My First Quilt Block — Sew On & Sew On

What is this?

Nothing like a pandemic to send someone diving deep, deep, deep into various blog archives for inspiration and to find projects that hit the requisite "I never thought I'd make this" target.

And aren't you glad I'm doing some of that deep diving for you?

Today I'm featuring a quilt block pattern from the Fat Quarter Shop (which is one of Sew4Home's sponsors, which explains how I ended up there). This was a year long "quilt along" project from 2015, rolled out as a fund raiser for the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which was/is a worthy cause, in my humble opinion.

It's called the Snapshots quilt, and this particular block is called Sew On & Sew On.

image courtesy of Fat Quarter Shop's Jolly Jabber blog...

This was a BOM quilt, with one block released each month throughout the year. Short videos are also available to show you how the pieces are sewn together, for those of you non-quilters who might need some hand holding. I'm also not a quilter — and suffice to say I've never made a quilt block before — but every now and then I feel pulled by the craft.

But while I'm occasionally fascinated by "that whole quilting thing", I'm also not likely to make anything close to an actual quilt. That said, I felt an instant affinity for this block and knew I could turn it into a mini quilt.

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The collection features several really neat blocks, like this super cool apron, called Kindred Kitchen:

image courtesy of Fat Quarter Shop's Jolly Jabber blog...

I've already downloaded it for future quilting urges.

For this current block, however, my first task was to select fabrics. Since it was meant as a stand-alone piece, I wanted it to be less "muted" than the sample from the actual quilt. Once I decided that my main fabric was going to be the eye chart (Black and White and Read All Over by Cindy Taylor Oates), the red and the black trim was obvious. However, the last selection turned out to be a "fail".

You see the round dial thing in the picture at the top of this post? That comes from one of my Spoonflower fabrics. Since I had the fabric out to fussy cut that element, I thought, why not use a strip of it for that bit of trim on the sewing machine?

All pieced together (I added the top and bottom strips to the pattern)...

I'm not sure why exactly, but I didn't like that piece as soon as I saw it completed. But I also didn't know how I could "fix" it, so I figured if I just stared at it for a few days, it would grow on me.

In the meantime, I also didn't like how the sewing machine itself didn't pop out as much as I thought it should. So I sewed around the outside of it with grey thread. It still didn't help much, so I made a further plan to hand quilt around it with embroidery floss. While retrieving the embroidery floss, I came across some red/black/grey ribbon.

Much better... (although the photo is over-exposed)

The ribbon was the exact same width as the trim piece that I was having issues with, so I zigzag stitched it on top. Amped up after that "fix", I proceeded to quilt the white background.

Close up of my quilting...

[By the way, before I started the quilting, the entire block was fused onto some fleece to give it body, in lieu of quilt batting (which I don't have).]

My next steps were to add some more dimensional embellishments. I'd already attached a scrap of red fabric and that dial thing. Four buttons, some thread, and a pin (for the needle) followed.

See all my embellishments?

I also zigzag stitched around the perimeter.

Speaking of the scrap of red fabric, for a very brief moment, I considered making a mini face mask and putting it there. The moment passed and I was happy to move on. While this is very much one of those pandemic projects that I chose to take on because of our current circumstances, I really didn't need such a literal reminder of those circumstances.

By the way, if you look back up to the image of the quilt block as designed, there should have been a small rectangle under where the piece of red fabric sits. I omitted that piece when I decided to add the scrap of fabric.

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As a final step before binding, I free motion quilted the area of the sewing machine. I must say I've gotten quite good at doing it with just a regular presser foot and the feed dogs up.

All ready for binding...

Here's a closeup of my free motion quilting.

Dipsy doodling...

And here's a closer look at some of the embellished areas.

Dimensional embellishments... a brad, a pin and some loose thread

Turns out that finding that ribbon was quite fortuitous: I'm going to use it to bind the edge.

However, a thought occurred to me as I considered whether or not to leave the back unfinished and frame it: that apron block looks really tempting. Why not make that one too, attach it to the back of this, and have a double-sided mini quilt?

Stay tuned.

To access this and other quilt blocks from the Snapshots quilt project, just do a search for fat quarter shop snapshots quilt blocks and you'll find them all.

'Til next...