A finish: #2.22 Weeds

I don't know if you remember this top from July 2022.  I spent a long time considering whether my applique skills were up to translating the teasel in my photograph into fabric, but in the end didn't think I would be able to produce something I was happy with.  However, along the way the idea of weeds inveigled itself into my brain and wouldn't go away.  In the end, I gave in and printed the names of lots of the weeds I have in my garden onto the quilt top.  Here's a view of what that looked like.

and here's a view of the finished quilt in its entirety.

In a departure from my habitual, straightforward quilting I had a bit of a play and tried a different version of something floral in every strip set.  In one or two I just followed what was already on the fabric, in others I added stylised leaves or flowers.  It was a lot of fun but has been surprisingly difficult to photograph.  This is the best shot I have managed.

It has ended up a biggish quilt - around 75" x 65" and is pleasingly weighty (that's the denim and old trousers).  

I started this on April 9th and finished piecing on  July 15th 2022.  I've been quilting it for a while, can't really remember when I started.  Nonetheless it is finished within 2 years (just) of completing the top, which is pretty quick for me.  I bound it using fabric from stash, quilted in perle no 8, mostly odds and ends, also from stash.  The wadding is organic cotton.  

My favourite things about this are the green that came from my best-ever trousers (that's the strip with Chickweed printed on it in the photo) and the inclusion of the  Monaluna print which I used to make the dress my then-4-year old daughter wore to my wedding (and she's nearly 14 now, so that tells you how long those scraps have been sitting in a box).  Also, the colours of this please me inordinately - greens, blues and browns just float my boat.

In other news, I am pushing on with my blue hexagons but more of that in my next post (which may even happen before the end of the summer!)

Done for now

It's hard to believe that it is May and this is the first quilt top I have completed this year.  Never mind.  Things can only get better!

Here is a progress picture of my central chunk of piecing with a couple of rounds of strips.  The right-hand side was sewn on at this point but the bottom, top and left were still being tinkered with.  I found I didn't much like it when two pieced sections sat next to each other.  A small overlap was okay, but after that everything got rather busy and, because there are lots of mid-tones, tended to run to mush.  So my strips are a mixture of small sections of piecing and bigger bits of single fabrics.  

That's fine in principle but of course I was running out of big bits, so figuring this out using what I had took ages.  The bit that caused me the most problems was the final strip I wanted to add at the top.  I tried all sorts of variations, including the strip that is sitting at the bottom now and every random length of shirt I had left.  I had a denim and the floral print, joined by a little cross and everything I tried to go above them worked with one half of that combination, or the other, but never both.  I was starting to think I was going to be tinkering with this forever.  Then serendipitously I was tidying up the bags with the octagons that I rejected a couple of months back and had an 'ah-ha' moment.  They did just the job.

It has ended up being quite a big top, so it wasn't easy to photograph and you will see that the right-hand side is flapping a bit and I haven't got it flat, but that is about my hanging system rather than the quilt.  Nevertheless,  I think this is still a fair picture and I am definitely happy with it as a finish (for now).

Now that I have sneaked a few of the octagons into this top, I am motivated to get them out and have another play.  Maybe this time I'll find a way forward that I like. Fingers crossed.

Strips and chunks - it's all progress

I'm still going with this.  The hourglasses went on down the left-hand side and are looking just right to me.   I also added to the right-hand side, cutting the strip I was adding so that I could keep that curve in the denim.

It feels to me right now as though the area with all the dark blue stripes and grey bits is a self-contained thing, so I'm not planning to add any more blue verticals, just that one piece horizontally across the bottom (or what is currently the bottom ). I'm also going to stop adding in the grey floral, except in hourglasses, so no more big bits.  Practically, I think the next step is going to entail just adding strips top, bottom, sides, rather as if this were a medallion with a very big middle. Since  I don't want it to feel like a medallion particularly, I will be trying to pay careful attention to how the strips and hourglasses fit together so it's not too obvious.

Here are the next two strips going onto the left and right-hand sides and also some of the random bits I am trying out around the edges.  

When I started, the floral bottom left felt a big loud and shouty and like it should only be used in smaller pieces, but somehow, now that the quilt is bigger, I feel much more comfortable considering using great big chunks of it.  Of course, given that it was a shirt, I only have enough fabric for a couple of those chunks, but that's definitely enough to have an impact. 

As this stands, I am not far of a length I would be happy with but am some way short of a satisfactory width.  Never mind.  

Chugging along

This is chugging along alright at the moment.   I joined a couple of my chunks together (that's the bit at the top in the photo), and kept making other bits at the same time.

Joining bits to make bigger bits is the easy part.  Some of my fabrics here (mostly the pale oranges)  I am treating as interchangeable.  Others, principally the dark, dark blue, which has tiny, fine orange stripes running through it, and the darkest floral, I am using more carefully.

Since I liked how the pieces looked lying on the floor together, I thought I'd have a go at finding a simple way of joining them together.  I wondered about using a horizontal line of hourglasses, but it felt a bit too crowded.  Interestingly, I don't hate them in this photo, but in real life it didn't work for me.

So I took them away, but left the denim strip.  I am happier with the hourglasses running vertically down the left side. As things are right now, all of this is sewn together, except those hourglasses. 

I am thinking that I might stop with the deep blue verticals at this point.  I am running out of big pieces of the shirt and what is left would probably work better in hourglasses, given that I have a collection of odd shaped bits and bobs.  The question is, then, what I do next.  Your guess is currently as good as mine.

Using up the rejects

While I was trying to figure out how to make something I liked out of the octagons, I made various other bits and pieces too.  I tried combining them with little crosses and also made a handful of hourglass blocks.  Neither of these worked, but now I am looking those rejects and wondering if they might belong together in something else.  The crosses were mostly in reds and dark blues, whilst the hourglasses came in red and orange-y fabrics.  So I have pulled some extra shirts and a pile of denim scraps and am giving it a go to see what happens.  

I didn't hate this first piece, so have kept going and now have three chunks. As you can see, they are pretty simple so this didn't take long.  Now I have to decide whether to make a few more, or start to think about how they might talk to each other.

Phew

At long last I have got this top to a place I am happy with.  I'm not entirely sure why I've struggled so much, to be honest.  A lot of disruptions haven't helped, nor has working with what was probably slightly too little fabric, but I like the shapes and the colours a lot and have never had one of those moments where I just fell out of love with the whole thing.  Nonetheless, this is only the second completed top of the year and we are already in July.  

Here's the photo of quilt on shed

and here is a close up of quilt with teasel.

It is, theoretically a weed, but this is the wilder part of the garden and the goldfinches love them, so I seldom pull them up, even when they are photobombing my quilt pictures.  Also, look what a lovely colour match it is for this particular quilt!

It has to be said that I really, really like this quilt, so maybe all the time it took to get here doesn't really matter at all in the end.

Done and dusted: my orange summer

My piecing may be slow, slow, slow, but at least I am keeping the quilting ticking along and as a result have a finished quilt. More to the point, I have a finished quilt that feels cheery and summery and perfect for the current weather. Here it is, nicely attached to the front of my little shed.  

I don't think it's as satisfactory a location for photos as the washing line, but I used to prop that up with a length of downpipe, which has now been used, strangely enough, for its proper purpose.  Until we devise an alternative prop, the shed is the best option.  

Having always worked through my quilting pile chronologically, last in, first out, I have changed my approach this year.  I am now working on two hoops, instead of one.  The first will always be something that's been waiting ages, but the other can be anything I fancy.  This particular quilt was only pieced last year, but I am still in an orange kind of place, so it pushed its way to the front of the queue.  It has made me happy, working on these colours and fabrics, so it was definitely a good choice.

You can see that I was really feeling the orange when I pulled fabrics for the back.

Mostly my backs are made using fabrics from the oldest part of my stash - so before I started only buying organic yardage and shirts.  I have started to contemplate what I will do once I run out of this stuff.  I am not keen on piecing all my backs from shirts and things like vintage sheets sound like a good idea, until you try to track them down - they are hard to find here and also expensive.  

I am really pleased with how this quilt turned out - I love the denim/orange combination and, strangely, haven't found the denim hard to quilt.  It has slightly more weight to it than an all-cotton quilt, but when the weather turns cold, I rather like something a bit heavier.  

So, down to the nitty-gritty. 

This was started on September 14th 2021 and piecing was completed October 14th.  I am surprised to see that this only took a month from start to finish. I think I started quilting it during the first week in January, and have been working in fits and starts until last week.  It was finished on June 29th 2022. 

I started with shirts and denim, and added in bits from stash.  You might recognise the black floral fabric from here.  Handquilted using perle no. 8.  I didn't buy anything special but just pulled the best options I had already.  I have been doing that for a while now, but think I will have to restock soon. The binding is a very old Oakshott stripe that has been in my boxes for at least seven or eight years now.  

My favourite parts of this quilt are the two strips of flying geese, and, specifically, the places where the geese change direction.  I will be making those again at some point.  

All out of fabric

This one is done now.  I added what I thought might be a final row across the bottom, to echo the triangles near the top.  

That got me almost, but not quite, to where I wanted to be. It was looking fine but it just wasn't quite as big as I like.  I eyed up my (tiny) pile of remaining fabric and figured I could go round just one more time.  I didn't do anything fancy, because the more cutting and piecing you do, the less fabric you end up with.  Instead I used up my left-over, previously pieced, odds and ends and then just cut wide strips from the remaining shirt fronts.  As is often the way, this practical decision pleases me from an aesthetic point of view too.

Here's the finished top, blowing in the wind.

Now I plan to quilt like a mad woman for a few days and let my brain settle, then it will be back to the beginning again.  

Happy accidents

I definitely feel like I've hit my stride with this now.  I added another chunk down the left-hand side, then more of the black and white bird fabric at the bottom.  

Then, in a most satisfying development, it turned out that the things which looked best over on the right-hand side were those little blocks based on flying geese. They were a happy accident: I made the geese, left them lying around, looked down and they had obligingly arranged themselves into the pairs, with one facing each way.  I love a bit of serendipity.

Almost there now.  I have, I hope, enough fabric for one more round but no more than that.  

The rules, roughly speaking, are as follows...

No sooner do I think I know my mind than things change.  Those triangles, which didn't look at all right down at the bottom, were somehow the best fit when I came to working the next row across the top.  Go figure.  

The sharp-eyed amongst you will notice that although this is now, broadly speaking, a medallion quilt, I am not being entirely consistent about working in rounds.  More a 'mostly medallion' quilt, I guess.  

I have been thinking about trying to articulate the 'rules' that I feel emerge as I piece.  It's not entirely easy, since I seldom think them through, but looking at this I can see that, loosely, I am not putting two sets of wedges side-by-side, or two long runs of plain strip (except where there are coping strips).  The black fabric is only being paired with orange, and most strips are cut so that they run vertically.  There is probably at least one exception to each of these, but I did say they were loose rules.

 

A game of fits and starts

One step forwards, two back.  Or sometimes one back and two forwards.  That's the way it's rolling around here at the moment.  This is mostly, I reflect now, because I wasn't listening to the quilt.  This had, quite early on, a medallion feel to it, but I had just done a medallion so I tried everything I could think of to avoid working in rounds.  Some things I tried were okay, but nothing fantastic emerged.  Still reluctant to give in I toyed with idea of building out on just two sides.  But you know what?  When I stopped thinking like a fool and just sat and looked, it was quite clear to me that this quilt wanted to be, if not a medallion proper than at least a fair imitation of one.

Amongst the bits I have made but rejected are these pointy triangles

and some Flying Geese which turned into these bits.

I rather liked those but sadly they looked too busy and didn't seem quite right there.  I'm keeping them though, on the offchance.  In the end, I settled for something simpler

The very pale strips were added in an attempt to counteract the distinct curves this has developed, due to a combination of some denim that I'm pretty sure had a bit of stretch in it and my habit of cutting every last bit of fabric from a shirt, on the bias if that's where it needs to be.  I quite like them though, so it's all good.

Photos, what photos?

There is a reason I can't build up a backlog of posts, to be published at times when I'm not sewing.  It has to do with my ability to keep track of where I put things.  Today is a case in point.  I had a couple of sessions worth of work done on this project but hadn't had time to blog.  Now that I come to write a post, do I have the camera card with the necessary photos?  No, I don't.  So I will have to ask you to imagine the steps between the previous post and where I am now.  

I know that those steps involved at least one piece being sewn on and then removed again and experiments with both flying geese and a pointy kind of triangle.  Those bits are still knocking around and may still get pressed into service, but for now they were not what I want.

I am much happier with how this is working now, though it is definitely still at the 'groping for something that works' stage.  More things are being tried and rejected than are succeeding. I would be able to demonstrate that, if only I had the pictures!

Off we go again

Kicking off the next quilt.  I pulled these shirts, just because they pleased me.

I have it in mind that I would like to try adding some denim into a quilt and these seem like they might work.  Three shirts, though, isn't enough for a whole quilt, even with a load of denim added in, so I found a few more bits.

I started with some random wedge-y bits.  This was my first go at putting them together.  Don't like it much.  Correction, I do like the individual chunks,(3 of them) but not the way they look here.  I added the scraps of black floral and while I think they will do a job for me, the piece across the bottom is somehow too heavy and lacking in movement.  Luckily it will be easy to separate them again.

I should probably have made more pieces before I started sewing things into bigger bits, but I just wasn't feeling very patient.  I have learned my lesson.  On the bright side, I do like how they work with the denim.  It's early days, of course, so some wins and some hiccups is neither here nor there.  I shall just keep going and see what comes of it.

Denim done and dusted

The denim circles are finished.

Here's the back.

And the funky binding.

I started this on 8th November 2015, as part of Audrey's Quilty 365, but got impatient and finished it on 6th May 2016.  Looking at it now, the little coloured strips in some circles mean I can still identify those that mark family birthdays and a handful of other significant dates that happened in the 6 months that I was making the circles.

I started quilting it on 16th April and finished it yesterday, 8th May.  I have no idea how it got done so fast.  The lines of quilting are not widely spaced - they are one or two finger widths apart -  so I can't explain it that way.  In any case, done it is.

The front is made from recycled denim (doesn't that sound a bit fancier than 'old jeans'?), recycled shirts and tiny scraps of every blue fabric I could lay my hands on.  

I used Sew Simple's Supersoft Eco Blend wadding ( it's a 70/30 blend made from 100% recycled material) and quilted it with Aurifil Lana 12 in 2 colours.

Finished size is 66" x 55".  

All it needs now is a name.

Slow Sunday binding

The long and short of it: it's quilted and now I just need to do the binding.

That's what happens when I take a break from piecing!

Linking up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Decisions, decisions

Yesterday evening I thought I knew what I was doing.  Well, to be fair I seldom know exactly what I'm doing, but I knew where I was starting.  I wanted to use this pile of  fabrics, and although I'm still tweaking I'm not far off where I want to be.

I also knew where I was starting with block choice.  

But when I pulled my fabrics out today to get on with it they didn't want to co-operate.  In fact they wanted to do something else entirely.  I'm getting the urge to turn them into blocks I hadn't even considered.

Now I'm happy for the quilt to tell me what it wants from time to time, but I've never had one think it could do that before I'd cut so much as one tiny strip and I'm not sure how I feel about it.  I will probably do what I'm told, but would like to maintain at least some pretence I'm in control, so am giving it 24 hours to stew and then I'll decide.  

In the meantime, I'm still quilting!  At this rate I'll get a whole quilt finished before I start piecing again.

Linking up today with Linda and Julie for Sew, Stitch, Snap,Share.  

A home for my needles

I won a needle-case in a giveaway on Doris's blog.  Doris is a bit of a whizz at hand stitching so I thought I'd show it off here.

My favourite thing is the rows of little knots. 

It has also motivated me to sort out my needles.  I still have them all over the place, but all the ones I use for quilting are now housed in here, and that makes me feel happy.  Small pleasures.

I'm still quilting away and now that I've left the idea of tieing this behind me, I am loving how the stitching looks on denim.  As I hadn't planned to quilt this, I used what came to hand, which, as it happens, was more Aurifil Lana (earmarked for something else, but what can you do?)  I'm using a very dark blue and a lovely light sandy colour, just for a tiny bit of contrast.

I'm making good progress, but know that's mostly because I'm still not piecing. When I start again (this week) things will slow right down.

Speaking of piecing, next Tuesday is AHIQ link up time, and the launch of our second challenge theme, so do check back here then, or visit Ann to see what everyone's getting up to. 

I'm linking up with Kathy again for Slow Sunday Stitching.

Next quilt in the hoop

It's denim circles next, though mostly because I am still waiting for the wadding for All at Sea to arrive.  Once it does, the circles may go on the back burner; it will just depend on my mood.  

I was certain I was going to tie this quilt.  I do love a tied quilt, admire other people's but have never tried it myself, and this seemed like a good candidate. I got as far as having a go but for some reason just wasn't feeling it.  I thought maybe I needed thread of a different colour - I should have taken photos to get some feedback, but it was just a cream-y sort of colour.  Anyway I cut it all out and tried again with a really pretty, and strong, linen thread, space-dyed in a soft green-y blue and a warm light brown.  Didn't like that either. I considered keeping going, but am not so keen on the idea of spending, say, a couple of weeks doing something I then think looks wrong.

This was really disappointing, but I'm not going to dwell on it right now, though I will try again on another quilt.  For now, I've just sorted out some different threads and have made a start on quilting this one. 

Linking up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching, and wishing you all a very pleasant Easter weekend.

Quilting like a maniac

Actually it's hard to quilt like a maniac, what with hand quilting being such a calming activity, but I have been putting in a lot of hours and as a result I am now binding, so the end really is in sight for Quiet Quilt.

Yesterday I pin-basted my denim 365 circles.  In a moment of distraction I did this with the backing on top, but don't really mind that everything's back-to-front.  

I've also almost finished a back for All at Sea, but keep running out of fabric.  I am always surprised by how much fabric it takes to make a backing for a big quilt.  I've no idea why this comes as a surprise, especially when the top is sitting right in front of me.  Somehow I think a couple of fat quarters will cover the back of something 80"x 90". Yup, I know that's ridiculous but I keep expecting it to work that way.  

I'm linking up today with Linda at koka quilts and julie from julielou for their new link-up Sew, Stitch, Snap, Share.  

Looking back, looking forwards

2016 was the first time I ever set down even vague quilting aims for the year ahead but it has proved to be an interesting exercise and since Yvonne is encouraging us to share our plans for 2017 I thought I'd use the opportunity to reflect and maybe lay out some tentative goals.

It has been a bizarrely productive year for me: I have completed 5 quilts, which I know doesn't sound like much to many people but is a lot for me, and made another 5 tops which are now waiting their turn in the quilting queue.  

Some of my resolutions fell by the wayside pretty quickly but the one I stuck with best was my resolve to 'green' my stash as much as I could.  I had a brief moment of panic about what the implications of Brexit would be (prices have gone up and my favourite fair trade fabric source is closing down) but apart from that I have concentrated on organic lines.  This has its disadvantages (lack of choice, especially if you don't want lots of 'look at me' prints or cute stuff) but also an unexpected upside, which is that I have definitely bought much less fabric.  I looked a lot, to start with, and then talked myself out of things, but after a bit I didn't even look.  It has also pushed me to use the bag of old shirts I had accumulated.  

The other aim I expressed that has worked for me was to keep looking for opportunities to interact with other quilters.  Last year I tried Stash Bee; this year I had a go at joining in with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, but gave up after about three months. I love the idea, but the reality was that my scraps just didn't seem to work - not enough of them for a start, so I acknowledged defeat.  Quilty 365 on the other hand really sparked something. I didn't imagine at the start of this year that I would spend an entire 12 months making circles, but look at the tops completed this year - there's definitely a bit of a theme going on.

So, aims for 2017:

• Work on finding rhythm.  I've been productive this year but somehow it has often felt scrappy and haphazard and sometimes downright unsatisfactory.  It's down to me to work out how to juggle things (time and space)so that this feels better.
• I will try to keep up my approach to fabric buying.  I can't bring myself to completely give up on non-organic lines, but will keep up the focus on organic, fair trade, and recycled stuff. 
• There are a couple of things I've done this year that I would like to revisit or rework.  I've thought this before and not followed up the idea, but maybe writing it here will encourage me. 
• I still like the idea of finding ways to collaborate/link up with others. If anyone out there has the inclination to play around this idea with me, do feel free to get in touch.   I wish I could find a satisfactory real life option, but I'm not holding my breath on that one. 
• Finally, I just aim to keep going, keep trying, keep recording what I do, keep learning through my interactions on this blog and by seeing what other quilters are doing.

A final note - the AHIQ linkup will happen next week, just in case some of you are still sewing.  I'm secretly hoping I might sneak a bit of time in between now and then!