Propelled by sheer obstinacy

 Yup, that's what has kept me moving with these tulips this week.  Here's how it went:

1.  Decide to piece your tulips.  Do a little sketch.  Decide the piecing will be too fiddly and that you need to make these blocks a bit bigger.  

2. Use a dodgy string block to get a feel for what the pieced flower might look like.  

3. Accidentally drop the flower on top of another block.  Like how it looks, with the tulip in the corner, so make a couple like that.

4.  Check these flowers with your string blocks.  Spot the not-so-deliberate error.  Two sides might work, the other two will merge into your strings in an unpleasant mush.  Also, larger gingham makes everything way too busy.

5. Not giving up.  Pull apart blocks, go back to your drawer full of shirts and look for a new background.  Find a lovely taupe shirt, recently acquired (but sadly way too big to wear).  Yes, that looks good.  Remake blocks.

6.  Check these flowers with your string blocks.  Hmm.  Like the strings, like the flowers but they look like they belong in different quilts.

7.  Maybe this would help?

8. Remake blocks adding little extra strips which, as it happens, add a slight leafy effect.  Better.

9. Check these flowers with your string blocks.  They look too big and a bit top heavy.  Decide they need to be smaller.  Try not to think about step one.

10.  Cut them down.

I'm not there yet, but feel like I get closer with each iteration.  To be fair, I only made a couple of the initial test blocks, so there are not horrific amounts of re-sewing going on.  in fact, the thinking probably takes more time than the actual stitching. 

A side note: this kitchen floor is doing nothing to help.  It is scheduled for replacement and you can be sure that I am hoping for something that does as good a job in quilting terms as the dark grey tiles at the last house.  

More strings

 More strings. 

Since I'm not entirely decided where I'm going with this project yet (more musing on this here, on the AHIQ blog) I have decided I will just keep making these until I get bored and then tackle the tulips.  Of course this won't take long, given my low boredom threshold but I reckon I've got at least another couple of  string-making sessions in me before I need a change.  

I love a tulip

Hmm.  I have been itching to start  Ann's AHIQ quiltalong.  As regular readers of this blog may remember there are few things I love as much as a good tulip, so a tulip-y quilt felt right up my street. It is especially welcome since I have moved house since last spring.  I have already put some tulips into the new garden, but nowhere near enough.    

However, this has already presented me with a few challenges.  Not a bad thing, but maybe this wont' be quite the simple sew I thought.  First up, I wanted to use scraps, since the only properly scrap-based quilts I have made were both lego quilts (and much as I admire Julie's many variations on this theme, I'm not inclined to go there again).  Turns out my current way of quilting doesn't generate masses of scrap.  This is my entire collection

and there are quite a few bits in that box that are big enough for me to consider including them in a top, so they are not really scraps for this purpose.

Second up, I can't quite relinquish all control, so wanted some sort of limited palette to play around with.  Hmm again.

I almost put the scrap box away and started again.  In fact I pulled a lovely assortment of blue and purple shirts that would make an excellent starting point for a quilt.  Maybe they still will, but in the end I stuck with the scraps.

This is where I got to at the end of the first session. You can see that I have already had to start pushing at the edges of my limited colour range but they seem to hang together alright.  

Now for a few days of nice, straightforward sewing before I have to start mithering away again.

A finish

This feels a bit like cheating - posting a finished quilt without having shown any of the work that went into it, but that's the way it goes sometimes.  I started this some time last spring (again, no blogging means I don't have a proper record of dates), worked on it on and off, through homeschooling and house moving. Now it is done, and has gone off to its home so I can share.

I  started with the moons and a colour palette (rich greens and blues and a little bit of mustard yellow/gold) and the rest followed from that start.  There are several shirts and a big piece of dressmaking remnant in amongst the fabrics, some (I think) easier to spot than others.   In several cases I have used both sides of a fabric in different places; those are not so hard to find, on the whole. 

I had been mulling over various ideas for tops using very pointy little triangles for quite a long time, originally inspired by a CD cover that I liked  a lot, and it made me very happy when I realised that they would be a great match for the moons in this.  They are fiddly to make but I love the way they look.  In this quilt they look a bit like trees or mountains, I think, so that the whole thing has a feeling of landscape about it.  That wasn't something I planned, but it happened as I went along, which for me is how all the best stuff happens.

I used organic cotton wadding, which is my current preferred option, and quilted it with perle no. 8, in a variety of shades, mostly ones I already had.  The quilting comes out in concentric circles from each moon. 

The back is a combination of left-overs from the front and bits from stash.

It is bound with what I believe to be an Alison Glass sunprint, from stash, with a couple of little inserts that came from the quilt scraps.

This is my second finish of the year so I'm already ahead of the game.  Let's see if I can keep it up!

Done circling for now

This one is done for now.  I added one last row and then one tiny column up the right-hand side.  It looks slightly lopsided in the photos because the child holding up the left hand side is taller than the one on the right, but the quilt itself is a little more regular.

I am really very happy with how this has turned out, so feel I have ticked the Positive Thinking box very nicely.  

I have also finished the unblogged quilt, which will be packed up and posted in a day or two, so hooray for finishes all round.  A brief pause, then on to the next one.

Not one, but two

One row, one column and so close to an end I can smell the finish line.  Only now it's half term, so we'll have to see how it goes next week.

I knew I wanted triangles across the top, so that bit was easy, but the strip that is with them was one I had already made specially for the bottom left corner.  I'll have to rethink that, I guess.

Then, although I don't need more width, I had to come back down the side.  I know, I know, it is my quilt and I could abandon the medallion at this point and just add across the bottom.  Only I've come this far...

so I've added just a wee narrow piece to get me back down to the bottom again.  Most of it is the same fabric that I used in the wee houses.  I'm very happy with how it looks; I much prefer it to finishing with the sharp yellow on the edge.  

I'm also nearing an end with my current quilting project.  It's not one I've blogged, which always feels odd, but I'm no more than a week off a total finish, with just a couple of days of quilting and then binding to go.  Like buses, my finishes are all coming at once.

You name it, I tried it

 And up the right hand side I went.

This column took flipping ages.  I had houses at the top, birds at the bottom;houses at the top, birds in the middle; birds at the top, no houses; no birds and no houses; you name it, I tried it. This is what I settled for in the end.

Of course the irony is that any one of the other solutions would quite probably have looked fine if I had persisted with them.  I wonder what would happen if I just stuck with my first decision every time and didn't do all this tinkering.  Would it make much difference?  Maybe not, but tinkering is what I shall continue to do.

This is probably wide enough now, though not long enough yet, so I only have to add more columns if I fancy it.  More tinkering ahead, I guess.