Curving again

 Curves, square, curves, square and now I'm back to the curves.

I did this bottom corner first and it turned out okay, so I kept going.

This is three out of four corners done, but the top left just has something sitting over it at the moment.  

I have also pulled another shirt- here's a close up and you can also see it in the two photos above.

It's rather lovely and, more importantly, seems to do the job I need it for.

I played around briefly with something like this.

It's an idea I may come back to (it's a good way to utilise those odd little scraps) but for now I am concentrating on piecing a double row down each side.  I probably should have done ends first, but I like how that run down the left-hand side is looking, so I'm going with the flow. As I go I am thinking about juxtaposition: where I'm happy to have two pieces of the same fabric hit each other and where that doesn't look quite right.  For a long time, I preferred not to let pieces run together but more and more I find I quite like how it looks.

It's all progress, right?

A bit of progress here, though mostly of the one step forward, two steps back variety.  Who cares, it's all progress right?

I have been playing around with my smaller blocks and have sewn some of them into sets of four.  I kind of like how this looks, but there are a couple of issues too.  The first is that I have used almost all the sensible-sized pieces of fabric and what is left is mostly the funny, curvy little strings you get from cutting lots of curves.  I have a good pile of blocks but I definitely won't have enough to go all the way around the centre.  

Not to worry, I wasn't particularly determined to make this symmetrical anyway.  So here is a view with just a single run of curves.   

This is more workable, or would be if the proportions felt right.  As it is I have two problems with it.  The first is that those borders (for want of a better word) seem too small and skinny for the centre.  It shows a bit, I think, in this photo but in real life it's much worse.  They look more like an afterthought than something deliberate. 

I fiddled and fiddled but no version of this pleased me.  Eventually I have started to think I need to go back to that centre and do something to help the two parts sit together better.  I am wondering about heading back from my square to something more circular (again!)  The little blue strip in the top right gives of hint of the direction I am considering. 

One another note entirely, I had several lovely comments on my last post from people I don't know and who are no-reply bloggers so I can't respond directly.  Thanks for taking an interest and bothering to comment- it's always lovely to hear what people think.  

Hardly sewing

I am hardly sewing, no point in fudging the issue.  I thought I might be up and running again but stuff keeps coming up.  So I am posting what I have, and considering whether I can come up with a way to keep both the quilting and the blog ticking over.  

In the nearly three months since my last post, I have had this out of the box a handful of times, mostly to look at it, feel completely stumped, and put it away again.  No rhythm.  Sometimes, though, I moved forward a step or two.

I had a vague plan that involved going around the outside of my four-patch with chunky wedges, to make it back into a circle.  Trying to be realistic, the pile of shirts I was looking at were not going to yield enough fabric for this plan, but I wouldn't quite give up on the idea of a circle, so I went about it a different way.   

It ended up like this.

And then I got stuck.

In the end, I turned my circle back into a square.

Then, as the edges of this picture show, I started playing around with my smaller blocks, to see where they might fit.  

Hedging my bets

I haven't quite made my mind up yet where this is going, so I have been working on two fronts.  First off I made a few more of the big blocks. This is my favourite.

It is very clear that if I want to make many more of these I will need to add in extra shirts; I can only get two or three of those big curves out of a shirt before I have to start piecing bits back together again. I'm not ruling that out but in the meantime I have  started making smaller blocks as a way of using up the weird leftovers I was creating.

I don't know how/where they fit into the scheme of things yet, but it feels like they will come in handy at some point, and they are kind of satisfying to make.

And then there were four

My posting adventures continue, since this is posted from an iPad, something else I don’t usually try.  Here are a few more blocks. 

A number of people thought they had a bit of a double wedding ring vibe and I agree. I have been looking at quite a few vintage quilts, but mostly very simple, restrained colour palettes and repeated bocks. Those our my favourite double wedding rings, but I don’t want to make one. I guess all that browsing has seeped into this quilt though. 

On a practical note, curves and shirts are tricky partners: what you ready want are nice expanses of fabric to slice your curves from, but mostly what you get are lots of compromises and extra piecing. In the end, I think this will give  the quilt its own particular character and it certainly stops me getting bored! 

Sometimes I am sewing together two pieces of the same fabric, sometimes I’m using a contrasting bit and sometimes,  as with the yellow block, I do one thing and then change my mind and try again.

These blocks are quite big, for me - maybe 10 inches or thereabouts. If I kept making them I would have a top in pretty good time. On one level that sounds appealing but I’m not sure now whether I’ll make more of them or start tinkering about. The good money is on tinkering.

 

First pass at the sun

I am posting from my phone for the first time ever, so this may or may not work,  but let's give it a go. 

I've done several quilts in a row that used not only similar shapes (chunky wedges) but also a similar approach (broadly speaking the medallion). I'm not sure whether I'm done with the edge but have decided to have a  play with some curves this time round. 

This is my first attempt. 

I am thinking,  I guess,  of the sun and sunflowers, but mostly,  as ever,  just trying to find shapes and colour combinations that please my eye.

And here's a second block. I can see that there is s hint of a chunky wedge here,  but what can you do?  It's clearly not going quietly.

 

All the yellows

Ann's newest challenge landed just as I was thinking about what to start next so I have pulled out a great big pile of shirts and dived right in.  Here is a photo of every single yellow and orange shirt I could find, plus some others that seemed to sit nicely with them.

Seems like a good place to start, so off I go.