Colour

Saturday Quilting Bring and Share (283)

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Welcome to Saturday(ish) Quilting Bring and Share. Bring along your project(s), share in news and inspiration by clicking the links below to enter our generous and kindly Worldwide Quilting Community 🙂

I’ve entered February at lightening speed (well! for me anyway), whizzing through the Plaid(ish) quilt to avoid over-running the deadline. To be fair there were a couple of days of no visible progress with the partially completed quilt top hanging on my design wall. The halt in production occurred when I had to face doubts about the finished size of the quilt. I had made enough blocks to create the 64″ x 82″ quilt. To be honest that 82″ figure was giving me the collywobbles. On two counts: 1. It would be a challenge/unpleasant to quilt on a domestic machine; 2. The finished quilt could well be too bulky to squish into a standard-size, European, front-loading washing machine. Hmm! It did take me a couple of days to get there but I’m happy with the decision I came to. My finished quilt will measure 64″ square. Taking two rows of blocks off the quilt top will keep the patchwork pattern symmetrical (which makes me happy!), but more importantly I’ve concluded it will be a much more practical gift if it can be washed easily.

Once I’d finally made a decision on the finished size of the quilt (symmetry winning over my usual preference for rectangular rather than square quilts) I whipped myself back up to light speed, piecing the top, preparing backing and wadding to create the quilt sandwich, pin basting and straight line, walking foot quilting all in the space of three days 😮 I also made the binding!

I’m hoping I might have the quilt completed later today. All the details will be revealed once it is in the care of it’s intended recipient 😉

Projects that are jostling for attention include the baby quilt design which will now be the quilt to be made in the next beginners class I hold at Purple Stitches. I’ve tweeked the pattern a little more to make sure it will be ‘beginner friendly’ and an acceptable size for a baby quilt. Tomorrow I’m going to have fun choosing fabrics to make a sample version of the quilt to display in the shop.

I’m looking forward to a sewing day later in the week. I’m hoping to catch up on the ‘Bullseye Courthouse Step’ blocks I’m making for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. The colour for January was red and I’ve completed just two of the eight blocks I had intended to make. The colour choice for February is aqua/teal. I have a plentiful supply of scraps that should suit – no surprise there!

Anyway that’s enough of my ‘news’, on to the links into much more interesting sharing going on in the Worldwide Quilting Community:

Rachel has supplied a foundation pieced download pattern to accompany her comprehensive tutorial for her Monument block. There’s lots of advice about colour choices as well as cutting instructions.

This is a fascinating story of how a textile artist got to make a bronze sculpture. Well worth a read and a look at the photos of the process in the foundry.

Laura has a completed project to share and explains how she creates tear-away stencils for quilting motifs. I will be giving this a go!

Whew! Rebecca Grace has been re-sizing and changing in and out blocks from the Moda ‘Building Blocks’ QAL design. She’d love to be able to credit the designer of the original QAL quilt but hasn’t been able to find a pattern (the QAL happened eight years ago) – if you can help please leave her a message. As well as re-creating (and changing) the whole design on her EQ8 software Rebecca Grace has been practising her piecing skills, looking for precision* all the way!

*Precision piecing has been on my mind this week – more to follow once I have my latest (very imprecisely pieced) quilt finished!

I’ve signed up for Christina Cameli’s latest on-line class, Finding Your Flow in Free Motion Quilting. I’m looking forward to getting stuck into free motion design and finding my own way to flow from one design to another.

Happy Stitching!

Allison

 

 

Finding the right colours for borders

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Phew! I have finalised my selection of fabrics for the borders of the Pieces of the Santa Fe Trail quilt. Thankfully it hasn’t involved the purchase of too much extra fabric. A total of one metre divided into two quarter and one half metre pieces. A quarter metre of grey for the narrow inner border; some extra of the dark blue for the second border & the binding; and a quarter of the rusty red to complete the sashing strips.

Here are my mock ups on EQ7 complete with colour changes:

 

And here’s how it all looks for real up on my design wall:

I’m planning to use the discarded pinky-peach sashing and excess fabric in a pieced backing. Funny how finishing a scrap quilt involves buying new fabric! If only I’d made the right fabric choices at the start 🙄

Never mind, I’m much more motivated to proceed now I’m happy with the colours of the fabrics.

Linking with Judy for Design Wall Monday and Beth for Monday Making. They’ve both been making place mats ready for Christmas and have plenty of interesting posts to click to from other quilty bloggers who’ve joined in with their link-ups.

Allison

Saturday Quilting Bring and Share (277)

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Welcome to Saturday Quilting Bring & Share. Bring along your project(s) and click the links to enjoy the sharing going on in our Worldwide Quilting Community. Join in the with the Community by leaving your comments in the discussion threads on the blog pages you visit 🙂

Hmm! I’m not at all sure about my choice of colours for the sashing and cornerstones of the Pieces of the Santa Fe Trail quilt 🤨 The colours looked OK on my EQ7 mock up but of course they are approximations… The actual fabrics appear more rusty red and salmon pink than the  shades of orange I’d been imagining.

Melva (designer of the QAL) took a look at the photo I posted on Instagram and messaged that with a blue border it should work… I’m hoping the broad, mainly blue outer border will throw attention on the blocks and suppress the sashing. We shall see! The fabrics are cut now so the options are: 1. to carry on or 2. face a trip to that UFO Cupboard of Shame 😱

The Following Day: I’ve moved on to a third (expensive) option 😌 I looked at the design wall this morning and decided the sashing hadn’t grown on me at all, quite the reverse. I experimented with some strips of golden yellow fabrics before trying strips of the cornerstone rusty red fabric. I’m surprised the darker strips seem to be a preferable option although I’m still not convinced… Whatever I decide will now involve buying even more fabric to finish a scrap quilt!

Back to UFOs, well things of outer space anyway. I’m listening to the autobiography of NASA’s Flight Director, Gene Kranz. You may have seen his character depicted in such films as ‘Apollo 13’ or ‘First Man’. Gene Krantz is the chap in Mission Control who dons a white waistcoat at the start of the manned rocket launches. His book, ‘Failure is Not an Option‘, is a fascinating listen. I can’t claim to follow all the technical stuff (although it is written to be accessible) but the background story to getting humans into space is remarkable. I’m in awe of the people who pushed the boundaries of knowledge and the men who basically sat on top of World War 2 German V2 rockets in order to be propelled out of the Earth’s atmosphere. Quite amazing!

Saturday Quilting Bring & Share posts may be a bit intermittent over the coming month but I intend to get the schedule back on track in the new year 🙂 Here are a few links to distract you from your Christmas preparations:

Sheila Christensen is launching her online ‘Modern Triangle Sampler’ course. Participants will have access to Sheila’s videos sharing all her expertise in cutting and making triangle blocks without templates or Y-seams. She is offering two options for the course quilt.

Have you made a Plaid-ish quilt? The design crops up fairly often in my Instagram feed and it’s definitely on my list of quilts to make. The Plaid-ish tutorial was first published in 2019 by Erica Jackman of Kitchen Table Quilting. You can download the pattern for free here.

Something else that catches my eye as I do the Instagram scroll are jackets made from quilts. Now, I’m no dress-maker but I am tempted by these especially as I have a large quilt that is not being used. I made it a few years ago as an entry for the Festival of Quilts challenge. It’s too big to work as a throw so I have no qualms about cutting it up. Alison Stothard @hexadoodlequilts shared her first version of the Paola jacket, a free pattern from the Fabric Store. That got me searching ’til I found another jacket pattern, the Tamarack Jacket by Grainline Studio. I found there is series of tutorials on the Grainline Studio blog page, maybe I could have a go? The website is full of helpful information – a good one to favourite I think 🙂

I had better stop dreaming of future projects, press the ‘publish’ button and acknowledge it is time for a reality check – go clean the bathroom 😛

Happy Stitching!

Allison

Using up the blue scraps

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Ha! When I declare, ‘I’m using up the blue scraps’ patchwork quilters reading this will understand my bin of blue scraps is no where near being emptied! In fact after all my rummaging the bin appeared to be overflowing even more than when I’d started! 😀

Left: Blocks of the Santa Fe Sew Along and Right: Blocks for the Dashing Stars quilt.

Anyhoo! The design wall is looking blue! And after a few hours of rummaging, playing with options and rotary cutting I have been able to clear my cutting table.

I have the pieces cut to make 10 more of the square-in-a-square blocks for the Dashing Stars beginners course quilt. I used the calculator from the Quilter’s Paradise website to give the cutting measurements for an 8″ finished block. After making a test block I’ve decided to keep the centre piece at 6-1/8th inches but to increase slightly the size of squares to cut into the outer triangles to 5″ square. This adjustment allows me to square-up the blocks to 8½” unfinished whilst ensuring there is a generous ¼” seam allowance at each of the points. I also selected and cut out the pieces for the other blocks I need to piece to complete the Dashing Stars quilt top. So I’ve pretty much prepared the materials for the second session I’ll be teaching this coming Saturday. (Always supposing tomorrow’s PCR test comes back negative – I received a ‘close contact’ ping today – *sigh*).

As the contents of the blue scrap bin were spread across my cutting table I took the opportunity to rummage some more in order to find pieces for the ninth block of the Pieces of Santa Fe Trail Sew Along.

I checked back through Melva’s blog posts and found a photo of the completed quilt top. Altogether there are twelve 12″ blocks in a 3 x 4 layout with sashing, cornerstones and three simple borders. I’m thinking I may add a ginger coloured fabric to the sashing or borders just to add a bit of warmth amongst all the cool blues….

Once done with rummaging and cutting, I carefully folded all the scraps, laid them flat in the scrap bin and …. Wahoo! The lid clicked shut without too much persuasion. Of course that may have been partly because I sorted out and put to one side the scraps of the scraps I’ve used to make the other eight Pieces of the Trail blocks, reasoning it will be good to use each fabric more than once… This battle of the scraps is definitely becoming a devious mind-game!

Now my cutting table is clear enough for me to begin work on the I-Spy quilt I’ve been itching to make. I’ll be making a slightly smaller version of my own I-Spy Shadow Quilt pattern and using some of the novelty print 5″ squares I’ve been busy cutting to collate into the Novelty Square Packs available from my Folksy and Etsy shops. I’ve chosen blue background fabrics for my quilt so inevitably there will be a few scraps to add to the blue scrap bin, although there’s not much ‘waste’ as it’s an economic strip-piecing pattern.

I’ll be posting regular updates @allisonreid.neweverymorning on Instagram as well as here 🙂

I wonder if you have been working on scrap-busting projects this year? Could you recommend a good quilt-along that is helping you keep going as you seek to make good use of your scraps?

Linking with Judy for Design Wall Monday and Beth for Monday Making. Judy has made a doll quilt with mini Pinwheel Blocks and tiny buttons. Beth is sharing the second block of her Christmas Sampler QAL.

Allison