BAMQG Sew Day

I finally made it to a Sew Day at the new BAMQG location.

Gerre emailed me while I was in Portland and asked if I was going. I thought ‘why not?’ and Gerre was willing to sew with me again. Even though the YM is home and lounging around, he is old enough to be alone and didn’t want to come with.  Why would he? He would be bored.

It was fantastic! I was thrilled to be there and thrilled to be sewing. Gerre brought the Orange T quilt and it is finished. I have to take some photos and then I will post a finished photo.

Simply Moderne
Simply Moderne

We had a great time sewing and chatting and working on our quilt. We had decided to work on a circle quilt as a donation quilt. We got the inspiration from Simply Moderne magazine. I was attracted by the cover and bought an older issue at QuiltCon.

Pushed Neutral Background
Pushed Neutral Background

We started out by cutting the background pieces in the Pushed Neutral technique I learned from Mary Mashuta 1,000 years ago.

I brought the neutrals and Gerre brought the foreground fabrics, though we didn’t know it would end up that way.

We had talked about using greens, so I brought my green bins along with my beige and brown bin (which thankfully is almost empty). We pulled out the last of my light and tolerable beiges and cut them into 10″ squares and put this together as a background.

Circle cutting ruler in use!
Circle cutting ruler in use!

Gerre then showed me some plaids she had and we decided to use the plaids instead of greens and make a boy quilt. We cut circles using both the Go cutter than Pati brought (with her circle template!) and my newish circle cutting ruler.

I wielded the circle ruler while Gerre took over the Accuquilt Go! I only had my normal 45mm rotary cutter and I think it would have worked better with a smaller cutter. I only have one of those and it was at home, so I did the best I could. I may need a new blade after cutting the circles.

We decided not to have a lot of large circles, because the size of our quilt was smaller than the example we saw in the magazine and we didn’t want the entire surface to be covered.

Circles on background
Circles on background

After putting the background together we laid out the circles on the background. I didn’t take a picture of that stage so you have to be satisfied with the photo on the right.

We decided we had to do the quilt in layers so that we could sew around a whole circle and not have to stop and start.

We didn’t bring fusible so we glued the first layer of circles down on the background, pressed it and then Gerre sewed.

Circle donation quilt back
Circle donation quilt back

While she sewed, I worked on the pieced background.

The fish and leaf fabric is OLD! The selvedge says “Sykel Enterprises 1993.” I don’t even know if Sykel exists anymore. It is certainly no Moda or Kaufman. I am sure TFQ could tell me where I bought it. 😉

It was in the brown bin and good for a boy quilt. I also had about a yard, which was a great start. It was in two pieces, so I added the strip in the middle. We also cut off a strip so we could see about applique’ing some of the motifs somewhere on the quilt. The center plaids are a couple Gerre brought.

First layer circles sewed
First layer circles sewed

We were able to sew the first layer down. These were the largest circles.

We don’t intend to necessarily go from largest to smallest, but we wanted to start with the largest.

So far, it doesn’t look like much, but the next layer (no photo) looks better.

Stay tuned.

Author: Jaye

Quiltmaker who enjoys writing and frozen chocolate covered bananas.

6 thoughts on “BAMQG Sew Day”

  1. I have the same circle cutting ruler and have to say it could be better. I used the smaller cutter (28mm), but it was still a struggle. The blade doesn’t come out as far from the blade guard as the thickness of the ruler and I had a hard time pushing it through to cut the fabric. Also, the arches moved, and some circles were not quiet circle enough 🙂
    Your quilt is coming along nicely!

    1. I was wondering about that as well. I will try it with the smaller cutter and see how it works. I think they must have needed to make the slit past the circle (on the left in the photo above) a little longer.

      I do want to put some True Grips on the bottom as it is a slidey ruler.

    1. I am not a beige fan. You might have noticed. 😉 I have even stopped buying greys that tends towards taupe or beige. I would rather use red or a clear grey or a turquoise for a background.

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