New month, new quilt

 March already!  I feel like there's no time to waste, an almost palpable sense that life is pushing me to quilt.  I guess have extended periods when that has been hard is making want to make the most of quilting time when/while I have it.  So, I have two quilts in hoops: one nearly done, the other not so much.  I also have two more, with backs made, just waiting for basting.  

I also have a new pile of shirts, and a slightly new approach.  I have thought a number of times that I would like to try and start quilts with a bundle of shirts all bought on the same day and in the same place.  I have done this once before (as the result of a happy accident rather than by deliberate choice) and it's a notion that tickles me, so I'm going to give it a go for a while.  I have a couple of suitcases full of shirts, so my theory is that I will find around 5 shirts that work well together in a charity shop, then go home and see what else I have that I think will sit comfortably with them.  I'm not going to overthink the initial stage, but it's amazing how often I see groups that I think have promise, so it should work out alright.  

Here's my first go.  I bought these shirts at the British Heart Foundation shop in Loughborough last Friday.

When I got back I dug out some more shirts, and one length of organic quilting cotton.

This is what they look like together.

This feels like the starting of something to me, so off we go again.

Maybe, nearly, almost, pretty much done for now

In a  perfect world there would be a couple of process photos between my last post and this one.  However I have had covid again.  I am perfectly fine but  have been confined to my room so can't get at the camera to retrieve my card.   I did manage to grab my box of sewing on my way into isolation though.  There isn't room to swing a cat in here but moving everything away from the wall so that I could pin my top to it kept me busy and time is the one thing I've had plenty off.

I'm trying to remember how this went.  Three columns were working but clearly not wide enough and I figured I had enough fabric to make a couple more sets of circle-y bits. The one in the top right is made of smaller pieces, partly because it let me use more of the scrappy bits but also deliberately to echo the similar piece bottom left.  

I had enough beige scrappage to run a line of triangles across the bottom and up the right hand side.  Again, this has a practical point - to edge towards a size I'm happy with - and also balances the left hand side.  No more beige left.  In fact almost no more of anything except one strip of tartan, a fair bit of the darkest red and blue stripe and some of the plain slightly pink-y red.  Ideally I would like to add a tiny bit of length, but am not sure this will give me much in the way of options.  I'll need to get back to my floor to know; if I can't find something pleasing then this will be where I stop.  

Not paying attention

You might think that for someone who finishes only a handful of quilts in a year, the moment of completion would be something to celebrate.  I certainly thought that.  Except...some time round about October of last year, I finished a quilt and completely forgot about it.  No blog mention, not even a dodgy photo on instagram.  In fact, the only reason I know when it was finished is the date stamp on the photos. Go figure.

Anyhow, here is my poor, sadly overlooked quilt, which was called In For a Penny (on account of the Coins).

Six shirts (if you want a reminder, you can see some of them here) plus scraps from my big box of random bits, pieced mostly as little strip sets, with the odd hourglass or pinwheel thrown in when I got bored.

Much of the back started life as a front, but at some point I realised I wasn't inclined to quilt it, so took to it with the scissors.  Some of it is in other quilt fronts now, and the rest has made this rather  satisfactory back. 

It was pieced between the end of November 2019 and 3rd March 2020, so it was my final quilt before lockdowns came and ate the rest of the year.  I have to confess that I don't know when I started quilting it, but it was finished on 17th October 2022, so I guess I would have started some time that summer.  

The wadding is organic cotton,the thread is perle cotton, just a random selection that seemed to go, and it is quilted with straight, vertical lines.The binding is one of the last Oakshott cottons that I have been hoarding for so long it's stopped being funny. It was just the right mix of yellow and pink tones.

It might seem, from my utter neglect of it, that I don't much care for this quilt but that's not the case.  In fact I like it a lot. I especially like the interruptions made by the hourglasses and pinwheels, the tiny bits of red and that bottom left-hand corner, which has a whole curvy thing of its own going on.  

Shuffling

Although I have decided I am going down the route of wilder rather than more structured, I find I am still laying my pieces out like this when I start to sew.  They come out of the box in a different order each time but that's okay.  I am aiming to make four long strips before I worry too much about which way round they go together.  

Maybe, once I've got that far, I will need a fifth strip.  I will almost certainly need to add something border-y to to the top and bottom to get to a length I like.  

In the meantime, each piece is having its own little internal conversations.  The one thing I am paying most attention to is how many of the horizontal red plaid strips I use.  As Doris said on my last post that fabric is rather shouting for attention.  So far, I feel that's okay; it helps to stop all the blues and darker tones from mushing too much.  But I don't want it to be the only thing you notice when you look at the completed top.

Every so often, I shuffle everything back together, just to make sure I don't lose sight of where I am going.  This is one iteration. The second vertical row in this next photo has been sewn together.  Apart from that, nothing is finally decided.  Each bauble is stitched to the rows below it, but they don't have final places yet, though I am pretty sure I'll be sewing the left hand row up soon too. 

On a practical note, I am running low on the dark blue plaid and also the batik shirt but overall it still seems like I have a fair amount of fabric.  The last bits may be dictated simply by what's left, but so far, so good.

 

Piecing and playing

 I'm still working away at this, though my chunks are slowly getting larger.  

For a while I was looking at my various bits and pieces and thinking mostly in terms of separating them in some way so that they didn't feel too busy. It was that impulse that led to my previous post, thinking more carefully about the values of my fabrics.  I added some extra beige triangles into one area and definitely felt that improved things.  However, I was still wondering how I would replace my large areas of floor with a more fabric-based alternative.

Then something interesting happened: I was discussing this with a friend who challenged my assumption that I needed that space.  What would happen, they wondered, if I just let my blocks run wild.  So I tried it.

You know what?  It needs more work, but I don't hate this.  Nothing is sewn together and I won't remember the order next time I get it out, but the general principle stands.  This has me thinking about challenging the assumptions I make as I quilt: there are some types of choice I have been making for so long that I don't question them at all any more and maybe I could, from time to time, step out of that comfort zone.  Let's see how this goes.

A bit more light and shade

Using black and white versions of my photos has helped me to figure out that if I use plenty of my light beige fabrics and the shirt with red and white plaid, I can build in more contrast without too much of a problem.  I made a line of triangles with a beige background instead of the dark blue - see how much better that is?

And here's a chunk where I have started to add in the plaid

I've got quite a few of these bits now: one bauble and some strips.  I'm playing around with different layouts but nothing is decided yet.  They look like they are stitched together, but as yet they just sit on top of each other while I see what I like.This one has some of the beige triangles.  I think that they look a bit lost in this photo, actually, but am finding that they work well when I add more of them to an area.

I am also wondering about adding in a few extra bits of the very dark red.  Lots of possibilities still, but at least now I have some sense of a direction.

Baubles

I know Christmas is over, but these blocks remind me of baubles and it's a thought that is pleasing me on this dreary, wet January afternoon.

I am slowly adding in a number of different elements.  The strips with little red insets showed up in the photos I shared last time but I am also now making strips of blue with red triangles. Put together, it goes something like this.

I had to pause once I had several bits like this, as grouped together they were not working quite as I wanted them to (yes, I know I should have a picture, but I was too busy concentrating to remember that).  The issue, in short was that it all felt a bit busy.  I took some quick phone photos and had a look in black and white.

The thing this makes quite obvious is that I need to think a bit about how I am using my lightest/darkest fabrics, to try and build in better contrast.  Too many mid-tones here are leaving things a bit mushy.  Of course, in reality there is a measure of contrast that comes just from the colours.  Quite often I find that is enough for me, but other times, and this is one of them, you just need a bit more.  I'm not sure that I need to find extra fabrics; it's more a case of using them better.

While I let this thought simmer, I am going to change tack and write out my 2023 plans for AHIQ