Friday Finish: Briar Rosary

The story of this quilt began back in 2013 when Amy from Diary of a Quilter invited me to design a block for a series she was running called the Virtual Quilting Bee (the series is available here).

There were 16 designers and we each had to come up with a block, and then make it in both solids and prints.

The block I designed is called Chiral Music (named by our son, Aaron), a rather quirky name. I had texted him a picture of the block and said I felt it needed a better name than "In and Out" or "Hello-Goodbye," and he immediately texted back "chiral." I wondered if he had meant "choral" because I had never heard of the term "chiral." He said that chiral refers to a molecule that appears to be a mirror image but actually is not exactly superimposable (he knows a lot of scientific information). I liked the name a lot, and added "music" as kind of a play on words since I had originally thought he meant "choral."

I really liked the block. It is basically just a 9-patch, with a frame, and finishes at 8"x8". I had a fat quarter stack of Heather Ross's line, Briar Rose, so I made another Chiral Music block.

Then I decided to play around with it, basically turning the four sets of half-square triangles in a different direction, and came up with this block.

 At about the same time, I had a stack of Cherrywood hand-dyed fabrics in beautiful blues and greens. I made a quilt to submit to Modern Patchwork for possible publication and it looked like this. I really liked the graphic element of the chain seeming to connect the blocks together, and named it Chain Link.

After all these years, I have finally completed the version done with the Briar Rose fabrics. I thought of beads on a string, and named it Briar Rosary.

The one Chiral Music block was added to the back.

I love the way the quilt turned out, and it was beautifully quilted by Darby.

Name:  Briar Rosary
Quilt Size: 40" x 40"
Block Size: 8" x 8"
Designed and Made by: Cindy Wiens
Quilted by: Darby Myers

I'm linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF, Fort Worth Fabric Studio and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Have a lovely weekend.

Sweet Rebellion: A Mini Quilt Tutorial

Are you familiar with Ink & Arrow Fabrics yet? I had a chance to work with a couple of fabrics from their Sweet Rebellion line, thanks to Courtney from Wives of Westwood. Sweet Rebellion is pretty and edgy at the same time. How many times do you see bike chains and peonies combined in the same fabric?

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I had designed a block for the the Summer 2015 issue of Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks called "Off the Rails," a variation of the classic rail fence block.

While I was really happy with the block, I never made anything more than that one block which I sent to the magazine.

As I have had three blocks published by Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks, one of my goals in 2017 is to actually make a project with each one of them. The beautiful fabric provided the perfect opportunity to start meeting that goal.

The block is super simple. There are four blocks in the Sweet Rebellion mini quilt (this is the information for one block):
Black Dot and White Dot:
from each:
4 rectangles 2 1/2" x 6 1/2"
4 squares 2 1/2" x 2 1/2"

Center Rail:
4 rectangles 2 1/2" x 6 1/2"

This block uses the "stitch and flip" technique. For the black and white dot rectangles, align one of the 2 1/2" x 2 1/2" squares on a corner of the rectangle. Mark a diagonal line from corner to corner as shown. Sew on the marked line. Trim the seam allowance to 1/4" as shown.

Flip the patch open and press.

Add one of the center rails and sew together.

Each block requires four of these units. I really loved the Peonies & Chains in light pink, so for each block I made two units those, one unit with Chain Scroll in Fuchsia and one unit Packed Lily of the Valley in pink.. All four units are constructed like the photo above. Then you just rotate them like this and sew the units together. 

I made four blocks to complete the mini quilt. But since I had never sewn more than one of the blocks, for some reason I hadn't visualized the cool secondary design that popped up in the middle of the block--like a reverse block right there in the center.

Here is the completed 24" x 24" mini quilt. I'm so happy with how it turned out that now I want to make a lap-sized quilt using this block.

The Sweet Rebellion line has the Square Dot Blender in several other colors as well. And the Chain Scroll comes in a black or white background--SUCH a fun print! 

Many thanks to Wives of Westwood and Ink & Arrow Fabrics for giving me the opportunity to play with this fun line of fabric. 

And three cheers--this is my first finish of 2017!!