I’ve finally finished the Green, Blue and Purple Equilateral Triangle quilt for my neighbour’s baby, but I’ve just washed it and will take final photos tomorrow. However it’s FINISHED!
I’ve had a quilt top, Cluck Cluck Sew’s Seville, finished all except the borders since August 2013.
And today I FINALLY GOT THE BORDERS ON!
I wonder how long it will take for me to quilt it.
I’m determined to finish a few WIPs. For example, this quilt has just been waiting for borders since August 2013!!!
I’ve even had the fabric for the inner borders (white) cut. They’re SOMEWHERE in my sewing room. And I have the fabric for the outer borders. So I needed something for the bindings and backing. I’m really pleased with what I found at Frangipani Fabrics.
In the interests of getting things finished, I’d considered and decided against making my Retro Flowers quilt larger, i.e. doing 25 flowers rather than the 16 I had originally planned. I almost have all 16 flowers finished.
But then when I buying the backing and binding, somehow I also bought these:
They’d fit in really well. Hmm. Sigh. What to do, what to do?!
I’ve been wanting to experiment with this for ages, but getting the fabric for it has been impossible – until recently a shop opened up that stocks the foll range of Kona solids. Now I can just walk into a shop and do this:
I didn’t really know how much to cut up. I had 10 inch strips, and strangely I decided to do 5 1/2 in triangles. I just cut a strip worth of each. If I’d been thinking it through more, I would have gotten slightly wider strips. Whatever – I had a 4-year-old with me in the shop, so I’m lucky I made it out.
I’m making this for my neighbour’s baby. He’s almost 6 months old, so I kinda feel wish I’d done 4 1/2 inch triangle now so that I could have done more triangles and made him a larger quilt.
But I’m really enjoying this, so this won’t be the last time I try out this idea.
I’ve already mentioned the quilt I’ve been working on since I did the curves class last Saturday. I’ve completed more ‘petals’ since this photo was taken, but it gives you and idea of where it is going.
I knew learning how to piece curves that would then sit flat on a quilt would be tricky. The first few I did really felt awkward. It took several pieces for me to get a feel for it. At first I was SO uncomfortable!
However I didn’t realise that sewing the curves wouldn’t be the major effort for this quilt. There is a LOT of cutting. Cutting the pieces to create the blocks to make up petals, but then after the bright fabric and grey are joined either with a curve or straight borders, each block must then be re-trimmed. Usually I love that sort of precision work, however I’m still ill – and keep making mistakes. Eek.
Some of the mistakes mean I just plain need to redo the block (like mistakes trimming blocks when tired and sick), but there’s others where I don’t know what to do! I was being so careful of the few blocks with pattern that they at least went in the same direction, but in my sick addle minded stupidity I paid attention not to change the direction when piecing the rounded blocks – but changed every single one of the curved blocked joined to a square block. And I didn’t realise I was doing this until today.
Oh dear. To unpick or not to unpick?
I had vowed that I would sew from my stash this year. Yup. Sure. Well I have been using my stash quite a lot, but I have also bought a bit of fabric. Just a bit.
I’ve never done a ‘Sunday Stash’ post here before, but I quite like the idea – pausing after making purchases to reflect on what you’ve gotten, perhaps play with it with other things in your stash. Usually I just hide it away before my husband sees how much fabric has entered the house.
I’ve had a summer cold this week, but I WAS NOT going to miss a class I signed up for a curves class at Frangipani Fabrics. I don’t do classes often, and I was really looking forward to learning how to do curves. These are my first ones, and although they aren’t perfect, they’re CURVES!
As I’m ill I haven’t given myself as much practice as I’d like, but I’m beginning to get the feel of it. Just looking at the start even looks wrong!
I already had my fabrics chosen for the quilt that this will make, but here’s where the stash bit comes in: I bought some more fabric. I couldn’t help it. I was at Frangipani Fabrics, and they have this lovely system where when you buy fabric you wind up with a credit for later, and they’re so lovely and have such yummy fabrics, and and. . . I decided to add a few fabrics to my curves project and swap out some I’d already chosen. I don’t think this is a traditional ‘Sunday Stash’ post as they’re not all from the same designer, but here are my additions:
I’ve been ill, so at least it has given me time to knit up some owl mittens not just for myself but for a friend. All I need now are some buttons for eyes!
The pattern was one I adapted from one I saw on Ravelry. The original pattern was knitted flat and then seamed, however I’m better at knitting in the round than I am at seaming.
I was too indecisive to work on the Project 48 blocks for a few weeks, so I finally got around to making a quilt for a friend’s baby. I had way too many ideas, but while stash diving for Project 48 I found a jelly roll I got ages ago. So I quickly put this together.
It wound up larger than I thought it would, and although it was too large for it, I really wanted to use some green heart fabric as the backing. So I just added a white strip.
I was so happy to finally get it finished and to the bub!
I have had a bit of a mental block for the past few weeks. I tried to cure it by knitting and doing other quilt projects. I actually think it was easier to do 3 blocks at once. If you only have one, you can overthink it. And I’m already good at overthinking!
So this afternoon I was able to get blocks 5, 6, and 7 of Project 48 started and FINISHED. They are all part of the half square triangle month. I LOVE half square triangles. I spent several hours in the middle of the day fabric shopping and lunching with a friend. I had a fabulous time – she’s an awesome friend – plus I got some lovely new fabrics. One really made sense for the idea I’d had for block 5 as soon as it had been published.
I tossed around the idea of adding white, and asked my friend as well, but in the end didn’t. I think it was the right choice. (The colours aren’t great in this photo.)
I don’t have any green blocks yet, so decided I’d do block 6 in green. I think I need more green in my stash – but also didn’t think I should delay doing it any longer. I actually did it last. The green is a little brighter than this photo shows, but it’s not as bright as I would have liked. But it’s DONE.
It’s not perfect – However it’s done! I really liked the designer – Alyce from Blossom Heart Quilts. She loves half square triangles too! I like that she had pressing instructions in her instructions (although I didn’t agree with them as I felt they hid the points – unless I misinterpreted them).
Block 7 was quite quick and relatively painless, despite being wonky. I’m not keen on wonky – but I could think about the non-wonky parts.
It’s Friday, so time for block 4 of Project 48! I read the instructions over for the first time over my morning coffee, and although I initially loved the look of the block I didn’t like how much fabric it wasted if you were only doing one block. It would be fine if you were doing a whole quilt; I can imagine 4 shades of kona in each block in a couple of colours – fabulous! But for one block. . .hmm. I had friends visiting in the morning, so ideas were bubbling away until I could get to my fabric.
For some reason I thought cutting a single piece of fabric in stripes then rearranging them would work. Luckily I tested it out with paper first. It didn’t work as I wanted it to.
So I cut out a paper template and did lots of stash diving. For some reason the red with yellow striped fabric had come into my mind immediately for this project, and I found that if I played around I had more than enough to do half of the centre with it.
I chose another red fabric – with droplets, a very appropriate celebration of today’s rain – as the other fabric in the centre.
I played with the placement for the coloured pieces. NO, those stripes would drive me insane like this.
Much better.
There’s still a lot of wastage on this block. The centre needed to be trimmed down to 5 1/2 inches; mine started as 6 1/2.
I marked the small squares, then sewed them to their strips. I sewed on the ‘outside’ side of the line to help compensate for the thickness of the thread and fabric when pressed. I had to use my normal foot instead of the 1/4 inch foot for this step.
More trimming/wastage – although these are quite small corners. If they were larger I would have sewed another seam parallel to the one needed for the pattern – then when you trim you have a HST to use on another project.
Cutting and trimming complete!
Ahhh – finally I see why this is part of the 9 patch month.
Block 4 of 48! As a larger quilt, I think this block would be fun. I’ll keep it in mind. With lots of shades of kona colours, a bit of a production line, and perhaps not having to make someone 5,000 pieces of Vegemite while making it and it could go quite well.
Blocks 1 through 4 of 48:
Still on this month’s 9-patch theme, this week’s Project 48 block is a wonky design. Oh dear. The phrase ‘No measuring allowed you guys!’ set me into a panic! That’s not me. Not me at all.
The previous 2 blocks I had finished by 10 or 10:30 am the morning they were published. With this one, I kept finding other things to do. I started knitting some owl mittens. I read to my son. I even cleaned the kitchen and put away the clean laundry! I even contemplated trying to organise my stash by colour, however my son wanted to help. Nooooo.
While I was going through fabrics, I saw I had 2 x 4.5 inch orange blocks. Hmm. Several people who had already done their wonky block found they had to re-do it as they’d cut it too wonky and couldn’t get a 9.5 inch block out of it. Then I found 5 inch charm squares, and there were several orange squares. Fine – I’d just choose a random 9 squares. They were all ‘too big’, so my planning brain didn’t have to worry about cutting it and not being able to make a large enough block.
I tried to be quite free when slicing them up. After putting the first 2 sets of ‘quarters’ together, I trimmed a bit.
Once I had the block ready to be trimmed down to 9.5 inches, I almost measured 4.75 inches from the middle seam – but then that just seemed wrong. I checked, and my block was certainly large enough that I could trim it wonky.
My block was certainly large enough! Maybe too large. In trimming it down I trimmed whole patches of fabric off, but I have a 9.5 square.
So here are blocks 1 through 3 of my Project 48:
