As usual, I started my Fabric of the Year 2011. I made good progress, but I did not finish.

Before I left for the Retreat, I spent time organizing the patches into color families and then from light to dark. Normally, I figure out the size of the finished piece and do more organizational stuff. No time this year and it was fine.

Once at the Retreat, I spent a lot of time – all day Friday – arranging the color gradations. I got opinions from others about the placement of certain patches. I used my camera to look at the patches in a different way and it was a useful tool in my arsenal of work. Above you can see the progression. The top left is pretty soon after I put all the patches on the wall. The last photo, bottom left, is, basically, what I took home.

I had to pin and wrap the pieces in the portable design wall. I set it up in my workroom and am working on it.

I am glad of the progress I made it on it at the Retreat, but I prefer to work in my workroom. As I started work on Monday, I felt an ease come over me and the work began to go very well. I hope to be done sooner rather than later. Stay tuned.

Mid-December Triangles

I am trying different arrangements of triangles for show. The previous arrangements have left so much design wall space in the photos. It took me awhile to cut enough triangles for this photo as I concentrated on the Stepping Stones top.

Many of the fabrics are from Camille Roskelley’s Ruby line. I have stacked them up as I search for suitable project for them. I have almost decided I will do another Stepping Stones quilt, though perhaps I will scale it down a bit as how many 100×80 quilts does a person need?

This may be the last batch of triangles as I have to start organizing them in preparation for sewing them at the CQFA retreat.

Late November Triangles

I am making an effort to cut and press fabric so I am ready for sewing the FOTY 2011 quilt. I have started to arrange the squares by color so they look good in the photo. Vanity, I think.

FOTY 2011 - Mid November

I can’t believe I haven’t posted triangles since mid September! But it’s true. I haven’t posted triangles since mid-September. I guess if I had actually pressed fabric in the past 2 months, then I wouldn’t be so behind.

It turns out that I have to press fabric, because the chair I lay the fabric over while it waits to be press keeps falling over. I spent a few hours on Sunday, after finishing a big project pressing and cutting the bits and snippets I need for various projects. I got quite a little pile going after not too long. I think the chair is a bit more stable now, but I just need to get the fabric pressed. AND stop buying new fabric.

Mid Sept Triangles

Mid September already! The CQFA Retreat has been set, so now I have a working deadline. I am pretty good in the fabric washing department. The cutting of triangles for fabrics I have used this year (already in my fabric closet) has been spotty. I am not going back to make that up and will try and do better. No promises. It will be what will be.

Early Sept. FOTY Triangles

Despite my misgivings, I am plowing ahead with my plan to cut triangles until such time as I have a new plan.

Mom and Lil  Sissy were over when I took this picture. Lil Sissy almost had a heart attack when I started to take the pieces off the wall. She didn’t realize that it was part of the process!

The process for making the FOTY quilts really lasts all year long. I don’t get to the sewing until the following year, usually, but I cut and arrange all year long. My process for working on the FOTY quilts is:

• Buy fabric
• Wash fabric
• Press fabric
• Cut pieces, including triangles from fabric
• Put triangles on the wall
• Photograph triangles
• Remove triangles
• Repeat.

FOTY Triangles - Late 8/2011

Bad news. I don’t think I like this triangle shape. What I really want to do is kind of row quilt like the Fons & Porter Kalamkari Strippy. I like the space between the rows, though you can’t see it very well in the size information they provide. Still, I want to be true to the idea of the Fabric of the Year quilts and continue with that series. The bottom line is that I have too many triangles to make that quilt unless I want to make one to cover half of San San Francisco – the City not the people in it!

I considered, briefly, cutting squares out of the all the fabric already cut into triangles. I like the idea of simple shapes and may have just gone too far this year in the shape department. That would cause a problem for the smaller triangles. I know myself and would not pull the fabrics out again to cut squares.

The other idea I had was to intersperse light colored or neutral triangles in between the colored ones so that I can give the fabrics some space.

I think I have decided to lay all the triangles out and see what I am really dealing with and go from there. I may lay them all out on the Pat Bravo Pure Elements white linen solid color fabric and see if I get the space effect I want.

I can’t leave you all fretting and worrying. There is good news. I am almost at the end of the giant pile of fabric needing to be pressed. My machine is back, though, so that effort will be slowed a bit. I do have a pile of fabric to be washed that will also need to be pressed, but for the zillion loads of fabric I did at the beginning of the month, I am almost through it. More good news is that the fabrics on the bottom of the pile had sort of pressed themselves!

FOTY Triangles mid-8/2011

I continue to cut triangles for the Fabric of the Year 2011 quilt. I have many fabrics that need to be pressed, so it is a continuing process. My sewing machine is back, temporarily, so my pressing has slowed down a bit.

Early August 2011 Triangles

I am making progress on the pressing and cutting and you can see the quilt that is next in line from the fabrics I have cut. The design wall is getting to be too small these days iwth so many large blocks taking up space.

FOTY 2011 Triangles

The triangle collection is growing, but not fast enough. The halfway mark for the year is long past and I have piles of fabric to wash and cut. Sigh.

I pressed a bunch while I was on the phone over the weekend. Being on the phone is an excellent time to press fabric. Get yourself a headset and try it out.

Still I have to cut the bits I need for various projects, too and I am behind on that. I realized that part of what was holding me up was the difficult to read list of patches I need to cut, so I have to redo that. Hopefully, that little project will speed up my process.

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FOTY Triangles, also late July 2011

After writing the above, I got busy pressing and cutting. I have a much larger collection of triangles now and a slightly smaller pile of fabric to press and cut. I got into a routine and ended up getting a lot of prep work done for the Food Quilt.

All the fabric I bought is now washed and just waiting to be pressed.

Lorajean's Flags

I was looking through my Flickr Feed when I came across this quilt of Lorajean’s. Remember my Flickr trick from ResearchBuzz? My eyes nearly popped out of my head for a couple of reasons.

• this is one of the layouts I am thinking about for my FOTY 2011 quilt with the triangles. While she is making it look more scrappy than I would, she has the idea.
• this is a fresh and fun piece
• the red really moves your eye around the quilt

I was thinking this morning that, perhaps I would lay the quilt out in a similar way to Lorajean’s, but focus each row on a different part of the color wheel and then within the row, I would colorwash the colors. I want to use Kona white or Kona Snow in this piece to give the fabrics some space. I’ll have to look at that and see if it works. Seeing Lorajean’s piece above makes me think it might. I know I have many more pieces to include than she has included in her quilt.

I also thought of making a two sided row with a thin strip in between so that some of the triangles are pointing and some are pointing down like Lorajean has done.

You can see Lorajean’s blog and this particular post about this top. The site has a very nice tone and some great posts. Aside from the pennant quilt posts, I really liked a post in which Lorajean talks about making a Harry Potter themed doll for her daughter. She does a lot of different crafts and the photos on her blog are well presented. Take a look at her site, leave her a comment and let her know you saw her top featured here at Artquiltmaker!

Fabric of the Year 2010 Professional

I promised, in the completed project post,  to post the professional photo of FOTY 2010 once I got it back. Here it is.

I am really please with the way the photo came out. You can really see the quilting well.

This quilt is off tomorrow to hang in the show. Hope you can see it.

FOTY Triangles, early July

I have been making a big effort to press the fabric that I have washed recently. First it is really uncomfortable to sit and sew with a big pile of fabric poking me in the back. Also, I felt so guilty last time TFQ was down as she spent hours on her feet pressing my fabric. Of course, I greatly appreciate it, but I’d like to avoid the guilt this time.

I have been trying to press fabrics, in general, in groups based on how I am thinking of using them. I may not end up using these all together, but that is in my mind now. Most of these fabrics are from a Piece O’Cake group called Daisies and Dots. I am not liking it as much as I thought I would. I do like the dots, of course, but some of the designs make me realize I have to be more discriminating when I pick fabric. I am looking for a project for this group at the moment.

FOTY 2010

Yes, Fabric of the Year 2010 is finished. I took it to the photographer today so that it can be professionally photographed before it goes to the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles Show. This is not a great picture, because the quilt is too large for my quilt holder (DH) to hold it out straight. I will replace it when the professional photos come back.

FOTY-Small June Triangles

I liked the way this group of colors looked together. Even though I didn’t have enough to really make a large picture, I thought this was worth showing. It makes me think about how I want to arrange the triangles.