January progress

 The first couple of weeks of January I spent catching up with Allietare! (click for information on the button to the left).  I chose to make a slightly smaller version than the official one  but after the reveal on 1 January discovered I hadn't made enough; now I'm making the setting triangles. I posted here about not having a suitable grey, but fortunately managed to pick it up the following day. I thought I had a photo on my phone, but I haven't got even one photo of the completed blocks. I'll remedy that soon when I'm ready to start joining the rows.

On 1 January I started with the Quilty 365 project which I had read about in November in  blog post from Deb. This project is being organised by Audrey at Quilty Folk and you can read about it here.
I decided then to wait and start symbolically in the New Year and to appliqué each circle using the needle-turn technique. This is a technique I'd never tried before, but after some You Tube tuition I felt confident enough to start! The first block took me 3 hours! Number 31 took 55 minutes! We're moving in the right direction! I really like the result so far.

January's blocks in chronological order, which will probably not be the final order.

At the start I thought I'd make the circles larger on "special" days; the first two (1 and 2 January) are larger circles: one for New Year, and one for my youngest Grandson's birthday.
At first I just picked matching pieces of roughly the right size from the scrap bin, but after about 10 days decided:

• to cut some solid squares in different colours to make the daily choosing-ritual easier (and faster!),
• to glue the circles with a smear of Sew Line glue in the centre,
• to alternate light and dark backgrounds in the final layout (medium backgrounds will count as light or dark, depending on their neighbours),
• and to experiment with colour.

My favourite block is number 15 (middle of the left-hand column): two purple fabrics joined in a curve on the machine, WITHOUT pins!!! You can probably imagine my surprise when it laid flat immediately! I learnt to do this from Leanne's video on sewing Drunkard's path blocks. It's brilliant!

As if this wasn't enough of a new project in January, I've also joined the Ad Hoc Improv Quilters (button on the right). This group has been going for about six months, so I'm a late starter, but have read up on improvised quilting on the sites of Kaya and Ann. Although I haven't started an improv project, I think the following three blocks could count as improv piecing.

As I'm not sure where the whole Quilty 365 project is going, maybe the whole project can be called "improv" too.

In total contrast to improvised patchwork I joined a club at my local quilt shop to make the blocks of the "Farmer's Wife 1930's sampler quilt". This is old style precision cutting and sewing, although I'm experimenting with colour here again.

top row: November, 2nd row: December (still 3 blocks to do), 3rd row: January (but it's not over yet!)

We are adding setting triangles and quilting as we  go, in theory. Everyone else is, so I shall have to cut the backing, wadding and setting triangles soon! I have until Tuesday week to fill these rows!

I'm linking up to:

    

Happy sewing

Marly.