The Desperate Housewife’s Quilt – Block 11 Kiss Kiss
Welcome to week 11 of the ‘The Desperate Housewife’s Quilt’. Todays block is all about practicing our foundation piecing. Remember, this is not a quilt-a-long. Just follow the blog every week and pick and choose which blocks you would like to make. I will be injecting some uniqueness into traditional blocks, applique, three dimensional, crazy and thread-art blocks. If you make a block you can post it on the Flickr group for everyone to enjoy. Also, I have this nifty button under each post that allows you to save the post as a PDF.
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Be sure to visit this week’s Guest Blogger and their wonderful block.
My guest this week is the very talented Kristen from KD Quilts.
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Kiss Kiss
The sweet kiss that heals everything, steals your breathe and makes a heart skip a beat. The daring red lipstick or the soft glossy pink. Kiss, Kiss xxx
Techniques explored
- Foundation Piecing
- Strip piecing
Materials
I thought my lips should be bold so I used pillar box red fabrics, framed in a subtle grey with black, red and white fabrics for the checkers.
Cutting
For the checkerboard rows:
Red and White
- 3 – 6.5″ x 1.5″ strips of red fabric
- 3 – 6.5″ x 1.5″ strips of white fabric
Black and White
- 1 – 1.5″ x 17″ strip of black fabric
- 1 – 1.5″ x 17″ strip of white fabric
Lips
- Scraps of red and grey fabrics.
Making the Lips
Download the foundation template from here. Please make sure that you do not scale down the document or fit to page.
Many of the previous blocks have used the technique of foundation piecing so I will assume that you are all professionals now ( Hee Hee ).
Some hints for this block as some of the pieces are very small.
- Colour in the sections so that you can see which fabric goes where.
- Over cut your pieces so that you have plenty of room to manoeuvre the pieces
- Use a very short stitch ( 1.5 )
- The seams will all fold to one side. If you cannot fold your seams to the darker fabric, trim back your darker fabrics in the seam allowance just a little bit more so that they do not show through the lighter fabrics.
- Only finger press or use a wooden iron when pressing open pieces until all piecing is completed then give it a press with a dry iron.
Your finished lip block should measure 6.5″ x 3.5″ unfinished.
Making the checkerboard rows
Red and White
- Make two sets of strips with the red and white.
- First set Red / White / Red
- Second Set White / Red / White
- Cut 4 – 1.5″ pieces from each set
- Lay them out in a checkerboard design as depicted below and sew together
Black and White
- Sew a black and white strip together
- Cut 11 – 1.5″ pieces
- Lay 8 pieces in a checkerboard design as shown below
- Unpick one of the pieces to yield a black and white 1.5″ square
- Sew one of each square onto the remaining two pieces
Sewing the rows together
- Attach a checkerboard piece to either side of the lips
- Sew the red and white checkerboard to the top
- Sew the black and white checkerboard to the bottom
One unfinished 8.5″ block with one luscious set of lips.
What can we do with these luscious lips?
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| On Point with rotation and change to checkerboard layout |
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| On Point with alternating solid blocks and embroidered words – Love Kiss Kiss Love |
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| Horizontal Layout with rotation |
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| Horizontal Layout with 30 degree tilted blocks and rotation. |
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| On Point with rotation, Alter Checkerboard layout |
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| On Point, Less colour |
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| On Point, Alternating Solid blocks. |
This could have potential for a Valentines Quilt! I hope you have enjoyed this fun block. Next week will be a sparkler of a block because we all know that diamonds are a girls best friend.
*** Please remember that these blocks and any blocks designed by guest bloggers should not be used for commercial purposes ( sold as a pattern, published etc) without the written consent of the owner ***
3 Comments
Karen Wilson
Too cute!!
I think it will be a while before I get to this one….soooooo many other things to be done right now.
Melody
Wow, what a spectacular block
Talin's Corner
Great tutorial. As stunning as this block is on it's own, it looks fantastic when put into a quilt.