Time has been whizzing by! I’ve been carried along on waves of inspiration which has been rather lovely after a long period of just ‘doing’ patchwork without feeling creative.
Following the craft fair with no sales I decided to think through what it is I enjoy about patchwork quilting and in what direction I should be heading. Sharing knowledge and skills came out as the way to go. This fits with my 2022 word of the year NURTURE and with previous words of the year LEARN, COMMUNITY, SHARE and GROW. With this fresh clarity, I pressed past procrastination and a bit of a crisis of confidence to book a local community hall for two Saturdays in July… Time to plan a couple of workshops….
Workshop No.1 – Bargello Table Runner has been inspired by the popularity of a couple of blog tutorials I posted back in June 2020. Seems people would like a straightforward introduction to the rather daunting patchwork version of the classic Bargello design. So I’ve fiddled about with pencil, paper (eraser) and fabric to come up with two designs, one symmetrical, the other asymmetrical, which provide an opportunity to practice the process of patchwork Bargello without a massive commitment of time or fabric. In fact all that’s required are seven WOF strips (left over jelly roll strips would be ideal) to make a Bargello table runner.
Workshop No.2 – I’m leaning towards teaching quick strip piecing using my I-Spy Shadow pattern. I haven’t quite made up my mind, so, for the time being I’ll put a ‘to be confirmed’ message next to this workshop!
And then there’s the squirrel project that just leapt out of an old book and onto my design wall! Ahem! There may have been an excursion to Amazon Prime to purchase a Layer Cake along the way 😏 The design is called ‘Hexagon Hip Hop’ and can be found in the original ‘Layer Cake, Jelly Roll and Charm Quilts’ book by Pam & Nicky Lintott. Looking along my shelf of books about patchwork I have a feeling this may have been the first one I purchased. It was published in 2009. I’ve thumbed through the book so many times but never made any of the designs! Maybe the (brief) thought of de-cluttering my patchwork supplies spurred me into making a quilt using a pattern from the book? I’m not sure but there it is on the design wall!
At some wakeful point during the night I was thinking about the patches on the design wall, wondering about changing up the border from the design in the book, when I came up with the idea to use whole hexagons rather than have partial hexagons around the edges. So first thing this morning I was busy making a few changes to the arrangement on the design wall.
I like the the look of the complete hexagons nudging into the borders. It will mean a bit more cutting to make border fabric half hexagons and a bit of fiddling to make border fabric pieces to fill-in the ‘v’ shapes along the top and bottom rows of the hexagons but I think it will be worth the trouble 🙂
Oh! I nearly forgot to mention another sewing project that got some attention this week! On Thursday I went to the monthly sewing day held at a local Scout Hut and made the May blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge. For the first time in months I am up-to-date with the RSC 🎉
Finally, I did manage to post a short video tutorial in my Facebook group, Patchwork Beginners’ Learning Hub. I demonstrated how to use a regular rectangular ruler (I like those rolling ‘r’s!) to cut the 60º slices to form the edges of the half hexagon patches.
All the sewing activity was made possible by the silver-lined cloud of a very sore back caused by an excess of digging and weeding at the allotment last weekend. We’d actually had some rain and rushed to get some beds dug over before the ground re-set to it’s usual concrete state. Boy! Did I know about it on Monday morning? Usually I find walking and moving about is the best relief for my back pain. Not this time, walking was really uncomfortable, bending and lifting were very painful, sitting and sewing were just fine 🙂
Thankfully, my back is feeling a lot better now. We had a gentle walk to the newsagents this morning with no ill-effects. There will be far less time for sewing in the coming week. I’m working two full days in Purple Stitches; the 2nd-5th June is a special holiday to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee so there are lots of activities around that; and I’m preparing to run a craft stall at an Art Fair on Saturday!
I hope you are finding inspiration and the time to sew. It is good for the soul!
Allison
