Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
As I work through some sewjo challenges, I decided to make another Ends donation top. I have already handed in two donation tops this month, but an empty design wall doesn’t work for me.
I had various ends laying around the workroom and slapped a few up on the wall to see if I could make anything.
Ends n.18 was finished in September, so it is time for another one. I want to use a background fabric with the pieces shown, but I haven’t decided what color yet.
Slowly, but surely I am making progress on this green improv donation quilt. I am exclusively using it as leaders and enders so I can finish it for the guild Community Quilts project.
It is about 40 inches wide and I want to make it that long as well. That is about the minimum useful size for a baby quilt, I think.
It is fun to remember quilts and bags I have made with the various fabrics in this piece. I am pleased to be cleaning out the random bits of green, but it is hard going. Piecing ‘made’ fabric takes time.
I have made some progress on the Green Improv #2 donation top. This is the second green improv, though the first one was called The Green Thing. Perhaps I should call #2 The Swamp Creature. LOL!
I started using the green scraps I had already pinned together in the green scrap drawer. It was easy to make progress by using them as leaders and enders while I worked on other projects, such as the Ombre Weave quilt. It is amazing how pieces grow larger if I actually work on them!
it is about 36 inches wide now. I’d like the piece to be minimum 40×40 inches. I don’t really want to put a border on it. I’d like it to matches the other quilts in this series, but I may, if I can’t get it large enough. I was thinking of scattering bits of improv in between sashing. I would want to do that with green solids and I don’t know that I have enough green solids to make the idea work. It is a thought I’ll keep in the back of my mind if I need it.
The grey improv top is looking good! It’s been a few weeks since I talked about this piece. I am very pleased.
Yes, I have made some good progress and I really like the way it is turning out. This piece is approximately 24.5 w x 17.25 tall. I have some sewing to do before it can be considered large enough for a donation quilt. Still, I really like it and it is shaping up nicely.
I am still concerned I won’t have enough scraps to make it large enough. I am trying not to worry about it. Sometimes I can’t help it.
It’s been a few weeks since I talked about this piece. The black pieces are getting larger and my scrap bin is getting emptier.
This is a lot more active than the grey, which you will see in a few days. Those stripes really make this piece dynamic. I think it needs some space for the eye to rest, though. I’ll have to work on that.
Because it can’t really be helped, I have started the Improv color quilts for the black-grey-brown scrap drawer. These miscellaneous pieces will end up being two donation quilts at some point in the Color Improv series.
Ignore the pink and grey 16 patch at the top. Design wall space is at a premium these days.
As you can see I have a lot of black pieces from working on the black strip donation blocks. There is also a slowly growing grey piece that I think has promise. One thing I notice about it is that most of it is made up of squares and rectangles.
I am not sure if I’ll have enough to make two whole quilts, but we will see.
As you have seen when I have made other Color Strip donation tops, they have been followed by an improv version. I have been putting a few pieces together from the black/grey/brown (mostly black and grey) scrap bin, but it isn’t going well.
Well, I have made chunks of improvisationally pieced fabric, but mostly they are unsatisfactory. Also, I am not sure if I have enough small scraps to make three quilts. I also am not sure I want to combine the three colors into one quilt.
The grey piece looks really good and I don’t really want to ruin it. The others are meh.
I am tempted to bring them to the guild and see who wants to work on them.
This quilt has been on my mind since I finished “The Tarts Come to Tea.” It is another quilt in an ongoing, though dormant, series of quilts using novelty fabrics, applique’ and improvisational design.
Most of this design is comprised of piecing and applique’. We used far fewer prints in this piece than in the previous quilts in the series. Some of the flowers were cut out of fabrics, broderie perse style. We used them instead of drawing the flowers and recreating them out of fabric. We did use some florals as sashing and spacing pieces as well.
This is the fourth in the series. Her Eyes Were Bigger Than Her Stomach, the first in the series, was a bit more chaotic than She Had to Have Her Latte. “He Tried” used many fewer novelty fabrics than “Latte“, which was an evolution of design choices in the series. The design required more drawings than the others in the series. I was very pleased with the overall design.
I did a number of the drawings and I was pleased with how well they came out. I was especially pleased with the pitcher of tulips.
I am also pretty pleased with this vase of Star Flowers. I thought putting the star-like shape on top of a circle was a brilliant bit of design work.
I started this with TFQ during a visit to her in Seattle. Most of the fabrics were hers. We didn’t finish it and I don’t know where this quilt top ended up. I think this is why I have been thinking about it. As I said, I like the design, so I am thinking of remaking it. I am NOT thinking of quilting it myself like I did the Tarts Come to Tea.
My Dad has always been a fisherman. He taught me to fish. He still fishes whenever he can, which is often since he retired. I associate fish with him. Every time I see fish fabric, I think of my Dad.
This quilt is in my gallery, but I made it before I started this blog. I never wrote about it in the way I write about other quilts I have made.
Soonish after I bought my Janome MC 9000, in about 1997, I made a quilt for my Dad. I bought some novelty fabrics with fish on them and made a quilt using improv techniques.
One of the reasons I bought the Janome MC 9000 was so I could do machine quilting (shocking, I know). I did machine quilt this quilt. I used an eyelet stitch. That means, I sewed little circles all over the quilt. I chose this stitch, because straight quilting all over the was even too much at that time. I should have known machine quilting wasn’t for me. 🙂
I called this quilt Friday Fishwrap because of some of the fabric I found, which was fish on newsprint. It’s shown on the top of the fabric above.
Since making this quilt, I have made two sets of pillowcases for my Dad. I made the first set a few years ago, in 2015, when my Dad retired. The other set I made this year. They kind of go with the quilt.
I finished another old project. As mentioned, I started this project in 2015, so it is only eight years old. Still, old enough to get on my nerves.
Someone compared my dislike of UFOs to someone I really don’t like who has no UFOs. That annoyed me, because I don’t think I am like her at all. I just don’t find that **my** projects improve by sitting around. I can’t imagine never having any UFOs, but I think they will be projects for which I have cut fabric, but not started sewing. Once I start sewing, it is pretty easy to continue.
I zoomed through the binding on this quilt. Using good fabric really helps. I was pleased I remembered not to use a batik in the binding! I didn’t expect to finish it so quickly, but it went really fast.
This is another quilt that I had returned to me for finishing. This has been a long time in coming. The start of the project was in 2015! I know Rhonda, who was also in my group, was working on hers recently as well.
I probably won’t keep this one, but for the moment I don’t have a recipient. I’ll need to check my Niece-phews list and see if it would be appropriate for anyone on it. I have an idea, but would need to make another for a sibling.
I remember my excitement at using the Queen Street fabric in this quilt. I think the solid turquoise dominates more that Queen Street, though the Philip Jacobs shell fabric is no slouch either.
Queen Street really shines on the back. You can see all the prints, but they aren’t highlighted by piecing.
More binding!
I may not have mentioned that I ripped out all of the Big Stitch quilting on this project. I am preparing it to go to Colleen.
To do so, I had to find some fabric for the binding. I wanted the main turquoise used for the background. I couldn’t find it anywhere.
I did find a slightly darker solid turquoise that I think will frame the piece better than the same color. I know the differentiation is hard to see, but I think you can see that the slight difference looks good for the binding.
I still haven’t done anything with the bits and bobs included by the others who worked on it.
At the last Sew Day Mary and I decided we would make another donation quilt in an hour. Neither of us brought a sewing machine, so we just played around with some blocks and shards that Mom donated.
Mom is clearing out stuff she doesn’t want and quilt projects she won’t finished.
These are not really my style and they are all odd sizes, but we can make them fit together in some way.
We started out by just putting them on the design wall and looking at them. Tim stopped by Sew Day and helped us play around with them. Three brains are definitely better than one.
We got rid of one block that was the same pattern, but just much busier than the others (bottom center block). It didn’t really go. The butterfly was not sewn by my Mom and that one was out, too. I really wanted to put all the blocks in so there were none left, but that isn’t always possible.
We tried spreading out the blocks and imagining other fabrics or blocks in between.
I think it is harder to imagine what could between blocks when you don’t have any extra fabric with which to work. When we did the Improve charity tops, Maria and Cyndi both brought big bins of solids we could use.
Still, we thought we had a good selection of blocks and some possibilities.
We automatically put the largest block in the center, but started talking about not having it in the center. What could we do if we put it somewhere else in the top?
Moving the largest block down and the Ying/Yang blocks (those with the crazy circle fabric prominently placed) to the center made the piece a weird shape, but we liked the location of the blocks better. We will probably cut off the yellow square on the bottom and use the yellow in some other location. We finally started to feel like we were getting somewhere.
Part of the issue is that none of use these types of fabrics. My Mom has a unique fabric selection style that people love and is hard to imitate.
We finally ended up adding some of the leftover purple and lilac squares from the Celestial Squares quilt to bring out the purples in the batik. Those fabrics are unconventional choices, but I think they work.
We have plans to sew it together next time, but we will see.
One of the good things about writing my 26 Projects posts is that I sometimes find projects I forgot to write about. This is one of those times.
I can’t believe I forgot to tell you about the Yellow Improv donation quilt. Yes! I finished it. I was super happy to do so. Peggy already has it and I think someone already decided to quilt it.
I am not fond of those big chunks on the left, but I used every yellow scrap I had so I had to get some yardage out to use.
The piece turned out ok. I am not a huge fan of yellow. Still, I am glad I did it.
Cindy made an amazing Improv top during Sew Day also.
This one is super cheerful and I love the way she used those curved blocks.
I am always amazed at how different the Charity Sew Day quilts look.