First Quarter of the Quilters Playcation Rainbow Adventure Sewlong 2024 Blocks

by Judy Tucker

Here are the first 12 blocks of my Rainbow Quilters Playcation Adventure Sew Along hosted by and blocks designed by Cheryl Arkison. You can catch the action at 2 PM Mountain Time (4 PM EST) on her Instagram feed @Cheryl_Arkison. All the blocks are improv. They are also free and you can join in at any time. You can also find them posted later on her YouTube Channel.

My blocks are roughly 9 inches square, but they do vary. So I’m planning to add filler fabric as needed when the time comes to sew the blocks into a quilt.

This is a really fun project. Anyone can do it. Cheryl demonstrated how to make each block on her Tuesday IG lives.

"Making Music" Graphic Tee Quilt Blocks

by Judy Tucker

Here are my four completed blocks for Amy Friend’s Graphic Tee Quilt Along. I’m calling my project “Making Music.” I’m going to use them in a wall hanging rather than making the whole quilt in the quilt along project.

My first block was the drumming dog. My second block was a xylophone playing wolf which got revised because that print wasn’t up to the quality of the other fussy cut motifs.

The drumming dog makes me laugh. My grandfather was a high school principal. When my father was a boy, they had a fox terrier. The dog was not allowed in the school, but their house was only a couple of blocks away, and the fox terrier would occasionally appear at assembly and sing along with the national anthem which amused everyone except my grandfather! (Though I know he had a great sense of humor, so off the record, he probably thought it was funny too).

Peg Doll Corp de Ballet

by Judy Tucker

When friend recently used strips of tulle to wrap up some presents for me, I just couldn’t bear to throw it away. I thought about making a tutu for one of the Waldorf dolls, but then realized the strips were just about the right width to make some peg doll ballerinas.

I folded the strips lengthwise to get the layers. The two outer dolls have 8 layers of tulle. I think that is really too much. The middle doll with the polka dot ribbon has 4 layers of tulle in her tutu. It is just lighter and seems to float a bit compared to the thicker ones. But really, they are all fine.

I made the first tutu hand basting the folded edge to gather the tulle. It slipped and slid a bit and I needed to baste it twice before I caught all the layers. I basted the other two tutus on the sewing machine, using the longest stitch length, and that worked much better. I had to use a 1/4 wide ribbon to hide the gathered edge of the tutu. Once I had the ribbon attached, I cut the lower folded edge of tulle to create the right length for the tutu. Yes, they are almost floor length, but any shorter, there would hardly be any tutu at all! So, a little artist liberty was taken!

These are standard boy size 2 3/8 inch wood peg dolls. I used the boys because girl pegs have sloping sides and the tutu would never have stayed on. I sanded off any roughness in the wood and painted them with Lyra opaque watercolor paint, mixing the tube of white paint with some of the red and magenta watercolor to create this pink.

I painted the hair down from the midline doll’s head to create a center part. Then I added buns on the backs of the the ballerina’s heads by using a slightly darker color to paint a small circle.

After the paint dried, I polished the peg dolls with Three BEEautiful Bees beewax polish. I allowed the polish to soak into the wood, and then buffed it with a scrap of flannel.
Finally I added the facial features with felt tip makers.

It’s been a while since I last made any peg dolls, so this was lots of fun. And it was the perfect way to repurpose those tulle “ribbons”!

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