Week 21 | Fourth Of July + Rachel

Week 21 | Fourth Of July + Rachel

 

 

Stephanie | This was a easy block to put together. It just consists of 8 rectangles each with a contrasting square sewn at the diagonal and trimmed. I stuck with the red/white/blue colors on this one. I could see a really cool Americana quilt with this pattern and a variety of red/white/blue fabrics. I think when I do this block again I'll switch up the color scheme. 

Favorite moment of the week: I really enjoyed helping with some design work for church. I was able to give my feedback on some upcoming designs. I've been wanting to do things like that for a long time, but just haven't had an avenue to pursue them. I let it be known that I want to help out in the graphics/media area and they seemed to be all excited to have my offer. So here's hoping that all works out.

Annetta | At the beginning of the pattern it states to size up a crochet hook, which I did, but halfway through I went back to my normal hook making the whole square smaller than the first. The bigger crochet hook was not a good hook to work with as it was very uncomfortable. Now that I had a smaller square I had to do my rounds a different way and not how the pattern asked for. This square is will with little mistakes that could have been avoided if I paid attention. I also tried something different with my vertical lines. My line from the last square were all different colors, but this time I am happy I made them white. This pattern was also one of the easier ones and I spent two whole days on it as I have other projects that are on deadlines.

Favorite moment of the week: I enjoyed going on a date with my husband this week. We did something different and walk around a lake, maybe it's a big pond, that's in the middle of the city. It felt a little like being back in Seattle at Greenlake. The sun nice and sunny that day too as our weather has been horrible, but it seems to have finally improved. After our walk, we sat down for a cup of Kafola and then went shopping for the picnic we had the next day.

Week 20 | Lisa + Open Star

Week 20 | Lisa + Open Star

Annetta | We are almost to our halfway point and I am starting to feel a bit burnt out on this project. I feel like I have been making the same complex squares for months when all I want is a quick and simple pattern. Each square takes about a week to make as I have a part-time job, a kid to pick-up from school (a tram + bus ride) and I'm also a soccer mom plus the wife and house stuff. I will see this project through, but it's getting tough. It's also nearing towards summer and I would like to spend my time working on other projects other than my squares. With all that said this week was tough to focus. I have summer ideas in my head and lots of hours at work lately. I didn't finish my square... I will need to at some point. When I was picking this project I had never crocheted and didn't know what I was signing up for. Now I know! I think I would have picked a much simpler project. Okay, rant over and hopefully next week I'll knock out a gorgeous square for you.

Favorite moment of the week: I can't even remember what happened this week other then I was on week two of a stomach virus. I also love our weekends, they are so fun and great. Honestly, my favorite moment this week was all the times I cheated on my project here and worked on a summer tank top instead. It's not my proudest moment, but it felt so darn good! I also enjoyed crocheting with a tiny hook versus the big one I use for the squares. It was a rainy and windy plus cold week so crocheting something for summer helped me to cope with that nasty weather.

Stephanie | This Open Star worked up rather quick, which is good because I'm doing it a day late. I spent my week working on a different quilting project. This is on a deadline, so it consumed me all week. This block has an 'hourglass' block in it. This is basically 2 half square triangles in 1 block. The only hang up I had was trimming them down to size at 4.5". Typically you square them up by going off the diagonal line in the center, however, the hourglass has 2 diagonals and both points need to be in the center of the final block. After a quick google search I confirmed my hunch on how to trim them to size. What I loved most about this block, is that it made an extra 4 hourglass halves, so I am ready to make a 2nd pattern block already. This will come in handy when I need to pre-sew a block before vacation.

Favorite moment of the week:  We had a Taco-Tuesday event at church this week. They are doing an extra series in the evening each Tuesday night in May. Shea and I can't make it to 2 of the 4 nights due to Girl Scouts, but this week we were able to go as a family. My girls were so excited because they have become fast friends with the other kids in church. So naturally they were all excited to be there for this event. But excited kids, are not sit in your seat and be quite kids. So after many attempts to keep the kids quiet and not to disturb the adults, I gave it and took them outside. We ended up finding a basketball and had a fun game going on. I was impressed at how good my girls did since they have never played before. 

Week 19 | Friendship Star + Le Vesinet

Week 19 | Friendship Star + Le Vesinet

Stephanie | This week made me want to give up! I originally set out to make the block Open Star. I cut all my fabric and got to work. This pattern called for 3-quarter half square triangles. This is 3 triangles in 1 square. It took a minute to understand the construction behind it, but I got it and made them. The problem is that they ended up measuring a 1/2 inch smaller than they needed to be. So frustrating. In order to remake them all, I was going to need to cut a lot more fabric. I didn't want to do this, so instead I repurposed my already cut and pieced fabric into a different block - the Friendship Star. Its very lackluster, but I didn't have to cut too much more fabric.

Favorite moment of the week: There were two things I enjoyed this week. The first one was that we had been invited to dinner at our new pastors house. We enjoyed good food, conversation and all the kids got to play together. We had a great time together. I am looking forward to seeing where this new friendship goes for both our families. The other was a paint along class. All the materials were provided and you just paint along with the instructor and get to take home the painting. We did a scene called 'Sutter Buttes in Bloom'. The Sutter Buttes are the worlds smallest complete mountain range that is here in town. I really loved being able to paint and be creative. I hope to do more.

Annetta | The goal this week was to finish the square way before my trip to Prague for the weekend. I think I accomplished that and all within one day! It also helps that this week there were only 10 rows after the crocheted the little circles that went into the center of the pattern. When I worked up this pattern last time I did not like it. It looked so different from the rest of the patterns and didn't fit in too well. Now that I'm on the second square, I have changed my mind. This one is actually really cute! I kept most of the white color just how it was on the other square, but swapped out the other colors. I also remembered to make the inner circles bigger which helps the size of the whole square itself. Yup, much happier with this one.

Favorite moment of the week: It has to be Wednesday with my family exploring our side of Austria. You see, in May we have two holidays and they are both on Wednesday. It provides a nice break in the middle of the week. Last week we didn't do much, but this week we really got to enjoy the day off. We went to a park, the lake, explored a new-to-us town. We also had fresh squeezed orange juice, strawberries, ate pizza and ice cream. We really need this time together as a family, going wherever the wind took us because my was it a windy day! We also decided to go to Austria because during holiday's everything closes in Slovakia, but Austria didn't have this holiday so everything was open. Other then the wind it was a nice and sunny day, which we haven't had in a while. I hope we do this again soon!

Week 18 | Denna 2 + Yankee Puzzle

Week 18 | Denna 2 + Yankee Puzzle

Annetta | I went against my new rule on this one and added a lot of charcoal to the square. For some reason, I wasn't feeling the other colors. When I line this square up to the rest of them I see how much it stand out and I don't like that, but it's too late to change that. I thought that all my second squares would be my favoite and way better then the first option, but this one has me guessing that. I also made sure to start the square early because it had 18 rows or something but found myself laying a little bit of catch up on Sunday. This project is just so massive and so much work in general. Why do I always pick the most complicating and time-consuming projects?! When I put all the squares together you can really see the scope of this project and the details that go into it. Which version of the square is your favorite, week one or week two?

Favorite moment of the week: I got to go see Avenger's Endgame finally. That was the highlight of my week for sure. It wasn't planned, but we had a babysitter on Frida and my husband was up for it so that was pretty cool. I am also thankful that I have a job that enables me to do things like seeing a movie, buying all the yarn I want and so on. 

Stephanie | This block is the Yankee Puzzle. I had 2 choices for the colors in this block and I ended up using the same color scheme from the example in the book. I have decided to make 2 smaller quilts rather than one large one during this project. I will make 25 blocks for each quilt. Each quilt will have the same patterns but with different color choices. So the other colors I like for this block will be used next time around. I really like the end look one this pattern and I like the look of all solid fabric. It was easy to work up as it was all half square triangles. This could make a fun larger quilt using varied solid prints throughout.

Favorite moment of the week: This was a crazy week. I had many large and time-consuming projects to do, chickens that we being very naughty and kept getting out of the coop, standardized testing in school along with the normal chaos that is my life right now. But my favorite thing that happened this week was being able to put my new roses in the ground, even though that was quite the chore! And having a package found that had been MIA for a week. My mail driver was able to locate my package that was delivered in the wrong part of town in an abandoned mailbox. This was an order of new fabric and I was getting very worried that it was lost for good. I was VERY happy when she found it and delivered it to me.