Scrapping the bottom of the scrap barrel

For once this quilt played nice and yesterday I had a happy couple of hours just quietly chugging away without too many dilemmas.  I went from this

 to this.

But now the fun starts.  The photos are a bit misleading in terms of proportion and in real life this is not long enough by maybe 6 inches or a bit more.  At the moment it looks slightly squat, which doesn't please me.  However, I am about out of most fabrics.  I have plenty of dark blue, and of the lilac and dark green in the little squares and I have about ten squares , mostly of the light blue shirting and the plaid, cut and not yet used.  No more of the white sashing shirt though.  

The obvious answer would be to work with the dark blue, but I am wondering if having too much dark at the bottom might mess the balance of the whole quilt.  I'll probably tinker around just to be sure but failing that I guess I either have to look for another fabric or consider doing something completely different across that bottom strip.  For now, I'm letting it stew.

Not too far to go

Again, not much to say about this, except that it's growing.

The dark blue bits on the left look a bit heavy, but they'll slim down once they're stitched into place. Suddenly it feels like there's not too far to go.

Upended

No sewing last week as it was half-term and there were all sorts of kid-related shenanigans going on instead.  I try to plan ahead for these moments and have piles of mindless piecing ready, so that I can keep ticking over, but this project doesn't lend itself to that approach.  As a result I was extremely happy to get back to it this morning.

I have decided to stick permanently with the rotated version of this quilt, although I haven't yet worked out a satisfactory way to add the extra bit of length it needs as a result.  I mostly worked today on accumulating more pieced chunks to work with.  I have run out of proper pieces of two fabrics now - you can see how a lot more of my basic squares are made up of scraps now.

These two pictures give a rough idea of where I'm headed - there's not much more sewn down than there was last time, but you get the gist.

Looking at things sideways on

My last progress post/update on this map quilt was over on the AHIQ blog (if you haven't already, do check out the other posts and see all the different takes on maps that are going on).  I was distinctly unhappy with what I had done, so I have unpicked the offending section and rather than trying to improve it I have left things to stew in the top right corner and moved on to other areas of the quilt.  

I 'm happier with this.  I was going to say that it's probably not going to get any wider, but then I looked at it from another angle.  I like it this way up too, but that would change the dimensions I'm aiming at.  Just so you know, in the first picture it's about 65" across and I was thinking of heading for about 80" in length.  

I think I'm going to make just a few more of my big chunks before I make any firm decisions about where they go.  That way I can mull this over but also, as is so often the way at this point, I'm running low on fabric.  I should see how far I can get and leave myself some wiggle room.

Missing the right bits

Slow progress.

I have added to the right hand side - and am not trying to figure out what happens above and below this piece.  

Quite a lot of the bits in this picture had not yet been sewn together, so the wider blue and white strips will end up rather narrower than they look.  The bit I'm struggling with right now is the top right-hand corner.  I would like the blue to extend around it, but can't find quite the right combination of bits.  Up until now I have just been using what I already had made, but I think the next step will be to make something specifically for the space.  

A whole lot of shuffling going on.

I still like the dark blue, which is a relief.  Right now I'm doing quite a lot of laying things out on the floor, like this...

to try and figure out where I want to use the dark stripes and where I want to stick with the pale ones.  Occasionally when I like something I'm pinning bits together, so that I don't forget next time I get them out and every so often I am biting the bullet and sewing.  

I'm still trying to avoid letting everything get too 'block-y' and this sort of placement creates little gaps to fill, which I hope will help with that.  Partial seams help too (and seem to have become a habit now).

Third time lucky

Well this has been interesting.

Having said I needed something extra, I started playing around with some different shapes.  I tried triangles

then I toyed with the idea of something circle-y, based on these vintage samples of furnishing fabric

but realistically I wasn't going to have enough fabric for this approach.

I'm not sure what led me back to my boxes, but I went furtling about in the one containing shirts and came up with this,

which led to this.

I like it, so I'm going to do a bit more and see how it goes. I'm guessing it will come down to whether I can balance the blue and the white stripy bits satisfactorily.