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.

another high teck tucks

a second sample to show the guild next week. The first one is here. I'll be teaching this twice, once at a quilt shop and then to the guild. The border fabric is slightly different than the tuck fabric- I used inadventently used it for something else. The bind is the same as the background. THe binding is done completely by machine but I think I may go back to a hand sewn binding - give the best finished binding IMHO.

finished in 1 day!!

A record has been set. I started and FINISHED this wallhanging TODAY. (insert roaring crowd here)

The turquoise and black are actually 3D tucks that stand out from the background fabric by Paula Nadelstern. The tucks are then folded to form the wave of black across the piece. This is a technique by Caryl Byer Fallert called High Tech Tucks. It was featured in Fons & Porter magazine Sept/Oct 06.

It is sewn onto the batting to prevent any linger UFO labels.

totes for sale

I have my very own sweatshop. trying to produce stuff for a Christmas craft sale. and I decided on a tote bag, a very cool but definitely spring/summer tote. Or maybe I should call it a winter cruise/March break tote.
Pattern is Screen Play by Nancy Ota and is very well designed. I loved picking out the various colour combos.
Have made 2 sizes DH likes the small one but he has no concept of what might need to go into a ladies tote especially for lounging in the sun. water,sunscreen, chick-lit novel, magazines, cell phone, hat,hair clips,sunglasses, towel and those are just the basics. Add a whole other set of stuff if there are little ones involved.

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?