Pussy March Block Lotto

Inspired by the Women’s March of January 21 and the Pussy Hat Project, this month’s block lotto is composed of pink triangles marching in the name of women’s rights and in support of peace and love. As women (and men) marched together (over 60,000 in Toronto alone and millions worldwide!) this block lotto project and subsequent quilt will represent the many hands coming together to symbolize our unity.

DEADLINE: March’s meeting, March 26, 2017. As usual, you’ll get ONE lotto ticket per BLOCK.

BLOCK DETAILS:

• Block pattern: basic Flying Geese block 
• Size: Width: 6” finished (6 ½” unfinished) 
• Height: 3” finished (3 ½” unfinished) 

BLOCK COLOURS:

Geese: The larger centre triangle is to be solid PINK. Any shade of pink, but please use SOLIDS. (Kona, Free Spirit, or any other quality quilting cotton solids - NO prints, tone-on-tones, batiks please.) Use a variety of shades of pink, as diversity is the name of the game on this one!

Sky/background: The outer smaller triangles are to be linen. Natural beige/taupey linen colours as shown below:

Recommended linen brand: Essex Linen FLAX or NATURAL. Please avoid the Essex Metallics though, as they tend to be a little scratchy. If you’re not using Essex linen, please make sure the weight you are using is suitable for quilting. Please PREWASH your linen.

A little word in defence of linen:

I know some quilters freak out about linen, but I think it’s because they haven’t tried it yet. Let me warn you, it’s pretty addictive once you give it a go. And a quilt made with linen has a lovely weight to it – perfect for snuggling in the winter. (I will bring some samples to the meeting to convince you.)

Tips for working with linen:

I mostly use Essex Linen by Robert Kaufman. Prewash it, as it does shrink. Wash it on a warm setting, then tumble dry it on warm too, and take it out the dryer before it’s completely dry. I then arm myself with a spray bottle of water and a spray bottle of starch and go at ‘er till she’s nice and tame. Once that’s done, she’s a breeze.

A nice new blade will glide through her like a knife through butter. I piece with a universal 70/10 – 80/12. Once pieced I am careful not to manhandle my blocks as they can fray, although I find the Essex linen is generally very well-behaved.

I press seams away from the linen when I can, but use a wooden roller to train them flat when I can’t. The end result is a wholesome feeling, somewhat tactile quilt. It’s a beautiful thing!

Links to a few Flying Geese tutorials:

Berene's preferred
Pat Sloan
Connecting Threads: Option 1

Local linen sources:

Fabric Spark

The Workroom

Sew Sisters

Eweknit

Elsewhere:

Needlework (Hamilton)
Mad About Patchwork (Ottawa)
Fabric Spot (online)
Flair Fabrics (online)

Note: For those of you who are not usually linen users, but would like to participate without buying a large amount of fabric, I will have a limited number of prewashed small cuts available at January's guild meeting for sale. At cost, includes HST:

• Fat Quarters (21” x 18”) - $4.25 each (makes 10 blocks)
• Fat Eighths (21” x 9”) - $2.25 each (makes 5 blocks)

If you’d like to preorder, you can DM me (Berene) on Instgram (@happysewlucky) or on Facebook to reserve your linen.

— Berene Campbell • @happysewlucky

January 2017