New Blocks and New Names: Nanu, Nanu? Or Mork and Mindy's Retro Building Blocks?

 Good morning and happy Sunday!  Today marks the beginning of the last week of this weird "summer break" for my family.  My husband hasn't traveled overnight for work since March, all of the usual summer activities were canceled, and yet here we are, preparing for Back to School once again.  Dr. Seuss needs to write us a new book, "How the Grinch Stole Summer Vacation!"  We have Anders' 17th birthday coming up this Thursday (with no party), then Lars gets moved back into his dorm at Appalachian State University next Sunday, and then classes begin for both of them a week from tomorrow.  Anders' senior year high school classes will be completely online "until further notice," and 3/5 of Lars's sophomore Fall semester courses will be online as well, with two small seminar classes meeting in person with social distancing.  It feels as though we're all Whos Down in Whoville, making the best of things after the Coronavirus Grinch tried to steal all our joy!

Okay, I know you guys came here for the quilting!  I've finished two more blocks for my Moda Modern Building Blocks sampler.  This block finishes at 6" in the original Moda quilt, but mine is 5":

And this next block is 12" in the Moda pattern, but mine finishes at 10":

I have one more block that I'm in the middle of cutting and prepping for foundation paper piecing, and piecing this one will be on my To Do list for the upcoming week:

Once that block is completed, there is only one more 15" block left to make for this quilt, so I went ahead and printed up a (rough) rotary cutting chart and foundation paper piecing templates for this block as well.  This is the second block I'm planning to piece this week:

But while I had this quilt project open in EQ8 today, I did some additional revising, changing the borders (again) and swapping out a lot of the 5" blocks.  After piecing that little yellow and black one the other day, I decided that some of the smallest blocks I was planning to make have too many pieces.  Not too many pieces in that I would not be able to piece them, but too many pieces for the scale to look right with the bigger blocks, and too many pieces for me to have enough room to quilt anything interesting on them, and too many pieces to get this quilt finished and on my son's bed before he leaves home to start his own family...  (This is for the son who's about to turn 17).  

This should finish at about 91 1/2" x 101 1/2", or Queen size with a 12" drop (with 10% factored in for quilting takeup and shrinkage).  As you can see, I also revised the borders again, tweaking the width of the border stripes to balance the interior of the quilt better, removing the skinny black borders because, again -- just because I can make something more difficult does not automatically make it better.  And I added little HSTs in the corners, too.  My color palette for this quilt is circa 1980 and my rainbow borders remind me of the suspenders that Robin Williams wore on Mork & Mindy.   I think I'm done tweaking the design of this quilt now, but everything is subject to change until it's finished. 

I miss Robin Williams.  :-(

By the way, Anders is not a fan of the working title "Beware the Ishmaelites" that I'd given his quilt, so now I'm thinking "Mork & Mindy's 'Eighties Building Blocks" or maybe just "Nanu, Nanu!"  But my husband doesn't like THAT name -- he says I'm "dating myself."  Since when did the non-quilters in my family become so opinionated about what I name my quilts?!  Maybe I should just name them all "Here's Your Dumb Quilt No. 1," "Here's Your Dumb Quilt No. 2," "Here's Your Dumb Quilt No.3,"...

This is the original Moda Modern Building Blocks sampler that I started out with:

I've now swapped out 20 of the 48 original blocks, and I redrafted several of the blocks that I kept to remove unnecessary seams that were only there to simplify construction.  I recolored everything with my vintage '80s palette, using Kona Solids.  However, it's still unmistakably a version of the Moda Modern Building Blocks sampler.  I love the mix of different block sizes in the layout and the way that repetition of shapes, block elements, and colors makes the different sized blocks relate to one another.  It's been interesting to play with this design, which is probably why I keep monkeying with it every time I open the project in my software!

Are you a machine quilter, either long arm or domestic machine?  Remember to link up here on Tuesday for the Long Arm Learning linky party!

I'm linking up today's post with:

SUNDAY

·       Frédérique at Quilting Patchwork Appliqué

·       Oh Scrap! at Quilting Is More Fun Than Housework

MONDAY

·       Design Wall Monday at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts  

·       Monday Making at Love Laugh Quilt

·       BOMs Away Katie Mae Quilts  

TUESDAY

·       Colour and Inspiration Tuesday at Clever Chameleon