I just realised that I forgot to blog the April MetaQuilter quilt blocks! I finished these really early in the month and posted them off to Melissa, the designer for the month. They were a simple modified log cabin. Well, I say “simple,” but it’s just not patchwork if I don’t cut something the wrong size and swear repeatedly. But I managed to get them right in the end. 🙂
Melissa said to feel free to put in any scraps we had that were LOUD. So the piece with the crazy fruit on it is actually mine!
Quilting took a back seat for a few weeks as I frantically finished all my Easter Show projects. Finally today I got a chance to put together the March MetaQuilter blocks. Amelia was the designer this month, and her quilt is the Earn Your Stripes quilt from Block Party: The Modern Quilting Bee. These were fairly free form, and I had fun playing with the beautiful fabrics she sent. I’ll be posting these off tomorrow…
Last year I decided to try something different so I signed up for a quilting club with some of the fine folks from MeFi. It’s called MetaQuilter, and I’m in the “adventurous” group. Each month a different member (the “designer”) sends out fabric and instructions for making blocks. The rest of us all sew the blocks and then send them back to the designer. I’ve just finished February’s blocks so I thought I’d show off what I’ve done so far:
The first four were for January. The block pattern is called Nonesuch. They were trickier than they look. One of the group members figured out a paper piecing technique that made things a lot simpler. Apparently the finished quilt is going to look something like this. So it’ll be a traditional pattern in some distinctly modern colours!
The other two blocks are called New York Beauty, and they were definitely a challenge. The pointy bits in the arcs were done with proper paper piecing, and at first it broke my brain. I watched YouTube videos; I read tutorials; and I still did everything wrong. My seam ripper definitely saw some use. But then after setting it aside for a few days – it totally clicked! I figured it out. I even made the second one a bit more complicated just for fun. Sewing the curved bits together was stressful but I didn’t do too badly. I can’t wait to see what this finished quilt looks like…
How-To: Photographic Quilt – I spent like 30 seconds wondering why Pac-Man had a chunk taken out of his head before I realised what the photo actually was.
Oh hey, I just found the company that makes the Star Wars fabric Mom used in our quilt. Turns out they make quite a few other designs. Ours is called (appropriately enough) “Vader’s Revenge”.
Incidentally, we had a long chat Friday night about the whole licensing issue thing. Mom was admonishing me for even mentioning selling the quilt because the fabric had apparently come with a big warning that you weren’t allowed to use it in products for resale. That sent Rodd off into a tangent about end-user license agreements and whether they’re valid if you don’t sign anything (which of course Mom hadn’t). I said that I thought you were allowed to sell derivative works, like collages that included copyrighted pictures. (Turns out I was wrong.) So it looks like selling it would be out of the question in terms of legality. It just seems really odd to think that I have a personal possession that I wouldn’t be allowed to sell in a garage sale (or on eBay). But wait – I didn’t make the quilt. It was gifted to me. So I should be able to sell it, right? I didn’t “manufacture” any products “for resale.” (Just to clarify, I wouldn’t dream of selling it. This is just an interesting thought exercise.) I wonder if anybody’s contested this one in court yet…
