Early doors

I titled this post 'early doors' but now I wonder whether that is a phrase anyone uses outside the UK.  Perhaps someone can tell me? We mostly used it in the days when pubs shut in the afternoon and reopened around 5.30.

Since I'm still at the beginning of this, I am pretty much just making doors.  This is what they look like when you have enough to start playing around.  

I like this version better - taller and skinnier and more reminiscent of the shape of the individual blocks.

To keep myself from getting bored I have also been moving them around to create different patterns.

This, in particular, has me wondering what I would put in those gaps.  It can't be something light, since that would rather miss the point of this.  I am hoping that if I keep shuffling, something will eventually occur to me that feels right.  Plenty of time and no big hurry.

A walk on the dark side

 New day, new pile of  shirts. 

A couple of weeks ago, just as I was finishing the last top, I read a piece in the paper about doing things outside in the dark.  At the top of the piece was a quote from a poem by Wendell Berry:

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark too blooms and sings,
and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings

And just like that, an idea for a quilt was born. I gathered up all the darks that I could find.  Instead of using them to extend the value range in a pile of mid-value shades, I wanted to see what I could do by using them all together.

Mostly, as you probably know, I start with a pile of shirts and not much else.  Strangely this time, I have not just the quote above floating around in my head but also was this image of a building in Liverpool, which I had saved recently. It seems to me that maybe these two ideas belong together.

So off I go, inspired by doors and the dark.  I know already that I can't make a whole quilt just of doors (remember my short attention span?) but I have started off with these.

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!