Starry Bow Ties!

so hey, remember Iron Craft?

with all the busy-ness of June (which i'll still post more about, don't worry!), i didn't have time to keep up with the challenges, but this week i really wanted to. the theme was stars and stripes, which quite honestly, i'm soooooo tired of! every craft blog on the internet has been all about independance day, and it's boring. i don't even celebrate canada day (read this for part of the reason why), so i'm understandably not all that interested in celebrating another country.


but Iron Craft left the challenge really open, not july 4th-based at all - and you know what, i LOVE stars and stripes, as long as they're not red, white and blue!


and this seemed like the perfect excuse to start another project - cause i always need more projects! i recently ran across a super simple summer quilt a long - Summer Bowties! the original blog post by Karen Snyder of Anna Lena Land has a tutorial for simple 3" or 6" block, and she wrote a second post with a tutorial for a 6" 3D block. she's started a Facebook group for people to share pictures and their progress, and to discuss layout options.

the basic idea is simple - make one block every day of summer.

so far it's been 16 days - by the end of the summer you'll have 95 blocks, enough for a quilt or even two, depending on your layout. but it's totally managable, right? (that's totally going to kick me in the ass now that i've said it, i know, but it IS simple!) i have a lot of fat quarters and snippets of fun fabrics that i haven't used, so it'll be a great excuse to make a scrappy quilt and use them.

i haven't finished 16 blocks yet, but i will! it's easy to get caught up, once you're in the rhythym of them. i cut the fabric for 37 blocks yesterday, and sewed up 8 of them, using the star and stripe fabrics in my stash.

i made the 3D blocks - not because i particularly cared about the 3D part, but because i wanted a solid piece for my centre, and the triangle technique uses two pieces. but the 3D aspect of it is definitely fun! (and as a bonus, you don't have to match the seams!)




i made 8 blocks total - two each of the purple and green star prints. i only wanted to use tone on tone prints, or at least prints that are all within the same colour family. it turns out that most of my stripey fabrics are not tone on tone - i was pretty amazed to realize that only two of them fit my loose requirements! i'll have to dig deeper into my stash i guess.





fun, huh? i'm excited to play with my scraps and put together more blocks!