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.

QAL: The Unconventional and Unexpected: Overlapping Octagons

I've decided to join in The Unconventional and Unexpected Quilt A-Long . The QAL is being hosted by Sujata Shah, whose work I have admired since I bought her book,  "Cultural Fusion Quilts". The inspiration for this QAL comes from the book "The Unconventional and Unexpected", by Roderrick Kiracofe. For more information check Sujata's posts on The Root Connection. I have chosen to start with the quilt "Overlapping Octagons".

I decided to join in after much deliberation. After all, "Do I really need another project?" "Yes", I answered myself, "You have to move on and this will be a new challenge."

My fabric choice is this:
 

blue and neutrals: a bulging bucket of blues and the right hand pile in the box. My supply of neutrals is very low, and in need of urgent replenishment.

with a few splashes of:

orange: starting with the scraps on the left.

Yesterday I started sewing blue strip scraps together along the short ends as leaders and enders in another project. These will be chopped and sewn together with others to make the string rectangles in the Overlapping Octagons. I shall be ordering more neutrals/ low volume during next week.

My plan is to cut the fabric freehand with the rotary cutter, although I shall be piecing the strips on phone book pages to keep them stable, as I can't manage to cut on the grain freehand, and would like to avoid wobbles and bubbles!

I'm already enjoying this project and look forward to sharing information and progress with others at Basket full of Scraps.

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

Happy sewing

Marly.

Good Fortune Clue 5

Yes, 5! I have looked at 6, and I've even cut a few strings, while straightening edges for the clue 5 pieces. However Christmas week is always extra busy (and I know I'm not the only one) so I haven't got any further with this winter's Quiltville Mystery Quilt, "Good Fortune" than making some of last week's pieces. I also made some more of clue 2 as leaders and enders in clue 5. Perhaps that's an advantage of being behind!

15 pieces for clue 5; where's the one that got away?

As I was making these in pairs, one right- and one left-facing, I was very surprised to have one large blue triangle left over. Where did the other pair of triangles get to, I wonder! I'm not about to move the furniture to look for it now, so that's all of clue 5 for the moment.

As to clue 6, I'm happy that Bonnie gave the option to make the pieces from strings as I'm very low on neutral fabric, but I do have a bag dedicated to the off- cuts from straightening fabric before I start cutting for regular patchwork. I should be able to fill at least one telephone-book page from there, I hope before Friday.

I'm linking to:

So click on the button to see how other's have made clue 6 pieces.

I wish everyone all the best in 2019, especially

Happy sewing

Marly.

Good Fortune clue 3

Last Friday Bonnie Hunter posted clue 3 of this year's Quiltville mystery, "Good Fortune". This involved making lots of rectangles with folded corners and their bonus HSTs.

24 "bonus" HSTs

 from:

12 parallelograms

As in the two previous clues I only made a slight fraction of the number given in the pattern.

I found it very time consuming sewing just to the side of the drawn lines on the squares. I tried to sew with the left-hand inside edge of the presser foot just touching the left-hand side of the line. I found myself being mesmerised by the motion of the needle resulting in a wobbly line. Of the first batch I had to unpick some of the stitching as the lines had wobbled too close together.  The next phase is cutting three-eighths of an inch from the line between the lines. That's why not wobbling is so important! (If that is confusing check out Bonnie's instructions in clue 3.)

I see in the link-up that there are bloggers there who have already finished this clue completely. At this rate I wouldn't be finished before the end of the year! It's not a problem, I'll just plod on fitting this in when I can and working on each new clue as it's published each week.

I'm linking to:

Click on the button to join the link-up.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Good Fortune: Clue 2

This year's Quiltville mystery is "Good Fortune". Clue 2 was published on Friday and can be found here. There is still time to join in if you have time on your hands the coming weeks!

I'm not making all the units but going for a lap quilt at the most. Even for that I need a lot more than forty of these HSTs.

40 HSTs: not there yet!

I plan to make more this coming week, along with more of last week's 4-patches.

I'm linking to

Click on the button to visit there and be amazed 

at the enormous number of HSTs made this weekend.

Happy Sewing

Marly

Quiltville Mystery "On Ringo Lake" part 9

Each year Bonnie Hunter starts a mystery quilt on the Friday after Thanksgiving Day. (Until I started patchwork and following her blog I had no idea when Thanksgiving was!) Anyway, I'm thankful to her for this opportunity to refine my skills as she doesn't just give the pattern, but gives lots of practical cutting and piecing tips along the way.

The last few clues to her Mystery Quilt "On Ringo Lake" came hard and fast over the last weekend of 2017, with the reveal on 1 January. So far I have joined the units to make six blocks and put them up on my design wall with the sections of pieced sashing and one cornerstone (the brown square in the middle of the middle row).

I like the pattern but I'm not really happy with my colour scheme; especially some of my coral-coloured pieces are too dark. I was actually more worried about the brown fabric, and in this photo above it looks as if it's a solid, but there are about nine different brown prints in here.

Even enlarged, and somewhat blurry, the depth of colour doesn't show, but you'll have to believe that there are subtle variations in each piece, with hints of orange and gold.

I set out to make half the number of units and did so in all the clues except the brown geese, of which I still have to make about 20, and the sashings. I've practically run out of aqua fabric, and will need to buy more to complete the quilt.

I'm looking forward to seeing other people's results. I'm always amazed to see the effects of using colours other than Bonnie's. There are always a lot of delightful surprises there.

I am linking up to

Click on the button above to visit the party.

Happy Sewing

Marly.

Neutral storage

The colour for August in the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is Neutral. My scrappy project thie year is to use my scraps to make scrappy storage baskets and at the beginning of this week I was able to add another basket to the row.

All are in use, but have themselves depleted the scrap supply - what I wanted, of course - and are squishy and falling about. Maybe placing the quilting lines even closer together would have given more stability; maybe another type of wadding would have worked better. I have used what I had and the result tends to fall over somewhat when empty. Tough!

This basket has less "made fabric" than the others and more ends of strips and and long pieces from trimming backing. What all the baskets have in common though is that all are unlined. That's what drew me first to this pattern from Fiona at BubzRugz; it is quilt-as-you-go and then the sections are joined in the usual way for a bag with a flat base, with the backing serving as the lining. It's not as neat as it could be, but I'm not selling or even giving these away, they are solely for my own use and I'm not bothered about a lining; in fact I'd rather do without the hassle of turning the whole lot through a small hole in the lining.

I'm linking to

 

Click on the above button to pop over there and see more projects with scrappy neutrals.

Happy sewing

Marly.

Neutral basket in the making

Neutral is the Rainbow Scrap Challenge colour for August. I didn't think I had enough neutral fabric for a basket, and I didn't! Not strictly neutral, at any rate. Some of these look decidedly brown, but are a mix of beige and grey, and some are ecru and grey.

I deliberately avoided any other colours, even though I have a lot of "neutral" with some other colours left from making Bonnie Hunter's mystery quilts. By her definition "neutral fabric" can have other colours in it, as long as they amount to less than 50%. This does give a more dynamic effect than solid white as here below where the neutral features orange hens, brown sewing notions, red lines, multi coloured polka dots and ecru buttons.

Allietare!

So my neutral bag will have some other darker shades in it, I could say for effect, but in fact without them I wouldn't have a neutral bag at all!

I'm linking up to 

so hop over there and see more neutral projects.

Happy sewing

Marly.

En Provence part 5

Friday's clue in the Quiltville 2016 mystery quilt was 64 HSTs. As I'm only making half, here are my 32:

32 x 3.5"square HSTs in purple and neutral

I found the last one on the floor this morning, unpressed and untrimmed. It was nearly too late for the photo shoot!

I have visitors arriving soon, so that's all for today.

Later today I shall be linking up to:

where lots more HSTs in purple and other colours are waiting for your viewing.

Happy sewing

Marly.