Donation Blocks for This Teal’s on Fire
June 2023
Once again, Kate over at Tall Tales from Chiconia is preparing an Ovarian Cancer charity quilt for the Trudy Crowley Foundation fund-raiser to be held later this year (in Australia). The theme for this year’s donation quilt is This Teal’s on Fire, a play on words of the Bob Dylan song This Wheel’s on Fire. The idea is to create the impression of a flicker of flame on teal ‘wheels’ across the quilt.
I’ve been wanting to try my hand at making New York Beauty blocks, so this gave me the perfect opportunity! I have to say, I got a lot of enjoyment out of making these blocks. I haven’t done curved piecing before – other than in garment sewing – nor have I had much experience with Y-seams. Both were a new and interesting learning process. I consider myself fairly proficient at math, but the geometry involved in arcs wearies my brain! The first block I created was the one that needed the Y-seams, so in addition to trying to get a handle on the geometry for the arcs, I also had to get the Y-seams lined up correctly. Yikes. There was a lot of time spent with Jack. However, this wasn’t the only block that required adjustments, and readjustments to the seams to get everything to work out. Alas, I have to say, I learned quite a lot along the way, and feel a bit more confident in making New York Beauty blocks.
I participate in this group quilt project each year in honor of my sister who had breast cancer and her sister-in-law that had ovarian cancer.
And, TADA! Here’s This Teal’s on Fire.
Love Hugs 
We’re glad to have you on the team! As I said in my email to you, these 4 blocks are going to be a major feature in the quilt, and now that others have begun to trickle in, I’m starting to have *ideas* on how best to arrange everything. Congratulations on getting to grips with the geometry of the thing; I’m going to go the cop-out route and use foundation paper piecing to assemble my NYB, using four 6″ blocks to create one whole ‘wheel’. Wish me luck!