Hi all,
How has your January been? Amazingly I have managed to catch up with quite a few things on the home admin side but also, and more importantly, I have made time to sew!
Last year I was a bit down in the dumps about how much fabric I had/how many WIPs had accumulated/how many ideas for quilts were unrealised and how I seemingly had no time to advance any, let alone all, of these matters.
So my goal for January was to tackle some of the WIPs which have been kicking about for one or several years, cluttering up my house and my brain.
Very happy to report that my goal has been achieved and I have got three quilt tops together. I am sure they will now lie fallow till I get organised for a marathon quilting session, but at least the tops are together and I can liberate and use the leftovers in other projects.
Which is a sort of tidying up, mentally as well as in the context of piles of stuff everywhere in physical space (aka lack of space).
So here they are in order of completing:
Carnival: the pieces for this quilt were cut out probably three years ago and I got as far as joining the elongated triangles into pairs but no further. Ever indecisive, I had the 'pennants' up on a design board for ages, finally taking them down and putting them away when the room had to be decorated. My motivation in tackling this one first is that I wanted to use any spare scraps for my Log Cabin squares (I said they were addictive to make!).
I guess over the intervening time I have become more relaxed about trying different colour combinations and not always playing safe, as this time around it didn't take nearly so long to lay out the pieces in an arrangement I was fairly happy with; I then got on with sewing it all together before I could change my mind.
I won't say I am any more skilful or instinctively good with colour as I don't feel skilled/clever at all in this area, but I do think that practice has helped, and making the Log Cabin squares has been a good exercise.
Anyway for better or worse I now have a completed top. It measures 56" x 75" and the pattern is a free one available from Windham Fabrics. The design is by Ashley Newcomb of the blog Film in the Fridge. I love quite a few of her quilt designs and am currently using a free tutorial on her website for another quilt - but you will have to wait till February to see that one!
Meanwhile I am very happy with Carnival which makes me feel cheerful. All the fabrics were from stash, including the plains. Now I just have to decide how to quilt it...
Next up is a Fractured Star design. I started this quilt in January 2019 in a workshop at Patchwork Cabin, a shop local to me which has since closed. I loved making the blocks and made as many as I could on the day and in the week afterwards, then ground to a halt as I was overtaken by my older son's move to Belgium and then the village fete planning which I mentioned in a previous post.
I knew I wanted to make the quilt bigger than 25 blocks, and because the design has to be square, that meant making it a 7 x 7 block set: another 24 blocks were required! I used mostly fabric from my stash and really enjoyed working out the layout with the different shades of blue.
I also decided that I didn't want the corner triangles to form a dense blue hourglass square where the blocks touch, so I modified the pattern and added more narrow sashing and tiny cornerstones to keep the whole quilt light and airy.
Here's a photo pf the back so you can see all the 1/4" seam allowances press neatly into the back of the 1/2" finished sashing. The slight extra thickness in the sashing actually helps to frame the star blocks.
Adding the sashing between the blocks also saved me from having to match the horizontal and vertical sashing/seam lines within the star blocks and avoided the lumps and bumps which would have occurred where all those seams would have come together.
Very happy with this one too, but it is large at 88"square: the blocks finish at 12". The sashing between the blue star pieces of the block and between the blocks is cut 1" wide, so it and the cornerstones finish at 1/2". The colours and shapes make me think of cool wintry snowflakes. Looking forward to quilting this one with simple straight lines through the sashing once I find a suitable backing fabric.
Final finished top was a bonus; I picked out the fabric strips one evening last autumn with a new baby in mind. The pattern is from Cluck Cluck Sew (Strip and Flip Baby Quilt, which is a free tutorial) and it is one which I have thought about and wanted to make for ages. The strips sat there without any further action, and the baby duly arrived and received a different quilt... But I finally managed to put the top together in a couple of evenings this month.
Fun to try for a rainbow effect, though my palette is more limited than the full spectrum of colour (determined by a jelly roll selection of strips I had on hand). You do need strips the full width of fabric so fat quarters are no good for this project. I am still pondering how to quilt it but no more babies in my vicinity are expected just yet, so I have a breathing space!
Spotty fabric for backing, by Riley Blake I think. Quilt top measures 38" x 42" so I can just about squeeze it on to a 1 metre piece of backing fabric.
My other great achievement this January (having failed last year) was to make some marmalade. I do love the zing of marmalade on sourdough toast for breakfast - jam just doesn't cut through and wake me up!
Have a great weekend, and here's to a productive February!
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