Last Friday (May 15) the Scrap Dance Twist – The reveal was posted on the From My Carolina Home blog. I have to tell you, I was expecting all those half square triangles we made in a previous step to turn into star points, so I was VERY excited to see the TWIST blocks! Go over and take a look at the link above, but don’t forget to come back~!~
When I did Step 6 of the Scrap Dance Twist, making some wonderful 9 patches with my 4 patches and back ground fabrics, I put them up on my design wall, as there were so many, and they were now “too big” for the box. I studied on them for 4 or 5 days and KNEW I had to take them apart and change out one of my white fabrics. Honestly, WHAT was I thinking using that particular white fabric that was SO thin. Honestly, how did that get in my stash…?????? Well…anyway….in the last couple of days, before I went on to Step 7 – The Reveal, I decided to rip out all those pieces. I think what put me “over the edge” was the post Carole had done on Quilt Repair by hand. She was repairing a vintage quilt that really had some horribly worn fabrics. Reading that post convinced me to get rid of the inferior fabric! Honestly….it was plain white, but was just not nice. I didn’t want my quilt shredding because of poor fabric. Out came the seam ripper, and I spent an evening watching movies and taking out those pieces. Then I dug into my big tote of white fabrics and cut a big stack of replacement squares, and put the “Block A’ back together. All but about 6 blocks had the crummy fabric, so you can imagine there was a lot of taking apart etc. It wasn’t as bad as you might expect and in the course of a couple of afternoon’s work I had all my A blocks reassembled and I was ready to move on to Step 7!
As soon as I opened my box of remaining “parts” I discovered the big stack of background fabrics that also had some of that “inferior” white fabric. I removed it all, and dug back into my giant bin of white fabric, cut some more background pieces from several different pieces, and got busy making the “B” block”. Carole calls it the FOOTPRINT block! My 28 “B” blocks went together nicely, and after clearing room on my design wall, I got all 56 blocks (A&B) up on the wall. (Note; my design wall is a queen size flannel sheet, pinned to the wall with giant push pins. I use pins to hold my blocks on the sheet, but only pin to the sheet, not the wall.)
There are a few blocks to move around, as suggested by Carole in her post. I have some darker “center” squares and I want to balance them out a little bit more, as well as move some of the pieces that have the same prints a bit further away. Scrappy can get tricky that way, and I could spend days moving things around. I played with the photo on Google photos a bit, and with Flickr too. I like to look at the blocks in black and white (B&W) to see if the darkness jumps out at me in any way. I do find it helpful and will be using the B&W below as I start to move things around a bit.
Looking at the blocks on the design wall in a photo doesn’t really let you see much of the prints that were used. I took some pictures of my fabric pull earlier in the year, so this might help you see more clearly how very scrappy the pieces are.
Those blocks in the above photo were the centers for all the 9 patch blocks in A & B.
Below are the fabrics I used for the little 4 patches in Block A.
I have to say this pattern has been fun to work on, as are all of the mystery quilts that Carole designs. I’ve enjoyed seeing what is happening on the Friends of From My Carolina Home Blog Facebook group. If you are following Carole’s blog, consider joining the Facebook group. You would be amazed at all the different background fabric choices people have made, and color choices for their blocks. I always say mine is “all scrappy all the time”, but I do admit to cutting yardage for the background fabrics.
So, next up is moving blocks around to please me, then assembling the rows. I was asked in the group if I would put borders on, and if so, what. My plan will be a narrow white border to start with, then I will dig in my stash to come up with an outer border of some sort. Fingers crossed I won’t leave this one on a hanger to “ferment” while I agonize over those borders! That is where I always seem to get “stuck”. The layout should be 84×96 before borders, so I have to play with the quilt-math, and decide how big I want to go. I just bought some wide backing but don’t remember if it was 108 or 90 wide, and that will be important when it comes time to add those borders.
I’m really happy that Carole moved this project along to the “every two week” point with the clues. If you haven’t done so yet, go download them from her blog. It won’t be long before the free pattern goes away and gets published for sale.
Are you doing the “TWIST” too? How’s your progress?
Stitching Grandma 