WIP

This stripe is an interesting thing. I liked that it worked as a counterbalance to the checks and little fussy prints and I thought the darkest of the blues would help echo the darkest blue shirt and stop all the mid-tones predominating. Sadly, I didn't like it as much as I thought I would once it was in the quilt, so I went ahead and took it out.  But I can see that it looks much better in the photos I shared than it does in real life and the arguments for its inclusion are still valid, so I fully intend to keep it in the pile and start adding it back in, though possibly in smaller bits.  It's not in these photos, but I reckon next time I post, it will be in there again.

I still like the notion of separating my curvy claws with something, so I have had a go with the crosses.

This seemed to be worth persisting with, so I kept going.

Of course nothing is carved in stone, but right now I think the six blocks on the left will be staying as they are.  The right hand bits are more by way of an experiment.  I am playing around trying to work out how symmetrical or asymmetrical I want to be, taking into account that in some versions I like how the blocks interact a lot, and in others I do not like them one tiny little bit.  I don't feel like I'm stuck, just playing still, but it does also feel like these blocks might turn out to be a bit contrary.

 

Trying stuff out

I am moving slowly. After a few false starts, I decided that one of the issues I was having with my group of fabrics was that there was something rather similar about them - a preponderance of small, busy prints - that was making them hard to work with.  I dug out a much paler shirt and a nice stripe, to see if they would help.

I haven't found anywhere yet that the pale one looks at home, but I had a go with the stripe. Here are a couple of versions.

This definitely reminds me of claws, now that Yvonne has pointed it out, and I am now thinking of it as "Wild Things" but it is also reminiscent of the spiky teasles in my garden. Using the strip between the curves accentuated this and I quite liked it, so I kept going.

You will see that I got bored of just making curves and started making crosses as well.  I like the crosses still, but as of today, I have started taking the stripes out, in the places where I had done actual sewing.  I have been trying to put my finger on why I decided to do this and the closest I can come to an explanation is that they pull my eye too much toward them, so I see the stripes but the curves are fenced off from each other.  I'm not sure I want strips of old pyjama to be the star of this particular show, so out they go.  Of course I may revisit, but for now the crosses are staying, the stripes are going.

Off we go again

This is the next bundle of shirts. All bought one day in late March from an Age UK shop in an upmarket suburb of Nottingham. 

You can't tell from this photo, but the gingham-type check at the back is a pale purple.  the rest are pretty much as they look.

A first pass through my drawers resulted in a few options to bulk this out: a nice navy with a tiny white dot, a mid-blue with a Hawaiian vibe and some scraps of dark red.  They really are scraps, though, so while I'm not putting them away just yet, I won't be counting on them for much either.

My calculation is that I am a couple of shirts short, but that's fine. I'm going to make a start and worry about what else a bit further down the line.  

Not wishing to hang about, since sewing time is hard to come by, I ignored my original thought, which involved pinwheels and/or hourglasses and decided instead to go for something fiddly and time-consuming.  There's just no accounting for the way my mind works. 

Hmm. I'm not loving these right now.  I am okay with the general idea, but someone, in passing, said they look like dinosaur eggs and I just can't get that image out of my head.  I'm not going to give up though.  I am hoping that a little rejig of the proportions, otherwise known as a sneaky trim on one side, will sort things out. Let's see how that goes.

And done...for now

 All finished and heading off for the pile of tops still waiting to be quilted.

This is how it went. Lots of bits were not sewn at this point, because I was  trying to figure out that top left corner and the right hand side simultaneously.  When I laid out the bits on the right, I thought I was right down to the wire, in terms of remaining fabric.  I was hoping to be have enough squares and pinwheels to fill in all my spaces, but was still trying to keep an eye on how things balanced across the whole top. Lucky for me, I  found one last, biggish piece of shirt big enough to cut several chunks from and that presented me with a much quicker solution in that top left corner. It is a note to self - sometimes I only use a small amount of a fabric, because it seems to me to be having an oversized effect on the quilt as a whole.  That's fine, but I should really keep better track of where I put the left-overs! I would have been pretty fed up if I had only found that fabric after I'd finished piecing.

I also dug out one last curved piece which fitted in over on the right.  These two finds between them gave me just enough to stretch to a finish.

In the end I am very pleased with how this has turned out and that it ended up being what feels like a respectable size to me (roughly 60"x70", I think)

Stretching

I am closing in on a finish now and have reached a point where my decisions are being driven mostly by the fabric I have left. In this spirit, I used a left-over quarter-oval to complete the big shape bottom right, but won't be making one for the gap on the left-hand side.  Cutting a big curve like that would be too wasteful of the fabric I have left, so I'll have to fill in the gap another way. 

Using a combination of pinwheels (made from my tiny scraps) and squares cut from any bigger pieces is, mostly, pleasing to my eye but is also a practical way to get the most from the fabric.  I'm so close to the wire now that I'm not losing any scrap into a seam allowance if I don't have to.   I have a couple of fabrics there is more off (the pale green and the darkest red stripe) but even those are going down quickly now.  In aesthetic terms, it doesn't seem to work if I have too much of that green in any one place so there is a constant juggling to stretch my fabric far enough without having to do something I find unpleasant to look at.

My current theory is that I will use more of my lighter bits top and right and concentrate the darker leftovers bottom and left, though of course there is a lot of crossover.  I think that I want to add a row of pinwheels top and bottom as well as on  the sides but will have to see if I can stretch that far.  

Although I am having to be so careful this quilt is sparking lots of ideas, so it's a satisfying process, figuring it all out.  I thought I might be done with curves for a bit by the end of this, but not I'm not so sure.  Maybe I will go again.

Progress report

First off, I want to apologise to all those whose blogs I visit.  I have not been managing to look at/comment on much, but am hoping to get back to it soon.  The cricket season has started.  If you knew my family, you would understand that everything else now takes a back seat until September and that the sport will expand to take up all available space.  It's fun, and a bit mad, but I scrabble around to fit my stuff in.  I'll get it sorted though.

I have chugged along with this where and when I could.  I added the little pointy bits top and bottom.

Of course that doesn't help me make things wider, but I like them.

Then I turned to the sides.  I wish I had read in time Patty's comment on my previous post, which suggested using the same shapes but in a different colourway.  I think that's a fabulous idea and shall be tucking it away for future quilts.  Instead I have been working away with the few curved pieces I had left over and pinwheels.

Where I have big enough scraps, I am cutting squares instead of sewing them into the pinwheels: it breaks things up but is also the most efficient use of what I have left.  If I have enough fabric, I am going to do one extra row of squares/pinwheels top and bottom, but that will have to wait until I'm nearer the finish line.  

 

Fun and games

The title of this post is ironic.  My laptop died so I have wasted a week of good sewing time figuring out what to replace it with and ordering said replacement.  Then the delivery company thought they had delivered it - well they had, just not to me.  Their driver had given it to a random builder working on a house somewhere else in my village!  So then he had to come back, retrieve it and redeliver, only this time to the right place.  Now it's up and running, but the photo software I used to use (which was basic and idiot-proof) is not around anymore and I can't find an alternative that both sorts and stores and lets me do simple editing all in one go.  Oh my, the range of complicated options out there is slightly terrifying!  I have just had to find two tutorials, one to straighten my image and one to crop, which just seems ridiculous.  If you have any recommendations, please add them in the comments.

In the meantime, I have got as far as this piece, which I am generally pretty happy with

except for the dimensions: it is about 60" long, but probably only half that across, so very long and skinny.  I have played around with things I could try on the sides with limited success.  There are photos but I lack the tenacity to turn them into useable images right now.  Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.