selvage spools made easier

The Crystal Lake Modern Quilt Guild is hosting three block lotteries this year, and the first one takes place in April. We chose the Selvage Spools block from this Riley Blake 2013 Block of the Month program.  You can download and print the Riley Blake block directions here, but you'll probably want to keep reading to discover an easier way to make this block.

The block is composed of four 6" spools to finish at 12" square (12.5" unfinished).

The original pattern uses a template and partial seams - no thank you.  When Lorrie and I met earlier this week to sew the sample blocks for our Sunday guild meeting I made some quick pattern modifications to make it easier.  Easier = Better, am I right?!  Here is my pattern tester block - spot on at 6.5" unfinished :)

I created this tutorial a little differently by adding text to each photo of the steps.  I hope you'll find this easier to follow :)

The materials you'll need for one block:

Using a pencil lightly mark a diagonal line on the wrong side of each 2" square.

Choose selvages with fun words and lots of color dots!

The sewing instructions begin here:

You'll want to center the wording/color dots on the background square.

I sewed this piece about 1/8" from the bottom of the background square so the words wouldn't be cut off later in a seam allowance.

You can choose to cover the printed fabric area of the first selvage or not.

We used 6-7 selvages per spool.

Press these seams toward the background fabric.

Make sure you carefully place the marked diagonal lines as shown.

Press away from the center.

Your spool block should measure 6.5" square now. 

These final seams are all pressed toward the spool end - not the background fabric.

And there you have it - a 12" square finished selvage spool block!

Thanks to Riley Blake for the original pattern and inspiration for this fun quilt block!

spools progress

It's been a few weeks since Lorrie and I have been able to work on our spool quilts. Life and the holidays just seem to take over sometimes, right?

But we did manage to get in one last sewing session before Christmas where we were able to finish all the spool blocks and get the centers of our quilts together...

41 spools arranged in 9 rows. I just realized that this photo is upside down - the sideways green spool at the top left is actually the bottom right part of the quilt center - whoops! A green applique floral vine will be spooling off of this block and flowering clockwise around the quilt border when all is finished.

We've elected to machine applique all of the flowers and vines (time savings!) as we'd like to finish these tops before spring. Lots of tracing applique shapes is what's up next for us, and that's our "homework" to finish before our next session in early February.

So many projects - so little time!!

Sewing time to complete 82 spool blocks and 2 quilt centers: 8 hours
Grand total from 4 sessions: 33 hours



**You can read more about this project by entering "spools" into the search function on the right sidebar.

spools progress

Yes - Lorrie and I are making spools! Our last sewing session earlier in November yielded quite a bit of progress...

We sewed our remaining eight strip sets giving us a total of 36 sets. We each need 41 pieces measuring 3.5" x 4.5" for our spools. Due to some over-zealous strip cutting on my part, we actually had enough strip sets made to make 4 spool quilts! Our extras have been stashed away for another project - we're not sure what project - but they will be used for something!

We then sewed the side pieces onto each colorful spool, pressed them, and called it a day. Here are some samples of what we accomplished. Pink spools...

And teal spools...

And now it's December and we got back to business today! It was a very tedious day of sewing - making 82 spool tops and bottoms for each of us. Yep, that's right. We spent the entire sewing time today adding these little triangles to the ends of the brown strips.

Over three hours for each of us sewing and pressing. The most boring part of the project so far. Mind numbing as it was, thank goodness we were working on it together or else it might have gone straight to the WIP pile (or out the window!) But we plodded through, and next week we'll be on to a more fun task - actually finishing the spool blocks!

Project hours from our November session:
Sewing strip sets - 2 hours
Cutting spools - 2 hours
Sewing blocks - 3 hours

Project hours from today:
Sewing spool tops and bottoms - 7 hours

Grand total from 3 sessions: 25 hours to date

To see more about the beginning of this project read this post.

combined effort

Today Lorrie (from SewMod) and I started a new project together! We're only going to work on it during our sewing days together, and in the end we'll each have our own quilt - each one different but both very similar.

Over the past week I've cut 200 or so of these...

And today the two of us turned 75% of those strips into these sets...

Pretty, huh?

And the next step will be to cut all the finished sets into these...

Any guesses about what they might become?


And just for fun I'm keeping track of hours the whole project takes us. So far:

Cutting strips: 4 hours
Sewing strip sets: 7 hours today with about 2-3 hours remaining