Tuesday 29 March 2011

I must focus!

I never seem to manage to focus on one thing at a time. My Verna blocks are still in a pile waiting to be sewn together, my Rural Jardin bear paws are draped over the kitchen table in mid quilt, I have a ton of coursework I should be doing but I'm still starting new projects!

I was so pleased with how my bear paws were turning out that I started slicing up my solid jelly roll to make the second version.


This version will have solid paws on a patterned background. The piles of neutral solids kind of look like tasty layered pastries - yummy! I also cut 240 of the 400 squares needed to go with them but got rotary fatigue at that point.


When I was rooting around in the box for the solid jelly roll I found my It's a Hoot jelly roll (I think I may have a jelly addiction). I'd completely forgotten about that and it's discovery led to a couple of hours of fun messing around on the computer.


This quilt is going to be a lot busier than my normal quilts but I'm trying to get out of my comfort zone. It took me a while to get here because this range has some large prints which you can't really see in a jelly roll. I may try and get one of them for the back so I can showcase the fabrics properly.

Now if I can focus and get some real work done I will have had a very productive day.

Sunday 27 March 2011

A Quilting Conundrum

I started quilting my bear paw quilt 3 months ago but I put it on pause because I wasn't happy with the way it was turning out. I started by quilting on every vertical and horizontal 2" strip but once I'd done them all (which was no easy feat on my little machine!) I didn't like the way it was looking.


I like the grid effect itself, which looks great from a distance, but when you look closer I'm not happy with the cream coloured thread that I've used.


I ordered some darker thread which has finally arrived but now I can't decide whether to unpick it all and try again with the new thread or just go with it and see how it turns out.


There are 14 lines which are 78" long and 18 lines which are 62" long giving a grand total of 2208" or 61 feet of quilting to be unpicked!!!

When you put it that way I think I'll just grit my teeth and go with it.

Monday 21 March 2011

Getting close to the end

It's taken a really long time to squeeze in these blocks between lectures, coursework and the general craziness of university life but I finally have a finished pile!


I hadn't realised how large this quilt was going to be until I saw the finished pile of blocks. I couldn't find the space to lay them out until I moved all the furniture in the kitchen to the outside of the room and started playing around on the floor. This attracted the attention of my flatmates so we spent a fun afternoon bonding over arrangements. It took a while, there is a lot of blue and green to disperse throughout the top but we go there in the end.


Look how excited Maria was:


I also found out that my maths isn't as good as it should be or, alternatively, I thought there were 40 squares in a layer cake instead of 42. Either way it turns out I made 4 too many blocks which worked out well because I didn't really like these ones, a little to 70s for my liking.


Now to find the time to zip them together and then I can move on to something else. As much as I love this top it seems to have been going on for ages!

Thursday 3 March 2011

Spring time is coming!

It was a beautiful day today with bright blue skies so I thought it would be the perfect time to work on my Verna quilt.

One of the things I love about a quilt in progress is the piles. For a very disorganised person I find great satisfaction in neat piles. Neat piles of rotary cut fabric:


Neat piles after the first seam:


and neat piles of finished blocks:


I managed to get all of the blocks with the cream outside finished today so there are only the inverse ones to go. Fingers crossed I'll get a bunch of sewing done again tomorrow. I'm so much more productive when there's sunshine and birdsong outside my window.