Road Home to Manitoulin

Back in 2016, I participated in a row along, sponsored by Marian Pena of Seams to be Sew.  The theme was 'Road to Home' and I thought I would really enjoy this event.  I did!  My idea was to create a 'filmstrip' wall hanging showing important sights that I enjoy while driving to my home on Manitoulin Island.
At the time, I placed all the files on Craftsy, but you all know that most of these files are not available to people any longer.  Marian suggested that we all do a recap and bring our row along and files back up on our own sites or blogs.  She will host a gallery of all the Row Alongs that she has run and I think this will be a great gallery to peruse - and maybe even to prompt us to make new projects!!
I still am not happy with the rocks I did for Block 1.  I redid them, but they still don't look right.  I'm going to do some thread painting and try to fix the block.  Frankly the whole quilt could probably use some thread painting!
Thanks for visiting and looking at my row and thanks Marian for this prompt!
Here is a link to a pdf file for the project:    Road Home to Manitoulin

All the pages of directions and templates were created with the format of 8.5" x 11" paper.

If you like the filmstrip idea, here is a sheet with the instructions for how I made the strips:

I'll show each block and the template pages and then I'll put in the 18 pages of explanations for the whole row.

Block 1:

Block 2:

Block 3:

Block 4:

Block 5:

And here are the files with the explanations and images to make the whole row!

Jelly Rolls into Half Square Triangle (HST) units

I have 2 unfinished quilt tops that I began a few years ago – well, I bought some of the Moda fabric line designed by Sandy Gervais called ‘Merry and Bright’…oops!  Just checked on the web and it was 2008!  Oh well, these things happen!  Anyway, I loved it so much, I bought one of the panels, a jelly roll and a couple of the charm packs, as well as 3 yards of the only yardage they had left – the blue crisscross fabric.    Why did they become UFOs?  For me, as a quilt designer, quilts become UFOs when I have a design decision and can’t make a clear one – so the fabric goes into a box and waits until the answer bubbles up!

Can you see what I mean by deciding?  What would you put in the middle of this panel?  My first decision was that I wanted the quilt to be the same if it was turned around, top to bottom.  So I kept running images through my mind:  4 wreaths around the middle, Christmas gifts, more Christmas balls, trees all around….. many ideas.  But last year, some patterns showing Christmas trees made of paisley shapes appeared on the internet and I decided to appliqué 2 trees on the centre panel.  I went down to my daughter’s place last June to stay with my grandson while she and her husband went on a holiday – only because he didn’t have his full driving license yet and he had several events planned.  So we had a good time during the day – he played his game on the Internet in the rec room and I made paisley shapes in the dining room and sewed them on.

I had already attached the flying geese border and the friendship star border, so I just had to decide what to put on for the last border to make the quilt larger. I absolutely love using Electric Quilt (EQ8) to create quilts - as you can see from the variety of borders I auditioned!!

I had most of one jelly roll left and decided that I needed to repeat the white fabric that I used in the flying geese fabric.  Then one of the members of my quilt club needed someone to give a lesson in yet another way to make half-square triangle units.  I had a reference sheet for making them out of jelly strips (2½″ wide), so I volunteered to show this method.  You end up with 3″ unfinished HSTs and very little waste!   Here’s a good tutorial about this:  http://www.quiltineering.com/hst-tutorial-strip-tube-method/  I hadn’t see this one, but it is almost what I did.  The two little additions were:

1.    I sewed a scant 1/4 “ seam (so that I could use the cutting method like she calls #1, and

2.    After sewing one side of the tube, I starched and pressed, because in the end, you will have bias edges, so I wanted them to stay straight.

At the top, ruler is set for next cut.  Bottom is square that was not trimmed!

All in all, if you have jelly roll strips, this is definitely the most efficient way to make hundreds of half square triangle units (HST)!
Here's an image of what the border will look like when sewn:

 I think it looks like a 'modern' quilt style (although the rest of the quilt isn't).  What do you think?
Thank you for reading this!