update on sunset

10 days away from the sewing room and I did about 2 hours of hand sewing on this sunset. I didn't have enough variety in the yarns I took. I am happy with how it is looking especially the bottom part. still needs lots of work. Here is the inspirational piece.

update on convergence

I made some progress on my convergence quilt. The focus fabric is a lovely floral print of zinnias designed by Valori Wells. I have 2 of the books she has written with her mother - Jean Wells. I like them because they have delightful pictures of gardens & flowers as well as quilts and descriptions of their design process.
One of their quilts features paper pieced arcs by Karen Stone's New York Beauties joined to represent flowers. I used just one quarter circle as the sun in the corner on my quilt. The batik has a good mix of the colours in the convergence as well as some brown for the earth. The green is repeated in the opposite corner. The next step will be a combination of fussy cut zinnias from the fabric as well as some silk flower petals under tulle. Just need to decide on foliage.

half way there

I settled on 2 fabrics for sashing & setting blocks for this quilt and a third reddish fabric for the narrow border. I'm quite pleased with how it is looking.

sunset background

all ready for hand stitching. This is a piece of the wool felt from the scarf I'm making. Little bits of wool roving and silk felted down. I forgot how luxurious silk rovings are. Some of the yarns ready to stitch a sunset. Or it could be a sunrise!

the rest of the blocks

These blocks whipped together in no time at all. and the variety is great.
You know when the cutting and sewing are accurate when the little slivers of colour on the seams are all the same. not bad Eh?!
I found a few playmates in the stash. The small print will probably end up as binding.

large scale fabric

I love that large scale fabrics are now readily available but it can be hard to decide what to do with them.Weekes Ringle discusses these challenges on Whipup. I bought what seems like miles but is about 5 metres of this floral for under $10. It has wonderful dusty greyed colours that I don't usually buy.
I did the Stack'n Whack technique like everyone else a few years back. It lingers in the UFO category. A much easier way is to cut 4 repeats of the fabric, stack and cut into square blocks.You still get lots of variety and options and wonderful movement in the blocks at a fraction of the work. This fabric has repeat of just under 24". My cut blocks are 5 & 1/2" square, making the pieced block 10 & 1/2" unfinished. I love the blocks. Some have more ground fabric that cuts the busyiness. I am going to look for a grey mustardy yellow for setting corners and one of the other colours for sashing. The conventional borders would be the uncut fabric but I want something in the same colour family but from a different line of fabric.

blocks are done

the other half of the blocks are done, pressed & auditioning for placement. I like the movement in the quilt now with the squares going in both directions. I will have to go shopping for border fabrics & will probably get one of the large scale floral prints for the back.

half time stretch

Is there anything better than waving a flag of pieced blocks on the way to the ironing board?
Yup! getting those freshly pressed blocks up on the design wall to get a feel for what the finished quilt will look like!
Half of the blocks using the Moda squares.The other half will face the opposite diection. I love this fabric!

fast fix for quilters

Moda has come out with wonderful collections of precision cut squares or as Wendy at Quilter's Cupboard says 'fast food for quilters'. All ready to go & sew.Hey, that's kind of catchy!
I'm not a big kit person. I've never bought a kit for its designed purpose. I have picked up the odd kit on sale for the individual contents only. BUT....
this I couldn't resist ... a delicious collection designed by April Cornell of stripes, polka dots, large scale botanical, small vintage motifs all in a fresh colour pallette of coral, teal, olive green and chocolate brown.
So what to do with them? They would look wonderful just sewn together with narrow borders but that's not my style.
To me one of the pleasures of buying fabric is bringing it home & introducing its cousins already in the stash. I've pulled fabrics for many quilts that I have no intention of actually making. Just an exercise in playing with fabric. This is especially fun and easy to do now that my fabrics are organized in the closet. This also helps me evaluate the stash. I don't have any great browns to go with these squares. I'll pick a brown for the border and the dark stripe for the binding.

I did pick the pattern before these fabrics. A modern pallette needs a modern pattern and obviously something that starts with squares. I settled on The Spin from Karla Alexander's book New Cuts for New Quilts More ways to Stack the Deck.
These are just sample blocks to work out the measurements but you can see how the square is surrounded with the other pieces that are stacked & cut. The squares end up in alternating directions to make the spin.
Now go & sew!

elements-fire

I had the perfect dyed fabric for this element so no painting. It is built up of layers of fabric coloured with marker & funky glitzy bits like angelina. many more layers to go.

painted fabrics

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I can see how this can be addictive - to create your own fabric - to slap some paint on a damp piece of fabric - put it aside to dry & see what colours have mixed & migrated.
The blue/green piece is for quilt U element class - water. beside it are batiks destined to be rocks. It has wonderful fine irridescent paint on it to give it some reflection.
The other piece is quartered & bagged & headed to NYC for a sunset fabric swap hosted by Alma The colours are a littled blurred and light - too much water but not bad for second attempt.

more from Quilter's playtime

this is from the game tiddly winks in Quilter's playtime by Dianne S. Hire. This one is broken so there are 16 pieces per block allowing for a lot of playing. I love the whole mix. the circles were covered with couched yarn and the straight breaks are ribbon.
Now just to decide on how to finish it. Borders? how wide, what colour?

work in progress-wreath

I need to finish this class sample before I go on holidays in a few weeks. It is a wreath made with bias strips then miles of yarns. I used up 10 yards of a yummy yarn I got in Chicago from Fabulous Fibers & Embellishments and that was just the last layer of yarn. I need to decide how to embellish it. Had picked out fabric with pinecones & evergreen branches but I think it needs something more from fall than winter. I'm thinking coloured leaves & bittersweet berries.
One of the benefits about blogging about a project other than not working on it is the photo helps to see what is working & what isn't. I love the two batiks for the border but I don't think there is enough contrast with the orange one. I think it should be a bluish green fabric.

Quilt Along

There are some wonderful groups of people sharing their progress of quilting based on specific books. One is the Modern Quilt-along I mentioned earlier. Another is based on Denise Schmidt's book at Sarah's site. They are fresh contemporary projects.
One of my favourite quilting books is Quilter's Playtime by Dianne S. Hire. There are no patterns. Instead it is a wonderful collection of games to play with fabric. They are named after simple childhood make-up-the-rules-as-you-go games. No x-box here! Hopscotch creates beautiful runs of blocks- playful courthouse log cabins. I started with the third to last game- Tiddly winks- off centre stacks of oval shapes with the fabrics sliced & shuffled. I started 2 versions of this game. In true gleaner fashion I took the leftover bits from one version and finished pick-up-sticks first!
I would love to see what other quilters are inspired by this book to create. Join me in the Quilter's Playtime Quilt Along.
As Dianne says in her Intro "these games ...were designed for sharing, for playing with a friend. Sometimes the fun comes in sharing results. Sometimes the fun is the sharing itself."