en route to his room that it looked like a fabric explosion had happened! Middle-of-the-night bathroom trips are a bit trickier to navigate with its residence there and often bits of trimmings can turn up in the bed having clung to my bed socks as I've walked by. What can I say? Makers gonna make. 

I quilted this one up using a pantograph called Chinese Crescents by Keryn Emmerson. I'm working on a couple cushions now... I have the patchwork done for the fronts and once they're quilted up I'll put envelope style backs on them and bind them to match. Funny thing about the pillows though... they don't put much of a dent in your scrap pile!