I don’t often have something to show for Throwback Thursday. I received a box back from ScanCafe and I found an early photo of the Tarts Come to Tea. It is amazing to see how it has progressed and to realized that the quilt is still in process. Sigh.
Early Tarts Come to Tea
I started this quilt pretty soon after TFQ and I made She Had to Have Her Latte and I was still thinking that novelty fabrics would be a good idea.
Those novelty fabrics were jettisoned at some point, but some of the elements stayed. Even some of the placement basically, stayed.
I also started out using much darker fabrics.
I do still have that vase, which I like and may make into another applique type quilt.
I am not sure how I feel about these improvisational pieces now. Clearly, I am having trouble finishing the Tarts, despite keeping it on the list.
My round robin came back after a long vacation! It went through two moves of my various round robin-mates. Kathleen was able to work on it during the past few weeks and I just got it back yesterday!
It is so bright and cheerful! It is also completely unexpected. I guess the point of a round robin is to work with other people and see how they would work on your project.
I was expecting the rows I created to be continued out into the border, but instead Kathleen added these very cheerful pinwheels and the checkerboard border.
When I saw the pictures of the piece I thought it was very small, but the piece turns out to be quite large – well on its way to being a twin or larger quilt.
I think it needs more and Kelly has agreed to work on it. I think I have to look at the design thus far some more. I also need to see what else the design needs in case it comes back to me and I want to make it bigger. I think I would like others to work on it, in addition to Kelly, though, if I have the opportunity. We’ll see who I can round up.
BAMQG Round Robin detailBAMQG Round Robin detailBAMQG Round Robin detail
Can you tell that I don’t know what to call these blocks? I really have to look the pattern up in Barbara Brackman’s book or Jinny Beyer’s book and see if they have a real name.
First PIQF Crosses
I haven’t made a ton of progress since I last talked about this project. I seem to have not had much time to sew in the past week or so. I finally took a few minutes last night while I was waiting for dinner to finish to sew the blocks together. It really only took a few minutes. I finished two of the blocks I have in process, but the others need fabric cut and I wasn’t set up to do that.
I was able to use scraps for most of the pieces as they are small, which is really good since my scrap bins seem to be overflowing. Still, the blocks are small and, thus, a pain to sew. In my haste I cut off some points, which I will need to remedy if we are going to continue making these blocks. I am not sure I like them well enough to make a whole quilt out of them.
TFQ & JHL Blocks
I think they do look nice together. I like the scrappy look. We didn’t intend to use all blues for the crosses, but it seems to have worked out that way. The others I have in process do not have blue or blue green or aqua in the center.
So, my blocks will be winging their way to TFQ today. It is possible that I’ll have more time to sew tomorrow and will send some on Monday.
These are the blocks we saw in the quilt at PIQF. I had a bad start with these blocks.
PIQF Inspiration Blocks
I started making them before I went to Houston and the pain and suffering was almost beyond endurance. OK, I am exaggerating, but I couldn’t understand why the square in a square pieces took so long to make. I really have had very few issues like this with blocks.
While I was in Houston, TFQ sent me one of her blocks. I put on the wall as inspiration for my blocks. When I finally got the square in a square pieces (ONLY the square in a square pieces, mind you, there are 5 additional pieces in this block) finished and up on the design wall, I found they were wrong. Much too small.
Huh?
I went back and checked the measurements and found that I had cut wrong or read the directions and cut wrong or something. Bleah. This was a total head on desk moment.
Once I got the dimensions correct, the square in a square pieces went relatively well. I put the first block together relatively quickly. I was able to cut pieces for the other blocks from some scraps, which was great.
There are lots of pieces in this block, but being able to use scraps is a bonus. I have to make time to sew about 10 more seams and then send them off. Wish me luck.
My English Paper Piecing half hexie stars are growing into a giant cluster.
I forgot to rotate the photo. What I think of as the bottom is the line of stars with the dark green and Philip Jacobs flower print on the diagonal on the left.
I have some diamonds that will make the border straight. I don’t know what color I will make them, but I would like to decide and make a few to get the feel of how the piece will look. There will be no black stars, so, perhaps, black? I hoping for a look like those 1930s quilts which just have a spark of black. I’ll have to try it out and see how it will look.
I recently finished adding a whole big section, or what I thought was a whole big section and it really turned out to be about four blocks. I thought it was a larger section when I was doing it, because of the twisting of the stars that needs to take place to get them together. I think I will add one star at a time from now on.
My biggest problem is the background stars. I need to make more and keep forgetting to cut the bright white dot fabrics until I am sitting and doing it.
My design wall is shockingly similar to the last time.
Fewer octagons.
Similar black and grey donation blocks.
If you zoom in, you can see the beginnings of the Modified Garden of Eden blocks I started after we went to PIQF. You have to zoom in, because all you can see are some grey triangles that are similar in color to my design wall.
I finished filling in the space for the FOTY 2014 blocks, which you will hear more about later this week.
Red and turquoise four patches are pretty much the same. I am in desperate need of some turquoise squares, which is kind of shocking since there is no shortage of turquoise in this place.
I really should do a What’s on the Design Floor, because all of my half baked projects are on the floor right now. I really have to get those octagons and the Russian Rubix out of my life.
A few days ago I talked about a project that TFQ are trying out. I think I am behind, because I didn’t get to sew anything until this past weekend.
First of all, I know some of you are thinking “what the heck, dude, don’t you have about a bajillion projects in process?” Well, yes, I have a few on my Current Projects list. I just really like doing a one-on-one project (also group projects like Scrapitude) with (an)other quiltmaker. Also, a few blocks isn’t really a project, is it??? Mostly, I am a social animal and like to have some human contact, especially if I can talk about quiltmaking in the geeky, detailed process-oriented way that my brain loves.
Second, I looked up the pattern and found a block called Garden of Eden that I could modify in EQ7. EQ provides such an easy and quick way to look at sizes of pieces. We were able to look at the rotary cutting directions for individual pieces in order to decide what finished size to make the blocks.
I don’t know exactly, but to put us on the same page, TFQ and I talked about colors of the octagons I am using for the Russian Rubix and whether those were the sorts of colors. Yes, they are the sorts of colors, but I will also use different fabrics and make it scrappy.
For the background, we will be using different cool, light greys. Again, they will be the same in each block, but, possibly different between blocks. The four squares in each block will be the same the same color, but not necessarily the same fabric.
I am not sure about the cross in the middle. I am not sure if I will use analagous colors or complimentary colors or what.
A few weeks ago, Sandi, of Quilt Cabana Patterns, posted a playmat she made. It reminded me of Throwback Thursday (#TBT) and how Quiltin’ Jenny always posts something from her pre-blogging days. I wasn’t very productive in pre-blogging days, but I do have quilts that only show up on Artquiltmaker.com about which I have never written.
Playmat
The Playmat is one of those quilts.I made this quilt in about 1997 or 1998.
The Playmat was one of the first projects I worked on when I was a new mom. I hadn’t been sewing much, was only marginally connected online (remember this was in the dark ages with no Twitter or podcasts or blogs) via the QuiltNet listserv.
I don’t remember why I decided I needed to make a playmat, but I really used it to lay out on the floor so the Y.M. (previously the Tiny Bubba) could lay on it. Later, he sat on it, but as soon as he started crawling, we used it briefly in the stroller, but he would throw it off and out, which became annoying.
I made this quilt very quickly and used a pillowcase technique to avoid binding it, then quilted it myself. I notice now that the edge is all bias. Not sure what I was thinking, but the piecing is much more interesting (if the color combo doesn’t hurt your eyes) on point than a straight set.
The back is a nice cute bears in King Arthur garb print. I know I didn’t want to cut it up and I used it for a quilt for Friend Julie‘s younger son as well. I’ll try and add that photo to this post.
I have been working on my Half Hexie English Paper Pieced Stars since August of 2012. I really wanted to see if I could actually take out the paper templates and use them again. I sewed four stars together and went from there.
I would have felt a lot better if TFQ were sitting with me supporting me (egging me on). She wasn’t and I needed a stiff upper lip.
EPP Stars with Papers
I did it. I took out the papers and the piece is fine. I was kind of shocked at how easy it was and how well it worked. It is tempting to take them all out, but I know I can only take out those that are surrounded on all sides by another piece.
I should have been, but I was a little surprised by how well the ‘free’ pieces kept their shape.
I don’t know how many stars I have completed, but I may pull out the box in which I keep them and start sewing them together. I would at least get an idea of how many more I need. I could also start putting a border on, once I decide what fabric to use for a border.
Here is another batch of rectangles for my FOTY 2014 piece.
Early July is a bit of a lie because all of these patches were cut in June. I picked the title based on the publish date and next year nobody will remember or care.
In between my travels, I did a load of blacks and greys. The colors you see are from projects I have been working on.
These are not in the same kind of color order that I normally use, but I was out of town for many days in June. You’ll see some of the fabrics I used in recent projects as well as a couple of loads of the Great Unwashed experiencing a bracing cleanliness for the first time. 😉
I know many of you liked the progress I was making on FOTY 2013. I didn’t like it, so I talked to Maureen and her son and started over.
This project is killing me and I have to get it done. I have to get it done for my own piece of mind. I also want to get it done, but the other layout was not achieving the goal I wanted to achieve. I was having a hard time gradating the colors horizontally and thought that I would need too much background.
I also didn’t want to do the same thing as FOTY 2012 despite the success of that quilt. I don’t want to do the same thing over and over.
Maureen and Andy suggested starting in the middle. I went home and started, which is what you see in the picture, and I feel like the process is going a lot better.
As you can see I making some progress on this piece.
FOTY 2013
FOTY 2013
FOTY 2013
FOTY 2013
FOTY 2013
FOTY 2013
I have about a thousand more photos of this piece and it doesn’t seem to be working. If you click on each photo in turn, you can see the minute changes. It doesn’t matter what I move around, the piece is not working.
I knew I had to go back to the regular format, but I wasn’t sure how. I had a chat with Maureen and her son about it last week and they gave me an idea. Stay tuned!
I don’t really even remember when I finished the last Pointillist Palette quilt. The late 1990s? It had some reproduction fabrics in it by Jinny Beyer, maybe? there are 3 quilts in the series and I think I had planned 6. I don’t know if #5 or #6 will ever be made as the bloom is somewhat off the rose after all of the these, but I am more interested in finishing #4 now that I have found some blocks.
Pointillist Palette #4 Blocks
Fortunately, the fabrics have held up well and are somewhat timeless.
This quilt in the series is called night and the black and white fabrics in it are supposed to represent that. I took apart a back of #2 or #3 so I could use the fabrics in this quilt. TFQ thought I was insane and I probably was since I didn’t actually finish the quilt…yet.
This is the first quilt I made on my Janome 9000 in about 1995.
I moved up to the 9k from a Singer 201 that I bought at a White Elephant sale for about $30 including the table. The Singer 201 got me started in quiltmaking, but I outgrew it after about 3 years. The one thing I really wanted to do was machine applique’. The Singer 201 did not have a zigzag stitch.
I was so excited to do machine applique’. I drew out a picture that became the center and stitched it out. I didn’t know anything about stitch density. I used Mettler quilting thread for the stitches. and the satin stitch was really thick.
I was really pleased with the center block when I made it. I can do much better now, but it really showed that a much better machine helped me take a huge leap forward in my quiltmaking. The new machine allowed me to spread my creative wings.
Lately I have been plowing through a lot of washed fabric. Most of it is blues and greens, which is good for my Blue[berry] Lemonade project and means that the FOTY 2014 will have a lot of blues and greens like the previous versions in the series.
I am a little more excited about cutting for FOTY 2014 now that FOTY 2012 is done. I am really pleased with how FOTY 2012 came out and now I am hoping future versions come out even better.
