On my design wall 14 April

I'm linking up on Wednesday 

with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday and 

with Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social.

This is on my design wall at the moment.  

rows 7 to 10 of the triangle quilt on Monday afternoon.

These are rows of my Triangle Quilt, for the Triangle Quilt Along at The Sassy Quilter. In the photo above the top two rows are completed and stitched together, the third row is almost completely pieced and the fourth partly. My design wall isn't wide enough for this single-bed size quilt, the patches at the ends keep falling off!

Detail of third and fourth row.

The first six rows are completed and have moved to the living room floor:

Another three rows will probably be enough, and then I'll be moving on to the borders.

I'm linking up with Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday and 

with Stitch by Stitch for Anything Goes Mondays.

Triangles on the design wall

Here are my first nine triangles for the triangle quilt along hosted by the Sassy Quilter. This week's assignment is sewing the rows; click here to see what others have done so far this week. Clearly everyone is much further than me; I'm still cutting and trying pieces out on the wall.

There are 33 more of each of these triangles (with the exception of the fourth from the left - cutting oops!) waiting to be included. 

I'm using the Marti Michell 6" equilateral triangle ruler, which gives a triangle side of 6" rather than a perpendicular 6", as other brands of ruler do. I got 11 triangles out of a WOF strip, but my triangles are slightly smaller than Paula's. Another difference I've discovered is that with the MM ruler, like all MM templates, all the corners are cut off. I'm going boss eyed checking the straight of grain on every triangle, and I'm not even sewing yet! 

This is not the definite arrangement, but until Saturday these were all the fabrics I had. 

some of my acquisitions on Saturday

On Saturday, however, I went to the local quilt show and bought these 1/2 metre pieces to add to the fabric already cut.

Since I took the photo early this morning I have been starching and pressing.

Wednesday update:

and starching and pressing, and cutting. All the new fabric is now cut into strips, and the  cutting of triangles is about to begin.

I'm linking up on Monday to:

The Sassy Quilter for Triangle QAL

Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday and

Karen's Quilts, Crows and Cardinals for Anything Goes Mondays.

and on Wednesday to: 
Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesdays and
Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Work in Progress on the Design Wall

Monday:

My Jigsaw quilt centre is finished. I'm working on the pieced inner border.

Jigsaw Quilt from Two from One Jelly Roll Quilts by Pam and Nicky Lintott, made in "Metropolitan Fair" by Barbara Brackman for Moda

I love this pattern, and so far it has all gone together very smoothly. I think I shall be making another one soon, but in softer fabrics.

Update Wednesday:

Now the top is finished and it's off the wall and waiting for me to get some backing fabric. Meanwhile I have other projects to keep me occupied.

I'm linking up with Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday,

with Stitch by Stitch for Anything goes Monday,

  with Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.
and with Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Work in Progress on the Design Wall

There are three projects on my wall this morning.

Emma stars, Jigsaw Quilt and teal blocks

Firstly, all those stars: here are thirty four of the required thirty six for the penultimate border of the Emma Quilt (last year's BO2M in the Dutch patchwork magazine "Quilt & Zo".



And here are the other two: the EPP finished yesterday evening, and now stuck onto their background squares ready to be appliquéd this evening.


I shall probably start arranging the blocks later, to give myself a break from the sewing machine, and I expect to be able to sew them all together and add the border this week, and also start on the EPP for the next border.




Secondly, on the wall (bottom left) are two teal blocks for the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2014. Not much done on that last week I'm afraid.

Thirdly, there are six blocks for my Jigsaw Quilt from this book made in "Metropolitan Fair" by Barbara Brackman for Moda.
Two more blocks are partly pieced on the cutting mat, and the pieces for the rest are in plastic bags on the sewing table. I'm now going to get cutting all the remaining small HSTs - the large ones are all done - and get sewing.

I'm linking up to 

Stitch by Stitch for Anything Goes Mondays
and Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday

so hop over there and take a look 

at what is keeping some other quilters occupied this week.

Happy Sewing

Marly.

My Design Wall

This was my design wall first thing this morning.

Nothing has changed over the past week

I've had a few comments on my design wall itself the last few weeks, not just on what's on it, so I decided to show how I made it. I don't have the space in my apartment for a proper design wall so I had to be inventive. 

So here it is. Nothing could be easier.




First buy a simple fleece at the supermarket or household store. Mine is plain white and cost €3.00 (less than USD 5.00 I think) A dark colour would also work but keep it simple.

Then buy an adjustable curtain rail at IKEA. I chose the system where the "curtain" would hang closest to the "window".

Stretch the fleece out on the floor and adjust the length of the rail to match, plus a little extra for the brackets and a few inches to the outside of the brackets.

Keep two curtain rings apart from the rest.

Put the remaining curtain rings with pegs on the rail.

Fix the brackets to the wall (preferably straight) the width of the fleece apart.

Hang the rail  and put the two rings you put aside to the outside of the brackets - this way you can keep the fleece taut. 

Hang the fleece.

And Bob's your uncle and you can start designing.



Advantages of this wall:

Easy to store in a small space when not in use. Just unclip one end peg and you can "open" your "curtain".

Easy to replace by a dark background if necessary - just unclip the pegs and hang a new fleece.

Cheap: the whole thing cost less than €10.00.



Disadvantages:

It is hanging free of the wall, so moves and can loose its load - care is needed
It measures only 1.8m. x 1.2m. 


For me the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. When my grandchildren come to stay, they sleep in this room. I have to clear my sewing things away anyway and a fixed board would be a problem. Anything rigid is out of the question, as it is my cutting mat has to be stowed behind my shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe. Now I just push the fleece aside and push my sewing machine cabinet into the same corner.

I'm linking up to Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday and to Sew Many Ways for the March theme link up.

Happy designing

Marly.

Design wall Monday & finish

This is my design wall. An awful lot of threads, but no design.

No, I haven't finished everything, but this, 

Bonnie Hunter Leader & Ender Challenge 2013,
about 1/8 completed.

having been photographed, has gone back into its box. 

And the pinks have also been laid to rest, at least until Saturday. Maybe I'll make more this week, the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is such a nice in between project.

But this is finished. 

The centre star is an orphan block from the "Goodnight quilt" I'm making for my 7 year-old grandson. Last week it was on the design wall with the wonky log cabin blocks newly added. Now I've added top and bottom sections made from the left-over triangles from my grandsons quilt and quilted, bound and washed it.



 My Grandson's new place mat which matches his new quilt which is still waiting for me to quilt it, 


because ...

all is not well with the Bernina 440. Having been back to Bernina for most of December and part of January the BSR is not doing what it should. 

Look at the random enormous stitches (up tp 3/4") and mini stitches. Good thing I discovered this on the place mat, and not on the quilt.









In case you're not familiar with Bernina terminology:

BSR = BERNINA STITCH REGULATOR 

a special foot for free motion quilting  that ensures that whatever speed the fabric is moved at the stitches are always the same length. Yeah, sure!

The machine is great for piecing: has a foot for a scant 1/4" and a patchwork seam guide to help guide the fabric straight to the 1/4" foot, can go from two to eight layers of fabric with ease and others I've spoken to assure me that the stitch length is regulated perfectly in FMQ. So do I have a Friday afternoon machine? I'm waiting to get an answer from Bernina.

In the meantime if anyone has experience in using the BSR I'd be glad to hear from you. The sooner that quilt gets quilted, the sooner I can start on something new. I'm trying to be strict with myself here.
I'm linking up with Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Design wall & Work in Progess

I'm doing the Rainbow Scrap Challenge and this month the colour is pink. Having my pink blocks on the wall makes it easy to see what combinations I've used already.



I am about to start quilting a quilt for my 7-year old grandson, and the main element is the yellow strip-pieced star on a blue background. Before I start the FMQ I want to practise on the one surplus star so I decided to build it out to make it place-mat size and practise quilting on that. Then it will be something other than just a practice block. Hence the two wonky log cabins left and right, made from the triangular off-cuts from the pieced strips. Now I have to figure out what to add top and bottom to make it up to size, and I only have triangles! 
Incidentally, now I like the wonky log cabins (my first shot at improv) more than the star!




Finally there are some split 9 patches for Bonnie Hunter's Leader and Ender Challenge, again so I can see what I've got put together so far and if the colour/neutral contrast is sufficiently strong.. At first I had far too many light solid patches, and there are still some blocks where the neutral half has too many solids. I've been unpicking and substituting neutral prints for the solids. It took me some time to understand what Bonnie means by neutral. I think I've got it sussed, but I hope I haven't gone too far in the other direction. I don't think so, because there is a definite line between the coloured and the neutral.

So, instead of sewing this week I've been unpicking, and cutting. I know, most people will have done all the necessary cutting for the L&E challenge months ago. But I didn't have many scraps (still don't). We brought two refuse-bags and a 12 gal storage box of dressmaking scraps up from the basement on Saturday, and I've been sorting them over the weekend. Polyester etc, and jersey to the rubbish bin, a few pieces of cotton to the washing machine, and the rest to the ironing board. 

It's not on the design wall yet, but look what I found, lurking in the storage box ...

Very cold ducklings and bears?

I can't remember buying this but the edges have been zig-zagged, so probably washed, but it hasn't been cut into. Which doesn't surprise me. I can't imagine what came over me when I chose this. Migraine maybe. But, cut it small; still ugly?: cut it smaller. I shall be making some double 9-patch blocks in blue soon; you know, with the patches that finish at 1/2"!



I'm linking up with  at Patchwork Times for Design Wall Monday, so just pop over there to see other people's design walls. 

Also with Lee at Freshly Pieced for WIP Wednesday.