Current Obsessions

For a couple of years now I have been interested in doing a Stack-n-Whack type quilt. Lazy Sister Sue had shown me some she had done a few years back and I liked the effect, but once we moved so far away from my quilt teacher, I had kind of put it on the back burner and had not pursued finding a class locally.

When I went to the Peeps Retreat in April, we did a book and pattern swap among the peeps, each of us bringing things we no longer wanted and placing them on a big table up for grabs.

I was so excited to find this book in the mix - this looked to be another authors version of the technique - which basically consists of cutting your fabric in rectangles so that the pattern repeat fills each rectangle, stacking up 8 layers so that the pattern aligns through all 8 layers, and then cutting out wedges that are then assembled into octagons.

This book was the gentle nudge I needed to get my mind back on doing this technique - it became one of those nagging things in the back of my mind, even as I worked on many many other projects.

One hitch to my plan was that I am working on tight pursestrings where fabric purchasing is concerned -and the quantity needed for me to "experiment" with a new technique was a bit daunting. A few chunks I had in my stash that I thought would be good for this were too small.

Then last Sunday (the 12th) a new quilting buddy came over for a few hours - it was her first visit to my workspace - and as we swapped ideas and chatted and I cut a few chunks of fabric to share with her, I unearthed FIVE YARDS of fabric that I had forgotten I had. FIVE YARDS of fabric that I purchased in a trip to Hobby Lobby in SC with Lazy Sister Sue nearly 2 years ago. FIVE YARDS of fabric that to this point I had no real plan for. FIVE YARDS of Halloween Spirit craziness... I had finally found my fabric!!!

So not long after Shellie left, I got to measuring and cutting and stacking and aligning and cutting some more - and soon had piles and piles of triangles just waiting to be assembled. Most would end up in 8" blocks -the rest in 4" (and I even scraped a few 3" blocks out of the scraps).

And then the magic began - especially in the centers of the blocks...

Witch hats turned into flower centers...

Witch hat brims and hair turned into "venus flytraps" ...

...or swirling fire spirals...

I never knew quite from the wedges how the final block would turn out - it was hard to visualize what the seam allowance would eliminate from the final effect - especially in the centers.
I thought I was going to lose the one-eyed witch in this one, but she surprised me and still peeks out from the middle

Still working from my stash, I decided to add the yellow corners to each block to form the square - since the yellow is the least dominant color in the original fabric. I am going to try to pick up some black, blue, purple, orange and lime fabrics to do some borders, sashing and other accents both front and back, but I have not yet figured out my final block arrangement.

Oh - the little ones are fun, too - the witch face is not so dominant in those due to the small size, so they get more "abstract".


I just love how the colors shift and change from block to block -and how quickly these go together.

I hope to have this completely done soon (at least by Halloween!)- other projects are patiently waiting in the wings - but don't think for a second that I have this technique entirely out of my system yet. The magic has just begun!!!