Last year, TFQ gave me a bundle of dots for my birthday. Since then they have been sitting on my cutting table waiting for inspiration to strike. I didn’t want to use them alone in a quilt, because I thought it would be too boring (dots, boring? I know, but my mind works in mysterious ways sometimes).
Tone-on-tone Pearl Bracelets
Recently, I saw some of the tone-on-tone Pearl Bracelets (great imagery in that name, don’t you think?) and these dots came around again in my thoughts. I am wondering if I could use the two of the groups together in something interesting?
I have had a few busy weeks plus Scrapitude to prepare for quilting so I haven’t had a chance to work on the Disappearing Pinwheels. I thought I remembered taking some photos of the latest group that I hadn’t posted.
I made a lot of progress on my last session of making these blocks and will need to get busy on it again soon.
The orange and red block to the left really caught my eye when I was looking at the whole group. I noticed how well the pinwheel in the center of the block stood out. Some of the blocks are very subtle, but that one has god contrast.
In the group photo, I noticed how the background stripes have a subtle stripe, but it does add a lot of movement. Friend Julie and my mom both said the same thing when they saw the blocks.
I may take Scrapitude over to be quilted next week and I have some idea that I will take this quilt over as well. That is a lot of work between now and then, but we will see. It would be nice to get this out of my hair.
The Infinity Quilt is finally finished. I finished it last week and am relatively pleased.
I think it is an interesting quilt from a color perspective. I didn’t really try and arrange the blocks much. They came out pretty well when I laid them out. There is a quite a lot of variety in the fabrics and also a good balance of light and dark. There were a few places where I switch a couple of blocks so that a print was next to a tone-on-tone rather than next to another print.
Colleen did a great job quilting it. It is a little stiff. I can’t tell if it is from the Harry Potter panel I used for the back or if the quilting made it stiff, so I might wash it.
In a effort to stay the chaos, I used some of the parts and pieces of the Russian Rubix as leaders and enders in between the Scrapitude project pieces.
The blocks pictured are still in 4 pieces each. I am not quite ready to sew them together. I want to contemplate the combinations of the colors for a while longer. There is a lot of blue in the left and a lot of orange in the right configuration. On one hand, one skews cool and one skews warm. On the other hand there is a lot of repetition. I haven’t changed them because I will use a lot of blocks in the quilt and I am still deciding whether, in the end, anyone will notice or care. I am also thinking about whether or not having some cool and some warm will benefit the look of the project.
I spent almost three solid days piecing the rest of this Scrapitude top. I say “almost solid” because I went and got a pedicure and ate breakfast, went to Pilates and picked up the Young Man on Friday. On Saturday I worked on the taxes, did the laundry and cleaned the kitchen. Yesterday, I got up late, spent a lot of time eating breakfast and reading the newspaper with the family, went to the gym, and worked on some of Super G’s stuff. It felt like three solid days since I had big plans to work on other quilt and fiber projects.
Finishing this top was more work than I thought it would be. The fact that the top was bigger than my design wall should not hamper me as I deal with that issue all the time. It did, though. As I got to the edges, I couldn’t see when to put a 2.5″ square on the almost-vertical sashing and when to put it on the almost-horizontal sashing. That meant that I unpicked and resewed a lot.
The only thing I really had to do yesterday was put borders on it and that small task seemed to take forever. I put borders on to stabilize all of those bias edges and sewed very carefully while I did it. the borders, of course, are scrappy. I mitered them for once and I am pleased with how they came out.
I still have the back, the binding and the label to make. I will use a bunch of Philip Jacobs fabrics to make the back, which makes me very happy. I don’t know what I will use for binding- perhaps another Philip Jacaobs or a white dot to continue the border and focus the eye on the center. I am pleased with my progress.
I have to say that I am sorely tempted to make this quilt again. I want to play with the look of the 2.5″ squares running across the quilt. I have tons of quilts I want to make and will think about making something with those same squares, but in a different pattern.
I am tempted to start each of the DPW posts with “I blame Sandy for this project.” It isn’t, however, a very positive statement and I do have free will with which to resist her quilty-wiles. I didn’t on this one, perhaps because I had a Layer Cake that really needed to be used as well as a lot of grey from the background tribulations of the Russian Rubix. The planets aligned, all the pieces were available and I didn’t have to leave the house to start.
Disappearing Pinwheel Blocks
I am determined not to let this project languish. I want to sew the blocks, put them together and move on. I thought about giving it to someone associated with DH’s nonprofit, but I think it might be suitable for one of the Niece-phews. I’ll have to ask DH if it is boyish enough. There are a lot of nephews and they get annoyed and confused when I try and give them pink quilts.
On the color front, I am not thinking too much about the combinations of fabrics. The grey that mom chose is good, but some of the fabrics from the Layer Cake do blend into it. I think that is ok. I think it will make the eye of the viewer move around the quilt. The larger prints of the Moda Mod Century fabrics made blocks with a lot of movement as well.
After the cutting, the blocks go together like 9 Patches, which is pretty easy. I used the parts and pieces of these blocks as leaders and enders to Scrapitude, which meant I really got a lot done on the project with very little effort. I think I have nearly 15 blocks by now.
I am using a lot of Mary Ellen’s Best Press, so the blocks feel a little bit like cardstock. They will have to feel that way as I want to keep them as straight as possible since all the edges are on the bias.
I have also decided on the border and started those blocks, simple pinwheels, but smaller than the starting pinwheels for this block, as well.
I really don’t know why I started it except to say that I am interested in the cutting oddly and rearranging of blocks. I was amazed and thrilled at the way the Disappearing Nine Patch pattern created automatic sashing in my Food Quilt and this is even better.
After finally settling down over the weekend, I decided to start piecing Scrapitude into a top. The top is not yet completely pieced, but I did get a rhythm going and I did make progress. I might be able to finish it this weekend, which would go a long way towards alleviating some of the chaos.
The piece looks really cheerful, which is nice. Sandi said it reminded her of confetti. It does, so I might use that as a name.
As I was piecing the seam allowances were shrinking, I noticed how the lines of squares ran through the whole piece. I think it would have been good to make those all one color and not use that color anywhere else in the quilt — or only in selected locations that didn’t touch the squares.
After years of this project being a UFO and a WIP, the end is in sight. Colleen is back in the saddle and she did this quilt as soon as she returned. She has had it for a year. I didn’t believe her, but when I looked back in the blog, I had to agree that she was correct.
Five more quilts will follow quickly over the next couple of months with one coming, perhaps, next week. I am not quite sure what to think! I had better get to binding; that is for sure.
I got all of these stars finished over the weekend. I spent several hours in the car on the way to and from Fortuna/Ferndale.
As an aside, if you haven’t visited Ferndale, it has a lovely Victorian main street (I posted some photos a few years ago) with lots of nice shops. Fortuna is more modern, but there are some great shops and a wonderful Mexican restaurant called La Costa where they make their own tortillas.
Both directions are about a 5 hour drive and DH drove on this trip. It rained and I am not a very good passenger. Having my focus on something else is a good thing.
One thing I did differently was I sewed a couple of the stars together to start a line of them. I want to start putting the piece together. I also have to put some of the stars together, so I can start to take the papers out. I may need to buy another pack of papers.
I don’t have the background nailed down, though I am still thinking of dots on white. I am pretty sure I will use dots on white since they worked so well on Scrapitude. I loved the look. I just need to cut some pieces.
The last time I posted about these stars was September 9, 2013. I can’t believe how time has flown. I have worked on them, but a couple of bindings and the Christmas stockings as well as the Christmas and Birthday thank you notes got in the way.
I’ll need some more of these to work on in the car during an upcoming car trip, so I will need to cut some more fabric. I like the way Scrapitude is coming out and think I will use dots on white background for the alternating rows of this project.
I am surprised at how many of these stars are in the blue range and am wondering if I decided to concentrate on these colors and have forgotten?
Periodically, I will find something interesting that is old and post it under the Vintage Tuesday tag. In this case, I am showing you an old quilt of mine. It can’t really be called vintage as it is only 24 years old, but you get the idea.
There are a few things that you should immediately see in this piece. They are:
another hexagon quilt – I really have done a few of them
not my colors
gradated to a certain extent – as much as could be with the colors I was using
This isn’t my first quilt, but I believe it was the first quilt I actually finished (the Sampler took me awhile, because of the hand quilting). It was finished in 1990.
I did in response to a challenge posed by one of the members of the quilt group of which I was a member at the time. We were all on board and one of the other members went to pick the fabric. It is all machine pieced-NOT paper pieced- and machine quilted as well.
Do you like that binding? I put the binding on by machine and then sewed all those miters down by hand.
For months I didn’t work on the Hexies project, then on the first I just dove in and added rows. I am not sure why except that it didn’t require cutting. The hexagons were there, the piece was there and I needed something to sew.
I got my head around the Y seams and did it. I didn’t want to sew one hexagon on at a time and I had a row started, so I finished the row and worked on sewing the whole row on at a time. It was a lot of stopping and starting, but I just did it. I developed a system and kept at it.
Things I have to figure out:
How big to make it. It seems small now, but I know that if I fill my design wall it makes a pretty big quilt.
Whether to unsew a section where I sewed two of the same fabrics together.
How to finish the border – to square it off or leave it jaggedy. I am not sure I can face all those mitered binding corners
I plan to just work on it until I am done with the top.
Over the weekend, I really had only a couple of hours to sew. Since I was behind Susan a bit on the Russian Rubix project, I decided to cut octagons from the fabrics I had selected for the 2.5″ strip project.
I know you must be thinking “what is she thinking!?!” Well, I was thinking that I really only needed 1-2 (at the most) strips for the 2.5″ strip project and that I could test out the color combination by using the same fabrics for the Russian Rubix project.
I may be wrong and may may have just cut up a bunch of fabric that I will need for something else. I may have cut up a bunch of fabric that I will be sick of using for projects by the time I have made two projects with it. I may hate the fabrics together, and have just cut up a bunch of fabrics in weird shapes that I won’t be able to use.
I really just needed something on the design wall.
Perhaps, for now, I am testing.
I cut a 2.5″ strip for the Jaye-roll project and a 3.75″ inch strip for the Russian Rubix and proceeded to use the RR templates to cut the octagons. I got about half way through cutting strips and octagons from the stack of fabrics I had selected and am pleased with the variety, the cohesiveness and the cheerfulness of the group.
I also cut enough so I could see how different fabrics interact with each other and on that level, I think this group is working.
Right now my biggest problem is background. It will be easier to audition backgrounds with smaller pieces available. The pattern has a white or Kona Snow background. I don’t know if I want to go that route, though I do think it would showcase-provide a nice backdrop? – for the colors of the fabric. I have been thinking grey. I wish P&B still made the Happy Go Lucky (?) grey I used in the A-B-C Challenge. I have some, but I don’t know if I have enough.
All of the above is speculation in my head. I have to get fabric out and look at it before I can decide for certain. Yes, I need to make visual decisions visually (thanks, Lorraine Torrence).
In between bindings and hemming pants, I made some more English Paper Pieced Stars. I still haven’t decided on a layout, but I am running out of papers, so I will need to do so soon, so I can reuse the papers.
The last time I seemed to have written about this Flower Sugar Hexagon project was way back in 2011. I didn’t think that much time had flown by, but Pam has made two hexagons, so I guess it has.
My design walls have been empty for several weeks while I work on small projects; the 3D items not needing much design wall space. I also love piecing so much that I didn’t want to be tempted away from the small projects that have been on my list for awhile.
My mom came over for a visit with the Young Man after being on vacation and down with Grama for several weeks. When I arrived home from work she told me that she had raced upstairs to see what was on the design wall and was so disappointed to see NOTHING. She looked a little worried as well. I felt bad.
This hexie project has been on my mind and it occurred to me that I could put it up on the design wall and see what I saw.
The only other photos I have of this quilt is laying on the floor. Laying on the floor is different, for me, than hanging on the wall. I seem to be able to see so much more when pieces are vertical. It must be the perspective or the angle.
I found the piece and put it up on the portable design wall. Looking at it after not having seen it for awhile, I noticed some interesting things:
My balance of different fabrics is pretty good.
The piece is tiny. It is less than half the size of the Swoon. I have a lot of hexies to cut
This piece does cheer up the room.
As I said in one of the previous posts,Adrianne of Little Bluebell, introduced me to the cutting technique I used for these hexies. You can find the cutting instructions on her blog.
I hope I won’t think too much about sewing more pieces together. I still need to work on small projects.
