I have a lot of fabric to press and cut, especially since I washed several yards the other day. I am determined to get busy on FOTY 2015 early in the year. It won’t be until at least February as I won’t be able to sew on most weekends in January. That means no sewing. I wonder what I will write about?
I digress.
I want to do FOTY 2015 early in the year so there is less overlap with FOTY 2016. I am not sure how that will go as this is all the progress I have made since the November 16 post. I should go and count my patches to see how many I had. I really don’t want a repeat of cutting down all the patches like I did for FOTY 2014.
I finished Fabric of the Year 2014 yesterday. I had the quilt done, but took my sweet time in sewing on the sleeve.
It has some similarities to FOTY 2013, namely the light in the middle. I wanted to try to recreate that glowing aspect again.
The back was one of the easiest I have made. Almost no drama, especially since one piece of fabric made almost the entire back. I added the solid so that large motifs didn’t run against each other when I sewed them. I thought it would look too jangly.
Fabric of the Year 2014 Back – Completed
I liked pieced backs, but am very happy when I don’t have to piece too much.
I mentioned cutting some pieces for the EPP. When I cut those pieces I also cut patches for the FOTY 2015. This group is, thus, really heavy on the colored dots on white.
I’ll need more colored dots on white for the EPP project so you’ll see more of these types of fabrics.
My DH actually ironed pants when I wasn’t home and messed up a bunch of my fabric. I had to re-iron some of my pieces. I decided I needed to get busy and cut and file some of those fabrics. Thus, I have also been working through cutting the fabrics from my ironing board.
I have been making an effort to cut up fabric I have washed and ironed, so I have another batch to show you.
Some of these are from projects. The black/white print in the middle is from a skirt I had made. The black/white print with the Caesar busts was included in the Red & Black Improv quilt.
Some of the colored fabrics are from the Carpenter’s Wheel quilt blocks.
The rest are new.
When I was fixing the photo above for posting, I realized that I could put the quilt together with the rectangles arranged in a horizontal manner. What do you think?
Another thing I did on PlayDay was to cut up my Ta Dots fat quarters into 10.25″ squares. I did this in anticipation of making half square triangles. As I did that cutting, I took the opportunity to cut up a lot of FOTY 2015 quilt rectangles.
I am not planning on letting these patches lay around all year next year. I am working on cutting pieces I need for various projects from the yardage I have pressed and plan on working on this piece early in the year.
Note that I said “plan”. We’ll see how it goes.
This plan was set in motion by my need to cut a lot of different fabrics for the HSTs and Flying Geese I needed for the Carpenter’s Wheel. The Ta Dots HSTs were an added bonus. Getting fabric off of the ironing board has made me feel like I am making progress, even if I am just cutting.
The black and white stripe at the bottom is one of the stripes that will be used as the other half of the HSTs.
I finally got down to cutting some fabric, especially working on the pillowcases last weekend. You can see all sorts of different projects in this group. This is a good thing as it means I am actually using fabric. Yes, there are some fabrics that will go into the stash. I am working on using fabrics. I really am.
In between other stuff, I spent a lot of time over the weekend sewing the FOTY 2014 patches together. This quilt top has been languishing much too long. I felt like I had a layout that I liked.
There are over 350 patches that have to be removed sewn and put back in order to keep the piece in order. I put a leader/ender in between each set of patches to make it easier to keep the FOTY patches straight in my head.
In the course of sewing the patches together, I also made 19 Octagon 9 Patches and 14 donation blocks. Not shabby for ‘found blocks’.
FOTY 2014 – Patches in 9s & 12s
I thought it was impossible that I would get it done. I got to the point where all the patches were sewn into sets of 8 and I was very happy with that. The other night I sewed those sets together, which took much less time, but required much more fiddling, because of the nesting of seams.
The piece looks together now, but it is in sets of 9 or 12 patches. I am carefully chunking all the sets in order to avoid those long seams and to nest the seams more precisely. My goal is to get the top done before Saturday, so I can show it off at the BAMQG meeting. Wish me luck!
Sometimes a little whining goes a long way. I got down to business after my last FOTY 2014 post and am now sewing the piece together. Yes, the piece is arranged to my satisfaction and I am on to the sewing part.
My driving force: I need all the pieces to be on the design wall. At the moment the very top and very bottom row are hanging off. I also want the whole thing off the design wall and in the hands of Colleen. I need to move on to other projects. I need the design wall for other projects.
Is the piece perfect?
No.
Will I ever make a perfect piece in this series?
Probably not.
Will I keep trying?
Yes.
FOTY 2014: Final Layout
Before I started sewing, this photo shows the piece as it was laid out in the configuration in which I decided to piece it.
I worked on the layout for hours yesterday and then after I started making dinner, I deliberately did not look at it.
When I got back to my workroom the following day, I decided to look at it and rearrange the patches.
These quilts will never have a perfect gradation. The nature of the fabric, the color combinations in the fabrics and the motifs as well as contrast make perfect gradation difficult. Still, I have done a good job with the parameters of my challenge and I am pretty happy with the layout.
Some process photos. You have to look carefully to see the differences because they are subtle, but that is part of the process:
I have almost had enough of this piece. Something drastic has to happen.
FOTY 2014 -Early September
I had a couple of choices on projects to work on and FOTY 2014 was one of them. I took this picture on Thursday as a baseline for the weekend.
The piece has looked like this for a long time and it isn’t a bad look, but it isn’t finished either.
The red and pink look pretty good. The green area needs a lot of work and the purple is simply missing.
I decided to do one small thing as one small thing often leads to larger things, so I counted up all the patches, then I worked on figuring out how large the piece needed to be. I *think* the piece needs to be 16 rows tall by 26 rows wide. At the moment the piece is 15 rows tall by 24 rows wide. Easy to add two more rows?
No.
Some FOTY 2014 Work – early Sept.
I got busy and started moving things around until I got to this point. The whole piece is filled in, which is a good thing. The green area still looks terrible, but it could be worse. The bad part is that there are 40+ patches on the floor. I have crammed some into the bottom rows, which is fine, but also not fine. I had to face reality that 26 x16 rows does not fit on this does wall and I need to do something else.
I really need all the pieces on the design wall in order to arrange the pieces the way I want them. I can’t just put the pieces up on the wall and sew them together and have a piece that I like.
I don’t seem to be able to think of very many options except to trim all the piece. The rectangles are large (5″x3″) and if I trim a 1/4″ off each side that will cut the size down and, perhaps, enable me to get all the pieces on the wall. I cut the rectangles that size to have them be 4.5″ x 2.5″ once sewn together and I kind of want them to be that size. I could cut them down to squares and forget my rectangle idea all together. I did squares for FOTY 2013 and I don’t think I want to do them again another year in a row.
The end of July has come and gone, which means that I didn’t make my original deadline. Still, I got back to the design wall over the weekend and worked on this piece. I decided to move all of the reds down towards the bottom, which meant touching almost every piece as I shifted the rectangles clockwise.
The biggest problem I have now is that I have a stack of blues that don’t fit on the design wall. I need to add them to the 9 o’clock position and there are many more than the 10 or so that look like they will fit. I need all of the pieces on the design wall so I can work with them all at once.
I may do some overlapping, but I definitely have to count the patches I have and figure out the size of quilt I need to make. Then I can figure out what I need to add to my design wall to design this quilt.
The other night after starting to arrange the patches for FOTY 2014, I was laying in bed and thinking about the arrangement and wondering what it would look like if I alternated light and dark for the whole thing instead of gradating the colors? This is where my mind goes when I am trying to go to sleep.
I didn’t have an equal amount of lights and darks in this batch, but I made an effort to do the light and dark arrangement just to see what it would look like. To get an idea.
Shockingly this is the first FOTY 2015 post. I have been cutting squares and rectangles, but, clearly, have not posted them.
I am not sure why since I have been cutting since late March or early April. I know the problem hasn’t been too much content. I guess I must have forgotten to post.
I have to admit that I am behind in the FOTY projects. This has been a weird year and I am ok with my slow progress. I think I’ll pick up speed later. A girl can dream anyway.
FOTY 2015 – April 2015
I know that you see some food fabrics in the top photo, but not all. I didn’t have enough of some of them to cut pieces. Sad, but not a complete tragedy. I might get more.
Yes, I have cut off FOTY 2014 and started in on FOTY 2015. I have yet to put FOTY 2014 together, but that task is coming soon. I have to clear off some of the ‘debris’ before I start on another project as design wall intensive as the FOTY quilts tend to be. At the moment, both design walls are filled with other projects.
The important part is that it is 2015 and FOTY 2015 is in progress. I had a number of pieces of fabric that I had pressed, but hadn’t cut into, so those fabrics were the start of this version of the series. Also, with all of the sewing I did on Sunday, I had a lot of squares of ‘previous’ fabrics to add to the stack.
FOTY 2015 Annotated
I decided that I liked the idea I used in FOTY 2012 where I had smaller patches for fabrics already in my stash that I pulled out in that year. This time, the sizes will be a little different: 5.5″ x 3″ rectangles and 3″ x 3″ squares. They should fit together nicely.
I have already had the first batch of patches on the design wall and taken them off again and started on the second. We are off to an excellent start!
I brought this quilt to the last BAMQG meeting and someone was shocked that I had only finished 2013 not 2014. I have barely finished cutting for Fabric of the Year 2014 and have not yet begun to arrange the pieces. Fabric of the Year 2015 is now a glimmer in my sight as well. I seem to have two or three of these going at once. I wonder how I keep them all straight?
Anyway, the process is a bit arduous. Cutting the fabric patches takes me all year. I take the time to get a sense of what I bought and used during the year. Then I have to arrange the patches into the top I want, then I have to sew, make the back, binding & sleeve and get the piece quilted. This all takes time. So, yes, just now this is Fabric of the Year 2013 finished. Stay tuned for the others. 😉
There were a lot of firsts in this quilt. This was the first time I arranged the pieces from the center out starting with white/lights. This process was also the first time I heavily used my camera as a tool to arrange the patches. I took a lot of pictures, converted them to black and white and rearranged according to the value indicated in the black & white photo. If a patch stuck out, I moved it. Of course, I didn’t move purple patches into the green section. Some of the patches look odd if you look at the piece close, but standing back the placement works. The gradation is a big improvement.
Fabric of the Year 2013 (back)
The back is a couple of Philip Jacobs prints. I got some comments that they clashed, but I like the boldness. I also used the wrong fabric for the sleeve! I got two quilts back at the same time and used the edge of the Russian Rubix, that was cut off to square up the quilt, instead of the edge of the Fabric of the Year 2013. Oh well. At least people can see the sleeve.
I am pleased that this one is done. As of this quilt, I have no (yes, NONE) quilts at the quilter. Of course, the Tarts Come to Tea is still in the process, but that is a story for another day…
