Hive 7 September Tutorial

Greetings from the Rocky Mountains of central Idaho. My name is Jane Holbrook. I live in a unique log cabin home with my spouse, Mike. We both retired young, and moved up to Riggins to  play and work near the wild and scenic Salmon River, and the largest wilderness area in North America. We have been building our cabin while we live in it. We also have a large vegetable and fruit garden, with a high deer proof fence.

Almost finished with the railing for the sewing loft. We harvested the lodge pole pines and tamaracks from our nearby forest, all standing dead trees. Notice the "smart phone" under the stairs?

    I love the Churn Dash Block! I am excited about this variation, and hope you all are tickled by your results. I am asking for a wonky version, in reds, oranges, pinks, and unbleached muslin or ecru tone on tone.

The center is a pink print. The side bars are a red print, and the half square triangles (HSQ) are another red or orange print. As you can see, I like big prints. Be bold! But, use your stash, and let the term wonky be your guide.

Erin Davis of Sew at Home Mummy graciously permitted me to use her tutorial, Wonky Churn Dash.  I found it fairly easy to follow, with the additional suggestions: (The wonky directions follow the classic churn dash. This is the one I want!)

The corner blocks will be 4.25" after you sew the HSQ. Here is my progress:

after sewing the triangle, it completely covers the underlying square

trim to 4.25" 

then, trim the back side

Keep following the tutorial...Sew your side rectangles next.

The next addition is pressing. Erin presses at the end, I prefer mid-stream pressing to help match seams.

I sewed the rows horizontally

Please press the center row outward, and the upper and lower rows inward. Then you can nestle your seams against each other and make snug matches.

Thank you SEW much for your efforts. Any questions, please contact me at thimblepie.gmail.com

As September Queen Bee I get to pose a question. What color(s) and prints of fabric would you like to add to your stash? And, why?   As we have been building our home, I read Creating Your Perfect Quilting Space, by Lois Hallock. She suggested doing a fabric inventory to calculate storage needs.  She said,

"Measure  all the fabric you have. I am not kidding. Most quilters that I work with are stunned by this... If  this has been an extremely painful experience, you should seriously consider reducing your storage needs..."

So, I decided to sell my fabric scraps in my etsy shop. I have sold 28 lbs, or about 56 yards of fabric scraps in the past 4 months. The strange thing is, I still have a lot of fabric, but hardly any scraps. Because, once scraps started selling I cut up my fabric and sold it as scraps. Seriously.

Life is funny, isn't it?