Bigger, smaller, quieter

Today I decided that I'd make some blocks with less contrast.

And here's what they looked like mixed in with my first batch

I'm not making big decisions, but I like to lay stuff out when I've been sewing for a bit and have a play - sooner or later I'll like something enough to keep it.  This version seemed a bit too regular, so I had another go.

I wanted to make one or two bigger blocks, but haven't for the entirely mundane reason that the phone book I am using for backing papers has really narrow pages and I couldn't find anything else. So I made a few smaller ones, just for the heck of it.

First decisions

Well, this is not going to be what I first thought, which was (possibly) something incorporating log cabin type blocks.  I did like the little block I mocked up for the previous post, but there were several things wrong: the first was that it just felt a bit predictable; the second, that cutting my fabric to make squares or rectangles would be quite wasteful, if I wanted to preserve the swallows whole; and finally it made the assumption that the whole quilt was about that one fabric - I think I want to try and find a way that it plays equally in relation to the other choices but doesn't hog the limelight, if that makes sense.

Anyway, since this was the fabric giving me pause for thought, I wanted to get the first cut over with.  Once I sat and looked at it properly, it seemed to make more sense to cut on the diagonal (picture included here so you can see what I mean), which has led me neatly back to string blocks. 

So what I am trying, for now at least, is these little blocks (6" square).  Some with three strips, some that just have one corner replaced and some that are a single fabric.

I'm using the swallows up first, but adding in the other fabrics as I go along. 

Of course this may be no indication at all of what the final quilt will look like, but it's where I'm starting.

(An interesting aside, is that the fabric I am least comfortable with so far is the one that comes from the same range as the swallows, which is designed to co-ordinate perfectly.  Probably says more about me than it does about the fabric!)

I love a nice shirt

I don't know if it's something to be celebrated or lamented but  where once I had specific clothing shops I loved (in the days when I visited bricks-and-mortar shops for clothing), then favourite online quilt stores, nowadays it's the British Heart Foundation second-hand shop gets my heart beating that wee bit faster.  In short, there's little I like better than a nice shirt and more specifically, a nice shirt that I can chop up.  

Yesterday morning I went hunting for something to throw into the mix for this latest quilt-to-be and this is what I found. It's hard to tell in the pictures but the second one is a pale grey-blue with a nice sandy stripe and the third is almost exactly the same shades of mint and brown as the shirt I had already pulled.  

The bronze one on the left may or may not fit into this quilt, but I like the colour a lot, and honestly, when it's only £3 for a whole shirt, why would I leave it behind?

So now I have to focus on where to start.  A lot of the ideas that have been floating around my head recently have been circles/curves again, but given that the Charley Harper fabric has big dots I'm thinking this might be overkill, so I'm playing around with other possibilities.  I don't want to be too uptight about it but would like to stretch that print as far as possible, without cutting every swallow in half, so squares or vertical strips make the most sense.  

For the moment I am just looking at things on the floor, but eventually I'll have to take the plunge and cut something.  Maybe on Monday.

New beginning

Off I go again. Though I am trying to prioritise the hand quilting and some non-quilting stuff, I have squeezed in half an hour to play with fabric.   I had in my mind a very pretty pale green and pink combination that Audrey has been working with, but my stash didn't yield anything very helpful.  I did find these two shirts, which my sister gave me for Christmas (yes, for chopping up; I wouldn't be so churlish as to cut into them if they were meant for wearing).

So I've got mint green, but no pink.  Then, rooting through my boxes I found  some Charley Harper.

Now it felt like I was getting somewhere.

So back to the boxes, to pull out things in the right colours: browns, greys, ochre, sand, and more minty greens.

 Here's a different view.

It's often the case with my first pulls that they are very pleasing on the eye but a little bit too nicely matched, and I think that's true here, but that dark brown with the little flowers introduces a little touch of a much deeper blue, which might be the answer.  Here's the same pull with a big piece of that deeper blue.

This, to my eye, has much more potential.  This is more yardage-heavy than I would ideally choose, so now I am going to let it stew for a day or two and maybe have a hunt around for one or two more shirts in the meantime.

A productive week

My finishes, like buses, all seem to come at once.  Of course this is not finished, as it still needs quilting, but the piecing is done.  I learnt my lesson on the left-hand side and didn't try any clever stuff over on the right, just stuck with geese and wedges.  Since we are still in the time frame for the AHIQ playing with scale challenge, please note the change of scale, from big to small geese, and, for that matter, big to smaller wedge-y bits too. I do like to stick to a brief!

Not only that, but it is backed, sandwiched and ready to quilt.  This needs to be done by September and given that I am currently quilting slower than the slowest snail I thought I'd better let it jump straight to the front of the queue.  I've never quilted something straight after I made it before, so it will be interesting to see if I like it.  

Tinkering

One of my weaknesses as a quilter is that I can waste time trying to make something work when I know it's not really right.  So I filled in the left hand edge with gold.  Didn't like it.  Or rather, I like the fabric a lot (never could resist a bit of sparkle), but this was just too much.  

So I added in another row of geese, another little slice of wedge. 

Obviously I would have ironed and trimmed, but  I still didn't like it, so unpicked (again!) instead.  

In the end, I just went on filling in that gap as it got smaller and smaller, until it had gone. The thing I like about this is the repetition of the purple strips, which I think helps this version to sit more comfortably with the rest of the quilt.

Still tinkering, I have moved the geese that were in the top right hand corner in the first pictures to the bottom right.  Initially I had intended to run a curve of geese all the way from the top to the bottom but when I laid it out it looked too final, closed that side off, so I had to think again.  Now I'm planning to add some smaller geese, still going up but not hugging such a tight curve. Nearly there, I think.

Done and dusted: Not Speaking for Me

I find that saying out loud (ie here on the blog) that I will finish something within a given time span works beautifully.  Last week I said I would finish this and some time around 7 pm yesterday it was indeed done.  Not before time.  My hand quilting routine has changed and I need to sort out lighting so that I can quilt in the very dark living room in the evenings, otherwise I will spend my whole life like some kind of quilting hermit, sitting in the back bedroom where the light is good.  (Actually maybe I'd like being a quilting hermit...)

Anyway here it is. 

 It is called "Not Speaking for Me", which is the title of a song by a folk group called The Young 'Uns,  (sorry, I can't find the song on youtube) but everything they do is worth a listen) and was the result of  my  sense of profound alienation at the time of the Brexit vote.  It's not so much about my opinion on the result of that vote as a reflection of the fact that during the entire debate I didn't hear voices on either side talking about any of the things that mattered to me, and I found myself wondering if I even belonged here.  I'm still wondering, but making this quilt definitely provided some sort of catharsis for the deep despair I felt initially.

 I ended up binding with a plain blue, but not before I had an odd, and irritating experience with the print I initially chose, which turned out to have been printed just off grain.  I cut the first strip and saw that the linear pattern curved gently from one end to the other.  Naturally I assumed this was my error, so lined up the selvages, trimmed, cut another strip and yes, the pattern was still wonky.  When I checked with a quilters rule it was clear that it was the pattern that was off, not my cutting.  I've used very similar prints before, but never had this problem.  Ah well, now I've got several neat strips with very wonky pattern placement - I'm sure I'll find a use for them sooner or later. 

Started on 16th August 2016, and piecing finished on 21st November 2016.

I started quilting on 7th January 2018, finished 28th April 2018.

Made with fabrics from stash,and a couple of second-hand white shirts (this was the last quilt I made which didn't start with a pull from the shirt stash).  

The wadding is Sew Simple SuperSoft Eco Blend, which is a 70/30 mix, but made entirely from recycled materials.  

Quilted with a selection of perle threads, again from stash, and bound with a lovely blue Oakshott.

Linking up with Kathy for Slow Sunday Stitching.  Now, what am I going to sew today?