What's on my new design wall

Hooray, I have made a design wall, following the not very successful flannel backed tablecloth pegged to the wall. This was simply too mobile and fabric kept falling off when i turned the lights off or on, so I headed to the hardware shop to see what was available to build a cheap semi rigid design wall.  For the spiderweb quilt, I really need a design wall, as my dog loves to walk on the floor, and ther are too many sections of this quilt to keep picking them up and relaying them again.

In Australia, we don't have the same products that everyone seems to use to make design walls. I ended up buying some sheets of 3 mm mdf, cutting them down to size, and supporting them in a cheap pine frame which I glued to the back of the mdf. Photos in my next post.

Once I covered one with the vinyl tablecloth, I went to a fabric shop to find something for the second panel of the design wall. Bargain - the flannelette was on sale for $3 metre, so I bought 10 m of plain white and 5m of a cute typewriter print. I now have two panels measuring 2.1m (7ft) high and 6 ft wide together. I need to make one more panel to make the whole thing big enough to lay out a full queen size quilt on its side.

As soon as the panels were up, I laid out the finished sections of my spiderweb quilt. They don't all fit! I've still got a couple of webs to lay out and strps cut for another ten. :(. Seems I've made too many, so I have to decide what to do with them. I've made 7 kites so far and they are much slower than the web sections, as they are paper pieced with eight sections for each kite block. I love how they look though.  I'm linking up with Wip wednesday at Freshly Pieced.  http://www.freshlypieced.com/

I have to decide whether I'll make two lap quilts or a super sized quilt and use some of the strips for the kites.

Above is my design wall so far.

Another finish!

The improv star quilt is finished - in plenty of time!  The binding went on today and here it is, still damp, hanging on the clothes line.  I was in a rush to wash it, as a large skink has now pooed on it twice and I managed to scorch the backing fabric when I put on the binding.

Thank heavens, both came out in the wash.

Pictures of each of the corners, and the middle, are below.

Sun/fire

Water

Wind/air

Earth/plants

Middle

There are two swathes of bubbles, each done in a different green.  I think of them as space dust.

I'm linking up with Leah Day's FMQ Friday finishes.

http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com.au/2013/04/fmq-friday-closet-design-vs-quilting.html

Spiderweb and stars

I saw a lovely spiderweb quilt on-line, but can't find it again.  It is similar to the spiderweb quilt in the Material Obsession book that some people on line have made, but the kites are pieced in circles, similar to the spiderweb section.

I decided I would make a quilt in this style, so raided my fabrics (I only have one box of fabric :)) and have been cutting them up for a week.

Here is the start of the spiderwebs.  I am trying to achieve colourful and varied webs, with nothing to rest the eye on.  My design wall was put up tonight and is a flannel backed tablecloth.  I know that this won't last long, as sections of fabric have already fallen off!

Here are my messy scraps from these blocks.

 I'm not paper piecing the webs, but making them as strip sets and then cutting them.  This gets two different looking webs from one strip set - I'm really happy with how they are turning out.   The fabrics are being auditioned by hanging them off cheap old coat hangers under the house where I sew.  I'm not happy with all of them so am leaving them to hang for a few days until I decide.  Most of the fabric that I haven't used is green and I don't want to buy more fabric for this quilt - so somehow, I'm going to have to make the combinations work.

Some of these combinations are blah, or boring

The improv star quilt is about 2/3 of the way through the quilting - the dark mark is where a lizard pooed on the quilt while it was on the floor overnight.  GRRRR to the skink.  I've tried to wash it out, but will have to wait for the quilt to be finished before I can give it a good soak.  The other marks in the top left corner are just from water to removed the soluble marker in the outer circles.

I'm enjoying this quilting which is unstructured after the last couple of quilts I've made.