Improvisation

At Five Islands

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Immediately after giving up on the Diamonds Quilt, I turned to a new wall art project: At Five Islands.

I’ve written about my visit to the Five Islands Park this past July. While at the park, I managed to capture a photo of my friend Ruby who had been on the trip with me:

At Five Islands

I knew I would turn the photo into a piece of fibre art. I started by enlarging the photo so I could make the panel 15″ x 12″ and have Ruby still be prominent. Next I dug out a bunch of fabrics and scraps from the stash trying to match colour.

At Five Islands – Picking Fabrics

Then I sketched in some features (using a Friction pen which will disappear when I fuse fabric elements in place).

At Five Islands – Sketching The Scene

This morning I started cutting small bits of fabric to “paint” the scene:

At Five Islands – Preliminary Layout

Nothing is fused in place yet. I’m still trying to get the feel of the layout. I can see I need to squash the vertical aspect quite a bit because I want Ruby’s head to be well above the landscape behind her.

The challenge with this piece is getting the feel of the wet mud flat of the Bay of Fundy at low tide. Yesterday I painted a piece of fabric using an acrylic wash but the colour is much too bright for the scene. I need something quite a bit darker; I also need to cut away much more.

St. Margaret’s Bay

I have been studying a couple of my watercolour paintings of the ocean – I’ve spent hours in front of them trying to understand how to set up the mud flat. Because the water reflects the sky it has to be the same colour – it’s the subtle shadowing of the “land” elements that make us read “water”. With watercolour, the water is painted first with the darker land elements added after the water has dried. I need to do the same with my piece – lay down the water fabric then add strips representing “mud” on top. The thread painting will fill in the flow of the remaining surface water on the mud.

Next step is to add fusible interfacing to each of the small fabric pieces, shape them, then fuse them in place.

 

Diamonds – Time To Quit!

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We had a snow storm yesterday – a good day for sewing. I managed to get half of the diamond blocks assembled but then I faced reality – if I aligned the left side and the top square on my cutting board I had a seriously wobbly diagonal that can’t be repaired easily! I’ll explain….

Half Of The Top Panel Assembled

I worked hard at getting precise diamond points and I was successful to a great extent. Laid out on batting the slight irregularities in the diamonds would smooth out as the cotton adhered to the batting.

Closeup Of The Diamonds

However the diagonal edge is about 2 1/2″ – 3″ too long!

The Problem With The Diagonal

I could take the whole assembled panel apart and try shaving small amounts from each diamond but then aligning the points would be very difficult.

Wobbly Diagonal

Even with the “dart” the further diagonal edge is still wobbly.

Second Side Of Panel Started

You can see how the wobble is beginning here on the second side – the problem at this point seems limited to the edge triangles but I suspect were I to replace those elements and continue adding rows I’d find the problem with the diagonal developing as the diagonal gets longer.

This has not been my favourite project – it’s been a fight from the beginning. I think it’s time to call it quits. That means actually throwing out the whole thing, not keeping it around as a U(n) F(finished) O(object). Just forget it.

I was thinking about axing the project at 6:00 am after I’d rolled over to register online for an aquafit class next Wednesday and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I was thinking maybe I should just slice the quilt, cut out the fullness, sew a seam across the diamonds, trim the diagonal, then continue working on the second half, maybe do the same thing there if I needed to.

I have a name for the project – “At War With Itself” – I’m doing fine with regard to COVID-19, the mess in the US has had me transfixed for five years. I think this quilt has been a reflection of that angst – my inner harmony seems lost. Do I want to quickly finish the piece with all it’s ugliness? Or should I simply get rid of it and start afresh? I suppose if I’m going to throw it away I might have a go at the splice and see how awful it looks – maybe awful is OK?

Diamonds – Updating

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I’d no sooner posted earlier this morning when my friend Deb texted me “Saw your post and have a few brighter fabrics if you want me to bring them up to audition? ”  “Sure, I said.” and within a few minutes Deb was at my door with a small pile of fabrics she thought might fit into my array.

I choose a couple, then went through my stash again, this time not worrying about “Dots” but just looking for fabrics in shades that might work with the diamonds in my layout.

Layout With Edges

I cut out a number of diamonds in bold colours and dropped them into the layout on my floor. Looking at my pile of unused diamonds it’s obvious I’ve removed most of the very pale diamonds and substituted much stronger colours.

While I was rummaging in the stash, I came across a “dots” fabric I thought would be dark enough to blend with the rest so I cut out half diamonds for the sides, top/bottom, and corners. The dots are much further apart but the pattern is soft enough that it isn’t distracting from the main panel, just framing it. I will need more borders but I’ll deal with that when I have this all assembled (I may have just enough of the dots left for a narrow border and I will add a narrow turquoise border I think; what else, I’m not sure yet).

My layout is complete. I can tell by looking at the photo I should still move a few diamonds but I’m now reasonably happy with what I have.

Assembly Beginning

I began assembling diamonds starting in what will become the bottom right corner (or upper left – I’ll see later which way I think the quilt will work best).

I’ll carry on with setting up the diagonal rows and attaching them to one another – painstaking work, because I want the points to align – that takes careful pinning at the joins before I sew. However, I’ve managed to align the points in these two rows reasonably well, hoping to be able to continue as I go along.

What I’ve realized is my decision to use the tiny dots jellyroll for this diamond project was a problem from the start – the strips were too narrow to make diamonds themselves and stitching them together set up conflicts I wasn’t able to resolve. That kept me stuck, not knowing how to move ahead. Stepping away from the lighter diamonds and deciding to use stronger colours freed me to explore my stash and consider other possibilities.

Diamonds – Finally…

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After weeks of walking around these forty 2 1/2″ fabric strips, I finally managed to get started.

Remember, I’m trying to create a quilt based on diamonds, from a jellyroll of 2 1/2″ strips.  I came up with a way of combining strips to end up with a reasonable size diamond and a possibly pleasing colour flow.

I paired up strips close in colour, then sewed three pairs along one edge. I stopped to create a diamond template based on the 4 1/2″ width (twice as tall as wide) using a file folder (for stiffness) and cut out three diamonds from the sewn dark pair, which left me with six half diamonds from the off-cuts. I laid the diamonds out on the two other uncut strips to see how the this would look.

Dark Diamonds On Uncut Strips

I could immediately see that if I stitched the second side of each pair, when I cut out a diamond, the off-cut would also be a stitched diamond (same size) that I could open and press rather than trying to sew two half diamonds (which is difficult!). So I sewed the second side of the medium and light pairs and cut them into diamonds:

Diamonds From Three Strip Pairs

The contrast between the light/medium/dark was stark so I introduced the turquoise Grunge fabric I was intending to use as a contrast – as half diamonds and as a full diamond (If I decide to use full diamonds in turquoise I will cut them as diamonds, not as half-diamonds).

Before sewing more strip pairs together I made a better template using quilting template plastic, backed it with file folder cardboard, marked the seam line along one edge as a reference and included the end cuts so I don’t have to cut a gazillion dog-ears from the diamonds after I’ve cut them all.

I stitched two more pairs, this time on both sides of the strips, cut them into diamonds and added them to the array.

Now you can start to see how I might be able to work on colour flow since the remaining 14 pairs are an array of light/medium/dark hues.

Jellyroll Collection

It’ll be interesting to see how much colour flow I can actually manage from this collection of fabrics – I won’t know until I’ve stitched all the remaining pairs, cut out the diamonds and start laying them on the floor (I don’t have a design wall – I don’t have a spare wall in my apartment studio to accommodate one).

Let you know how it goes once I’ve got a layout.

Comet Quilt – Completed

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Finally finished. Yesterday I attached the hidden binding (mitring the corners) and hand stitched it to the back.

Comet Quilt - Top

Comet Quilt – Top

I’m happy with the colour flow from top left to bottom right. The bronze “sparkle” in the background fabric shows nicely, as well – I didn’t see that as a possibility when I ordered the fabric. There’s also a blue speckle which is brought out by the medium blue shades in the brighter blocks.

The back turned out nicely, as well.  I was able to incorporate the single pink triangle there. In the photo, the blocks look darker than they are – that’s because in a brighter light (it’s a dark cloudy day today – a large snowstorm is forecast to start around noon) the bronze sparkle in the blocks from the background fabric do show.

Just about every scrap of fabric I had leftover from the front got used in that strip. I was lucky to be able to complete the 125 blocks I needed for the stripe.

When I was making the quilt back  made sure I’d have enough fabric from the offcuts to be able to make the hidden binding. I like how the elements of the back come to the edge of the quilt that way rather than being interrupted by a conventional binding.

Comet Quilt – Back

This morning I pulled out two complementary jellyroll packages from the stash. Now I have to figure out some way to use them in a quilt. That’s my next project.

Comet Quilt VI – The Back

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All those bright blue triangles I had leftover when I remade so many of those HST blocks? I used them to make more HST blocks for the insert on the back of the quilt!

25 of 125 blocks

The quilt top is 54″ x 68″. I need to make the back 4″ larger in both length and width: 58″ x 72″ or thereabouts (I’ll be using the off-cuts to do a hidden binding after the quilt is quilted). My HST blocks finish at 3″ so I needed 25 of them for the length (one extra row just in case), and 5 blocks for the width (15″ to make the back panel wide enough: 42″ + 16 1/2″) will do it.

I needed 125 blocks to construct the insert strip. The strip will be bordered with two dark strips – a finished 1″ strip using the last small scraps I had of the Sparkle fabric (not a single bit left), and one other (finished width 1/2″) yet to be determined!

Back strip under construction

I have assembled two of the 25 blocks elements – 3 to go. I should get those done today. Tomorrow I’ll put the quilt back together, set up the sandwich and then think about what kind of quilting design would complement the Comet Quilt top – no idea about that yet.

Comet Quilt – V

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Here is the quilt top – finished – borders in place. Final size ~ 50″ x 70″ (I’ll measure it when it’s finished).

Quilt Top – Completed

It has taken a lot of fiddling, and looking at the photograph I can see spots where I could make more block swaps – but this is it. No more replacing blocks – I’ve done enough. I’m prepared to live with this outcome. Besides, the quilting will integrate the blocks; I will use some kind of variegated thread that both blends but contrasts with the fabrics.

Leftovers from remade blocks

I realized quite early on the bright blue blocks were going to be too bright so I remade almost all of them, substituting darker fabrics, particularly in the upper right quadrant. I haven’t counted them – I don’t want to know how much extra work I actually did. I’m happy with the reconstructed blocks, I was able to make enough to distribute throughout the panels surrounding the central panel.

I was keeping one eye on the Moda quilt pattern as I worked and that was a mistake – I thought it would make the process simpler (give me an idea about how many blocks to make, what pairings to set up) – it made it more difficult. Because I wasn’t using the suggested fabrics I had to reconsider and rework selections/pairings I’d made even after large sections were stitched. The quilt pattern uses large blocks in the outer regions – those elements turned out to be difficult to incorporate and keep the whole flat – I would have been better off to have constructed the quilt from 3 1/2″ blocks throughout. Next time I attempt something freeform like this, I will put the stimulus photo away and work from scratch basing decisions on the fabrics and the colour movement I want to achieve.

Now onto the back – I have absolutely no idea what to do with that. I think I’ll take the top to the fabric shop to see what I can find. I know, without looking, I have nothing in my stash that will suit the quilt top.

Comet Quilt – IV

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Comet Quilt – More sections added

It’s a dull day today, hard to get a good photo without more daylight, but this image does give a sense of how this quilt is building out.

I added a row at the top and along the left side, a panel across the bottom and another (built from two smaller panels) to the right. Along the way, I found myself taking bits apart and changing out blocks to better the colour movement down and to the right.

The next section is a panel, constructed from segments of the background with just a few HST dotted here and there. This panel will extend the length of the whole by about a foot giving a good throw quilt size.

The final borders are constructed from background fabric – and I’m pretty sure I don’t have enough. With a bit of luck the yard I bought online the other day will arrive soon.

Comet Quilt – III

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Central Panel – Done!

There it is. I’ve just finished assembling the central panel.

It took a careful, precise pairing of blocks in rows, making sure I pressed the seams in an appropriate direction so I could juxtapose the blocks when stitching the rows. Not a task for the disorganized. Fortunately I’d taken lots of photos of the arrangement on the floor so I could refer to them as I was painstakingly sewing these blocks together.

I’m happy with this layout – I got rid of a lot of the “squareness” in the pattern and what’s left will be dulled when I add the darker bordering elements which are all much darker.

I also managed to align the points pretty well (not perfectly – I can see a few small irregularities) – even another quilter would have to have an eagle eye to spot them.

So, tomorrow – since there is no aquafit (the pool is closed for the next 10 days – probably longer – COVID-19 precautions, right? We’re all working hard here in NS to keep the lid on the virus – we’re getting spread but so far it’s not escalating exponentially…). I have NOTHING else on my calendar. I’ll be able to get up and get to work on the next set of bordering panels.

[BTW: The pink bit in the lower right corner is a post-it note saying “Bottom Right” so I had a reference point to keep me oriented as I was assembling the panel (I built up the panel starting at the bottom rows simply because I could reach them more easily without having to worry about inadvertently shifting blocks).]

[BTW 2: Yesterday I bought some of the striped fabrics specified in the original quilt pattern – I’m thinking it might be interesting to try this quilt again as a “postage stamp” quilt ending up with 1 1/2″ blocks. That’ll be a challenge because the HST will be very small – same number of blocks, however. I think those striped fabrics were an interesting aspect of the original design and I want to see if I can make them work without following the pattern!]

Comet Quilt – II

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I’m progressing – I haven’t begun sewing yet – I’ve spent the past three days walking around the panel arrayed on my floor, moving a block here, changing a block there.

This morning I removed 8 HST with the bright blue with dots and remade them using some Stonehenge fabric (in dark blue and teal tones) which I bought yesterday. Then I placed them into the array. They register as medium in colour supporting the “bright” centre of the panel.

Comet panel – Laid out

The “squareness” of it is now more or less gone. I have the light moving toward the bottom left corner. The adjacent panels will continue that colour movement. I’m now ready to assemble these rows.

In the meantime I’ve begun laying out segments to fit around this piece which bring elements of the medium and darker blue shades into mostly background strips and blocks. I have sewn a portion of one of the side panels and lain out two others. These pieces become constructed, more and more, from the background Sparkle fabric, until finally the borders just use background (fingers crossed I actually have enough – I ordered another yard yesterday just in case because I have a suspicion I will need more than I have).

Side Panels Under Construction

I finally have a handle on the ratio I’m working with. My quilt will turn out 78% of the original (that’s because I changed 4 1/2″ blocks to 3 1/2″). Knowing that ratio now lets me construct the panels elements and borders which I intend doing after I sew the main centre panel together.

That’s for tomorrow.