What I'm working on: the color block quilts

(Again, a photo heavy post. Bear with me, please.)

I checked in my Facebook quilting photo album for 2017, and the first photos I had posted of making the first two color block quilts (for when Mikael's cousin's first child Luca was born, and when Maria and Kristoffer's second child Leonore was christened) the were posted on the 20th of March that year.

So, I've been working on making these type of blocks for little more than a year.

And I have Elisabeth Hartman to thank for making the tutorial I read about how to make them. She calls them "stamp collection blocks", because of the whole "postage stamp quilt"-idea you get from them.

After making Luca's and Leonore's quilts, I had this epiphany about sewing 12 identical color block quilts and then free motion quilt them all a bit differently. For practicing my free motion quilting skills. And also with the motivation that it took as long to cut out TWELVE 5x5 cm pieces as it took to cut out just ONE. Which is true, but fixing them together takes twelve times as long....

I remember getting stressed about finding enough different fabric pieces in my small stash, and then stressed when I tried to find fabrics in specific colorways at the second hand stores.

I kept track of what I had and what I needed via a spreadsheet in Google drive, just so I could update it via my phone and check what I needed to yet buy.

I bought a LOT of purple, orange, yellow and turquoise fat quarters when I was in Umeå (Sweden) visiting Syfestivalen.

I got a lot of fabric scraps at Arbis, for free, out of the stash there of what people had donated.

I had good friends, like Emma, helping out by selling me fat quarter or fat eight pieces out of their stash.

I organized all the small blocks I had cut up into small drawers/boxes, sorted in color from lightest to darkest value. Ready to be ironed on interfacing, when I could steal an hour or two late at night to do it in peace.

I remember I felt so happy, and elated, when I finally had amassed 36 different fabrics in all the nine colors and had enough money to finally buy enough white background fabric for at least the first three quilts. Just so I could start on what I really wanted to do; free motion quilting.

I remember I thought I was so lucky, when I just before Christmas in 2017 found a coupon for 15% off when buying normal prized fabric at Eurokangas (the biggest fabric chain store in Finland) and bought 12 meters of the white background fabric and some thread for 72 euros (since it was 9,90 euros/meter). Enough to complete all the remaining quilt tops.
I had, long before then, given up of wanting to have the backing fabric in the same white. I had to save somewhere, and I had found some okay backing fabrics second hand.

The first of these twelve "new" quilts got finished on the 18th of December, 2017. And it was Eetu's quilt. The only one of them that won't get a "finished quilt" post here on the blog.

Then I got Pihla's quilt and Aimo's quilt finished.

And now I'm working on the nine that are left.

When I finished Aimo's quilt, I was at this stage:

All the borders for the quilt centers were already cut out and organized into neat piles of four borders in each pile.

I had put all the centers that needed to be sown together into one pile (in a box)...

...and those two that for some frikkin' reason still needed a green color block attached in another pile.

I thought I was going crazy! I -knew- I had made 12 green blocks, but somehow, I couldn't find them. I kept cleaning and cleaning and searching through my small studio trying desperately to find them. But alas, it was not to be.

So, I went through my magazine folder with small green scraps, and cut out 2 pieces of every scrap I could. Then, I went through my own pre-cut squares in the green folder, and cut out from them. And then I went through my stash, to find enough to get 2 x 36 different ones.

Then it took some sorting and pressing with the iron, and then I had two new green blocks.

I sewed and pressed and squared them up, and then sewed them into the quilt top centers. They looked SO good, all done and ready for borders.

This far done, it took slightly more than two weeks until I continued on them this Saturday and Sunday. 

While we were in Kirkkonumi, and went via Kierrätyskeskus, I found the bag above with larger pieces of fabrics. All of them were cotton. 

This was where I started; All the "done" centers had gotten their respective borders folded into them, so I had 7 + 2 of these "quilt packages". Waiting to have their borders fixed.

This is how many fit in the box I had had them in before.

How I just checked if one of the fabrics were wide enough. 

After a nearly whole one-and-a-half-day of basically letting Mikael take care of the kids and me on/off sewing on borders and ironing the quilt tops...

...I got FOUR tops and FIVE backings ready to be turned into quilt sandwiches!

Can you believe it? (I almost couldn't.) But those four ready ones feels -really really- great to have accomplished.

And just for posterity, these are the backing fabrics I got done:

Part of an IKEA bed sheet.

One of the fabrics from Kierrätyskeskus, a fabric from a Stockmann collection.

One of the fabrics from Kierrätyskeskus, a fabric than had been part of a curtain.

Two backings, from a fabric I just happened to see in my stash, I don't think it has been washed, so I need to fix that.

And that was a -really really- long update on where I am at with the color blocks quilts: 3 done, 4 ready to become sandwiches as soon as I can get batting for them, and 5 waiting to have their borders finished.

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