Motherboard Mayhem!

Thank you all for your incredible patience with me as I struggle with my brand new Dell computer with Windows 7. Last week my motherboard failed and left me with zero internet. The experience taught me just how dependent I have become upon the internet, LOL!

Today is the day to show my invitational American Made Brands fabric solids block for the design I made to represent New Hampshire. I wanted to be sure to include a representation of Mount Washington, the tallest peak of the White Mountains, here in New Hampshire. Here is my design:

The host company, Clothworks Textiles, http://americanmadebrand.com/the-fabric/ promises that all their fabrics are American grown cotton that is spun in the United States and woven and dyed here, too. 100% American cotton quilting fabrics, wheee!!!!
If you wish to catch the whole blog tour here is the link to the blog tour.
I was one of fifty blogs chosen to represent the 50 United States of America, and I'm honored. All of the "license plate" blocks are made with the beautiful cotton solid fabrics that American Made Brands sent us.
I will be showing a photo-montage of how I made my 12 1/2" by 6 1/2" block. Here goes!

I started with the large pine tree on the right side of the block.

Make two flying geese based on 4 1/2" by 2 1/2" in green and pale blue. Since I was only using two geese, I chose to use the flippy corner's method to make them.

Set the flying geese aside so that you can make the base of the tree.

 I used a 1" brown tree trunk with two 2 1/2"x 1 1/2" rectangles of a pale yellow neutral background.

Join the base to the tree tops next to complete the first one third of the block that should be 4 1/2" by 6 1/2" unfinished.

Now you are going to work on the left side of the block that represents Mount Washington. It is done as two "string blocks," each of which is 4 1/2" wide by 6 1/2" tall. I cut these two foundations of that size from the plain white, as it will not show.

Onto the white foundation fabric rectangles, I laid straight cut strips of two different blues diagonally across to form the mountain peak.

Be sure that the different widths of the two blues are lined up together and pinned when you stitch through all three layers of fabric.

After they are stitched, fold back the upper blue and finger press it down to hide the stitching.

Then pin on the next layer of color, onto the opposite side of the lighter blue one, and again, stitch through all three layers.

Once it is stitched, as you can see it is in the above shot (click on any picture to enlarge it), then you may flip it open, to again hide the stitching, and finger press it open.

Keep building the layers of the mountain evenly, but have fun and do not obsess about making everything perfect. Mountains are, after all, organic, LOL!

I chose to show the summer season with a meadow green at the base of Mount Washington. Be sure that your green strip is plenty fat enough to cover over all of that base corner once it is flipped.

Do not worry that all of the fabric strips hang over the edge of the white foundation fabric, they are supposed to do that for now.
Next we do the sky color at the top of Mount Washington, which matches the pale turquoise blue of the sky beyond the large pine tree in the section we did earlier.

Again, be sure that you've cut a big enough hunk of the pale turquoise sky color to cover over that white area of the foundation when it is sewn on and then folded over.

Now you should have the two mirror images with all the white foundation fabric completely covered up. Take the two block-sections and flip them over to reveal the "wrong" side and rotary trim them to match the edges of the white foundation fabric.

Place the two sections into a mountain arrangement beside the pine tree and sew them together.

I chose a very dark richly saturated purple for the lettering of the words, "New Hampshire." In the photos, it looks black, but it really is purple!

 It stands for our State Flower, just now in bloom, the common lilac. To adhere the letters, I just followed the instructions for some Pellon Wonder-Under, which is a paper-backed fusible web.

You fuse the bumpy side of the web to the wrong side of the fabric for 5 seconds, then cut your shapes of the letters. Peel off the paper from the wrong side of the letter shapes, position them and heat set for 12 seconds with a damp pressing cloth. Be careful not to cut out a letter backwards. I used an exacto knife on a cutting board for the tiny windows of the letters that needed cut-outs in them.

New Hampshire is a lovely place with lovely people. I hope you get to visit us someday! If that is not possible, perhaps you will make your own version of the New Hampshire block for the 50 states quilt.
These American Made Brand fabrics are superb quality and the colors in the solids are rich and even. I highly recommend them! I hope you will continue to support American workers by asking for these fabrics in your local quilt shops.

Please leave a comment for the giveaway. In the meantime, Happy Quilting!