Circles quilt

  My goal for August was to make progress in hand quilting my circles quilt.

 I've made progress in quilting round about 160 of the 180 circles. 

Ready to quilt on the lavender coloured background yesterday evening.

Most of the circles left to quilt are along the edge, where there isn't enough fabric to use the frame.
I've discovered that I can quilt without the frame if I stabilise the the outside edge of the quilt with big machine stitches first. That's enough to ensure I don't pull the fabric sideways while sewing.

Still to do before this is finished:Add the label

1. Quilt the last approx. 20 circles
2. Bind.

I should manage that in the next week or so. Now to choose a WIP or UFO for next month's goal!

I'm linking to

 Click on the button to see more goals achieved.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Improvisation progress in May

This week I did a little work on my improvised quilt inspired by Piet Mondriaan's "Composition in Red, Yellow and Blue".

Last month I showed some red half rectangle triangles I wasn't satisfied with. This month I sewed the red triangles together along the short side; that really did seem to be the best arrangement. The yellow and blue I cut as flying geese right from the start. I didn't manage to work out how much extra I needed to cut for the seam allowance, as a result most of the geese have been beheaded!

This week I'm going to make two more blue "geese" and continue to make my Mondriaan inspired block. Then it'll be time to think about the other corners - more triangles? more squares? And it needs more fabric on the left hand side, probably empty space, but I just don't know yet.

I've been trying to make a circle a day in the Quilty 365 project, but I've fallen behind. Here are this month's improvised circles as of last Wednesday. I'll be showing all May's circles here on Tuesday.

I've recently learnt how to make free-hand curves; I bet you'd never have guessed! Even so, this one, with all straight lines, is my favourite:

with 21 pieces. cut-offs from various farmer's wife blocks, and they are tiny pieces to start with! Although it will look better after pressing, it's not a very circular circle!

I'm linking to the Ad hoc improvised quilting link up hosted by Kaya and Ann

Click on the button to see more improvised patchwork quilts.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Quilty 365 scrappy appliqué circles May link, April progress

Audrey at Quilty Folk issued a challenge last autumn to appliqué a circle onto a square each day. I joined in on 1 January and  made these blocks in April:

April's blocks in chronological order, starting with the short column on the left: 1, 2, 3 April.

making a total of 121 blocks to date.

All the squares measure 4.5 inches, and most of the circles 3 inches in diameter. Special days' circles are 3.75 inches and there are three: family birthdays on 6 and 8 April, and a public holiday (King's Day) on 27 April. The pieced circles are all made from scraps, but I have cut into a few new fat quarters this month to achieve enough variety. Two of the squares are prepared, but not sewn yet! I hope to manage to sew three today, and be up-to-date by the end of the day!

I have been thinking about the layout and at present favour something like this:

most of the circles from the first three months

a rainbow arrangement of the background colours, although the regimented straight lines need some mixing up in the final arrangement. It definitely needs tweaking before I start sewing them together.  The main trouble with this layout is that I have to find a way to include these:

about 15 squares in non-rainbow colours

I've also started sewing the circles cut from behind the appliqué patches onto a 4.5" wide strip and

intend including them in the final quilt.

I'm looking forward to seeing more layout ideas.

I'm linking to:

     

Click on the buttons to see more quilt blocks from scraps

 Enjoy your Sunday everyone, and have a good week!

Happy sewing
Marly.

Improv composition in red, (yellow and blue) in progress ...?!

Kaya and Ann are giving hints on improv patchwork on their sites as they host the Ad Hoc Improv Quilter's link up.

In January's linky party Monica enthused about the book "Cultural Fusion Quilts" by Sujata Shah which had been the inspiration for much of her own work. I agree, it's great to see haw Sujata has taken the patterns presented by everyday images and turned them into quilts.

Sujata Shah's work as well as that of Kaya and Ann is very inspiring and has given me lots of ideas, but last week I was quite suddenly hit by the work of Piet Mondriaan. Not really HIT you will understand, although I live within ten miles of the largest single collection of his work in the world, but such close proximity to a masterpiece would have got me arrested. Inspired by his famous Composition in Red Yellow and Blue (there are several of the same name) I added red, yellow and blue solids to my FQ collection (white I already had, but I forgot the black!) and got cutting. Hmm!

Using Sujata's method of stack and slash, but going for straight cuts, I cut white and red 8 x 4" rectangles diagonally. The result was disappointing really as I was going for arrows, so I cut the next two pairs of rectangle in half vertically to 8 x 2"

The narrow points won't do! (on the left) They curl outwards and when they are joined it's even worse (on the right): all that fabric coming together at the point, just wouldn't come together. Nor would it lie flat.

I haven't tried joining the wider ones, but expect that those bulky seam ends will be just the same.

Rather than go on with yellow and blue I tried some other arrangements:

I quite like this one; this afternoon, at least

and ended up with this:

which looks highly conventional!
Feeling somewhat disheartened I made some highly conventional HSTs (as opposed to HRTs) to get myself back in balance.

I haven't given up on this project, but don't want elongated pinwheels. So it's back to the drawing board for me and into a little zip-lock bag for  the fabric! It's still on the cutting table so not shelved yet, but I need to decide on what sort of triangles, and how to construct them. As this is my first improv attempt I'd welcome any ideas on how to go next. Perhaps I should have tried a wonky log cabin first!... to be continued ....

I wrote this post a month ago, but missed the link up by a week! (Wrong Tuesday - silly girl!) In the meantime I've done nothing with this project except think about it now and again.

The Quilty 365 project is proving an easy project for improvised piecing as the scraps in my scrap bucket are getting smaller and in March I pieced more circles (although one is not improv!)

And pieced more circles in April, although not so many:

Not to happy with the fabric repetition there, but they won't be together in the final layout.

I'm linking to:

Click on the button for the link to more amazing improvised patchwork.

Happy sewing

Marly.

More Quilty circles

Audrey at Quilty Folk started a project towards the end of last year to appliqué a circle onto a square each day. At the end of the year you have 365 (or, actually 366 this year) squares with a circle: Quilty 365.
I have, contrary to my own expectations, managed to stick to it for three months since I started on 1 January. I find it addictive, and my needle turn appliqué has improved no end!
Here are my March blocks:

The squares are all solid fabric and measure 4.5"; most of the circles measure 3" in diameter, but there are a couple of slightly larger circles on special days. It depends on how much time I have whether or not I piece the circle from scraps, some of which are really small.

circle 88: Monday 28 March 2016, made of the results of cutting mistakes of a very frustrating paper-pieced Farmer's Wife block which I posted about on Saturday. Every cloud has a silver lining!

I have now made 92 circles (that includes today's) and this quilt promises to be enormous!

You can still join in this project; there is no particular starting date. The only rule is to make 365 circle blocks in one year.

I'm linking up to 

so click on the button and see more appliqué circles, some of which are really spectacular. Maybe you'll feel inspired to sew along with us.

Happy sewing

Marly

RSC 16 Still March: more purple!

Each month Angela at Soscrappy posts a colour and many quilters use their scraps of that colour throughout the month. This year March's colour is purple. Angela also posts patterns for a sampler, but, after two years of Rainbow Samplers, I'm taking a year off the sampler, and making my own rainbow quilt of bear paw blocks.

I made two more purple blocks this last week,
 

to add to the ones I made the week before.

Furthermore, I've been struggling with paper piecing one of the blocks in the 1930's Farmer's Wife, which I'm making along with a group of other (much better!) quilters at my LQS, QuiltersPalet in The Hague. I've wasted so much fabric trying to keep the outside edges of the block straight on the fabric grain. I wonder if it's really necessary when I'm stitching to paper anyway. What do you think? Keep the edges on the straight of grain at all costs, or not?

I've also managed to appliqué a circle each day for the Quilty 365 project. It's becoming difficult to find fabrics I haven't used already. I'll be posting more about this project next Friday.

This weekend I'll be linking up to

  and to 

For more scrappy fun click the buttons above on Saturday and Sunday respectively.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Brown Saturday and Some Improv Circles

The colour chosen by Angela at Soscrappy for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge (see button on the right) this month was brown. I made two more bear's paw blocks,

brown bear's paws framed by black and white squares

February has not been my most productive quilting month; I was away from home for a few days, and then my machine was away for maintenance for a whole week.

Nevertheless I managed a needle-turned circle every day for the Quilty 365 project (see button on the right),

February circles up to 26th, in chronological order

including some brown ones:

My inspiration comes from my scrap bucket, I just root around until I find a suitable piece. The bigger pieces have gone, so now I'm piecing the circles and am quite amazed at the resulting combinations! This project is becoming more improvised as it progresses, and I don't always take account of the grain of the fabric. 

I'm following the advice of Kaya and Ann at the Ad Hoc Improv Quilters (see button on the right), although I could be more ad hoc; my squares are all exactly 4.5 inches square! I'm going improv one step at a time, and these circles are, for now the perfect project.

randomly pieced circles

 I'm still using solids for the background squares and am pleased with the result. 

There were two family birthdays this month, celebrated by a larger circle:

confetti and snow

The first was Carnival weekend, hence the confetti , and the second birthday boy was skiing in the Alps, so I used the nearest I had to a snow scene. I must admit to cutting into a new FQ for the snow!


Update 1 March

Here are the last three February circles:

I  am linking up to 

       

Click on the images to see more photos.

Happy sewing

Marly.

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.

Quilty 365 January link up

This is the first day of my new project:

to create one block per day by appliquéing a circle onto a 4½" neutral block.  And to stick at it for ONE WHOLE YEAR!

I wan't entirely sure about using neutral, and have decided since the above photo to change to different coloured backgrounds. So here is my new first block, prepared and ready to go.

Another first is I shall be trying my hand at needle turn appliqué. I don't have any hand-sewing on the go at the moment, so this will be a good project for the evenings.

Why don't you join the growing group of quilters on this project? The great thing about this project is you can start whenever you like, just keep going for a year.

Pop over to the linky-party now and see what the others have been doing.

click on the image for the link

Happy sewing

Marly.