Raffle Quilt Blocks

After a long stretch of crocheting, I finally used my sewing machine again. In two days I have to turn in my raffle quilt blocks, so I had to actually make them. I had taken home three packets, but I wanted four so that I could make better use of the leftovers, so the blue-violet star is extra. I hope it works for the raffle quilt. The block is basically a nine-patch, with the star points being the sides and the center the same color as the star points. Little triangles are generated in the process of making the star points, and I used these to make two bonus blocks.

The colors didn't come out true in this picture, in spite of my efforts at post- processing. But these are the blocks, a very nice way to make LeMoyne stars without having eight points in the middle.

The first step is to mark a 2 1/4 inch colored square on the diagonal, place it on the corner of a 3 inch black square, sew along the diagonal, and trim away the triangles outside of the seam. I sew the triangles together before I cut them off to get little half-square triangles. Sixteen of them make this block. (The colors here are much closer to the actual colors.)

The next step is to mark another 2 1/4 inch colored square on the diagonal, place it on the left bottom corner of the square from step 1, then sew and trim as before. These little half-square triangles include a little corner of the first triangle. So I made pinwheel blocks with diamonds in the middle.

Paintbrush holder

This paintbrush holder was very easy to make. I bought this fabric in St. Thomas the year we went to Tortola with my mother-in-law and all her kids and grandkids. The ribbon is lovely, but it was only by chance that it was the one that most closely matched the colors in the fabric.

It's hard to see exactly what I did here, but I'll try to explain. I used a decorator-width fabric (54 inches rather than 42) about 25 inches wide. I folded it in half right sides together, lengthwise, selvage edges touching. I folded back the selvages about an inch and sewed the side seams. Then I turned it inside out, sort of like a pillowcase. Then I sewed the open end shut. That is what you see on the top. This was a unique piece of fabric. It was only printed up to a certain point. So it looks like it's lined. I made a similar small pocket for the little brushes, except for that I didn't fold the raw edges under. I just sewed it onto the big piece so that the raw edges are covered.
Then I folded up about nine inches to form the pockets, sewed up the sides, and sewed eight interior lines from the bottom to the opening to make nine compartments. I used my brushes as a guide. They were mostly 12 inches long. If I make another one of these, I'll take pictures and provide more detailed directions. I sewed the ribbon just through the middle of the ribbon to the right side only. When I roll up the holder, I fold the top down over the brushes and then roll it up starting from the left side where the smaller brushes are. When it is all rolled up, the ribbon is on the outside and I just tie it around. When I'm using the brushes, I fold the top back and tie the ribbon to the easel. The whole thing just hangs there with a little slant so that the brushes don't fall out, and I can pull out whatever size brush I need. For this to happen the ribbon has to be closer to the top than to the bottom.