Pat Speth Gives Us More Than a Nickel's Worth
The Santa Rosa Quilt Guild. was very lucky to have Pat Speth as this month's speaker and teacher. At our Thursday meeting, Pat gave a talk entitled "Five Inch Is A Cinch" and her trunk show was out of this world. Pat's specialty is using 5 inch squares to make units that are then sewn into blocks. This is a fabulous way to deplete your stash and cut up those odd bits of fat quarters that you needed for some special project or another.
You would not believe how many quilts she shipped to California just to show us. The woman is amazing!
My pal Becky came up from Lompoc and we took the class together on Friday, making blocks for Pat's quilt "Labor Day Madness," and as a bonus, we ended up with enough blocks for a second quilt, the pinwheel. Or at least we will when we finish sewing our blocks...LOL.
Becky and I both participated in the Nickel Swaps group on Yahoo for a while and we had a pretty good stash of them to start our quilts. I was shy on backgrounds a
nd opted to use all the same fabric for my backgrounds. Becky's was scrappy.
This is one of Becky's pinwheel blocks made with leftover units.
And here is one of my Labor Day Madness blocks.
And here is a grouping of our classmates' blocks.
I was able to finish 10 blocks with dark large triangles and medium
small triangles. I have the second 10 (which are reversed) sitting on the sewing table ready to be sewn up.
The hardest part of the whole procedure was getting used to using a 3/8" seam allowance instead of 1/4"~what an adjustment~. My seam ripper was my constant companion for a while, but I finally "got" it.
Great fun with great gals!! Thanks for coming up Becky!
UPDATE: That would be a 3/16" seam allowance, not 3/8".....try that one on for size!
6 comments:
We had Pat Speth at our guild a few months ago, and she did the same program and trunk show for us. I enjoyed every minute of it, and loved seeing all those quilts that are in her books. I have both her books but haven't had a chance to make anything from them yet. I have a couple large plastic boxes of 5" squares just waiting for me to make something from them. I'm looking forward to seeing your finished top.
3/8" seams?? Egads! Looks like great fun anyway and your blocks look great!
Kathy B
I love the nickel quilt books, they're so inspiring. How on earth did you go with the 3/8" seams, I can't even imagine it?
*hugs*
Tazzie
:-)
Thank you for the inspiring pictures. It sure gives me ideas to use some scraps. It seems you had fun and that´s always great at a workshop. I am curious to see some bigger(!) results. Take care.
Your block is great. Can't imagine why the strange seam allowance . . . .
inspiring ...
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