Monday, March 21, 2011

Back in the hoop

The advantage of having many projects on the go is that as soon as you finish one you have something else you can pick up and continue on with (that's my justification anyway:) ).
The other day I finished the blocks from the last post and while I wait for some clear-thinking time to calculate sashing yardage, I pulled out this project which has been waiting patiently all winter. I still have a couple of months before it becomes too hot to quilt this woolen quilt.

I am making up the quilting patterns as I go, playing with styles and discovering what I like and don't like. I have discovered that I am not crazy about the quarter inch outline quilting and will replace it - perhaps with a single line down the centre of each diamond? I love the circles but couldn't for the life of me remember what I had used to mark them, so the above photo is also a pro-memoria. I only mark a small section at a time as I the pencil tends to fade or rub off and needs to be redone. I use a sharp HB or 2B pencil, depending on how dark I need the lines to be. I raided my girls' toy boxes for the marking tools. The cardboard templates were traced from applique patterns. I love how they look quilted. These patterned fabrics are difficult to quilt on and make me wish I had included more white muslin.
I have only just noticed how irregularly I marked the diagonal lines on the plaid fabric. Iwill leave it until later and decide if I can live with that. Probably not, but I want to move on a bit with the quilting before I do it over.
Time can give a different perspective to things, which I guess is the advantage of working slowly. Janet has found a solution to something that has been bothering her about this quilt that she has been working on for a long time. Her thoughts on batting are quite interesting.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Only just


The last four blocks remaining for this quilt have been cut and stacked, ready to sew.

This is how much yellow fabric that was left at the end. Careful planning? No. I had so much yellow fabric to start with that I didn't bother to estimate how much I would need. I managed to make 15 blocks, and 15 blocks will be the quilt, but only just.
As boring as it is, I think I will sit down and plan things a little more carefully next time. Not so economically, I got into a bit of a panic and bought some more yellow fabric while in Australia. As it turned out, finding a good match was not as easy as I thought and I now have a as much yellow fabric in my stash as when I started out!