Piecing – Artquiltmaker Blog

Pink Kaffe Quilt Start

I know I talked about my plans a month or so ago, but hadn’t started it yet. After thinking about this quilt for awhile, I finally started it and it is making me super happy.

I am following the directions in Kaffe’s book, Quilts in the Cotswolds**. However, I am not using many of the fabrics he suggests. I am pulling out the Philip Jacobs fabrics I have stashed for awhile and have not yet used for backs. I am fussy cutting flowers from them and arranging them in a pleasing way. I have also used, so far, one Anna Maria Horner print and one Martha Negley print. I’ll probably had more different prints. The flowers are by no means in their final location. I want to spread them out so the pinks are not all together. For now I am placing them in the order I cut them so I can easily count them.

For the sashing, I am using solids I recently purchased from Stash Fabrics. I plan to arrange them in gradation order and use a different solid for each section, gradating out from light to dark.

Every day I have been spending a little time cutting. I may need to sew some pieces and parts together to gain space on my design wall, but that is a decision for another day. In the meantime I am enjoying showcasing the beautiful flowers.

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Gazebo Starts

Last week I decided to finish the last project.

The last Journey 2 Nebula project (except for the bonus project, which I am not doing) is Gazebo. I sort of did the whole project in order to do this one for myself. By the time I finished Candy Dish, I was kind of sick of the whole thing. All of the projects were well received by their recipients, was a relief. I don’t know what my problem was. I enjoyed it until December-ish.

I think life ended up overwhelming me. Big surprise since it was December!

However, I like this design, so I decided just to cut it out and do it. I started after lunch one day. I was able to get the whole thing cut out and pieced by the end of the day. I was also able to make the back and start quilting it.

I worked hard on the fabrics. Since this was for me, I really thought about the look I wanted and am pleased with my choices.

FOTY 2019 OOPS

Fabric of the Year 2019 - mid-November 2 — Fabric of the Year 2019 – mid-November 2

Part of the process is ripping and I had to rip as I was very close to finishing the FOTY 2019 top.

The quilt top started out correct. It is not sewn together completely in the photo (left), but all of the pieces are where I wanted them.

I continued sewing -and it is a lot of sewing to get these Fabric of the Year quilts together- to make chunks.

FOTY 2019 - Letters upside down — FOTY 2019 – Letters upside down

When I had about 12 seams left, I realized that something had happened. I had reversed a section somewhere along the process.

I can tell because the letters (white on red serif print) are upside down. I try to get the directional prints going in the right direction when I make these quilts. They do have a top and a bottom. I was nearly done sewing the quilt together. I could have gotten the quilt done before dinner if I had just continued. The question, however, becomes “will I notice this forever?” In this case, the answer was yes.

One good thing about this type of quilt is that I could rip out that one section, resew it and finish the quilt, which is what I did.

Except that I also tried to figure out where I went wrong. I know that on November 14 that section was oriented correctly. On November 23rd, it wasn’t. Sometime in that 10ish day period, something happened and that chunk was turned upside down.

It is hard to keep these pieces correctly oriented. By ‘correctly oriented’ I mean in the place I want them. Most people wouldn’t notice and in 10 years, I might not notice either. I notice now, however.

It is fixed and the quilt top is on its way to being finished.

Candy Dish Progresses

I finally made progress on the Journey2Nebula projects. I had started Candy Dish right before the Big Blog Blow-up and then didn’t make much progress. I also haven’t started the last project, Gazebo, which is sad. I really like that project and wanted to do that one most.

I still have to trim Candy Dish and make it into a cushion cover, but I finished the piecing over the weekend in between working on FOTY 2019.

Black Windmill – All the Blocks

I worked over the weekend on getting the rest of the blocks made so I could start to sew the piece together.

I admit that some of the greys used as foreground (not-black) are too close in tone to the blacks to be true backgrounds. I am going to leave them to add to the mystery of the pattern, if there is a such a thing.

Another Windmill on the Wall

I haven’t worked on this piece since July, because Red Scribbles was on the wall and red thread (for the applique’) was in the machine. Now grey thread is back in the machine and I am putting the piece up on the design wall.

I am thinking of calling this Black Windmill. I don’t really like the name that much, but there are more than cool colors in the foreground, so Cool Windmill n.2 doesn’t work either. It is looking good, though I have a lot of rearranging work to do before I can start piecing.

Blue Improv Donation Top Start

After making the most recent journal cover, I continued piecing together my blue scraps. One good thing is that I am also unearthing more strips, so there may be another Blue Strip donation top in my future.

I haven’t yet made a blue improv donation top, so I decided to just go forward with that project rather than making another journal cover. I am sure I will have plenty of scraps to make another one when I am finished!

I am finding scraps from older projects, which is interesting. It is fun to contemplate what I was thinking when I bought and used those scraps. Some are a lot darker than the fabrics I buy now.

I am also finding (this drawer is STUFFED!!!, though getting better) some pieces that have already been pieced together, so those are also useful

Blue Improv Piecing

In between working on the applique’ for Red Scribbles, I have been piecing blue scraps in an improv style. I am vaguely thinking this is the start of the next Color Improv quilt, but we’ll see.

I am working very hard at not using a lot of strips that I can use for more of the strip blocks like I made for Blue Strips #2. It isn’t working 100% as I do resort to using some occasionally.

Black & White Quilt Progresses

I spent some time on Sunday working on the Black & White with Red quilt. I wasn’t sure what I would do, but I just started sewing rectangles together first.

Per my rule, Make Visual Decisions Visually, I pinned up some of the bias tape to see what the piece would look like with the bias tape applied.

I am not happy with the look of the bias as applied in the photo, but I do think putting a larger piece over the whole top is a good idea. I don’t want it to look like a giant *enis so I have to make sure about that.

When I pinned that long piece of bias tape on the top, I hadn’t done any sewing. Now I have sewed shorter pieces of bias tape to smaller sections and now I am much more confident and have a better idea of how the bias tape works.

I am really liking the bias tape. It is amazing how the curves work! I am getting much better at sewing them down flat and I am testing how tight I can make the curves. I think I have to do something else with curves. First I have to find my bias tape makers

Blue Strips #2 Donation Top Sashing

I cut up the fabric I found the other day into sashing strips and had been waiting for some miracle to sew them together. I found another piece of a similar colored batik and was able to move forward yesterday. I sewed sashing pieces to the tops of all of the blocks and am now sewing the blocks together into rows. I am not adding corner stones so I am not chunking.

Black & Red Quilt

This quilt does not yet have a name. Black & Red Quilt doesn’t seem useful or interesting, somehow.

This photo also does not seem interesting. Trust me, the piece looks a lot better on my design wall. Clearly, I need better lighting for photographing monochromatic quilts.

The shifts in fabric/tones & shades are subtle. This is more like a pushed neutral background than anything. There won’t be much of a foreground, however, as my idea is to use the 3,000 yards of bias tape I made in the January Challenge for the Mighty Lucky Quilting Club. My original idea was to applique a small strip to each rectangle at a different angle, then sew the rectangles together. The other night as I was going to sleep, I thought about sewing the bias tape to the quilt as one long piece in large arcs or swirls. I am eager to sew the rectangles together, but the new idea would mean maneuvering the large top around my sewing table rather than the smaller rectangles. I’ll get the red bias tape out and see what I think.

Plaid Top Finished

I spent some time working on sewing the plaid blocks together. I was able to finish the top with only a minimal amount of irritation. There are a few places where I would have changed the blocks if I had been able to see them on the design wall, but didn’t and am not unsewing.

In general, I am pretty pleased with how the piece looks. The yellow is pretty well distributed over the top, so it helps the eye to move around. Now on to back and binding!