friday finish - strawberry social!

It's done! The Strawberry Social top is completely assembled!

One of my all time favorite Flower Sugar prints. 

It's always an extra-good Friday when I finish a quilt top, and this is my second finish this month! I know that I say I love all my quilt tops, but I really, really love this one. I had fun sewing every single berry. I used all my favorite reds and pinks from Pam Kitty Morning, Lori Holt, Flower Sugar and Bonnie & Camille. The pink-on-white dotted background is from the Pam Kitty Picnic collection. 

The pattern is Strawberry Social by Margot Languedoc's The Pattern Basket. Her instructions are very clear and easy to understand, although the leaf portion takes a bit of concentration.

I also made my quilt larger than the pattern. I think that it's the perfect sofa size. My top contains 36 berries and measures 62" x 75" - the pattern measures 53" x 66" and has 25 berries. 

Remember the two experimental blocks? I decided that they weren't ripe enough for this quilt, and so I turned them into jam. Ha ha! I'm glad that I tried something quirky, but, um, no... just too weird. 

I love this recipe print from Lori Holt's Bake Sale collection.

Yes, that's a strawberry covered in cherries!

Thanks for taking the time to visit with me today! I'm linking up with Finish It Up Fridays at Crazy Mom Quilts. I'll check out what everybody else finished this week after lunch. And maybe dessert. A strawberry sundae? A strawberry shake? I saw strawberry cream filled Twinkies at my grocery store last night, but they scare me.

half square triangle happiness

I actually like to sew half square triangles! And that's a good thing, because the border of my Mixing It Up quilt needs 184 of them (Ok, that's a lot of HSTs. Almost too many.)

I make them by pairing squares, marking a line from corner to corner and then sewing 1/4" away from the line. I've tried all of the other methods but I really prefer this one. I always cut my squares slightly larger than pattern specifications and then trim them down to the exact size. If the pattern says to cut squares 2 7/8", I cut them to 3 1/4" or even 3 1/2".

Ready for trimming!

This gives me larger squares than I really need. I trim them down to the exact size using the diagonal line on my 6" square ruler as a guide. I like how my components are accurate after trimming. This method also lets me focus on the cute parts of the prints - I sort of fussy trim them to capture the flowers, cherries, strawberries and spatulas.

All that trimming can be calming once I give in to the monotony. I just have to watch out for that rotary cutter and my fingers!

And three hours later I ended up with a big pile of scraps and 184 2 1/2" HSTs! 

All lined up, like cookies on a baking sheet. I love this Bake Sale fabric from Lori Holt (and a few pieces of Polka Dot Stitches, too). And now I can make the mixer beater blocks for my border!

mixing it up borders

It's border time again! Wow, I just finished borders for the Quilty Fun sampler, and here I am working on MORE borders! These are for the "Mixing It Up" quilt that I've been making for the past few weeks. 

These 5" blocks are called "beater blocks" and will form the second border surrounding the mixers and spatulas. Lori Holt's pattern says that the blocks are designed to look like "a beater twirling into the batter mixing up something yummy." I couldn't agree more. When I was a kid, licking the beaters was my favorite part. I probably liked the beaters even more than the finished cake! Mom always saved a beater for me, and she or my brother got the other one. I need 46 of these blocks... so that's a LOT of half square triangles that need to be sewn!

I spent some time this weekend at the Kinokuniya Japanese bookstore in NYC. I love that store! The street level has English language fiction and art books. The upper level has manga books and a cafe. But my favorite is the lower level, which has tons of Japanese magazines, cards and craft supplies. The level of detail in these magazines is beyond amazing. (Looking for a dozen different magazines on men's workboots? How about ten guides to garnishing your sushi?) This is where I go to find magazines like Cotton Time, Quilts Japan and Patchwork Tsushin.

The quilts shown in these magazines are more classic than what is currently popular in the US (no acid yellow and grey combos here, and most prints are smallish), with an almost obsessive focus on miniaturized blocks - Dresdens, hexagons, log cabins, granny squares and rail fences. There's so much cuteness - I want to make everything on the cover of this copy of Patchwork Tsushin! The store also has a very large section of Japanese books on embroidery, cross stitch and quilting.

I finally bought this Log Cabin book. I had been stalking it for the past few months, so it was just time to buy it! I love that cover quilt as well as many of the unique block settings shown inside. Look at that fun house border! The magazines and books are entirely in Japanese, but they're great for inspiration. Now maybe if I do one house block each month I can be finished in a few years. 

I'm linking up today with Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times. Check out what other quilters are working on this week!