Overlapping Octagons is finished!

Overlapping Octagons is copied from a photograph of a quilt made around 1950 and featured in the book "Unconventional and Unexpected, American quilts under the radar", by Roderick Kiracofe. Making a replica of a quilt in this book was a challenge issued by Sujata Shah about a year ago.
Unlike the original maker I used the sewing machine throughout, although I now think I would have been faster sewing all those y-seams by hand. I chose to use red to meet the criteria of another challenge; about the same time the Ad Hoc Improv Quilters issued the challenge: "Red is the new Neutral"

The Y-seams are not only at the four corners of the red squares but also at the X joins of the string sections.
In this photo the octagons are maybe easier to identify.

Originally I tried using hourglass blocks as cornerstones in the string sashing. That didn't work as the hourglass blocks became too visible as hourglasses and didn't blend into the octagons. The seams also became very bulky as five fabrics came together at one point, as opposed to just three now. In the original the fabric in the "sashing" continues into the "cornerstone" so I went with that, as you can see in the picture above.

I used fabric scraps throughout. I started with red and blue 19th century reproduction fabrics - the ones that have been hanging around the longest - but soon used up that lot (hooray!!) and moved on to the more recent fabrics. Just two colours - red and blue - became very boring, so quite early in the process I introduced small pieces of other colours among the blue strings.

fabrics: scraps from stash
measurements: 38" x 44"
pieced with Aurifil 50 wt light grey
quilted with Aurifil 40 wt dark blue, dark red and bright red

 Although this was intended as a small lap quilt my DH has claimed it for the wall above his desk! 

Finishing this quilt was my goal of the month this month, (and last, and the one before!) but now it really is bound, labelled and all the threads are buried!
It is also the first item on my Q4 list for the 2019 Finish A-Long, hosted by Sandra at Studio sew of course.

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Click on the buttons to see more scrappy quilts and goals achieved. 

Happy sewing

Marly.

One Monthly Goal November

My October goal was to finish my "Overlapping Octagons". Hmm!

A few minutes ago, on Thursday 31 October, just as the sun was setting,

 I finished the quilting

but not the whole quilt! I still have hundreds of threads to bury, before I can even think of straightening up and binding. I failed to reach my goal! Boo!

The Octagons therefore are featuring in One Monthly Goal, yet again!

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Happy sewing

Marly.

Finish Along 2019 Q4

This is my list for the Finish along in the fourth quarter of 2019. As usual rather optimistic, but several items are nearing completion.

1.   Overlapping Octagons - for the UandUQAL hosted by Sujata Shah. The challenge is to reproduce a quilt from a photo in Roderick Kiracofe's book, "Unconventional and Unexpected, American Quilts under the radar". I have about one quarter of the quilting done.

2.   Pullover - The sleeves and neckline are done; I'm now weaving in the threads.

3.   Bow ties - inspired by a pattern in "Make Modern". My 2019 project for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge
(The mistake below has now been corrected!)

4.    For the Boys - pattern by Jen Kingwell, published in her book "Quilt Lovely". This I will start as soon as the Overlapping Octagons and the Bow Ties are finished.


5.   Dwellings - appliqué wall hanging - pattern by  bjdesignsandpatterns.com

I'm linking to Sandra at Studio Sew of Course:

 

Click on the button to see more projected finishes.

 Happy sewing

Marly.

October's goal

September left without my realising it and without achieving my goal to quilt my "Overlapping Octagons" for the UandU QAL.

All was going well until inflammation in my right shoulder put pay to machine quilting two weeks ago. Although the shoulder is less painful now and I'm sewing again, I haven't dared to try quilting. It was probably heaving the quilt through my machine that caused the injury in the first place.

So far I have quilted about two thirds of the vertical blue sections. I've been using a quilting ruler and foot for the first time and there are lots of imperfections. I can live with them; you have to start somewhere! Once the vertical sections are finished I can start on the horizontal and then the red squares; let's hope I get this finished this month!

My goal for October is to finish my Overlapping Octagons.

I'm linking up to

 

Click on the button to see more October goals.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Some purple bow ties

Angela posts a colour every month for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, and this month's colour is purple. I thought last month's colour would be purple, so while I was waiting for Angela's post I jumped the gun and made one at the beginning of August. It may even have crept into one of last month's posts, but here are all my purple bow ties so far; both for August and September!

I wasn't planning on doing brown or black, but I do need to make a few more blocks to get a satisfactory layout, so maybe grey will creep in next month too, as well as some of the colours I've already used.

I have another scrappy project on my design wall at the moment:

No planned colour scheme here!
4.5" shoo fly blocks for the 2019 Leaders and Enders challenge organised by Bonnie Hunter. If you're interested in the challenge, or just in the concept of leaders and enders click here.

Another scrappy project that's just come off the wall:

Overlapping Octagons is ready to be layered and quilted.

I'm linking up to 

      and  

Click on the buttons to see more scrappy delights.

Happy sewing

Marly.

One Monthy Goal for September

September is a short month, so here's a short post with my goal.

inspired by a quilt (In Dialogue with an Anonymous Quilt, p.18) in Roderick Kiracofe's book "Unconventional and Unexpected, American Quilts Below the Radar 1950-2000"

Overlapping Octagons should become a quilt. This is my first make at the Unconventional and Unexpected QAL hosted by Sujata Shah.

Quite a few other things are in progress, so here's hoping!

I'm linking to:

Click on the button to see more September goals.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Overlapping Octagons is a top!

In January I started making this following a suggestion by Sujata Shah. I've forgotten where I first read about it, but immediately found it intriguing. The U&UQAL uses the photos in Roderick Kiracofe's book, "Unconventional and Unexpected, American Quilts under the radar." This book is a history of lesser-known American quilts from the first half of the twentieth century; there are no patterns just excellent photographs. Every participant in the QAL chooses a quilt from the book to copy. The puzzle is to work out from the photo exactly how the quilt was constructed.

While we know from the notes that the original was pieced by hand I chose to piece using the machine. Not a fast task as only the strip sets could be pieced easily. Assembling the octagons requires y-seams everywhere. I did wonder near the beginning if piecing by hand might not be faster, but persevering with y-seams has paid off, and I got both faster and more accurate.

My plan was to use 19th Century reproduction fabrics in red and blue and finish that stash. Unfortunately the reds were largely almost brown and didn't contrast enough with the blue, so I introduced flashes of other colours from the scrap bags to liven things up! When I finished those blues I had to use other, modern fabrics, and added modern reds too.

I tried hourglass blocks in the small squares between the red centres, but wasn't happy with them: they detracted from the octagon effect, and they made for excessively bulky joins. Removing them made it possible to continue the last strip into the triangle which gives less bulk, and enhances the octagons. Hourglass blocks would have made quilt assembly more straightforward, but they were giving a sashing and cornerstone effect - emphasising the squares, and not the octagons. More photos of the process can be found in my posts to A Basket Full of Scraps

Now I have to decide on the quilting, and having pieced by machine I think I'll quilt by hand. I would like to try doing Baptist fans, spaced fairly widely, maybe as wide as 1". But first I have to reduce a few wobbles in the piecing:

The joins above and to the right of the dogs in this photo are just refusing to lie flat. I will try pressing them again so that they do lie flat, and then sew along those creases by machine. If that fails I'll try by hand, and otherwise rely on the quilting to fix it. Not very scientific!

Have a good weekend.

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Happy sewing

Marly.

Finish Along 2019 Q3

My list for the FAL in the third quarter is:

1. Crocheted cuddle cloths 

 This looks finished, but only one arm is attached. And then there is the one for her twin brother!

2. Sweater for DH 

 Just needs sleeves and the neck ribbing

3. Clam-up pouch

 I only have to sew a binding down on the inside.

4. Sewing machine cover

using these blocks:

5. Cats and Dogs wall hanging

 - secret sewing -

6. Overlapping Octagons

All the vertical columns are joined, as are columns 3 and 4 to one another. Here is a detail from columns 3 and 4:

I'm linking up to Sandra Jansen at Studio Sew of Course for the FAL Q3 planned finishes link up.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Overlapping Octagons and Y-seams

For the UandUQAL organised by Sujata Shah I am reproducing the Overlapping Octagons quilt from Roderick Kirakofe's book, "Unconventional and Unexpected". I haven't done much to it over the last few months; this is the present state of this lap quilt.

I have made octagons with red centres surrounded by predominantly dark blue strings.  With this choice I aimed to use up most of my blue and red Civil War reproduction fabrics, and with the red I succeeded and have added more modern reds, but the blue were all so dark I soon started introducing flashes of other colours.

At present they're not overlapping, but I have more red squares cut, and here I've positioned them where red squares will go in the final design.

I am pleased that the overlapping octagons have now emerged.

The octagon blocks have Y-seams at each corner, and inserting the second set of red centre blocks will involve more Y-seams. I wasn't happy about this at the beginning, and so tried making hourglass blocks in the corners, as shown here:

This is one of two hourglass blocks I retained, before I gave up on them. At each of  the corners of this hourglass block five fabrics come together making very bulky seams which I couldn't get to lie flat.

Doing Y-seams, however, means joining only three, which will lie much more easily, especially if the last string in the side panel continues into the corner triangle, as here below.

Sorry about the fuzziness!

In this corner above, one of the four string sets ends in a separate triangle; this is one of the string sets I originally joined to an hourglass block. I rejected that method because of the lack of continuity between the string set and its triangular ending as well as the bulkiness of the join.

There was only one thing for it: Y-seams. I dreaded the thought! Now I'm becoming an expert! Practice makes perfect, they say, and I've had a lot of practice! The secret lies in:

1. starting sewing the seam at the opposite end to the Y-join,
2. stopping two stitches before the point of the join and backtracking a couple of stitches. That unsewn space gives you some room to manoeuvre.
3. starting each seam four stitch lengths further than the join, stitching back two stitches to fix the seam and then stitching the seam further until two stitch lengths before the point and backtracking two to fix the seam.

The mistake I made when I first tried Y-seams was to start at the point where everything came together. It's very crowded there! Much easier to keep your distance from everyone else at the party. Approach slowly and stand still when you're close enough. After following a tutorial from Mary Huey on sewing tumbling blocks, it was plain sailing for me! Mary illustrates the process with lots of excellent, clear photos.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Finish Along 2019 Q2 list

My finish along list for the second quarter is short as I'm going to be without a sewing machine for a few weeks. I doubt whether my hands will be totally inactive, but there won't be much quilting done.

 

1.  The Mini Wonders table runner: pattern in Make Modern issues 19 - 24. I have three of the five blocks finished. this looks as if it could be EPP, but it's regular piecing with lots of tiny pieces with 60 degree angles.

1. 2.  Overlapping Octagons QAL with Sujata Shah. This photo is from the beginning of February, and even though I haven't done anything to it for the last month, it's quite a bit larger, and I am becoming an expert at Y-seams.

3. Bento bags: how many? No idea!

4. Sewing machine cover. I still have to make a start, although the materials are all ready and waiting.

While I'm away I shall be probably be knitting, or passing the time with EPP, but I doubt very much if there'll be a finish there!

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Click on the button to view this quarter's good intentions.

Happy sewing

Marly.

QAL: The Unconventional and the Unexpected

My Overlapping Octagons, inspired by a quilt in "The Unconventional and Unexpected ..." and part of the Quilt along hosted by Sujata Shah, is progressing, but nowhere near completion. Here are the units I've made so far, randomly placed on the design wall.

Overlapping Octagons: Try-out on the design wall with 4.5" red (the new neutral) centres.

I thought I would use as many of my 19th century reproduction fabrics as possible to make space in my sewing room. Unfortunately most of the "reds" look more like brown, so I shall be adding brighter reds to the mix.There was not much blue, and that has nearly all been used now.

I'm enoying using my scraps in this way; really satisfying!

For more information go to Basket full of Scraps where there are more posts relating to this QAL.

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Click on the button above to see more works in progress.

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Happy Sewing

Marly.