For the past week I have been trying to make this quilt top work.  It just doesn’t want to play nicely.  The blocks are paper foundation pieced, which means no design wall.  Crawling around on the floor is not conducive to inspiration for me.   I set it up, walk away for a day and the next time I look at it, it’s still not working.  I think it’s just too scrappy, I should have made the blocks with more consistent shading.  Something like all the inner squares light and the outer triangles dark or medium shades.  In the beginning I was looking to create an ocean of waves, sparkling with the many blues of water and wave and light.  I don’t think its a total loss though, I will sew it together and maybe with some strong quilting lines it will “gel”.  The last picture on the right is the final mock-up.

Last week I also worked on a T-shirt quilt with a friend.  Her daughter is in a sorority at San Diego State.  When they graduate, they have a tradition of making quilts out of their t-shirts.  My friend has been dreading making this quilt for the past few years, as she doesn’t sew and really wants to make it special for her daughter.  There is a whole presentation ceremony that goes along with this sorority tradition, as you can imagine.  We had a fun and stress free afternoon cutting out the shirts and stabilizing them.  She was in charge of the iron and I did the rotary cutting.  I asked her if she’d like to cut, but she was happy to iron.  She did the layout too.  I am going to add lavender sashing and a burgundy colored minky backing, the quilting is a simple bird (their mascot is a dove) with loopy flowers.

On my design table this week is a baby quilt for one of my Dh’s associates at work.  The pattern is from Carrie Nelson’s book “Schnibbles” called Reveille.  This is the small version, but I added nine more blocks, as the original quilt finishes at 37 inches square.  The fabric is a really cute collection called Stellar Baby.  I used most of a layer cake and about a yard of white to make these 6 3/4 inch square blocks and the border.

This week ended on an up-beat though despite the chaos on my floor, I hope to have the S@S quilt put together this week.

I’m linking up with Judy at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts for Design Wall Monday.  Check out her pretty Valentine Day quilt!

 

I finished quilting the Farmers Wife quilt the week before I went on the retreat.  I had some time to square it up and bind it this past Saturday.  First I needed to make 11 yards of binding, I thought I might go with scrappy, like the inner border.  I still had a bunch of scraps left from piecing this top.  But finally decided to use the left over backing scraps, which were already in long lengths and just needed to be cut into 2 1/4 inch widths.  I usually machine sew my bindings, I think the last one I hand bound was the Hampton Ridge Sampler (pictured below, un-quilted) two years ago.  Which also happens to be on my bed at the moment 🙂

My method is to cut the strips 2 1/4 inches wide, fold them in half and press them well.  Then I machine sew them to the back side with a 1/4 inch allowance.  Then I wrap the binding to the front, clip it with the magic clover clips and sew it down with a straight stitch about 1/16 of an inch in.  Neat and tidy, a bit faster too.

Getting back to the Farmer’s Wife quilt, I used apple green Kona to sash and border it. Tiny assorted squares break up the sashing and a border of 2 inch squares goes all around.  Those details are here The Last Monday of March , funny that it’s almost a year ago, but things get done, eventually 🙂 . Pictured below are most of my individual blocks, I made one or two a week for a year. I quilted it with a pretty simple pantograph, leaves and loops.  I couldn’t begin to think about individually quilting each block.  Many of them have lots of seam lines and tiny pieces, plus after finishing RD&G, a simple computer design was in order.  The quilt is so bright and cheery, I think I’m going to leave it on my bed for a while, especially as we have rain in our forecast for the rest of the week.

 

 

I’m steadily working on the Storm at Sea quilt made from assorted blue batiks.  I’m paper foundation piecing it, so its slow going.  My consolation will be at how perfectly all the points match up 😉

 

Linking up with Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict  for “Can I Get a Whoop Whoop” today.

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This week I have been working on the “Inner Circle” quilt pattern by Modern Quilt Studio.  I made my striped fabric panels, carefully ironed all the seams open and printed out the 35 sheets that make up the templates for cutting out the circles.  As I was cutting the circles out of me fabric, I thought to myself, these are not going to be fun to set into the background with the machine.  No, not at all.  What the pattern has you do is make two panels of contrasting stripes, cut the circles out of one, then cut corresponding holes in the other panel.  It then gives instructions to machine sew them together, matching all the seams.  This step was not going to happen on my version.  I consider myself a pretty good piecer and would much rather piece by machine than hand stitch.  But this quilt was telling me that those circles should be appliquéd on top and the underneath fabric cut away.  

I carefully pressed the 1/2 seam allowance under and used a bit of Elmers school glue to keep it folded under.  Then I pinned every stripe together, keeping it straight and true.  Hand sewing took a few hours, and made me think of an appliqué  UFO that has been languishing, maybe if I got it out I could work on it.  My hand work has been knitting for the past 8 months, but summer is coming, and I just don’t like to knit as much in the summer.  MQS has a YouTube video Inner Circle Tutorial on how to assemble this quilt their way, Bill Ringle makes it look easy.  For me, appliqué is easier, not quite as fast, but my resulting quilt looks good to me.

 I was able to use some of the left over circle stripes to add length to the backing.

Then, I got it on the frame, and started the E2E pantograph I choose for it.  Its called “Feathers and More” by Nancy Haacke of Wasatch Quilting .  Only 10 more rows to go, but it’ll wait, tomorrows another day.

Linking up with Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for todays “Can I Get Whoop Whoop?”

Thanks for reading.

Last week I spent six days at the Empty Spools seminars in Asilomar (Pacific Grove) CA.  The class I took was called Taking Shape, and was led by Cathy Doughty of Material Obsession near Sydney Australia.  For five days we explored color, fabric patterns and design all while using 60 degree angles.  Hexagons, diamonds and triangles were the shapes of choice.  I brought along a fat quarter collection of Cotton and Steel from 2014, and a few other sort of modern prints I had.  All cool colored tones and small scale prints.  Cathy’s fabric lines are all about Australia, big, bright, organic shapes, aboriginal dots and motifs,  and the color pallet of that country.  So beautiful, I bought some to make a quilt with on my own.  The class was about designing a quilt on the fly, no pattern is needed, because all the pieces fit together one way or another.  For me, I needed a little bit of an outline so to speak.  I came up with a gem shape made up of triangles and hexagons.  Then I made six of these shapes, put them into a star shape and then filled in the center with diamonds

 

The outer space is currently set in trapezoids using the woven striped fabric.  I want to add a few more shapes, probably appliquéd to the background and a 2 inch border around the star.  Then finish with a 4 inch triangle border using up the scraps from the inner star fabrics.

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My design wall at home is covered in the second part of the Modern Quilts Illustrated pattern “Inner Circle”.  I need to iron the seams open, thats why it has a bit of a curve to it.  I am liking the contrasts between the light and dark pieces as seen in the photo to the right.  Next up is cutting these big pieces into large circles.

 

Linking up today with Judy at Small Quilts and Doll Quilts for Design Wall Monday.

Thanks for stopping by!

I finished quilting DR&G yesterday.  YAY!  I am so glad its done.

The purple marker will be gone it a few days, it’s been humid here, so it stays visible longer.  I tried to quilt each block differently, most of them have ruler work to accent the angles and break up the big spaces.  I finished this top on March 11th 2016, this post Red and White All Over has all the numbers and stats for it.  Funny, I don’t really remember making all those HST’s, but I’m glad I did, as they really make this quilt sing.  Now on to the binding.

Linking up today with Sarah at Confessions of a Fabric Addict for “Can I get a Whoop Whoop?”  and while I’m at it,  Crazy Mom Quilts for Finish it up Friday.