Block #9 - Stashbuster's Ugly Sunshine BOM quilt

Block #9.  This is the final block.  After completing all the blocks, you will have enough to make a fair size quilt. With each block measuring 12" square, even if sewn together, side by side, the quilt would be 36" square.  Once you start adding sashing and borders it would be somewhere around 60" square.  Or you could do the squares on a diagonal.

There is always the alternating plain square, where you lay it out in one block, plain, block, the next row one plain, block, plain and repeat once more and end with the first sequence.  This will leave you an extra block that you could use for a pillow.

The options of layouts are endless. Let your imagination wonder.

So this is the last block, what are you going to do with it?  This block as you will see from the one I made, will look very different depending on the placement of your colours or where you put your lights and darks.

As I've told you before, I like stars.  With the colour placement that I used, I was able to emphasize the second outer star, more than is apparent from the black and white draft above.  I like my version of colours because it also emphasizes the diagonal lines.  These diagonal lines are great for making quilts because they usually create a secondary pattern that runs diagonally through the whole quilt. Somewhat of a grid and this grid adds to the texture and keeps your eyes moving across a quilt.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my blocks and hopefully have joined in to make your own.  Stay tuned for tomorrow for the reveal of my Stashbuster's Ugly Sunshine BOM quilt top.

Not quilt related, I thought I would share with you what I have been up to these past two weekends.  Over time the grade of your house needs to be fixed. For my home the walkways had all sunk in and tilted toward the house.  The grade next to the house actually sunk in a little over 4".  That is big when you think of all the water that is directed to the house and looks for a place to go.

What I did to fix this is install the 6" cement curbs along the property line along the garage side.  I added the landscape fabric and limestone to level things off, on a slight tilt away from the house.  For now there is a 1 1/2" gap to the top of the curb, but later we will be laying interlocking stones to complete the walkways.  It may be difficult to see but the curb even goes behind the garden.

By doing the walkways I am also creating the shapes of my flower gardens.  In the forefront of the picture is one garden that was created to stop the view from the street (once the bushes grow and fill in), and create a sense of walking through a garden before entering into the backyard.

What I will be working on today is trying to clean up the other side of this path.  The garden here is going to be on a diagonal to turn the pathway back in the direction of the yard.  This I have decided is going to be my butterfly garden, with butterfly bushes and different butterfly loving flowers. It doesn't look very big, but it is 6' x 6' along the house and will be big enough to plant.

I quite for a bit.  I need to still finalize what kind of stone I want to use to retain the gardens from the walkways.  At least for now it will be cleaned up some.  When I do decide what type of stone, I will pull out the temporary bricks and finish it off.