Heirloom Stitches July Blocks

Finished the two pieced July blocks for Heirloom Stitches - more or less anyway. They would both be done except a square of green was inadvertently left out of my kit. It's pretty tough to cut 2, 2 7/8" squares from one 4" square. I emailed them today and they are sending another square right out. So as soon as it arrives I can finish the Union Square block.

The other block is called Aunt Martha's Tulips. I love how it turned out, but it's one of the most complicated blocks I've ever pieced. It's just 12" square, so those half square triangle squares finish at 1 1/2". If I counted correctly there are 93 pieces in this block - that's a lot of pieces to squeeze into 12". There are 16 flying geese units alone, and that's one of my least favorite units to piece. This would make a wonderful looking quilt but I don't know that I'd want to take that much time for an entire quilt. This one block took me several hours to cut and piece. I know one thing - if I were going to design a quilt around this block I'd draft it to be considerably larger than 12"!

I thought some of you might like to see the back so you could see how I pressed it. Notice I didn't hesitate to press seams open, or clip seams so I could press part in one direction and part in another. I'm not at all afraid of the clip weakening the seam on the quilt. After all, when I used to sew clothing I'd make lots of close together clips on the bottom of the armseye when sewing in a sleeve, and would do the same for the crotch seam on a pair of pants. If those seams didn't rip open while wearing the garment with all the stress on them while being warn and washed, then I have no fear of the quilt seams ripping open at these points. They will certainly suffer way less stress than the clothes I used to make for my kids!

The is also an appliqué wreath block for July - prepping that for handwork is my next quilty task That and quilting Broken Dishes, which is loaded onto Gandalf and has had the first three passes of the pantograph stitched. I'll finish it as soon as the weather cools down a little. As you can see the stitching I've done hardly shows up at all, so I chose a very simple pattern called "Surf's Up", just to give it some texture and hold the layers together.