Early November Diamonds

Early Nov. Diamonds
Early Nov. Diamonds
Early Nov. Diamonds-light
Early Nov. Diamonds-light

I have been cutting like a possessed person. I am very anxious about getting all the pieces cut for this quilt, FOTY 2010. I am doing pretty well. The pile of fabrics to cut is slowly shrinking, but I do have another stack fo fabric to wash, which is followed by the need to cut.

I also need to figure out what fabric I am going to use for the edge. I was thinking one color for corners and edge, but perhaps I will just make it scrappy? That might be harder, since I don’t know what fabrics will go on the edge. We’ll see, I guess.

Late October Diamonds

Late October 2010 Diamonds
Late October 2010 Diamonds

These have been on my design wall for, what seems like, weeks. I have been and out of town for work and neglecting my patch cutting. I need to get going, as I have said numerous times. I am in town for the rest of the year, as far as I know now, so I should be able to spend many weekends cutting and pressing.

What looks like a view into my design wall is actually a white on white print. It looks really strange in the group, but I bought it so in it goes.

More Diamonds Progressing

Diamonds, Early October 2010
Diamonds, Early October 2010

I find it really interesting how the colors fall as I press and cut. I do rearrange the diamonds on my design wall, but I generally just grab the next fabric, press and cut. Sometimes, I decide I don’t want to press one color or pattern just yet. They all have to be pressed, so I don’t do very much selective pressing.

I was amazed at this group, because of all the brown and orange that fell together AND it is the month of Hallowe’en.

Diamonds Progressing

Diamonds Late September
Diamonds Late September

I am pressing and cutting patching like a mad thing. I am progressing, but not fast enough. I have to keep at it. The edges are on my mind at the moment. I think I will buy Fast2Cut ruler from C&T and the diamond edge ruler from Creative Grids. I haven’t received any answers to my inquiries about whether they will work with the diamond ruler I already have, but have to get prepared to sew this quilt together in one weekend.

And More Diamonds

Diamond 8/16/2010
Diamond 8/16/2010

If you thought I was kidding when I said that I had cut a lot of fabric on Monday, you were mistaken. I think that is the way I shed those Crankypants I had been wearing for a week or more.

This group looks a little more light and airy than the last batch. The next group of fabrics I have to press are for the Frosted Stars, so I won’t be cutting diamonds from those until I have used all the fabric I need. I don’t think it will be long. I am almost done cutting fabric for those stars and then I can cut diamonds.

I am getting scared about how big this quilt will be.

More Diamonds

FOTY Diamonds 8/2010-2
FOTY Diamonds 8/2010-2

Here is another batch of FOTY Diamonds. I diligently pressed and cut for a good portion of the weekend. This isn’t a very lively batch. I am working my way through the stack that TFQ pressed and for some reason this is not a cheerful batch.

I have to admit that cutting the patches makes me think about sewing the project together and that prospect makes me a little bit anxiety ridden. I am thinking about using the P&B Fizz as the anchor colors. I still want to do a colorwash with the diamonds, but thought that if I lined them up in color order across the quilt, I could use them to start laying out the piece.

My other idea was to arrange them like a Lone Star and radiate the other fabric diamonds off of them from the center.

For the moment, however, I need to cut diamonds out of my fabric.

Late June Diamonds

Late June Diamonds
Late June Diamonds

I have been cutting and pressing fabrics like a demon lately and here is another group. I have found that this number of diamonds is the right number to photograph, so I have a few more on the wall that will be in the next photo.

One of the things about this group is that there are a lot of the Fizz by P&B fabrics and I am really loving those fabrics. I would love it if they would come out with another dozen colors in between the colors they already have. There are a lot of colors in the group already so that would mean that their colorists would really have to work over time. I would love it if these became a staple background fabric. Fabrics go so quickly out of fashion that I doubt that will happen. I plan to use these fabrics in another Interlocking Triangle quilt.

An idea that occurred to me with these Fizz fabrics is that I could arrange them in a color wheel and then radiate the other diamonds out from them. I think that would make the piecing a challenge, but all ideas are worth considering. It might be a problem with the colors which I don’t buy very often.

I haven’t decided if I am cutting diamonds from the food fabrics for my mom. I am intermittently, so some show up as diamonds and some don’t.

The other thing I am doing is cutting pieces from a few fabrics I have pulled out of the stash. An example is the red at the tip of the diamond. These fabrics have never had a piece cut from them. My project, my rules.

FOTY Diamonds

May FOTY 2010 Diamond
May FOTY 2010 Diamonds

While TFQ was visiting, we had to attend a family event. She was invited, but declined to attend, so she stayed home and rested. One of the things she did while resting was iron the fabrics that I had washed, but had not yet pressed. TFQ is one of the fastest pressers I have ever seen! She made a neat pile for me and I needed to cut various pieces from them. The pile got moved a couple of times during the week because the ironing board needed to be used for the actual pressing of clothes!

I was feeling a bit better on Sunday, and I didn’t want to have repress any of those fabrics so I went to work and cut various patches I needed from these pieces. The main shape I need is diamonds, as you know, for the FOTY 2010 quilt. I also cut some Tumblers and Eye Spy pieces and a few food fabric pieces for my mom.

This is the biggest group of diamonds I have added to the pile thus far. I have to say that there are distinct advantages to cutting into the fabric shortly after I buy it. I have mentioned that it is helpful to know that I like a fabric so I can go and buy more before the fabric manufacturers stop producing it.

The other advantage I found this time was that I know immediately if I don’t like a fabric. There are several in this group that I really don’t like. I have decided that I don’t like little tiny splotchy dots. It could be that the colors of the fabrics with those types of motifs in this group are not my colors. I might feel differently if they were turquoise and hot pink.

I have also been testing the ‘white water’ by buying more fabrics with white backgrounds. I have also decided that there are some fabrics where the ratio of white is too much. I love coffee fabrics, but the coffee cup fabrics above with the white background are really not my thing. Something about the orange and icky green combined with the white do not make me happy.

I also have to admit that I am a little scared of this year’s FOTY quilt. How am I going to do the edge? I don’t want to cut off diamonds, so I’ll have to cut half diamonds of some border fabric and do a self bordering type border. Will I need to organize that well before the CQFA retreat? I think so! Can I do it? I hope so. Yikes! What was I thinking?

More FOTY 2010

FOTY 2010 - March
FOTY 2010 - March

I have made an effort to cut pieces for the FOTY 2010 project. I really want to avoid the massive cutting and sewing I did in January. I just want to be more balanced about the project this year. We will see if my plans work.

As of this moment, I have pressed a lot of fabric, but there are still a number of pieces to cut.

I haven’t done any sewing. That should come as no surprise since I don’t sew until everything is cut.

First Glimpse of FOTY 2010

FOTY 2010 - March 2010Here is your first glimpse of the FOTY 2010 patches. I have pressed a lot of fabric, but haven’t cut it yet. Many of the patches in this photo have been on my design wall for awhile. I have been moving them around so I can see how they look in different arrangements. It is definitely different.

Not different as in “I wish I had chosen something different,” but different in the way I have to think about cutting the patches.

This patch takes a lot of fabric to cut. I like the diamond ruler I bought to help. Once I got the hang of using it, I found it to be quite useful. I am ending up with a lot of triangles and may pick a background and sew them on to squares to make the Corner Store design I discussed in the Pretty Little Mini Quilts review. It would make an interesting sort of scrap quilt. We’ll see.

Starting this cutting process is also making me think about how I will arrange them and set these diamonds. I am thinking of picking something for the border and cutting half diamonds to make a straight edge out of a uniform color. I need to decide if I want to use something I already have or if the “rules” say I have to buy something. Stay tuned.

CQFA Retreat 2010

FOTY Top Complete
FOTY Top Complete

This past weekend was our annual CQFA retreat by the beach. I spent the weekend working on the FOTY 2009. I also relaxed a little even though I spent a lot of time hard at hard sewing. My body is rebelling a bit from sitting so much and standing so much.

Last few FOTY blocks
Last few FOTY blocks

First, I found the last few FOTY blocks on my design wall before I left and I wanted to post a picture of them. I didn’t think I would use the one with the earthy brown (middle row, middle block) on the front, but I ended up using it.

FOTY 2009 in progress
FOTY 2009 in progress

I really worked hard on the piece. As with last year’s piece, there is a lot of sewing and pressing. The process, after I figured out the size and laid the blocks out was to sew two Zanzibar blocks together, press, put back on the design wall, sew two Zanzibar blocks together, press, put back on the design wall and then repeat that process 133 times. Once I sewed sets of blocks together, then I sewed two sets of two blocks together to make a set of four. I did that approximately 67 times. Since I wasn’t in my own workroom I had to walk around my table, past another table and into the corner to get to the iron. The distance was inconvenient, but also good, because it forced me to stretch my body. Putting the top together was a lot of rote sewing, but it was the perfect project for the retreat.

I did a few things differently this year. One was to count up the blocks and try to make a plan as to how I would lay them out before I arrived at the retreat location and was standing in front of my design wall.  I knew I had 225 blocks, so I thought I would lay them out in a 15×15 format. What I didn’t take into the consideration was the size of the portable design wall. If I placed 15 blocks down, 3 of them were on the floor. I didn’t want to work with blocks on the floor even though I could have. It is hard to photograph the in progress piece. It is easy to forget some of the blocks, etc. I reconfigured the layout and ended up with, I believe, 12 down and 19 across. I prefer a rectangular layout anyway so it worked out. I needed another block, however, so the earthy brown one ended up on the front. In the grand scheme, it doesn’t scream brown out of the quilt.

Color Sorting
Color Sorting

I also sorted the blocks. Last year, I think I just put them up in general areas on the design wall and then I had to move them around a lot. This time I sorted the fabrics on the table, put them in Roy G. Biv + white and black order and then put them up on the design wall. This strategy was a lot easier. I didn’t have move such large groups of blocks over and over. I had to move some groups, but the whole process was much easier. Below is a progression of how the piece evolved as I worked on the color:

#1 Blocks on the design wall
#1 Blocks on the design wall
#2 Blocks on the design wall
#2 Blocks on the design wall
#3 Blocks on the design wall
#3 Blocks on the design wall
#4 Blocks on the design wall
#4 Blocks on the design wall

Another thing I did differently this year was ask some of the other retreaters if any blocks stood out to them in an “I am out of place in this quilt” kind of way. Many of the CQFAers are really skilled designers, others are skilled colorists. All of them have something wonderful to offer if I remember to ask and listen.

I was looking at FOTY 2008 last week and found that there were some rectangles I really should have moved. It is by no means a horrible quilt, but I should have played with the layout a bit more. Asking for help was a great strategy, because people mostly liked the color work I did and I got lots of kudos, but some of the blocks jumped out at them. Funnily enough the blocks they noticed, for the most part, did not jump out at me. Almost exclusively, these were blocks that were hard to place – multi-color fabrics, conversationals, light backgrounds almost completely covered by various colors, etc. The CQFA group is great, because they helped me place the problematic blocks to their best advantage. In this way, I also learned.

FOTY 2009 Upper left corner
FOTY 2009 Upper left corner
FOTY 2009 Lower left corner
FOTY 2009 Lower left corner
FOTY 2009 Upper right corner
FOTY 2009 Upper right corner
FOTY 2009 Lower right corner
FOTY 2009 Lower right corner

I spent a good portion of the retreat sewing the quilt top together. Open house at school was today, so I had to leave the retreat early and only got some straps for my next Anna Maria Horner Multi-tasker tote done. I really wanted to stay, but am glad I was able to have a chat with various teachers at school as well. There is always so much to do!

Ideas for FOTY 2010

I know I am not even most of the way finished with FOTY 2009, but I am on to FOTY 2010. I guess I have to keep moving forward.

I mentioned that I was thinking of making a diamond one patch. I looked at the diamond ruler that I have at home and decided that it wasn’t going to work. Mostly because the lines that divide the different sizes of diamonds were too thick to be accurate — at least for me.

I looked at the Creative Grids website and decided to buy this ruler. I’ll see what I think when I receive it.

clipped from www.creativegridsusa.com

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