Quilty 365: Circles in August

Audrey had the brilliant idea of appliquéing a circle onto a square of cotton every day for a whole year. Never having done needle-turn appliqué I liked the idea and decided almost immediately to join in. All went well until I spent a few days in hospital in the second week in June; I had kept on schedule and my needle turning skills improved enormously. The first five months I could report a full batch, in June half a batch, and in July I also managed to make one a day.

It was one-a-day too during the first half of August:

Oops! There were 16!

There were 16 in August, but one clearly got away!

Then on 16 August I wondered if I had enough for a lap quilt - we don't have quilts on beds around here - so I put all the blocks up on the design wall. I had been picking the fabrics at random so wondered if I could get a balanced layout, or if I should maybe concentrate in future on a particular colour.

My design wall wasn't big enough! I'm afraid I forgot to take a photo, but I got them all in there somehow, with a lot of overlapping.I had clearly enough for a lap quilt, so decided to call it a day! I still have about 20 in a box, that didn't make it into this project.

Anyway the one that got away is in here somewhere:

180 4" (finished) blocks joined in three sections ready for quilting.

I started the layout with red in one corner and blue in the opposite corner (would you believe I have never been to a boxing match in my life?!) Then added green and purple in the other two corners. I wanted  a rainbow effect, but also wanted to have the lighter fabrics in the middle. So yellow went in the middle and then it was a question of filling in the spaces while keeping the colour gradation as much as possible. This took the next 10 days or so! Not helped by all those overlapping blocks falling off the wall!

I made a few more light green blocks to put between yellow and blue (and forgot to take a photo; I was so absorbed in my layout!). For some reason I had enough orange, so on the red side the problem didn't arise.

I joined the blocks into 12 rows of 15 blocks each, and then joined the rows together in groups of four. I shall be quilting them with the walking foot, and then joining them by a QAYG method that I used before here.

I'm pleased with the result so far, and hope I can get it quilted by the end of the year!

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Happy Sewing

Marly.