Twisted Threads Round Robin

I belong to a small quilt group by the name of Twisted Threads. Every year we do a friendship type quilt and a charitable effort. This year we have been doing row friendship quilts. For this past months row I attempted to make waves, literally. When M unveiled her theme back in August, I immediately knew what I wanted to do and hoped that no one else would decide to do it. Her theme is Marine and I wanted to do a row of waves in a snail's trail block. I finally accomplished it on the third attempt.

This is the first try. The piecing looks great. The block is how it's supposed to look but it is about a half inch too small. Not gonna work. Thank goodness I tested it first.

The sizing is from the book "Knockout Blocks and Sampler Quilts" by Judy Martin. It you haven't seen this book yet, I highly! recommend it. This book is fantastic. I will post about it in depth later.

I test all my iffy piecing in red, white, and blue fabrics. That way I don't waste fabric needed for the project and someday I will have enough blocks in that color scheme to make an Americana quilt.

The next attempt was even worse.

I printed out a "Monkey Wrench"? block from EQ4. I measured the printed templates and cut and pieced.

UGH. The whole block was just way off. You can see where the points don't match and they stick out all funky. I think I forgot to adjust the print settings so it printed out all wrong. Oh well. Another one for the Americana Quilt.

The final blocks were done with freezer paper foundation piecing. This time I actually enjoyed foundation piecing. And I drafted the block myself. Although I usually reverse things wrong or forget to reverse them until after the first round of ribbet stitches. :) I used dark blue, light blue, grey and white so that they looked like crashing waves. I am quite proud of the (pictureless) results.

I will be meeting with them again in the next few weeks and will get a pic then. This concept of having a digital camera is still new to me. :)