I’ve filled in the upper right corner, but I’ve run into another issue – my strips aren’t long enough to extend along the diagonal!
So what can I do? I decided to bring the dark blue into the top and use it to fill the left corner so I can bring the strips further down on the right side.
I have to say I don’t like the points, although I’m sure I wouldn’t have liked straight joins either. It’s a matter of just carrying on and seeing what happens.
Stopping for now.
I had a second set of Bali Poppies strips – Poppy Field – which I held back from the previous quilt. With this quilt top I’ve started laying out strips – the plan is to have the strips on an angle across the width of the quilt top. I started with a long strip – at the moment I’m working my way into the top right corner, then I’ll pick up and work my way to the bottom left. I want the quilt to be about 46″ wide by whatever length it turns out to be.
I’ve elected to do mitre joins (rather than blunt ones) – that may not have been the best decision in this situation. I’m also alternating the direction of the joins – which means some are almost vertical and the next horizontal. I’m not sure the visual effect I was hoping for is going to materialize – I won’t be able to tell until then top is nearly assembled.
I’m having to piece this project one strip at a time, making sure I get the join direction correct and the join position somewhat interesting.
As I get further along I’m planning on inserting “diamonds” into the dark blue background. I may have to appliqué them in order for them to look like diamonds. I have a hunch that if I piece them into the background with mitre joins they’re going to look quite odd!
We’ll see how it turns out.
Once I got rolling again on piecing the quilt back, the quilt went reasonably quickly. I’d already set up an embroidery (320mm x 320mm) to quilt the project – using my “grand dream” hoop – 360x350mm. The hoop is “reversible” – the machine stitches out the right half of the embroidery design, then you rotate the hoop to stitch out the second half. So all I needed was to execute 16 repeats of the design. The quilting turned out quite nicely.
Then I stitched the sashing “in-the-ditch” using a navy 50wt thread adjacent the dark blue so the stitches are barely visible. After I trimmed the backing, I had enough leftover fabric to use as binding. I’d initially thought I’d turn the binding completely to the back, but in the end I liked having 1/4″ showing – it added interest to the quilt top. Then I hand stitched the binding to the back. It blended in perfectly; you hardly notice it at all.
Now I have the choice to display either side of this quilt – I’m almost tempted to show the back of the quilt in Parrsboro!
Just finished piecing the quilt back. I managed to get it a bit longer and a bit wider than the quilt top which will allow me to position the vertical pieced stripe further to the left a wee bit when I assemble the quilt sandwich.
I’m not sure how I feel about the unequal sashing on the pieced stripe – I suspect it ought to be symmetrical – the question is whether it wants both sides 1″ or both sides 1/2″? I’ll probably leave it as it is. Nobody looking at the finished quilt will even wonder about that possibility! They’ll accept whatever decision I made.
Now I have to think about binding fabric – I intend a hidden binding which will show only on the back side of the quilt; I suspect it should be pieced – I may be able to salvage enough from all four sides, after quilting, to make the binding strips which will then match (more or less) the four sides of the quilt! Wouldn’t that be nice. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
BTW the quilt back is actually square. I’ll be able to ease out the wobbles visible in the photo when I place it against the batting. That’s one of the things I like about Warm & Natural batting – the cotton fabric clings to it so I don’t have to use a spray glue when I assemble the sandwich. Also, I’ll be able to smooth each section when I place the quilt in the hoop to quilt it. The slight excess of fabric will disappear. I’m not going to fuss about at this stage. A good spraying with Best Press will shrink the fabric and eliminate a good bit of the fullness.
I’ve been pondering the quilt back for many days – I have the four long strips assembled from the 2 1/2″ batik pieces which I’d originally intended using on the front and I wanted to incorporate them in some way on the back. I picked up what could have been some batik backing fabric at Atlantic Fabrics on Friday – there wasn’t quite enough of it for a single length but I thought it brought out the colours in the small strips so I bought what was there. I also picked up this blue batik on Sunday at Heidi Wulffrat’s shop in Mahone Bay – just enough for a single strip. However this quilt (because it’s a square) needs ~60″ in width – close to 20″ needed to augment this strip I’ve assembled so far.
I’ve attached one of the long strips to the right side, the second is sitting on the floor beside it. I’m going to intersperse something between those two long strips and I intend using a third but I also want to integrate the fabric I bought on Friday which also needs to be broken up in some way.
I’ll just keep working at this. I’m thinking about this – if I get it more or less pieced in an interesting way – as possibly the front of the quilt! I have to see how it all turns out.
I also don’t have a name for this quilt, either! Maybe something will come to me when I get it completed.
I’ve just added a 1″ border to the panel using the sashing fabric. My intention was to add another 3″ border built from 2 1/2″ cuts of the panel fabrics. I have the assembled strips, I’ve added one to one end – don’t like it at all!
The backing fabric I ordered arrived – the same navy sparkle that I had – whew! – I could now cut a wider outer border from the dark sparkly fabric but I’m not sure that’s what I want, either! I might be fine with this narrow outer border and consider the panel done.
I know my local fabric shop down the street from me has no batik that would work as an outer border (I want something darker rather than lighter) so I guess it’s a trip to Atlantic Fabrics and hope I can find something there.
I have just finished assembling the 16 blocks with 1/2″ sashing. I decided to use a narrow sashing to tame the bias edges of the blocks – it has done that. The half inches and the intersections are pretty good – the imperfections won’t be noticeable when I’ve added the outer border and quilted the whole thing.
So here’s my dilemma – I have exactly 20″ of the sashing fabric to use for the outer border. I’d like to use 3″ cuts but here is the math:
If I cut six 3″ strips I’m going to be 20″ short of fabric – and I don’t have a scrap of this navy Speckled (Ruby Star Society) anywhere in my boxes of scraps. (If I hadn’t done the sashing, I’d have had enough fabric!)
Back to the beginning – what if I don’t mitre the border corners – I still need 56″ of border length for two sides, plus 6″ to create a mitre join, the two short lengths each need to be 62″. The two longer pieces each need to be 62″ + 6″ (double the width of the border) – 68″. Total border length: (62 x 2) + (68 x 2) = 260″! I’ve managed to save 12″ but I’m still short 8″. Butting the border pieces won’t work either.
OK, so I create 2 3/4″ strips (2 3/4″ x 7 = 19 1/4″) – that means I have enough fabric to make 7 cuts from the 20″ of fabric. 7 x 42″ = 294″. That gives me enough length for four border sides with mitred corners (leaving me 22″ to play with). Attached, (using a 1/4″ seam) gives me a 2 1/2″ border. I then lose at least another 1/4″ if I do a hidden binding, 1/2″ – 5/8″ if I decide to finish with a traditional quilt binding. In the end I will have just about a 2″ border. Not quite wide enough to tame the busyness of the 40 coloured strips in the panel.
I managed to find more navy Speckled fabric online – it’s on the way; but I have no guarantee that the colour will match what I used for the sashing. It looks like I better wait for the fabric I ordered to arrive. Just put this project aside and start another quilt. If the fabric I ordered is close I’m in business. If not, I will have to make a narrower navy border and then improvise with another fabric to make a wide second border.
Four days ago I shared my work on a new quilt – I had sewn together 3 panels of four strips each – I had 7 panels left to create.
I’ve worked away at the panels – finished sewing them yesterday.
Here’s where it got interesting. I made the decision to revamp the panels into 4 sets of 10 strips – I accomplished that by sewing two sets of 4 then splitting the next adjacent panel in half and joining the resulting 2 strip sets to the first 8 and the second 8. Repeated that with the remaining strips giving me 4 sets of 10.
What I did next was create two 20.5″ squares from each 10 strip panel, matched up two non-identical panels, stitched around the outside, then cut along the diagonals. From my first two panels I got the following:
Not a bad start – you get two large blocks with an encircled square. But my other eight blocks are very different in colour so how do I use them?
The first layout was a more or less random placing of the 16 blocks. The second layout set up a dark square in the centre and build more or less randomly on that centre. The third layout took the initial 8 blocks and added the second eight to the sides. At the moment I have no idea which to use. Each time I look at the photos I see new conflicts I want to resolve.
In addition, I’m planning on putting a navy speckled 1/2″ sashing between all the blocks which should actually bring the hodgepodge of colour together – fingers crossed on that. Furthermore, I really don’t want a square quilt! I want a rectangular one. I could get that, if after sewing the square together, I cut each of the two sides in half and place the cut pieces at the top and bottom! I have a hunch I may actually do that.
I worked on another half-square triangle project yesterday as well – the quilt is really a half-square triangle block (just built from 10 strips rather than a smaller number, usually 4).
I’m on the calendar to teach a quilting class Thursday on experimenting with HST. I had a layer cake – I matched up the fabrics – same batik pattern in two different colours, and made the blocks. This is the layout I will probably use. I can’t really sew the blocks together since I want to use them to show the many different ways these blocks can be assembled. In fact, it’s Sunday, tomorrow is a holiday, I won’t find out whether anybody actually signed up for the class till Tuesday – at which point I’ll have to scramble to contact the participants to notify them about what to bring to class on Thursday. Crazy! If nobody has signed up I’ll be able to work on the quilt!
Last week I pulled a jellyroll package from my stash (Hoffman Bali Poppy: Poppy Field #2: Hard Cider #662) – it held 20 strips – maybe enough for a lap quilt but there weren’t enough light contrasts so I dug through the drawers of batik and came up with another 20 fabrics that blended – I cut 20 more strips. I colour sorted them into groups of 4 to give me 10 groupings. I’ve begun sewing the 4-strip groups together. I have 6 groupings to go.
I have no idea yet what I’m going to do next. The obvious move is to cut the strips into 8 1/2″ blocks, overlap blocks (right sides together), stitch around the outside, then cut on the diagonals to create 4 HST blocks. But there may be other things I can do with these 8 1/2″ panels. I’m still thinking about it.
The thing is, I used the projection guidelines on the machine to set up a scant 1/4″ seam – I still used my 1/4″ quilting foot with right guide, but the laser guide was a scant bit to the left of the guide on the foot. It was actually quite easy to follow the laser guide and I did end up with a pretty accurate 8 1/2″ panel.
I’ve marked the needle position on the embroidery unit extension (and I’ll mark it on the tool box, too) in order to accurately stitch a 45° mitre when joining two 2 1/2″ strips. No other marking needed. The laser guide isn’t quite long enough to position the end point of the mitre.
I also played with more decorative stitches:
I’m doing the “Experimenting With Your Machine’s Stitches” class a second time in couple of weeks – an opportunity to try out more off the stitches on this machine. Again, I used the laser grid system to align the stitching. I mirrored the stitches as well as the thread colour from the centre. [I did a simple grid quilted the back of the bag.]
I also pulled out a bag I made quite a while ago using scraps of fabric, where I used the “stitch/flip” technique to construct the fabric on which I then used decorative stitches to mark the seams. I want folks to see this other possible use for other machine stitches.
Finished this quilt last evening.
The photos don’t do it justice – the colours are more vibrant, the relationships among the elements on the quilt top are much clearer.
I finished with a hidden binding – I didn’t think the quilt front wanted another edge element. Besides, I didn’t have ay more “petunia” fabric and used the darker blue stonehenge to finish the edge on the back.
The quilting turned out well. I chose to quilt the blocks excluding the sashing – in part because I’d have been left with an unattached row of sashing either at the top or the bottom. It was simpler to just quilt the blocks themselves. I stitched-in-the-ditch along all sashing edges, then quilted the outer border with a modification of the block design to fit the border width.
That’s it for quilts at the moment. I’m now picking up the Kantha bedspread and making another jacket – this time, the back without any flare. I need buttons – will go looking for some this afternoon.
BTW I have written instructions for making this Lap/Throw quilt top: https://jmn111.files.wordpress.com/2022/07/delft-2.pdf
jmn 