Taking Flight: done and dusted

Hooray!  Just when I needed it, I have a finish and I don't know whether it's just because everything else has stalled or not but I'm really happy with this.

I like the wonky string blocks, I  like the places where the corner triangles make little butterflies, I like my blue border with its freehand vine quilting, I like those funny little leaves. Yep, I pretty much like everything about it.

Here's a peak at the back

here's the binding, which is a lovely Cloud 9 print

and here's a closer shot that lets you see all the lovely shirt fabrics properly.

The details:

I started this on 9th May and finished piecing on 4th July 2018.

It reached the top of the quilting queue on 12th March this year and was finished on 8th May.

I started with, I think, 4 shirts but also a pile of squares cut from other shirting (that's where the pretty yellow check came from) plus the Charley Harper piece with the swallows and everything else was pulled from stash.

The wadding is organic cotton and it is quilted using a selection of perle no 8.

It is 60" x 75", roughly speaking.

A bit of binding

Today I am starting to bind Taking Flight, which feels like a big achievement right now. In fact, I shall see if I can take a couple of days over it, just to prolong that feeling of satisfaction at nearly reaching an end.  

I am also thinking a lot about piecing, but not doing any.  

At least I'm quilting

I'm still not feeling the piecing, though I have made four more blocks.  I could just sew them together and call it done but really I'd like to find a way to make myself love the end result so I'm letting it stew.  In the meantime I am fiddling about with scraps, doing a bit of dressmaking and quilting Taking Flight.  I'm well along the way with the quilting - everything inside the blue border is done, so I've just got the border itself and then one more round of blocks outside it.

I decided to try something new-to-me in the border and am drawing, freehand, a winding stalk with little leaves, which echo the pieced leaves in the body of the quilt.

 Here's a view from the back.

I wasn't sure if this would be okay but I rather like it.  Good think really since I definitely don't want to  do any unpicking!

Taking Flight- done for now

On Tuesday I added the second side and bottom borders...

 and today, by the skin of my teeth, I got the blocks for the top edge done and sewn on.  It's funny, isn't it, how long it can take to make a few string blocks.  You'll see there are more small blocks in the top, because I was using my scraps, but in fact I had more left over than I expected.  Not enough to tempt me into another round though.

That's this one done for now, so the next task is to press on with the hand quilting and try to catch up a bit.  The World Cup is helping with this, the heat is not, though I'm not complaining about being warm.

What to do when you run short of fabric...

So, I decided to go with a border in the blue fabric, which has been in the original pull for this quilt but hadn't made it into the string blocks.  Of course there wasn't quite enough, as you can see below.

I cut up everything I had and ended up with enough for three out of four sides.  I did consider not adding the border all the way round, but decided to eke things out by adding some bits of the blue shirt fabric that's already in the quilt.

And then started making more string blocks.

I think I need another 22.  Not sure whether I can get there - you'll see I've started making some much smaller bits and then sewing them together to make 6" squares.  This is not so much playing with scale as trying to use every last bit of fabric.  If I run out, then I'll worry about what I do instead.

Breaking my own rule

Some progress I think.  I spend ages fiddling around, as stated in the previous post and couldn't get things how I wanted.  My inclination was to have the brown squares spread around, and the larger blue diagonals in the bottom right corner and that wasn't feasible, since there was a brown square sewn onto the blue.   This is a good example though, of why you should question the rules you set yourself.  I always tend to look at the spread of things (shapes/colours) but what worked best for me in this case was to plonk one big brown bit right next to another one.  This is where it got me.

This is about 60" long but not quite 40" wide.  I have enough blocks already made to add one more column, which I will get on and do  Then I am wondering about some borders. And maybe one more round of squares.  Or something else entirely.

Shuffling and tinkering

Halfway there, I think.  I had this chunk you see all sewn together by the end of my last session and had laid out the left hand column.  I still liked it this morning, so have sewn it on (making one change which you can see in the second photo).

I'm still making blocks, but slowly now, trying to keep an eye on how many I will actually need.  And there's a lot of tinkering going on.  This is one version, though I can see lots on the right hand side I don't like.  So I continue shuffling things around, trying to balance out all the different elements in a pleasing way.