Shrinking violet

Thirty of the blocks are now joined together.

When I first laid out this quilt, I thought I had cut too many spiderwebs. I was wrong.

This was my initial layout.

I thought that 3 large webs wide and 3.5 high would be big enough.

After sewing the many, many, many seams, here is the revised layout. You can see how much the middle section has shrunk, from all those seam allowances. It will now be 3.5 large webs wide and 4 high, so I have to make another 5 or so half webs and lots more kites.

The quilt has shrunk, but I don't think its a shrinking violet, more of a loud, brash gerbera. This was never meant to be a quiet, peaceful quilt.

 

 

Because everything is on the bias, my piecing the sections together has not gone as well as I first planned, however I don't mind. I like the overall effect and don't think that the jagged joins really spoil the look - since when were spiderwebs perfect anyway!

 

The top is becoming very heavy- this should be a very warm sofa or bed quilt - depends on how big I end up making it. I don't think this quilt will want any fancy quilting - It's far too busy for that.

 

Bloggers' festival

I started a quilt for a work colleague who decided to move back to Darwin. She really wanted my version of Kentuckii Botannica, but that was for someone else and has already been given, so I decided to make something in the same colours, but different. I won't make the same quilts again. As I didn't have too much time, I decided to make an improv star quilt, with lots of negative space for what I enjoy - the quilting!

All pieced and basted

The only thing I had decided was that all the stars should be in the process of moving, so I quilted the main stars with trails. After that, I used fillers to complete the middle section of the quilt.

Detail of some of the middle.

after that, I then decided to quilt each of the four elements in each corner of the quilt - fire (sun)' water, wind and the earth, represented by plants.

I am linking up to http://amyscreativeside.com/category/bloggers-quilt-festival/
And am entering the home machine quilting and throw quilt categories? I hope you enjoy these pictures.

WIP Wednesday - spiderweb update

Not much seems to have changed since last week on my design wall. I have made quite a few more kites, but there are still lots of empty spaces!

I've moved some of the webs around and still have to make a few more changes before I'm happy with the layout, but on the whole, it's going well. It's also a lot faster than I originally envisaged, as I thought it might take me a year or two to finish:). The fabric on the floor is a flannelette I bought to possibly use for the backing - little old fashioned telephones. It might be a bit cute for this quilt, but the colours work.

Piecing of the kites is very wasteful, but tonight, I figured out a way to use less fabric, so I'm happy with that. Here is my rubbish after making two kite sets. Hopefully I won't have as much left over from now on.

I'm linking up to the Freshly Pieced WIP Wednesday at http://www.freshlypieced.com/2013/05/i-feel-like-broken-record-lately-since.html

 

 

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.

Prizes received and finishes achieved

My little prize packet of Aurifil threads arrived.  Lovely colours.  I also won a $50 voucher from the fat quarter shop, through the 2012 FMQ Challenge hosted by SewCalGal.  Sadly, postage to Australia has increased a lot, so I had to pay about another $20 to get a colour card for Kona cotton and two charm packs of Kaffe Fassett fabric.  All the prizes have lovely bright colours.

A couple of weeks ago, I finished my sister's quilt, a red and white double nine patch on point.  It's taken about five washes to try and get the dissolving thread out, and the lines from those stitches still show.  Hopefully a few more washes and they'll be completely gone.  My sister will be coming up for a visit in a couple of weeks, so I won't post it to her but wait to give it to her when she arrives.
Here it the back of the quilt, hanging on the clothes line.  Its the first sunny day we've had in a couple of months.

Here it is lying on the floor - the ripple in the side is only due to the clothes line.  The border is actually flat - hooray.

Border quilting

First alternate motif

Second alternate motif

On the train to work yesterday morning, I also finished hand sewing the binding to my mother-in-law's GMFG hexagon lap quilt.

I also started an improv star quilt as a present for someone.  It didn't take long to piece and I've started to quilt it in the last couple of days.  Progress to date.