Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
Posts about the piecing, applique’ of quilts. Don’t use for completed quilts or non-quilt projects.
I worked on the Box Full of Letters blocks at the Retreat. I made 21 blocks as leaders and enders. The photo (left) shows a selection of the blocks I made.
I love the leaders and enders technique. I couldn’t believe how much I accomplished using leaders and enders.
I still don’t know what I am going to do with these blocks, but I am thrilled that I have an actual group of blocks with which to work.
Another part of the wackiness of the weekend was adding to my nine patch stash for the Octagon Nine Patch. I made some progress on adding to my nine patch pile.
when I stand next to the piece, I feel like I am making progress, but when I look at it in a photo I post here, I think I will never be finished. I guess that is why I take photos, then I can compare. For example, this photo with the last one.
One part of my attitude is that people comment on how small the blocks are. Yes they are on the smallish side, but are by no means miniatures.
I think I need to sew some parts together pretty soon. That will make the piece much smaller, of course, but will also enhance the feeling of accomplishment.
I have been preparing for the CQFA Retreat. I have been putting projects, supplies and parts into project bags in preparation to grab and go.
I was all over the place sewing over the weekend and this was part of the wackiness. I don’t know why, but I decided to sew a couple of the blocks rather than waiting until the CQFA Retreat.
I guess they look ok. I am not completely invested in the project yet, but I have some ideas and I want to move forward. It might be a palette cleanser
More progress on the Octagon 9 Patch. It seems slow, but I see the progress. Compare from last time and let me know what you think.
The 9 patches are not in their final locations. I started to arrange them as I made them, but it was hard to judge progress so now I just put each nine patch in the next open space. I’ll arrange them later.
I don’t think I have made much progress but I am making some progress. I finished all of the extra octagons so the piece is much bigger. I have to make a few more just to complete one side. I also still have a lot of nine patches to make.
I am now out of grey squares and have to make a concentrated effort to cut a bunch more. It isn’t a big deal; I just have to do it.
Getting the Black & Grey Teenaged Boy Donation Quilt off the design wall allowed me, as I had wished, to put the Octagon Nine Patch up on the wall.
It looks so little. You know I make big quilts so this one just looks weird.
I could cut more octagons and make it bigger, but the pieces are really small and piecing the blocks takes forever.
I have a few more octagons that are in the process of being sewn into Snowballs, so the piece will be a bit bigger, but it won’t be bed sized.
I can add a border and I do have an idea for that already, so that will also enlarge it.
I could also just be okay with the size that it is.
There are a lot of warm colors and I may need to cut a few octagons from cool colors, but I am not going to decide until I have more 9 patches completed and all the octagons are made into Snowballs.
Friend Julie and I went to Colleen’s last Friday and picked up quilts.
I picked up 2 quilts, which now need to be bound. Julie picked up her giant Christmas quilt. We went to Dharma, Flourcraft and had lunch at the Miracle Mile Cafe.
Colleen is finally getting back into the swing after her family challenges. She is caught up on quilting quilts and is starting to design patterns again. She is working on a group of patterns with a labyrinth theme. They are gorgeous and the construction uses a technique that keeps them very straight. I will share more information with you when she gets to a point where you can buy them.
Julie picked up her giant Christmas quilt, which she showed at the CQFA Meeting. It is a full on scrap quilt and really epitomizes Julie’s exuberant nature.
I picked up the FOTY 2013 and the Russian Rubix. I didn’t remember FOTY 2013 until the morning of when I was in the shower. I am very pleased to have it home and am in the process of hand sewing the binding. After that I will work on the Russian Rubix. I thought I might get RR done in time to enter into the SCVQA Show, but I don’t think so. It is in two weeks and I have done no paperwork, contacted nobody. I’ll enter it into something else later in the year.
Julie needed to stock up on dyes and dyeing supplies, so we went to Dharma. I never feel like there is much there for me there, but I bought a couple of bottles of Retayne and some gifts. I always enjoy looking at the yarns. They are such beautiful colors and feel so soft.
Julie and I shared the purchase of on skein of some PFD silk ribbon. I wasn’t even thinking about until she showed it to me and said that we could lay it on other fabric and color it or paint it. Once she said that I was a goner. I couldn’t get the process out of my head, especially with the Tsukineko Ink experience fresh in my mind. She put it back, but I said I would share it with her.
After Dharma, we went to lunch. There is a cafe, which has a lot of gluten free options. I had GF Eggs Benedict. It is so nice to order straight off the menu and not have to go over ingredients with the server. It makes me feel like a real person. We sat for awhile and then headed over to Flourcraft, which is a gluten free bakery. I was full as a goog, but we sat and had coffee and cake anyway. I stuffed a piece of orange bundt cake into my stomach AND bought two scones for later. Again, I can’t tell you who a treat it is to go into some shop and buy whatever I want without worrying about wheat flour. It was nice to sit there and look out the large windows. The clouds were big and fluffy and gorgeous that day, so the sun was, on and off, peeking through to give a blast-like sunbeam. I definitely did not eat pizza for dinner. I just had a salad while the boys ate pizza.
We stopped at a small toy/craft shop called Doodlebug as well. They have a lot of fun toys, but also craft supplies. They also have pottery to paint. Their button selection is almost as good as Britex, but veering towards kids themed.
It was supposed to be a leisurely day, visiting with each other and doing fun stuff. We did fun stuff and we visited, but we also went and went and went and it felt a little like a marathon. A VERY fun marathon. 😉
Some time ago I wrote about TFQ’s cool quilt, Pink Lemonade.
I have washed a lot of blues lately, so my version (future) has been on my mind. Mom came over the other day and on a whim I asked her if she would use my Accuquilt to cut blue squares for me from my scrap basket. The scrap basket over floweth, as they say.
She said yes, which netted me a bunch of blue squares. I am much farther along that I was, though I still have a long way to go.
As I was organizing them, I wondered about just sewing them randomly or trying to organize them like I do with the the Fabric of the Year quilts. I have to admit that it doesn’t sound very appealing. It sounds like a boring slog.
In TFQ’s version, it looks like she sewed the fabrics together sort of randomly, though I am sure there was a method to the madness. I definitely do not see a gradation.
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.
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.
Remember when we started the round robin project?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Stay tuned for that.
These are the blocks we saw in the quilt at PIQF. I had a bad start with these 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.
Nota bene: If you want to try to make the block, click on the link:
PIQF Crosses-6 inch version
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.
Linking up with Judy for Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.
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.
Next, you are probably wondering, after my long dissertation on Color Stories, what my color story will be.
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.
You can play along using the PIQF Crosses Rotary Cutting-5in pattern (5 inches) I created in EQ7.